GOSHEN COUNTY – The Goshen County Commissioners held their first April meeting on Tuesday, April 1. Chairman Michael McNamee called the meeting to order and the Pledge of Allegiance followed thereafter. Present at the Tuesday meeting were fellow commissioners Justin Burkart and Aaron Walsh. Mary Feagler clerk for the county, was also present. 

“We will begin with the approval of the agenda for today’s meeting. There are going to be a couple of variations but no changes that we made,” McNamee stated.

A motion was quickly made by Burkart and seconded by Walsh to approve the agenda. The motion carried by vote to approve the agenda. The meeting minutes from the previous commissioners' meeting were also approved as presented.  

During McNamee’s opening statements, he expressed gratitude for the recent moisture in the county, noting the county roads are being tended to as they can be. McNamee stated patience was needed by the community.

“Please remember, they will get around to that as quickly as they possibly can and make use of the moisture while they can do so,” McNamee said. “That is certainly the most important.”

McNamee further noted there was a length meeting ahead of the commissioners and the commissioners moved on to departmental reports where they heard from clerk of court, Brandi Correa.

“I don’t have an earnings report to turn into you yet because I cannot balance due to the fact that circuit court went live and when they went live, I was getting their filing fees. At that time, circuit court, I had noticed I had put in a help to supreme court. It took them a couple of days to get back to me, which is normal,” Correa said. 

Due to the issues, Correa will provide Feagler with the current earnings report once the issue is resolved. The commissioners agreed to delay the approval of the clerk of court’s earnings report and they moved on to the grant writer, Hannah Fullmer’s report.

“This month, I had basically kind of the same sorts of meetings, webinars I attended. One to note is the coordination with the Wyoming Energy Authority. We have coordinated with them on the ECBG grant. I think that’s a really good partner to have and give us insight on our projects for energy,” Fullmer said. “Then, we have a couple more projects in mind. We’re looking at some of the grants that are opening up this spring and this summer. This month, I submitted three grants.”

“Submitted the Rural and Tribal Assistance Pilot Program – that one, unfortunately, had technical difficulties when they opened it. So, they had it open for two days and they closed it. They were going to reopen it,” Fullmer said. “I submitted the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant for windows and LED lighting and HVAC.”

Fullmer noted the T-Mobile Small Town Grant was submitted to upgrade the sound system for the county and it should be awarded mid-May with fund dispersal in June. 

“I know that with the current climate at the federal level, with funding and with grants and different things, are you seeing any feedback, any kind of indication of what we can expect with grant possibilities?” McNamee asked Fullmer. “Certain areas maybe being enhanced with grant opportunities, others being cut? Where are we at there?”

“They’re still kind of up in the air. It’s gone down. The federal government is kind of hard to get a hold of right now, but they’re kind of – each department sorting out which ones they want to keep and weed out,” Fullmer explained. “Some of them have gotten back and started opening them up again, some of them are still kind of hard to get a hold of at times. But I don’t see any that we’ve been looking at or applying for any push back on those.”

After a prompt from Burkart, Fullmer announced the county had been awarded two grants in the last week.

“We were awarded the American Libraries Association LTC Libraries Transforming Communities Grant for $20,000 for accessible shelving and a wheelchair accessible desk at the Goshen County Library. I’ll have a resolution at the next meeting when the library reports on this as well. Then we were also awarded the Wyoming Community Gas Grant for additional accessible shelving at the Goshen County Library as well,” Fullmer explained.

“I was just going to mention congratulations on the grants that were awarded,” Walsh said. “This is all starting to work out good for you.”

With nothing further to discuss, the commissioners voted to approve the report provided by Fullmer and the moved on to the road and bridge report. 

“The only thing I have is a couple of plats. They’re actually vacations, no more lots, less lots,” Taylor said. “One of them, I’ve got a small version of the plan to look at. It’s part of a unique thing. We had a recreation subdivision. The only one in Goshen County in the last 25 year’s and only one period, which is out by Bump Sullivan. As it turned out, they’re not using two of the lots. These two down in the lower portion there. That they’re going to vacate. It now has a center pivot sprinkler.” 

Taylor explained the landowner wished to vacate the recreation department. Taylor also noted there are lenders involved so the plate was unavailable for the April 1st meeting. Taylor stated he would have the final plat at the April 15 meeting for the commissioners’ signatures. 

Taylor noted the second plat waiting the commissioners’ approval was out where the Christmas Tree Farm was on Hwy 26.

“It was called the Park Subdivision. There were four lots in there, originally,” Taylor said.

Taylor explained the landowner had purchased three additional lots and they wished to vacate the lot noting there was no need for covenants. Taylor noted the neighbors are happy and there were no complaints. 

Mike Tietjen spoke to the commissioners with the planning commission’s decision regarding the two plats. 

“The planning commission has met in the previous meeting, considered both plats and vacation and through discourse amongst the presenters and commissioners, found positive conditions,” Tietjen said. “They recommend a positive consideration by the board of commissioners for both plats.”

McNamee noted there were no questions of concerns and Taylor explained he would like the plat approved today. McNamee asked if water rights and conservation districts had been evaluated to which Taylor responded everything was in order.

With nothing further to discuss, McNamee called for a motion to approve the abandonment of the Raymond, second filing, and Park, second filing, Subdivisions. Walsh motioned to approve which was seconded by Burkart. The motion carried. 

“Just as a point of update, the planning office’s website, planning GIS, we’ve finally added an agenda and minutes tab to it,” Tietjen said. “We’ll be able to post agenda and minutes similar to what the county commissioners have on the main website. So, over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be getting with IT to get the final process to move things over so both can look for previous minutes or previous agendas and the upcoming agenda by a little bit more easily navigating the website.”

Tietjen said he appreciated the assistance from the IT department and he further noted it took him a bit to get things figured out, but now the public can visit the planning commission’s agendas and meeting minutes. 

“This upcoming planning commission, we will probably begin according to their planning commission’s desire to approach and update to the confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) regulations,” Tietjen said. “It needs to be addressed. “It’s very old and it presents some difficulties navigating through it as the intent in regard to the land use plan. I think they’re expressing interest to start that this coming month meeting and going until they can come forward with a document that reflects public input to make more manageable regulatory operation.”

“And probably, one of the biggest things that all CAFOs do is the adherence to preventing water, the waters of the United States, the big term up there, from being polluted with runoff,” Tietjen said. “So, that’s one of the big things that the regulatory mechanism does is look at runoff potential and location of water contaminating pollutants, things like that. So, that will be the focus as well.”

Chris Stoddard, road and bridge superintendent, addressed the board. 

“To add to your comment from earlier, your opening comment, to the public, thank you for being patient and letting us get around.” Stoddard said. “But I’ll add to it. If there is something that is really bad, please, just don’t hesitate to call in and let us know because we can get in and get the ones that are really bad. I got a call this morning from one of the bus drivers. We have some that are pretty rough that we need to get across.” 

Stoddard further noted with the recent rainfall; the moisture had only made it two inches into the ground and the county needed more. Stoddard explained what worked had been done on the county roads, noting the intersections and the larger problem areas had been identified. Stoddard also explained with the anticipated arrival of the county’s new road patching machine, they will be checking the arrival over for parts and repairs needed prior to use. Stoddard also mentioned he was looking for seasonal help.

A member of the public in attendance thanked Stoddard for his hard work on the county’s roads noting this is the first time in nine years the roads have been done correctly. After a bit more discussion, a motion was made by Walsh to accept the road and bridge report which was seconded by Burkart. The motion carried and the report was accepted. 

Moving on to the county clerk’s report, Feagler presented the warrant report and the earnings report which was quickly accepted by the commissioners.

Feagler noted the contract for the new bookkeeping system should have been discussed during the meeting Tuesday morning however due to the changes in the IT department’s budget, they have decided to wait. 

The commissioners moved on to the emergency manager and fire warden’s report. 

“We had an emergency mangers conference two weeks ago, where we met in Cheyenne. It was emergency mangers from throughout the state. We did decide to go with a ‘Ready, set go,’ which is evacuation type standard we’re going to try to have in place before fire season really gets started and tornado season gets started. We expect that kick-off to come within the next 45 days probably,” Bozeman said.

Bozeman noted it’s nice to see all of the emergency managers getting on board in the state.

“We had some issues in Pine Ridge where different evacuation orders were going out in different ways. So, it was nice to see that even though we had some issues in Pine Ridge, there were really bad issues with some of the other fires,” Bozeman said. “We do have the MRG grant for signature today. It was accepted at the last meeting in January down in Cheyenne. I was in attendance. It was pretty much a no-brainer grant. It was approved without much discussion and more of just a formality.”

Moving on to the fire warden’s report, Bozeman explained Goshen County is still in a D3 drought even though there was some moisture in the county.

“D3 drought, if everybody remembers, the drought system goes from D0 which we’ve had plenty of rain, we’re good – to D4. D4 being the most extreme drought you can be in. We’re at a three. The whole southeast part of Wyoming is in that state right now. But if you look at Goshen County, we’re the only county where the entire county is in a D3 drought,” Bozeman said.

In further explanation, Bozeman explained the county had only seen 11/2 inches of rain since January, about seven inches below normal for the last 18 months. 

“We’re still in the drought area even though we’ve had some moisture. This past March, we were the 11th driest on record since the 1800s so I still want to remind people to burn responsibility. Definitely don’t burn when the wind’s blowing. Make sure you clean out the area around your burn pits or your burn barrels and try to use spark arresters, if possible,” Bozeman said. “We’ve already had some fires started up throughout the county so we don’t want to see any of those get worse.”

After a deep discussion, the commissioners accepted the resolution Bozeman had presented to accept the awarded grant.

Prior to the approval of the emergency manger and fire warden’s report, Walsh explained the public needs to call in controlled burns. 

“We’ve had already some instances where people have been doing some control burns this year and it was not called in and we’ve been responding to those calls. So, it would be appreciated if everyone would give a phone call to dispatch before they start burning,” Walsh explained.

Burkart also noted both he and Bozeman would be attending fire mitigation training during the next meeting.

During the public health report, the commissioners were informed, Kara Palfy had recently stepped down from her position as county nurse manager. The department asked for the commissioners’ approval to seek new hires for the position. The department also presented an MOU between the state’s public health preparedness and response unit and Goshen County. It was noted the MOU had been signed last year however they failed to update the statement of work at that time. In going further, Ryan Wunibald gave a brief explanation of what his role for the department. 

“They’re really kind if in this new budget cycle from – I’ve probably tripled the amount of ‘deliverables’ that I do, which is fine. It’s more of a – let’s take the learned experiences that we’ve had from our COVID responses and what we did well and let’s be able to now apply that to other emergencies, whether that be the chemical exposure for a train derailment or maybe how do we as public health present to Mr. Bozeman in our county, specific in our county,” Wunibald said. “It’s asking me to come alongside a little bit more often with the emergency manager.”

Wunibald further elaborated his responsibilities noting the department was looking into emergency shelters should a location in the county require evacuation. He explained he had also been working with the school district, seeking permission for the county to utilize a school bus should the emergent evacuation need a form of mass transportation, such as the nursing home. Wunibald also explained Goshen County is lucky to have Bozeman.

McNamee noted the commissioners will provide whatever is needed for the MOU and he called for a motion to accept the public health report. Walsh motioned to accept, which was seconded by Burkart. The motion carried by vote. 

In absence of Kevin Flock, maintenance supervisor, Feagler explained the company had arrived to work on the control panel in the basement. Feagler further relayed Flock had received some bids for a dump trailer and he has money in his budget. 

The commissioner requested a little time to look over the set of bids presented in Flock’s report and further encouraged Flock to seek bids. The commissioners noted they could see the benefits of Flock’s request. Feagler further relayed Flock was still searching for a way to paint the red truck white noting the bids have been pricey. 

With nothing further to report, the commissioners voted to approve the maintenance supervisors report and moved on to old business on the agenda where Moriah Harkins asked the commissioners to designate the Fort Laramie Historical Association as the official committee for the Semiquincentinneal Celebration. 

The commissioners agreed to designate the nonprofit as the official committee and Harkins agreed to report back to the commissioners with updates. 

Under new business, the commissioners heard from Anthony Bianchini of the Chugwater Eind Energy Project spoke to the commissioners on a portion of the project which would be in Goshen County. Bianchini noted some of the wind regulation changes the commissioners were considering would prevent the company from building the project in the county.

A public hearing was then held to discuss wind regulations and the meeting was then adjourned to reconvene Tuesday, April 15, at 9 a.m.