LYONS – In responding to emergencies, preparation is everything. After watching footage of the Japanese tsunami, I was struck by how relatively low the death toll was compared to the 2004 tsunami that devastated countries around the Indian Ocean.

The news reported that in Japan they had an extensive early warning system and households practiced drills on what to do if disaster struck. While we are not in such a high-risk zone, the fires in Four Mile Canyon last year and closer fires this year on Coffintop and Blue Mountain Road as well as the threats of flooding in the St. Vrain bring to focus that in fact our community needs emergency preparedness.

LYONS – Costco is not coming to Lyons. Neither is Walmart or Furniture Warehouse. Don’t worry about the Donald, either. There will be no Trump St. Vrain down the road from Clark’s Hardware. The sky is clear. Corporate vultures do not soar over Lyons, looking for easy pickings.

Some people in Lyons, town leaders we all admire and respect, seem to have a bit of a phobia about alleged corporate buccaneers staking a position in Lyons. That fear could stall the progress Lyons has made in recent years. This article will explain one perspective about how our community can be harmed by overreaction to unnecessary fear.

LYONS – The next big issue looming on the Board of Trustee’s agenda is the renegotiation of our Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with Boulder County. The IGA is a legal agreement that sets the framework for cooperation between Lyons and Boulder County in terms of land use issues and a range of other areas of common objectives. It also defines how far Lyons will be able to expand its town limits over the next decade and it stipulates what both parties can do in the land that surrounds Lyons, defined as the Lyons Planning Area or LPA.

LYONS – Despite a certain amount of unease between Lyons and Boulder County, Lyons is forging ahead with the process of creating a new Intergovernmental Agreement, IGA, with the county. The current IGA expires in December 2012.

“We need to renew the IGA to match the current comp plan,” said Mayor Julie Van Domelen. “The current IGA is not reflective of our current comp plan.”

LYONS – After a somewhat complicated process, the Lyons Farmette, east of Lyons on Colorado Highway 66 and owned by Mike Whipp and Betsy Burton was finally annexed into the Town of Lyons.

“We started this process in January,” said Burton. “We were the first ones (to annex in under the town’s new economic incentive plan); we were the newbies. It took a while for us to get our application finished and then once that was done, it was about 90 days until the final vote with the Board of Trustees. That’s the amount of time that they said it would probably take and we were pretty much on schedule.”

LYONS – Every once in a while, a book that you are reading seems to be a perfect fit for what you are experiencing. This month the book club I belong to is reading Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner, which recounts one man’s journey through the most happy and least happy places on our planet in search of the answer: what are the elements that make for a happy place?