{"id":96083,"date":"2019-01-21T18:29:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T01:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-seeks-way-to-open-mesa-verde-road\/"},"modified":"2019-01-21T18:29:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-22T01:29:00","slug":"montezuma-county-seeks-way-to-open-mesa-verde-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-seeks-way-to-open-mesa-verde-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma County seeks way to open Mesa Verde road"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The road into Mesa Verde National Park was closed after the Dec. 25 snowstorm because snowplows haven\u2019t been funded during the federal government shutdown.<\/span>The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Montezuma County Board of Commissioners jumped into 2019 by welcoming newly elected member Jim Candelaria and new county administrator Shak Powers.<\/p>\n

Out of the gate, the commissioners and staff discussed how to reopen the road into Mesa Verde National Park, which closed because of the partial federal government shutdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t have tourists coming here to find the park closed,\u201d said commissioner Larry Don Suckla. \u201cWe want to offer our help.\u201d<\/p>\n

The winding, 21-mile road through the park briefly remained open after the shutdown began Dec. 21, despite the closure of park attractions and services.<\/p>\n

But it was closed after the Dec. 25 snowstorm because there were not enough resources to sufficiently plow the road for public safety.<\/p>\n

The commissioners directed county road manager Rob Englehart to seek a mutual aid agreement with the park that would allow county crews to help plow during the shutdown to keep the road open.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would take some time, but we have the equipment to get it done,\u201d Englehart said. \u201cI\u2019ll look into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Calls and emails to park officials on whether they would be open to such an agreement were not returned.<\/p>\n

After reviewing applications in open session, commissioners appointed 11 people to the new Montezuma County Recreation Advisory Board. They said the diverse group represents a wide variety of recreation interests and brings fundraising skills to the table.<\/p>\n

Appointed members are Shawn Gregory, Robert Walden, Latifa Rodriguez, Kathryn Fulton, Brett Grubbs, Paul Crook, Roger Lawrence, Mark Drudge and Susan Thomas. Alternates are Abigail Lock and Cap Allen.<\/p>\n

The committee will be charged with promoting outdoor recreation in the county. Its first priority will be moving forward on the planning and construction of the proposed 17-mile Paths to Mesa Verde trail between Cortez and Mancos. The ambitious project is in its fourth year of a planning phase that has been funded by local county and municipal governments and a $400,000 grant from the Colorado Department of Transportation.<\/p>\n

The first phase of the trail is being planned from Mancos along the U.S. 160 right of way.<\/p>\n

Also, the commissioners said they plan to interview all nine applicants seeking the open planning director job.<\/p>\n

The planning and zoning board also is accepting applications for an alternate position. Commissioners did not release the names of the applicants.<\/p>\n

jmimiaga@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Federal shutdown, snow close road<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13,173,60,265,414],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-96083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-mesa-verde-national-park","tag-montezuma-county","tag-politics","tag-weather"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96083"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=96083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}