Riverside donates to library

The town of Riverside council met briefly Thursday, absent mayor Leroy Stephenson, and quickly dispensed with routine business.

The entire meeting lasted about 18 minutes and most of that time was spent hearing issues from the public. The board quickly approved meeting minutes and voted to pay the town’s bills before moving on to guest speakers and voting to allocate $500 to the Carbon County Library System which will go directly to benefit the Encampment-Riverside branch.

Over the summer, as a funding battle between the library board and county commissioners threatened branch closures, the council discussed giving funds to the library system to help keep the local branch running. At the time, the library system was not set up to allow donations to be earmarked to only one branch, so the town held off donating until the Library board could assure them their donation would only be used to fund the Encampment-Riverside branch.

Having gotten that reassurance from the library board, the council voted to allocate $500 to the Encampment-Riverside Library branch.

The rest of the meeting was taken up by members of the public and routine business.

The first guest speaker was Christy Smith, director of the Grand Encampment Museum (GEM). Smith addressed the council for about 10 minutes and asked the town to cover a full-page ad in a travel magazine that would advertise the museum and local businesses in the towns of Riverside and Encampment. The charge for the ad from the publisher is $890, Smith said, and GEM would pay for $400 of that if the towns of Riverside and Encampment would agree to pay $245 each.

Riverside town council members said that they would offer $245 to help pay for the ad if the town of Encampment were to agree to also pay $245. The council said they would vote to do so at the next meeting in December, pending actions by the Encampment council..

Later Thursday evening, the Encampment council agreed to pay $245 toward the ad.

The second member of the public to address the council was Craig Kopasz of Engineering associates in Saratoga. Kopasz said he was visiting the councils of Riverside and Encampment just to touch base and let them know that even though one employee of the company left to return to Michigan, the company was still available for consulting.

The council then finished up routine business.

The next meeting of the Riverside Town Council will be 6 p.m., Dec. 8 at the Riverside Town office.