The city council in Rifle wrapped up their discussions on their 2025 budget and approved some services for next year at their regular meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 4. 

Scott Rust, finance director for the city, presented on the assessed values from Garfield County for certifying the city’s mill levy.

“Just as a reminder, the city of Rifle’s mill levy is 5.261 mills, the Downtown Development Authority has 3.774 mills. We plan to certify the full amount of those mills,” Rust said. “We had a slight increase of about $2 million in the city of Rifle assessed values and DDA actually slightly decreased by about $140,000. In total dollar amount to the city of Rifle we’re assessing about $8,000 more than the prior year and for DDA we’re assessing about $500 less.”

Assessed values from the county come in before Dec. 10. The mill levy certification was passed unanimously, with councilors Joe Carpenter and Chris Bornholdt absent from the meeting.

Next, Tami Sours, the director of the senior center, presented a request to the council for a total of $212,828.49 for the city of Rifle’s contribution to the seven party MOU for senior programs like nutrition, transportation and well and wise. 

The MOU entities that participate are Garfield County, Roaring Fork Transportation Authority, towns of Carbondale, Silt and New Castle, and the cities of Glenwood Springs and Rifle. 

“It just keeps going up, little by little,” said councilor Clint Hostettler about the amount of money requested. 

The nutrition program is roughly $60,990 and the rest for transportation comes out to roughly $151,839. This total is an 8.5% increase from last year’s request. 

Mayor Sean Strode wondered if there could be a way to increase ridership on buses to help the price of a ride go down. Hostettler added they’d love to see the cost of rides go down. 

At the moment, Strode said that a ride costs $73. 

Sours told the council that a lot of seniors had commented about how great Rifle is and how many amenities they have for senior residents as many other places don’t have those. 

The monetary request was also passed unanimously and the council moved on to approving their Microsoft licensing renewal for the city to use and the bid they put out for snow removal for the city for 2025 through 2027. 

Both requests were approved, the bid for snow removal being awarded to All Around Property Maintenance, who have been doing this service for the city for the last five years.