Rifle city council roundup from Jan. 15’s regular meeting

The city of Rifle’s regularly scheduled city council meeting on Jan. 15 involved bulk water rates, park design and supporting Colorado State University’s field office.
The Garfield County Outdoor Classroom & Community Education Center project wants to transform a 2.93 acre site located off the Rifle Creek Trail for a learning hub with amphitheater, community gardens and more to help address the barrier between outdoor education recreation for Rifle’s residents.
“The Parks and Rec Activity Board is very supportive of this project,” said Austin Rickstrew, director of Parks and Recreation. “They’re coming to you asking for a letter of support…they’re asking for an updated letter of support.”
Annie McGregor from Colorado State University told the council they’d been working on this concept for a while and it’s taken them a while to get back on their feet.
“I liked it the first time,” said Mayor Sean Strode. “I liked it even more the second time.”
The letter of support was approved unanimously with Chris Bornholdt excusing himself from the vote.
The next item was to raise the city prosecutor’s compensation. Timothy Graves, the city prosecutor for Rifle, is being paid $150 an hour and Jim Neu, the city attorney, put forth a presentation asking that Graves be paid $175 per hour.
This would increase his yearly compensation from $50,000 to $55,000 per year as a part-time employee.
“I certainly support this increase…I would advocate to go to $200 (an hour)…I think we’re behind market value on it,” Strode said.
The council voted unanimously to increase Graves’ salary rate to $200 an hour, increasing the base salary to $60,000.
Next, the council amended bulk water rates, increasing them to mirror the out of city base rate, which allows it to stay fair and escalate at 2.5% without requiring it to be presented to council each time.
“(The new water rates) would go into effect on March 1,” Neu said.
The rest of the rates will rise on Jan. 1 of each year and this water rate will also rise Jan. 1, 2026 after the raise on March 1 of this year.
The design bid for Birch Park was up next, which was awarded to Design Concepts.
“We have been working on this project for a while, we went out and worked on the master plan, we got grant funding from two organizations, so we have about $2,000,000 in grant funding so far,” said Rickstrew. “It’s really important to us.”
Design Concepts did the master planning and has done a lot of work for the city, like on Centennial Park. The council decided to award the bid of $240,612 to Design Concepts for Birch Park.
Rickstrew’s next ask for the council was to purchase a Musco-Control Link System for Deerfield Park Sports Fields for $32,250.
He said this would allow Parks and Rec to be able to turn off the field lights whenever they want from their computers and phones.
“I’ll get calls at one in the morning to come turn off the lights,” Rickstrew said.
This was also approved unanimously.

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