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Steamboat Springs — Imagine you picked 2008 to leave Steamboat Springs for a year, with no communication or news - not even a ski report.

How surprised you would be upon returning.

You would find Ski Time Square demolished, seemingly washed away by a record-setting, season-long storm that dumped 489 inches of snow on Steamboat Ski Area. After gawking up at One Steamboat Place looming over Gondola Square, you would head to Old Town and find a new Soda Creek Elementary School and vastly expanded Bud Werner Memorial Library, along with high-profile developments - Alpen Glow, Howelsen Place, The Victoria - changing the face of Lincoln Avenue through a downtown no longer distinguished by a daily noon whistle.

You would find all three Routt County school districts with a new superintendent - along with new principals at Steamboat and Soroco high schools - Steamboat without a city manager, pine trees ravaged by bark beetles, slick waterslides at a renovated Old Town Hot Springs and a new Steamboat Springs Community Center.

As Routt County rolls into 2009, there is no doubt that 2008 brought sweeping changes not only to the entire nation but also to our own corner of Colorado.

Schools sprouting

The year of 2008 was a big one for local education. The widespread administrative turnover also included a new chief executive officer at Colorado Mountain College's Alpine Campus. The Steamboat Springs community, spurred by two parents, rallied to build two new, universal playgrounds at the city's elementary schools.

The South Routt School District completed the South Routt Early Learning Center and replaced coal-burning heat systems with biomass heating in South Routt schools.

"This is really important to the state," Gov. Bill Ritter said at Soroco High School in May. "In Colorado, we really believe your future will involve a different way for you to both produce energy as a society and to consume energy. If we don't act : we really believe the climate is in peril."

The Hayden School District added a state-of-the-art regional vocational center, and in North Routt, plans and fundraising continued for a new charter school facility - an idea now under way in McCoy and being considered in Stagecoach.

But perhaps the biggest educational impact of 2008 came at the polls, where voters resoundingly approved not only a renewal of Steamboat's half-cent sales tax for education but also the ability to share those revenues with Hayden and South Routt schools. That approval will play out in 2009, as Education Fund Board members and school officials from across the county iron out the details of the groundbreaking policy change.

Political fever

Worries about long lines at the polls proved unfounded in 2008, as polling places ran smoothly while Routt County voters turned out in huge numbers, many voting early. Ninety percent of active county voters cast a ballot in what became a historic presidential election. Locally, Routt County voters said goodbye to longtime Republican state legislator Jack Taylor, who was term-limited after a total of 16 years in the House and Senate, and hello to Grand County Republican Randy Baumgardner, a newly elected state representative who will join state Sen. Al White, R-Hayden, in the Capitol when the legislative session begins this week. White defeated former Steamboat Springs City Council President Ken Brenner for the Senate seat.

Tightening belts

Broad budget cuts will be the driving factor in this year's legislative session at the Capitol, and the same is true in Steamboat Springs. The city enters 2009 facing a projected revenue decline of about 5 percent, including a 4 percent decrease in sales tax revenues that account for almost 75 percent of the city's general operating fund. The decreasing revenues will mean cuts in city staff and services. And some local businesses already are feeling the pinch of the national economy's deepening recession.

But if 2008 is any indication, Steamboat's business community will find ways to make ends meet in 2009. The year gone by gave rise to innovative retail engines such as the First Friday ArtWalk and Merry Mainstreet, a downtown holiday celebration slated to become an annual event.

Snow that didn't stop

In Routt County news, perhaps the biggest story of 2008 was snow.

In March, North Routt rancher Ray Heid said the winter of 2007-08 "was the hardest, healthiest winter I've ever had, not only skiing, but out here horseback riding.

"I had to walk in front of the horses this winter just to show them where the trail was. : There were times when you'd pick your line up between the trees and had to stay with it because the snow was coming not at your face but clear over the top - I called it submarining."

Memories of the biggest snow winter in recent memory will linger long for everyone from county residents to tourists and skiers, snowboarders and city snowplow drivers - who logged more than 1,300 overtime hours. At least 100 inches of snow fell in January and February, in a winter that saw more than 8.4 million pounds of scoria dumped on local roadways and more than 75,000 cubic yards of snow hauled out of Steamboat.

"It's the most snow that I remember," Heid said about 2008. "I remember as a little kid shoveling a path out to the coal shed and not being able to throw the snow high enough to get it over my head. This was a year that reminds me of those years."

- To reach Mike Lawrence, call 871-4233 or e-mail mlawrence@steamboatpilot.com