Rifle City Council met March 19 for their regular meeting for a variety of actions concerning grants, purchases and appointments. 

The first consideration for city council was a code change about grading and erosion of soil for residential, industrial and commercial developments. 

Street projects or other construction can lead to dust or mud being tracked onto roadways, or washed into the waterways. 

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“If there’s dust or mud on the roads, there are calls that we’re getting and having to respond to and there’s usually not a clear path for staff to enforce, and there’s also no clear paths for developers to adhere to,” civil engineer Craig Spaulding explained. 

The proposed code change would make standards clearer. The other part of the code change is for grading permits, where a developer who is doing a project exceeding 6,000 square feet or 50 cubic yards for excavation. 

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The grading permit would provide a process for developers to follow as they begin excavation, which would be reviewed by the city staff, which protects both the city of Rifle and the developer. 

Spaulding said one of the projects that finished at risk was the Pioneer Mesa Estates project, which Spaulding clarified was done well. 

“It’s recently been totally finished, the developer did a good job,” Spaulding explained. 

“But to get there, there were times we had erosion running into the people downstream of them, there was soil piping in the holes and kids playing in it, so there were hazards, there was erosion control.”

Spaulding said with the code change, the city staff would’ve needed to see plans on how the developer planned to prevent those things from happening. 

Councilor Clint Hostettler was absent from the meeting, but the rest of the council passed the code change. 

Next, Lillian Dahlin applied to be on the Rifle Housing Authority Board. Councilor Joe Carpenter said that Dahlin would do a great job, as he’s worked with her before. 

Dahlin was approved unanimously by the council to the Rifle Housing Authority Board. 

The next motion was to approve the city manager signing the Colorado Department of Transportation Bridge Joint Agreement, which came up at the last meeting. 

This is the final agreement about the bridge joint replacement work, where the city of Rifle is responsible for the care of the joints of the bridge connecting U.S. Highway 6 and Interstate 70. 

Originally, the city of Rifle was supposed to take care of the surface road of the bridge and CDOT would care for the rest of the bridge, but the joints need to be replaced almost immediately, so the city is asking CDOT for reimbursement on the bridge joint repair for the amount of a little more than $1 million. 

The second document in need of the city manager’s signature is an MOU for land exchange and development for a new Park and Ride. 

This new Park and Ride will be larger and in better shape and the work has been approved and in the budget, covered by a RAISE grant in the amount of a little over $2.7 million. This MOU has been approved previously, but has lapsed and therefore needs to be renewed. 

Both the bridge joint replacement document and the MOU for the Park and Ride were both approved unanimously to be signed by City Manager Patrick Waller. 

The city council then approved another grant for the Penwell Phase One Project from DOLA in the amount of $1,000,000. The Penwell Project is for replacing a thin and inadequate water transmission line that will extend along Birch Street, 16th Street and Graham Mesa Avenue. 

Two purchases followed this grant application, one for the Parks and Recreation building to be fitted with new floors and installation services. 

The Parks building is almost 20 years old and the carpet flooring is starting to show significant wear and tear. They will be replaced with luxury vinyl tiling planks. 

The city received one bid from AG Flooring out of Silt for the amount of a little bit over $30,000 and the project was budgeted for $35,000, coming in around $5,000 under budget. AG Flooring also worked on Rifle’s justice building last year and they were happy with the result. 

The second purchase was for special signage and event street closure barricades for the city. This purchase wasn’t budgeted so the funds will come from the Visitor Improvement Fund reserves in the amount of around $22,500. 

“We’re looking at purchasing these sign closures to help with some additional events that we’re going to have,” Waller said. “That includes the Third Thursdays on Third, we’re having five of those events this year and with the loss of the local traffic control company, it’s pretty expensive for the city to contract those out for our own events.”

Waller said the city would be responsible for those events, along with the Hometown Holiday event and three parades that were having a hard time finding help for their events. Otherwise, Waller said, they’d have to go to Grand Junction, which is more expensive. 

The entities, Waller clarified, would be paying for staff time and anything they pay toward the events would help cover the signage and event closure barricades purchased by the city. 

Parks and Rec floorings and installation services and the signage and closure barricades were both approved unanimously by the council. 

Lastly, the council approved an Intergovernmental Agreement to participate as a member in the Intermountain Transportation Planning Region of Colorado, which is trying to establish the STIP, the Statewide Transportation Improvement Program. 

Zach Higgens, the planning director for Rifle, already attends the meetings and there is no fiscal impact, merely making the membership official.