Monday’s meeting was short and to the point. All discretionary grant requests presented last week were awarded, including $5,000 for the Andy Zanca Youth Empowerment Program, $1,000 for the Roaring Fork Conservancy, $1,450 to Valley Senior Center for a new hot water heater, $5,000 to Garfield County Search and Rescue, $5,000 to YouthEntity and $5,000 to the Glenwood Springs Arts Council.
Commissioners (BOCC) approved a request to split landfill fees with the City of Rifle for the City’s fall clean-up in September, a remote communications site utilization agreement with Pano AI and an amendment to a commercial hangar land lease and operating agreement with Atlantic Aviation to expand a lease parcel at the county airport. Atlantic Aviation said the hangar is built and planes are in it but they need to relocate parking and make a path to safely land Flight for Life helicopters.
The BOCC also heard from auditing firm McMahan and Associates about the county’s 2023 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. Matt Miller began with a brief description of the auditing process, which includes planning, fieldwork and the report (145 pages this year). He said it took about two months to finish the fieldwork and the report, which included reading the minutes of every 2023 BOCC meeting.
The county received a clean audit opinion for 2023. The upshot is the general fund balance is “healthy” at $42 million and the county has no outstanding debt, which Miller said is “very rare for any government of actual size.”
County investment funds are at $111 million with $54 million in the Colorado Trust that the county can access at any time. The financial report is available here.
The BOCC also approved a request from Traveler’s Highland Public Improvement District for road repair and drainage work near Parachute, which the County Road and Bridge Department will oversee.
Commissioners have yet to set a meeting date with the Garfield County Library board about a proposed agreement for onboarding library board trustees.