June 2022

Welcome to City Currents

• Lake Nighthorse opened May 13 daily for swimming and other recreation. Motorized vehicles were allowed back on the lake for the season May 15. For information on Lake Nighthorse click here.
• There will be three different FREE bike decorating clinics to prepare for the Fourth of July parade, including yarn bombing, cardboard creatures, and paper and streamers. Bike decorating events are planned to start before Movies in the Park on June 3, June 17, and July 1. For more information visit the Durango Parks and Recreation Facebook page.
• Starting June 3, the City of Durango will kick off its summer movie series with "Jungle Cruise" at Buckley Park. Movies are free, and will begin 15 minutes after sunset.  

• In addition to new trees, there are also new basketball and sand volleyball courts at Santa Rita Park. Staff are finishing up irrigation and sod work at the basketball courts, and the volleyball courts are now open. Public restrooms were completed last year and are located nearby in the Administration Building at the Santa Rita Water Reclamation Facility. The restrooms face the Animas River Trail.

• Durango has been selected to host the 2022 BMX State Championships August 20 and 21. Durango was selected because the city's track hosted the most racers of 14 tracks in Colorado in 2021. The event will draw about 400 racers and more than 1,000 people for the weekend.

• On Thursday, June 16 from 5:15 to 6:00 p.m. city staff met with the Animas City neighborhood to discuss the landscaping plan for the new section of the Animas River Trail. 

• Volunteers gathered downtown on Friday, May 27 to clean up for the 19th Annual Downtown Cleanup.

• A cleaning and striping project for all the parking lots and some parking spaces on the east side of East Second Avenue took place between June 7 through June 14. 

  Parking lots that were striped include Parking Lot 2 between College Avenue and 7th Street; Parking Lot 3 between 7th & 8th Streets; and Parking Lot 4 between 8th & 9th Streets.

• Are you interested in more information about the quality of Durango's drinking water? The 2022 Consumer Confidence Report for calendar year 2021 is now available. 
• Learn about the journey from wastewater to clean water by scheduling a tour of the Santa Rita Water Reclamation Facility. Tours are available for groups of 5 to 20 people on the last Thursday of each month. Tours are 1-1.5 hours long and include an overview of the local area watershed, a walk through of the facility and Q & A along the way. Contact Santa Rita Water Reclamation Facility Manager Justin Elkins at (970) 375-4896 or by email. 
• Fire-mitigation work on city-owned lands in the Durango Wildland Urban Interface began on June 14, starting near Ball Lane. 

• Have you been keeping up with the Downtown's Next Step project? If you haven't checked in lately, click here to see the latest conceptual design and comments from the community. The conceptual plan was presented to City Council on June 7 and will be progressing to the traffic study and engineering design phase of the process. This next phase will include additional public involvement and will dive into the technical aspects of the project. The next phase is funded by the 2015 Half Cent Sales and Use Tax Fund and was prioritized by the Multimodal Advisory Board in 2021. 
• Residents may have noticed that water bills were a little lower than usual starting the month of May, as a water rate decrease approved by City Council at its March 15, 2022, meeting has now gone into effect. The rate reduction is saving the average residential customer $6 a month, and the average commercial customer $43 a month.  The average monthly water bill is $28 for residential customers, and $130 for commercial users.    
• As the city begins its budgeting process for 2023, the next town hall meeting is planned for July 27, at City Council Chambers from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. for residents to share their ideas for next year’s budget with staff. 

• Clean Commute Week is here! Join the city for a celebration of walking, rolling, biking, riding the bus and carpooling around Durango. The events you all love are back this year with a couple of change ups. This year featured one new event, Multimodal Trivia. For more information visit: GetAroundDurango.Com.
• Everyone’s favorite friendly competition is back this year! It’s time for businesses and organizations around Durango to compete to see who can walk, bike, run, roll, carpool, and telecommute the most during Clean Commute Week and in the Business Commuter Challenge!
•  The challenge lasted one week, from Wednesday, June 8 until June 14, with trophies, awards and prizes presented during the Love Your Commute Celebration at Ska on Thursday, June 16.
• A lot is happening in the City of Durango Transportation Department. Stay up-to-date on Multimodal and Durango Transit news by signing up for Momentum, the department's monthly e-newsletter! Sign up at DurangoGov.org/NotifyMe

• Please join us in congratulating Brandon Holgate, London Bartholomew, and Jermal Ball on their graduation from The Regional Law Enforcement Training Academy at Pueblo Community College. Congratulations also go out to Irvin Blais who graduated from Otero Junior College's Law Enforcement Training Academy. These gentlemen have all begun new hire training this week which will include 16 weeks of hands-on training with an experienced Field Training Officer. 
• Durango Police held a Bike Rodeo at Animas Valley Elementary during the week of May 16 -20. Bike Rodeos are a great way for kids and their parents to learn about biking safety, and practice and develop skills that will help them to become better safer bicyclists.
• Axis Health System and the Durango Police Department celebrated the addition of a new unmarked vehicle on Friday, May 13, that will aid in how the two organization’s co-responder program helps people experiencing a mental health crisis.  

As tourism season hits Durango, we look back to June of 1975, where the Durango -La Plata airport manager presented a monthly report to the Airport Commission that said increased air travel to Durango was making it increasingly difficult for local people to find flights.

During June 1975 the airport recorded 2,523 deplaning passengers. That's a far cry from the nearly 400,000 that deplaned at the airport in 2021, which averages out to around 33,000 a month. That's on average more than 10 times the amount of traffic our airport had in 1975.

To read more, search the Public Records Access Portal. Select Minutes - INDEXED SEARCH as your Search Type, selecting City Council Regular Meeting from the dropdown menu for the Meeting Type, and entering the Meeting Date that was mentioned above.

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