What’s more difficult? Filing income tax returns or working hard to earn money to pay those taxes. The good news is another tax filing deadline has come and gone. With the exception of those requesting extensions, the tedious chore of making all those calculations and completing all those forms is mercifully over for another year. […]
Most people of a certain age can recall the summer jobs of their youth. Washing dishes in a restaurant. Waiting on customers in a retail shop. Cleaning up on a construction site. It wasn’t so much the specific skills people learned that were necessarily valuable, but the more general lessons that were so important. Showing […]
The new year brings more good economic news in the Grand Valley in the form of increasing sales tax collections and real estate activity. The City of Grand Junction and Mesa County both reported year-over-year gains in January sales tax collections based on December sales. The latest numbers are doubly important not only in quantifying […]
The Business Incubator Center in Grand Junction is deservedly famous for the resources offered there to entrepreneurs: low-cost space, counseling and even financing. Add to that entrepreneurial cornucopia the GJ Makerspace, a place where entrepreneurs, engineers and other inventive people can develop and test their ideas and, eventually, turn them into new businesses. The GJ […]
Vaccinations have made headlines. Is it because scientists have discovered a new one that will protect against yet another pernicious and deadly disease? No, it’s because Chris Christie and Rand Paul, however mildly, raised the specter of the anti-vaccine conspiracy theory again. To be fair, most of the question, especially in regards to Christie, the […]
A busy couple of weeks for business news also included a welcome announcement about improvements planned for Powderhorn Mountain Resort. The $5 million project will include the installation of a high-speed quad chairlift at the resort on the Grand Mesa. The project is doubly beneficial in that the chairlift will be manufactured at Leitner-Poma right […]
Universities aren’t usually considered in the same fashion as such major industry sectors as energy production or tourism in quantifying economic effects. And that’s too bad, because universities exert a variety of direct and indirect effects on the economy in the money educational institutes spend as well as the money students and faculty spend. Fortunately, […]
Important indicators continue to reflect improving economic conditions in the Grand Valley, bolstering prospects 2015 really will be a better year for business. But, will indicators tracking the local labor market follow suit? Sales tax collections, a key indicator of retail activity, increased 2.5 percent for Mesa County in 2014 over 2013. At 3.4 percent, […]
A new year almost always brings an opportunity for a fresh start and renewed ambition to do things better. In business, that usually boils down to providing customers better products and services faster and at lower cost than competitors. Part of the process must include listening to customers to determine what they actually need and […]
The holiday season brings tidings of at least comfort and perhaps even joy to business owners who’ve struggled through the slow economic recovery in the Grand Valley. The prospects for a prosperous new year appear promising. While past performance offers no guarantee of future results, several economic indicators point to improving conditions. An outlook of […]