The Rifle City Council discussed on July 17 adopting the updated Colorado Model Traffic Code from the previous 2019 edition to the more modern 2024 edition. 

“Rifle is functioning under the prior model traffic code for Colorado, adopted back in 2019,” said Kathy Pototsky, the Court Administrator for Rifle’s municipal court. “At the time, it was a huge overhaul, in terms of the changes from the prior edition to that 2019 edition.”

Pototsky said that she and City Attorney Jim Neu reviewed the new edition together, looking for big changes. However, they didn’t find any. 

“It’s a lot of grammar and verbiage kind of changes, they changed stuff like ‘device’ to ‘system’, it’s relatively minor,” Pototsky said. 

There wouldn’t be any operational changes for the Rifle Police Department or any other department. 

“Ordinarily I send out a huge document to the PD, saying ‘this is going to be different’, there’s going to be none of that,” Pototsky said. 

There won’t be as many ‘thereofs’ in the changes and the Police Department will receive the new grammar checked 2024 edition. 

The 2024 edition will include the local amenities that Rifle has in their traffic code.

Councilor Alicia Gresley asked if there was a downside to not adopting the new edition of the code. 

“The big advantage is in uniformity across the state, so there’s no difference between various driving offenses in Silt or Greeley or Rifle,” Pototsky answered. 

Neu added that sometimes it can get confusing for officers, from the Rifle Police Department or Garfield County Sheriffs, if the editions being used are different, so having everyone up to date makes it easier. 

“Tonight we’re setting the public hearing as well for the next meeting and then we’ll go through this again,” Neu said. 

A public hearing is required for this ordinance and will take place during the next regularly scheduled city council meeting on Aug. 7. 

The motion was passed unanimously by the council.