Monday, Jan. 5, marked the first Garfield County Commissioners (BOCC) meeting of 2026. 

The agenda opened with the appointment of three trustees for the Garfield County Public Library District. Library Board of Trustees Chair Adrian Rippy-Sheehy and Executive Director Jamie LaRue were on-hand. 

Describing the selection process, Jankovsky explained, “The library will get one vote and then I’ll go one commissioner at a time.” He asked everyone to provide their first and second choices. “If there is a tie, then it will go back to this board, three commissioners, to break that tie.”

Commissioner Mike Samson said that he was not in favor of giving the library a vote. “I don’t think that’s appropriate,” he said. County Attorney Heather Beattie pointed out that it was not in the [March, 2024] resolution. “Okay, it’s not in the resolution,” said Jankovsky. “But I want to give them, for sitting through these meetings, I want to at least give them a voice.”

With that, the appointments began. The Parachute/Battlement Mesa seat was first. Jankovsky chose David Baugh and Cindy Bjerstedt in that order. Samson chose the same but reversed the order. Commissioner Perry Will chose Bjerstedt with Lynda Pendergrast as his second choice. The library recommended Pendergrast. Bjerstedt was appointed.

For the Rifle position, Jankovsky chose Ed Green and Gregorio Rios Aguilar. Both Samson and Will chose the same. The library board recommended Rios Aguilar. Green was appointed. 

Brit McLin was reappointed to the New Castle seat, hands down.

LaRue told The Sopris Sun in an email that the library received a lot of qualified applicants. “Many community members greatly value the library and the right to read freely,” he said. But he added that the BOCC still isn’t saying what their criteria are for library board members. “They ignored the clear recommendations of the library board for two of the three [appointments],” he explained. “In a community that is about a third Hispanic, we now have no native Spanish speakers on the board.” 

LaRue, Rippy-Sheehy and the library board treasurer, John Mallonee, presented the 2026 budget, which the BOCC approved. Samson questioned the $24 million in reserves. He said he understands the need to guard against hard times. But, he added, “What are you going to do with $24 million? That seems like a lot of money for a library board.” 

Mallonee said that one goal is to avoid a repeat of 2016. “I’ve looked at the minutes of the [BOCC meetings] and, in 2016, the library board was in here saying there’s a 25% hole in our budget because of the unexpected fluctuation in oil and gas revenues,” he explained. “And we don’t want to be in that position again.” 

The other goal is to finish refreshing all library buildings from Parachute to Carbondale. LaRue added that all branches are shifting their hours of operation. More information about library hours is at gcpld.org 

Next, the BOCC approved a letter to U.S Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, urging them to support the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development, or SPEED, Act, which has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill limits the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). It modifies the environmental review of major federal actions under NEPA to generally speed up the review process. 

County Manager Fred Jarman pointed to the “coordination component” of the bill. “[The BOCC] has for a long time advocated for a higher seat at the table for decision-making for local governments and that’s what this also includes,” he explained. 

Carbondale-based public lands watchdog group Wilderness Workshop (WW) is against the bill. In an email to The Sopris Sun, WW attorney Peter Hart called the SPEED Act “a giveaway to industrial developers.” Wilderness Workshop also wrote a letter to Senator John Hickenlooper, obtained by The Sopris Sun, suggesting the opposite of Jarman’s claim.  

“[The SPEED Act] would provide the Trump administration with new tools to entrench fossil fuels, limit future climate action, prioritize unsustainable logging and mining extraction over conservation, and otherwise undermine action to forcefully address the climate and ecological crises,” the letter reads. “It would also subordinate the interests of people and communities to developers.”

In energy-related news, the county’s oil and gas liaison, Kirby Wynn, suggested that the BOCC provide scoping comments for the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) upcoming June 2026 oil and gas lease sale. According to the BLM website, more than 160,000 acres will be up for grabs in Colorado. Wynn stated that 10,000 of those acres are in Garfield County. Scoping comments are due Thursday, Jan. 8. 

Commissioners also interviewed candidates for the county Planning Commission and the Board of Adjustment with decisions coming at the next regular meeting. They approved the purchase of a 2024 John Deere dozer for the county landfill and accepted the 2025 Highway Users Tax Fund Accountability Inventory.

You can find recordings of all BOCC meetings at www.garfieldcountyco.gov/board-commissioners