News

• Candidates Vie for Telluride Town Council
• Funding Cliff Looms for Telluride School District
• A Look Back: Goats Graze the Valley Floor

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Remembering John “Eagle” Hoagland

Norwood lost a member of its community over the weekend.

John “Eagle” Hoagland was found dead in his camper Saturday by a friend. He was 80.

According to the San Miguel County Coroner’s Office, Hoagland had not been feeling well for several weeks but did not seek medical care or take prescription medications. He chose to live simply and close to the earth.

Hoagland moved to the mountains of San Miguel County in 1972 after leaving the Air Force. He was a memorable character, known by many in the community.

The cause and manner of death are under investigation. Crippin Funeral Home will handle services.

Hoagland is survived by his siblings, Tom, Karen and Vicki.

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Candidates Vie for Telluride Town Council

Three candidates have thrown their names in the hat for Telluride Town Council.

Charles Dalton, Marya Stark and Chris Uihlein are vying for two seats up for election in June.

One seat will fill the position left vacant after former councilmember Meehan Fee stepped down in January.

The second seat is currently held by Stark. She was appointed to Town Council in December 2025 after a seat was left vacant following the November election. Her appointment lasts until the next regular or special election.

“I really saw there were a lot of concerns in the community about the town’s finances, and since I have a background in finance, I felt like those were really interesting questions,” Stark said. “I love problem solving, and problem-solving in areas of interest is extra fun. So, that’s why I ran.”

She highlighted economic development and diversification as areas of interest moving forward.

“The problems the town now faces — giant infrastructure needs and a need to diversify the winter economy — those are super interesting to me,” Stark said. “So, for me, it was natural to try and keep chugging along.”

Dalton said he was drawn to run based on the lack of candidates in last year’s election.

“I was a little disappointed in our last election that we ended up not having enough people even to fill the positions, so I wanted to make sure that we had choices this time,” Dalton said.

He pointed to improving communication between the community and government as a key priority and said he wants to lend his finance background to major projects.

“If you look at our town budget, it’s exploded in recent years. We’ve got a lot of important things that need to be done, and I think we need to make sure we’re being accountable for how we’re spending this money, and we’re spending it in the most judicious way and getting what we need done, whether that’s affordable housing, or a gondola, or a wastewater treatment center,” Dalton said. “Those are all huge projects, and I would like to be a little more involved in that financial aspect of town government.”

Uihlein said he entered the race after not always agreeing with the direction of the council.

“I’d rather try to help that than sit back and critique it from a distance,” Uihlein said.

He pointed to affordable housing as his main issue and said the town needs to find a balance between making as many people happy as possible and keeping Telluride’s spirit.

“I go back all the time to that quote from ‘Blizzard of AAHHHs,’ ‘let’s keep Telluride weird,’” Uihlein said. “That was Rasta Stevie in the ’80s talking about how people are going to sit in the Buck and wonder where all the locals are. We are the people that make this town what this town is, and we should try to keep this town a little funky, and keep those people that you see on the street that make you think this is Telluride and not Aspen or some other place — keep those people here somehow.”

KOTO News will hold a candidate forum with Dalton, Stark and Uihlein in the lead-up to the election.

The Telluride Town Council election will take place Tuesday, June 30, in coordination with San Miguel County’s primary election.

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Funding Cliff Looms for Telluride School District

The Telluride School District’s mission is to ensure each student is able to achieve personal success through quality education.

If you ask Superintendent John Pandolfo, decisions at the state level are making that mission more difficult.

“In 2024, the state passed a new funding formula that benefited almost all districts, but it definitely does not benefit Telluride,” Pandolfo said.

The aim of the new formula was to fund schools in a more sustainable way and provide more funding for rural districts. The bill passed the Colorado State House with 59 of 65 representatives voting in support and passed the Colorado State Senate with 27 of 34 voting in support. It was then signed by Gov. Jared Polis.

While the bill had overwhelming support in Denver, Pandolfo said it hurts the Telluride School District, largely because it caps the cost-of-living factor — a multiplier used to determine funding based on the cost of living in a place. It also shifts how student population is calculated from a several-year average to a one-year number.

When the bill passed, Pandolfo said the state allowed Telluride to stay in “hold harmless,” so it would keep getting funded by the old formula while the state fully implemented the new formula.

“Then we would fall off a big cliff,” Pandolfo said.

But then, the state faced its own budgetary challenges, so in 2025 it moved the timeline up, creating two cliffs.

“The first cliff is when the flat funding ends and we stand to lose $1 million, and then the cliff when we actually move over to the new formula fully, which is somewhere around 2031/32, we would then fall off another cliff of around $2 million,” Pandolfo said.

That first cliff is due to arrive in 2027. After the second cliff, the school district would lose around $3 million — about 15% of its budget.

Pandolfo said the school district is doing what it can to keep the quality of education high with fewer dollars. That comes as district enrollment is going down — the classes of 2025 and 2026 were some of the biggest the district has had, and the incoming kindergarten class is less than half the size.

The reality, he said, is that it means letting go of staff or consolidating positions.

“We’re looking at a reduction of five-plus FTE, or full-time equivalent, staffing going into next year, but if something big doesn’t change going into the following year, our student numbers aren’t going to reduce as much because we’re going to be graduating a smaller class, but the fiscal cliff we’re going to fall off is going to force something more drastic if we don’t have a solution,” Pandolfo said.

That is why, Pandolfo said, the school district is planning to go to voters in November to ask for an increase to its mill levy.

Currently, the Telluride School District’s mill levy is 30% of its total program funding. The district plans to ask voters to increase that to 50%.

“The amount of the mill levy override is a percentage of our total program funding, and as our total program funding shrinks from the formula, then the amount we get in a mill levy override shrinks,” Pandolfo said. “So even if we successfully pass a mill levy override ballot initiative this coming November, by the time we get to the end of the phase-in of the new formula, it will really be fairly equivalent of 30% of our current total program funding. So it’s almost us just trying to tread water.”

While Pandolfo acknowledged the new funding formula is a benefit for the vast majority of school districts in Colorado, he said the state has put Telluride in a bind.

“The perception of a community like ours is, ‘You’ve got money and you’ll find ways to get money.’ That just gets really hard because we’re constrained in what we can do,” Pandolfo said. “The overall statement is: You’ve got to find a way to fix this.”

Until, and if, the state does fix it, Pandolfo said he hopes the Telluride community will continue to show up for education.

“Education is such the backbone of what we need, and I think we have a great education system,” Pandolfo said. “I know things are hard for everyone at every level, so any impact is impact. We have to recognize that, and we’re just going to have to continue to advocate and see what we can do to try to provide the best education in our fantastic town and community.”

With lawmakers still in session in Denver, a solution could still emerge. If not, Pandolfo said the Telluride School District will go to voters in November to help stave off the impending financial cliff.

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A Look Back: Goats Graze the Valley Floor

KOTO News was recently recognized by the Colorado Broadcasters Association for excellence in news programming in 2025. Today, we’re highlighting one of KOTO’s award-winning stories from last year.

This story, originally broadcast in July 2025, highlighted an innovative weed management tool on Telluride’s Valley Floor.

Find all of KOTO News’ featured stories here.

Story beings at 9:55.

It’s a warm July day. Jonathan Bartley and Adrian Lacasse are on Telluride’s Valley Floor — with over 80 bleating companions.

“That’s Duce 2.0, and then you have Cookie over there, who looks like cookie dough ice cream. He’s one of our lead, favorite goats. Mumu over there munching on the thistle,” Bartley said.

Bartley and Lacasse are the owners and managers of Durangoats, a Durango-based fire and weed mitigation company. Their method? Goats.

“We take a regenerative approach to the land management. It’s all about regenerating the land. From the beginning of every site visit we always say, this is not about getting rid of the weeds, or destroying the weeds, or anything like that. Even in the mentality of that, you’re entering into the destructive, extractive methods that have gotten us here,” Bartley said.

“The goal is more to create an environment that the weeds can’t thrive in.”

Bartley started Durangoats after four seasons of wildland firefighting, looking for a regenerative way to fight fires. He started with six baby goats: Fanta, Cola, Barg, Spirit, Dewey and Pepe — named after the soda bottles Bartley bottle-fed them from.

“They’ve been there from the beginning. They’re everything. It’s cool to have this relationship with your stock where you provide for them and they provide for you,” he said.

Rather than wildfire prevention, the town of Telluride hired Durangoats for weed mitigation. The goats are eating thistle and yellow toadflax on approximately four acres of land.

“We’re down on the Valley Floor, and there are a bunch of thistles that are blooming big purple flowers everywhere,” Lacasse said. “We’re enclosing those blooming thistles within our electric fence and trying to keep as many of these invasive plants in the fence and as many native plants outside the fence as we can. We always have the pen where the goats are in, and they’re just about done with their area right now. So, we have their next pen set up. So, we’re constantly leapfrogging them from one pen to the other.”

On this morning, the goats have been in one pen for about 24 hours and are ready to move to the next. Lacasse and Bartley use a herding dog named Kippy to shuttle the goats to the new pasture.

Once in the pen, the process is quite simple. The goats eat the plants — seeds, leaves and all — preventing them from photosynthesizing.

“We time out our management of the weeds with the biocycle of the plant, so when we eat down these flower heads, it’s in its seeding season so it’s less likely to go into another bloom,” Bartley said.

But the goats aren’t only removing the weeds — they’re fertilizing the ground.

“They ferment whatever they’re eating in their stomach, and spread this micro-rich and nitrogen-rich manure. It’s incredibly good for the soil,” he said.

Durangoats is a business, but for Bartley and Lacasse, it’s more than that. It’s small and meaningful steps toward healing the planet.

“When you compare these things that are the worst of the worst carcinogens, and then you compare it to a goat eating down this plant, then using that plant — that you would have sprayed chemicals on — to fertilize your earth — which is actually the solution to getting rid of those weeds, it’s healing that earth. So, fertilizing it. Then they can be turning it into goat milk. It’s wild that this isn’t more common,” Bartley said.

It’s about making intentional, and historic, efforts to have a more reciprocal relationship with the land.

“It’s pretty wild to see how many vast impacts can happen just by trying to replicate nature and using a natural path,” he said.

While climate change and creating a healthy planet is a multifaceted, complex conversation, the Durangoats are doing their part — munching on thistle.

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BAM! It’s a Battle of the Bands

It’s time to go to battle — of the bands.

“We are going to be having a battle of the bands after a dinner theatre,” said Tuck Gillett, music teacher at Telluride Middle High School and organizer of the show.

“We’re really excited to be doing a battle of the bands at the Palm because of the ability of the Palm to have good sound, both on stage and out to the audience,” Gillett said. “We’re going to kick the whole thing off with the Mighty Miners Uptown Brass Band — that’s the jazz band from the middle school high school.”

Performers will be judged on five categories, including musicianship, performance and presentation.

The event is the inaugural fundraiser for BAM — Boosters for Art and Music.

“The idea is that the BAM becomes the center for people at the school and beyond the school, saying ‘I’m here to help. How can I help? This is what I have. How can I fit in?’” Gillett said.

Battle of the Bands winners will receive cash prizes, and the champion will earn the opportunity to play on the Town Park stage during the Telluride Education Foundation’s Party in the Park.

The night of entertainment will begin with Friday Night Live from 5:30 to 7 p.m., followed by the Battle of the Bands from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Palm Theatre. Tickets are available at the door.

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County Deploys Pheromone Packs to Combat Bark Beetles

Bark beetles are drawn to stressed or recently dead trees. The insects enter trees, lay their eggs and leave larvae to feed until they mature into adults and fly away in search of new hosts, leaving the original tree dead.

Bark beetle infestations can ravage forests, leaving large numbers of dead trees that are more susceptible to wildfire.

In an effort to eradicate and slow the impact of infestations, San Miguel County Parks and Open Space is placing pheromone packs, or “p-packs,” on Douglas fir trees across the county.

The p-packs are designed to trick bark beetles by emitting a chemical that mimics a pheromone produced by the insects. When attached to a tree, the p-pack signals to beetles that the tree is already occupied, prompting them to move on.

According to county officials, p-packs are about 90% effective at protecting high-risk trees from bark beetles.

With warmer weather, Parks and Open Space is deploying 600 p-packs to vulnerable Douglas fir stands along the M59 River Trail, Bridal Veil Trail, and in Ophir, Lawson Hill, Keystone Gorge and Ilium.

P-packs are also available for groups and organizations interested in participating in the program.

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Federal Government Plans to Release Water to Protect Lake Powell

The U.S. Department of the Interior is planning to release a large amount of water into the Colorado River from a reservoir in Wyoming to prevent a potential power and water crisis. KUNC’s Scott Franz reports historic drought conditions are driving the federal decision.

Flaming Gorge Reservoir is forecast to drop as much as 35 feet over the next year as water is sent downstream to help stabilize Lake Powell. Water that would typically flow farther downstream toward Nevada would be retained in Lake Powell.

The plan aims to keep the reservoir from dropping too low to generate electricity for millions of people in the West. Some forecasts predict that could happen by August without intervention.

Meanwhile, the Interior Department warned that some recreation in the Colorado River Basin could be affected. Boating seasons may end earlier in some states, and rafting and fishing in the Grand Canyon could also be impacted.

A final decision on the federal water plan is expected this week.

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Colorado Remembers Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell

Last week, hundreds of people gathered at the Sky Ute Casino in Ignacio to remember Former United States Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who passed away at the end of last year.

For Rocky Mountain Community Radio, KSUT’s Adam Burke has the story.

Story beings at 19:15.