Tom Ross:
"Steamboat Springs — State Highway Commissioner Kathy Connell, of Steamboat Springs, said Thursday that she’s feisty enough to press home on Front Range officials an important point about Western Slope highways. However, dwindling state funds for road maintenance and capital highway projects will make it difficult to steer a path to the future until new funding sources materialize.
Connell, a former Steamboat Springs City Council member, said Front Range government officials and her colleagues on the highway commission need to be reminded that the highways on the west side of the Continental Divide play a vital role in generating Colorado sales tax receipts.
“The Front Range needs numbers from us to help them understand the economic hit” the area will take if mountain road networks branching off the Interstate 70 west mountain corridor are allowed to decline, she said.
“About 30 percent of tourism and visitor spending in Colorado occurs in the mountain resort region,”
Connell told an audience attending a Steamboat Springs Chamber Resort Association economic forum this week. “If tourists find it difficult to travel through the mountains, it will cost a lot of money in state sales taxes.”
Connell was appointed in June 2011 to represent Colorado Department of Transportation District 6 comprising Clear Creek, Gilpin, Grand, Jackson, Moffat, Rio Blanco and Routt counties...."
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