Dear Community,
As you may have noticed, Meeker Elementary School has experienced significant growth during the past couple of years. We finally reached the point where we’ve outgrown the space in our current facility. This summer, we installed two new modular buildings that house four classrooms to accommodate this growth.
We had a great deal of help from a variety of people and organizations in our drive to have these new classrooms ready for the children this fall. Below is a list of those individuals and organizations that provided us with assistance: White River Electric Association, Matt Rosendahl with Qwest, Pat Hughes and Western Slope Sod Farm, Tim Cleary, Bill White with the State Electrical Board, Bill Troutwine with Commercial Specialists, ConocoPhillips, EnCana Oil & Gas, Williams Energy, Bill Bischof with the State Building Inspector’s Office, Dean Smith with the State Office of Fire Safety, Joe Bartucco and MIH Construction, Stanley Crawford and St. James Church. The assistance that each of these people and organizations provided was invaluable in preparing our new buildings on a very tight timeline.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to invite the community to come to our open house on Friday, Sept. 5 from 4-6 p.m. We’ll be happy to show you around the modulars as well as the main building and address any questions or concerns you might have about the building and the well-documented issues we’ve been experiencing.
Jason Hightower, principal
Meeker Elementary School
Dear Editor,
Once again the Rangely Middle School Relay for Life Team wishes to thank all Rio Blanco County businesses and residents who contributed to the Relay this year. The annual relay event was held Aug. 22-23, and our team collected more than $7,900 through the summer for the Rio Blanco County Relay division of the American Cancer Society.
We want to specifically thank Los Tres Potrillos and Gio-vanni’s Italian Grill each for hosting a diner for the cure for a second year; the Rangely Fire Department and Mike Cushman for allowing us to use their facility for our third annual car wash; Los Tres Potrillos and White River market for allowing us to leave collection cans; multiple businesses in both Rangely and Meeker for very generous donations and all Rio Blanco County residents who made direct donations as well as attended our fund raising activities. We also want to thank the Rio Blanco Herald Times for advertising our fundraisers at little or no charge.
The Rangely Middle School team has been involved in the relay for three years and has collected more than $18,000 since the 2006 relay. We want to personally thank Leanna Cox, Pauline Hillard and Vicki McPhail for all their help and guidance during the years. Each team member continues to hope that a cure will be found and that we do not lose anymore special people to cancer.
Again we thank everyone in Rio Blanco County for his or her support and we know that we will be successful in our goal one day!
The Young Padawans:
Holly Lepro
Kelsey Prosser,
Kelsey Skaggs
Brittany Babineaux
Shelby Neiberger
Kimber Kinney
Mariah Morano
Espy Saenz
Alex Richens
Chris Staley
James Rogers
Riley Way
Marshall Way
William Scoggins
James Scoggins
Robert Longoria
Dear Editor,
I hope everyone had an enjoyable Labor Day weekend. Like many of you, I packed up the camper and headed off to the forest for some rest and relaxation away from phones, TVs and e-mails. I was surprised and pleased to find my “usual” spot on Miller Creek available even though I didn’t get there until almost dark Friday night.
Long after dark, though, I began to have second thoughts as a parade of noisy “kids” in pickups began charging through the stream crossing and banging up the west fork Miller Creek road to some party location thankfully out of sight and mind. Disturbing, but I can remember being that age and just as obnoxious and reckless. Hopefully, as we get older, we get smarter.
Not so with the idiots on the ATVs who took turns the next day tearing up the creek bottom above and below the stream crossing. One of them was a full grown adult, apparently teaching his son or someone else’s unfortunate youngster what real “fun” is — ripping around in the stream on your ATV doing as much damage as possible and churning up the creek until it looked like a big bowl of mud with a tail bleeding off downstream, which is exactly what it is. What morons! It doesn’t take a biologist or rocket scientist to figure out what releasing torrents of silt and mud into the creek does to trout populations — it destroys them. Silt covers the eggs that brown trout are laying right about now, causing them to suffocate. When all the trout are gone a few years from now and junior wants to go fishing, you’ll have to take him somewhere else, having destroyed the fishing in this stream.
Just to confirm my belief, I talked with a Division of Wildlife officer the next day who shook his head in sad resignation and said, “Yep it’s illegal to do that, but we can’t be everywhere at once.” However, I know where you idiots on the four-wheelers went after tearing up the stream, and now so does the DOW and sheriff’s office. You obviously knew what you were doing was wrong from the way you hightailed it when I hollered at you. It’s stupid jerks like you that make other people want to ban four-wheelers from public lands. Oh, and to the equally obnoxious and inconsiderate folks camped up the road that kept screaming up and down the road on a green dirt bike with no muffler, and also did your share of damage “playing” in the stream crossing. How about a little consideration for those who go camping for some rest and relaxation? If I want to listen to dirt bikes screaming all day, I’ll go to a motocross track — so should you.
Mike Neumann
Meeker
