Monday’s Garfield County Commissioner (BOCC) meeting was short and polite. Garfield County resident Debbie Wilde opened the meeting during the public comment period, describing her love of and gratitude for the library system. She said she has been trying to set up a learning center in the Navajo Nation for the past four years, which has helped her see how good Garfield County residents have it with their libraries.
“I realized how easily I’ve taken our library system for granted,” she said. “It is a very important part of living in this county.” She said she’s noticed that the library has been discussed in the county commissioner chambers lately. “What brings me to this table is not only appreciation but the awareness that when we talk about the library, we talk about a whole system, an organization,” she said. “And I’ve not heard the recognition of that complexity in the library rumblings I’ve heard.”
She added that the library director must be competent in staffing, budgeting, finances and strategic planning, not to mention the physical plant issues and the wide variety of library materials. “A library is not just a shelf of books anymore,” she said.
Wilde pointed out that the current library director is managing all of those things very well, adding, “What I’m clear [about] is that we must not take apart the foundation of an organization when that’s maybe not the issue at all.” She cautioned, “As the old saying goes, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
Board Chair Tom Jankovsky reminded Wilde that the library board has jurisdiction over the library director. Commissioner Perry Will, interjecting a little humor into the conversation, asked Wilde about Pie Day, an annual event hosted by the Glenwood Springs Rotary Club during Strawberry Days. “It is on for June 20,” Wilde responded.
The BOCC moved on to consider a resolution to invite Interior Secretary Doug Burgham to deliver the keynote address at the 2026 Joint Organizations Leading Transition (JOLT) Energy Summit in Grand Junction. This year’s event is in Rifle in late June.
JOLT is the brainchild of former Craig mayor and Moffat County commissioner Ray Beck. In a 2023 interview on the Fire2Fission podcast, Beck said that a group of county and state elected officials began meeting to discuss northwest Colorado energy issues. They came up with the name JOLT after Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association’s January 2020 announcement to close coal fired power plants in Colorado and New Mexico. “It was a jolt to this community,” said Beck.
On Monday, Jankovsky questioned why a resolution and not a letter. “We go to the JOLT conference but we’re not on the committee that makes selections on who’s to speak,” he said. “I’m wondering where this came from.”
Commissioner Mike Samson responded by listing supporters from the Western Slope, including several counties and commissioners as well as the Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado (AGNC). He wants the national spotlight on Western Colorado’s energy resources.
“We are a treasure trove of energy potential,” he exclaimed before berating the Polis administration. “We have a state legislature and a governor that has done everything it can to hurt us and endanger us in the development of energy here in Western Colorado,” he said.
Jankovsky suggested that the AGNC or the JOLT committee coordinate sending all the resolutions along with a cover letter to Secretary Burgham. The BOCC unanimously approved the resolution.
Other items on Monday’s agenda included nonprofit grant requests from the Glenwood Springs Historical Society, Roaring Fork Youth Orchestra, Bookcliffs Council on the Arts and Humanities, the Colorado Mountain College Foundation and the Glenwood Springs Chamber Foundation. The BOCC will make decisions about those requests on May 12.
YouthEntity director Kris Freeman presented the successes of the organization over the past six months, highlighting the youth culinary team’s first place win at the state youth culinary competition in Denver and fifth place win at the national competition. The BOCC granted her request for $9,900 for the organization. Will joked that baked goods for the BOCC from the culinary team should be a condition of the grant.
Summertime fun
The BOCC approved a special events permit for the weekly Carbondale Wild West Rodeo from June 5 through Aug. 21 at the Gus Darien Arena; pig pens were ordered for this year’s county fair; and approval was granted to enter into the final contracts for the fair’s main concerts.