Anna Stonehouse/The Aspen Times file photo
Sheriff’s deputies locked down the county administration building Tuesday after receiving unspecified email threats from a former Pitkin County Jail inmate, according to a news release.
Pitkin County Sheriff Joe DiSalvo declined to release any further information about the nature of the threat during a media briefing Tuesday afternoon, saying only that the threat was made “toward county facilities.”
The Pitkin County Administration and Sheriff’s Office on Main Street was targeted, though he declined to say whether a person or persons were threatened. Employees working at the building were evacuated early Tuesday afternoon and a board of county commissioners work session scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. was canceled. No members of the public were in the building Tuesday afternoon, said county Manager Jon Peacock.
Aspen Fire Chief Rick Balentine receives a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine from family planning nurse Linda Vieira at the Community Health Services building in Aspen on Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2020. (Kelsey Brunner/The Aspen Times)
Aspen Fire Chief Rick Balentine has been put on notice by the district board that he needs to improve his relationships with other local public safety agencies by June, when his contract likely will come up for renewal.
The Aspen Fire Protection District Board is putting Balentine on a six-month employment contract rather than an annual one-year or multi-year deal he has had since becoming chief in 2014. He had two consecutive three-year contracts and then a one-year deal, which expired Dec. 31.
For the first time in nearly a year, all five Pitkin County commissioners spent time together in the same room last week discussing county priorities for the year.
Not surprisingly, the list included no new projects for 2021, with board members and senior staff preferring to concentrate on several on-going issues including the pandemic, the jail, the airport and changes to the county’s growth management system.
“People are still trying to get through the pandemic,” said Board Chairwoman Kelly McNicholas Kury. “The resources to take on more just aren’t there. The board made a conscious decision about what we think we can and should do well.”
In an effort to try to combat the highest COVID-19 incidence rate in the state, law enforcement officials in Pitkin County said Thursday they will introduce a stick to what has previously been a carrot-based approach to public health order enforcement.
Police in Aspen, Snowmass Village and Basalt, as well as county sheriff’s deputies, will now write misdemeanor tickets for egregious and blatant violations of local public health orders, such as large parties, law enforcement officials said.
“There’s some value in issuing a ticket on scene,” Aspen Assistant Police Chief Bill Linn said Thursday. “Sending a letter a week later that says ‘Don’t do it again,’ is not as clear as a ticket stuck in a hand the night it happens.”