TORRINGTON – On Wednesday, April 22, Go Goshen hosted the Wellness Center Introductory Meeting at 2 p.m. 

“Alright, perhaps we’ll get started. There might be a late attendee or two but we’ll leave the door open and let them in. My name is Brian Young, CEO of Go Goshen as of about seven months ago,” Brian Young said opening the meeting. “I really appreciate you coming out. [I’m] excited about the Goshen County Wellness Center concept. There are some agendas over there, if you didn’t have one. It’s not too much on the agenda. We’ll keep this to an hour to make sure we’re respectful of everyone’s time.”

“I just want to provide a brief introductory meeting and overview of a new concept. I know that in the years passed and decades passed, this has come up quite a few times. A wellness center, as it’s termed for grant purposes. We probably recognize it more as a rec center,” Young said.

Young then had each of the meeting participants introduce themselves and he turned the floor over to City of Torrington Mayor Herb Doby who provided a project overview. 

“I just want to say that this is a process that’s just getting started. This, very quickly for review, several of us met up here late summer/fall of last year and then we kicked that back together again and had a meeting or two. The city council on April 9 had a work session that dealt with this wellness center concept,” Doby explained. “I’m reminded of, I read this somewhere in my past, that foreign country where regarding commissions or boards, there was always one person appointed. They took turn turns in rotation to be the ‘no’ vote and think of everything negative that could possibly happen. I say that just because I want transparency. I don’t want anybody thinking we’re hiding the ball on any of this stuff. I think that’s been a concern in the past, but I want realistic thinking,” Doby continued. 

“There’s going to be people that are very enthusiastic about this and I appreciate that enthusiasm. But I’m explaining to people that this is a process, certainly to get going,” Doby explained. “For the city’s part, we’re going to have to have mayor and council approve an MoU (memorandum of understanding) and approve a joint powers agreement if that’s the way we decide to go forward. So, that takes a little bit of time.”

Doby further noted he would not be happy with a joint powers agreement or with an MoU until he and his staff agree. 

“So, that’s just some of the things that are in the background of this. I’m not, the council meeting, that was my forum – this is not necessarily as Brain’s (Young) been very good about spearheading and organizing these meetings and I thank him for that,” Doby said. “A whole lot of people want this wellness center.”

Talk of a wellness center or recreation center has been occurring in Goshen County for decades, Doby admits. 

“There have been numerous iterations of this in the past and they’ve failed for various reasons. I have concerns, which I’ll state. This is a chicken and an egg thing to me. The smart people, including Brain and other people that I talk about – economic development – say in this modern day and age, you need amenities in a city, like a wellness center, for corporations to be interested in coming. Low taxes is like seventh on their list now and amenities may be at the top if their list,” Doby said. “So, there’s that in terms of economic development.”

“I’ll pitch this because I do this every time I get a chance to talk to anybody that’s active. President Trump said, ‘Coal, coal, coal,’ when he looked at the Wyoming delegation and he looked at the governor and said, ‘We need energy, energy, energy, three times more than we currently have. Wyoming’s perfectly posited to start mining coal, natural gas and building power plants,” Doby said. “I’d like to see a power plant built here in Goshen County, maybe down where the old sugar factory is. We need to replace our biggest private employer. That’s the chicken and the egg thing. The wellness center, do you build it and they will come? You sure hope, right? But you don’t know. There’s no guarantee to that.”

Doby presented a few questions of who will pay for the center and who will maintain the center. 

“I know that was Councilman Victor’s concern at the council meeting was. What about going in time 30, 40, 50 years from now? Who is going to keep up the maintenance, pay the staff, all the things that one of these wellness centers will require?” Doby said. “And I gave a horror story. I misspoke. I said it was Baggs, Wyoming last time. It was Hannah, Wyoming. When the big, I think it was Archer Coal was in there and there was a lot of people in the town and a lot of coal mining going on, the coal company just built them a wellness center. Then coal dried up, the coal didn’t dry up, but the mining company left, the town shrunk, and now that building has fallen down around them,” Doby continued. “So, this is something that has to go on into the future. As I said, and Eric will get into this at his turn on joint powers board, but we thought a good way to try this this time was by way of the joint powers board. And in my mind, every entity that can be on there should be on there. The cities and the towns, the prison maybe, the school district, alright? Because I don’t want anybody to think they don’t have an equal vote.”

“Now in a way I’m kind of selling out the entity I represent because we’ve got the largest population. But I’d be happy with the joint powers board that had one vote for Lingle and one vote for Yoder and one vote for Fort Laramie and this one,” Doby said. “So, that we don’t have this problem having passed where I think the outlying communities think Torrington’s up to something and this is only going to benefit Torrington residents. That’s something I’m concerned about. I would see this wellness center as a public good. And in this country government and government, government entities can get together and do things for the public good,” Doby continued. “That’s how I look at this wellness center as a public good. And as I said, there’s two sides to this. There are some people that are going to be very enthusiastically for it. And there’s going to be elements in this community that are very enthusiastically against it.”

Doby continued by stating he didn’t want to crush the optimism but wanted to walk into the project with eyes open. 

“I just want this to be realistic,” Doby concluded before turning the discussion over to Goshen County Attorney, Eric Boyer to discuss funding.

“As the mayor envisioned, that we propose it a little differently this time in terms of the basic funding. I think one of the big political obstacles, understandably, last generation or two that this was considered especially, from Lingle and Fort Laramie and LaGrange and so forth was the idea it would just be funded with the six-penny tax or some tax on the citizens,” Boyer began. “And that has all its own political issues which we don’t need to get into. Our vision at this time is to pursue it like a like we have pursued, as a community city and towns and county, other big projects. Like this building was purchased with and rehabilitated with funds. I think a lot of them were tax funds but a lot of them were grant funds also. I say that because the City of Torrington building is largely refurbished with grant. The simple reality is that the county courthouse is 113 years old and the county doesn’t have the money to rebuild that. So, we’re going to need grant funds,” Boyer continued. 

“We as a community, a lot of us think, want to need a facility that could be used here year-round that everyone in the community could use as a conference facility and to have indoor facilities year-round for swimming lessons and for wellness, for people in the hospital and nursing home and all kinds of basketball tournaments and the kind of things that a lot of us would go down to like – Pine Bluffs has a fabulous little facility that they rent out that has a fitting rooms. It has basketball facilities and they have basketball tourneys there,” Boyer explained. 

Boyer further stated he knew everyone in the room wanted to see the town succeed.

“I think this time we can shift away from that – the political angst of adding taxes by looking at just the way we fund other facilities. The City of Torrington for instance had a $7,000,000 or so project to get its water system upgraded to provide for reverse osmosis for the water treatment and that was largely grant funded,” Boyer said. “And so, those of you who have heard me talk about this will know that I used to do this for the federal government. The idea is that for all of us in our personal life and working life we need to understand the reality of what we’re getting into. We don’t – none of us go out and buy a brand-new Ferrari and $10 million mansions because we know we can’t afford that at the back end. So, that’s kind of what the mayor was getting at and the beauty of a situation like this is we can do this in phases and with a few hurdles we can start looking at an entity being the legal entity which is the joint powers board. A governmental entity which would be any of the cities and towns in the county that chose to join,” Boyer explained. 

Boyer explained the county had agreed to join a joint powers board.

“The City of Torrington has agreed to join that joint powers board and hopefully, all the other towns and other entities like the prison and Eastern Wyoming College, the school district and other eligible government entities might choose to join that joint powers board,” Boyer explained. “Then, as the mayor said, all have one seat at the table of that board which would itself own and manage any facility that was built and so that’s kind of one big piece of a couple,” Boyer said. “Getting away from the political tax issue then separately having a joint powers board which the city and county have had before.”

Boyer noted the main step in going forward would be to get a feasibility study.

“Then, I think, the main step going forward first would be to fund and get a feasibility study. There are several big nationwide firms that specialize in doing feasibility studies for projects like this. And we, we call it a wellness center. And most of you have heard me say this because the federal and state government doesn’t promote grants for fitness centers or for recreational centers. But the federal and state government has a lot of funding available for centers, facilities that deal with educational needs, that deal with wellness needs, that have supporters like junior colleges and the school districts, and hospitals and nursing homes. I convinced that teamwork will make the dream happen,” Boyer said. 

The meeting continued on with more of an overview of the project until shortly after 2 p.m., when it was adjourned by Young.