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Rifle City Council candidates announced

Alex Zorn
  

Rifle is gearing up for City Council elections this fall as voters will once again get the chance to determine what their council will look like for the next two years. With four seats up for voters to fill, candidates were finalized on Tuesday.

Mayor Randy Winkler, who is term-limited, will be stepping down as mayor after eight years on council. Mayor Pro-tem Barbara Clifton’s seat is up after four years, and both Dana Wood and Theresa Hamilton’s seats are up after just two years.

This year’s six candidates include Helen Artist-Rogers, Brent A. Buss, Joe R. Carpenter and Sean Strode with Barbara L. Clifton and Theresa Hamilton seeking re-election.



2015 was an unusual year for Rifle council elections. The death of one council member and the move of another created a total of five vacated seats. In order to ensure that Rifle elections would continue to be held on odd years and that the total number of seats up would stay at three and four every other year, it was determined that three of the five seats up for re-election would be to four-year terms with the other two serving just two years.

In 2015, Annick Pruett, Joe Elliot, Ed Green, Hamilton and Wood were all elected, but because Pruett, Elliot and Green received the most votes, they were elected to four-year terms, while Hamilton and Wood were elected to two-year terms, completing the vacated seats’ terms.



Rifle City Council members are term-limited to serve two four-year terms consecutively, and, according to the Rifle Charter, council members who serve at least one half of a term will be considered to have served a full term in office, so if Hamilton were to win in September, after that four-year term she would reach her term limit.

Municipal elections will be held Sept. 12, and the four candidates receiving the most votes will be elected for four-year terms until September 2021.


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