Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
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Have a safe and happy Labor Day Weekend. Look for our football contest starting next week....
WORLAND — Worland residents Wanda and Dennis Richard, owners of property at 622 South Fifth, came before the council Tuesday night to discuss what they described as dilapidated apartments next door. Wanda Richard said they have talked to the ordinance officer and the city building official and finally talked to council member Mike Neufer who suggested they come before the council with their concerns. She said they have been trying since 2017 to get the neighbors to clean up the property. She said the building is falling apart with the only t...
WORLAND — Last week Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon announced the finalization of the first round of state budget cuts totaling more than $250 million, with an additional $80 million in cuts to maintenance of state buildings and those at the university and community colleges. The 10% cuts to state agencies, boards and commissions will have significant effects on Wyoming communities and citizens, as the cuts will impact important services that people depend on and will reduce general fund dollars that enter the private sector, according to a p...
BIG HORN BASIN - U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue designated six Wyoming counties as primary natural disaster areas. Producers in Big Horn, Hot Springs, Johnson, Natrona, Sheridan and Washakie counties who suffered losses due to the recent drought may be eligible for U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA) emergency loans. This natural disaster designation allows FSA to extend much-needed emergency credit to producers recovering from natural disasters. The...
Another round of civil unrest and ... it's tiring. The bad faith arguments are flying from every which direction, and they're genuinely exhausting, which is the design. But, it's time to summon the strength and will of the late Chadwick Boseman. As we've gotten more details about the Jacob Blake shooting, two parts of Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail have been on repeat in my mind: Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what...
WORLAND - Students in Grace Godfrey's ag mechanics class at Worland High School are learning about engineering within the agricultural field and the careers associated within that field. Each student will be making a corn-seed planters with building criteria that the seeds need to be dispersed every two inches for a total of 60 inches. Constraints include not being able to touch the seed by hand and completing the dispersal in less than 60 seconds. Students were given the weekend to build and a...
WORLAND — As rough as last season’s sugar beet harvest season ended, with snow and freezing temperatures, Wyoming Sugar CEO Mike Greear is excited about this year’s crop. “We have a darn good crop out there,” Greear said, noting that the crop in Washakie County and Big Horn County looks good. He said the crop in Fremont County is good but not as good with farmers struggling with weather and water. Early harvest should begin next week with pre-piling on September 16 and regular harvest beginning Oct. 1. “I’ve been in charge for three years and i...
WORLAND – During their monthly meeting Tuesday, Aug. 25, Chief Financial Officer Jennifer McMillan informed the Washakie Medical Center Board that the Washakie Medical Center is behind budget for the year by approximately $396,000. “We are still not quite where we wanted to be but we are starting to see some recovery from the COVID period,” McMillan said. McMillan said that the Swing Bed program has really slowed down at the hospital. Swing Bed is a Medicare program that allows for patie...
WORLAND – Washakie County School District No. 1 hosted a town hall meeting via Zoom to provide an update on how the first week of school went and how activities would be conducted this fall. The district began by providing an update from curriculum director Jody Rakness discussing how technology is being utilized in the district and how students are being helped to get online should quarantine result for that child. Rakness said that the district has heeded advice from parents in the spring a...
WORLAND - A public meeting has been scheduled for Sept. 9 concerning a 2021-22 project to reconstruct three bridges on WY433 near Worland. The 6:30 p.m. public meeting will be held at the Washakie County Fairgrounds. Citizens and area landowners/farmers/ranchers are invited to attend. The 2021-22 project will replace 3 bridges and reconstruct the roadway on West River Road between mileposts 4.14 and 5.5. "The project includes total reconstruction of the three bridges," said Wyoming Department...
CHEYENNE - The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission’s next meeting is Wednesday, Sept. 9 in Thermopolis. The public is invited to attend in person or via ZOOM video conferencing and will have a chance to comment on each specific agenda item and can speak to the Commission about any matter, regardless of their attendance method. For those who would like to attend in person, the meeting will be held at the Days Inn, 115 East Park Street. The meeting will follow state public gathering recommendations which allow for 50 people in a confined space w...
WORLAND – The Washakie County Commissioners met for their regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 1, to discuss the value engineering list set forth regarding the new Washakie County Library by the tentatively awarded bidder Groathouse Construction and the county’s engineering firm TSP. Those present for the discussion were the Washakie County Commission, Project Manager Mark Averett from TSP, Groathouse Construction President Fred Bronnenberg along with representatives from the Washakie C...
CHEYENNE – With Wyoming bracing for its largest revenue decline in state history, lawmakers rejected every tax-raising proposal on their agenda during a committee meeting Tuesday. Due to long-term declines in its energy industries and the economic downturn brought by COVID-19, Wyoming has been projected to see its revenue drop by $1.5 billion total over the next two years. In response, Gov. Mark Gordon has already directed state agencies to cut 10% of their budgets, which totals about $250 million. On the other side of the state’s fiscal pol...
CHEYENNE — Lawmakers advanced legislation Friday aiming to boost the state’s meat processing facilities and provide more financial relief to agriculture industries. But the ultimate call on whether to stand up such programs will be left to Gov. Mark Gordon. The bills approved Friday by the Joint Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Committee would appropriate $80 million of the state’s federal stimulus money – which must be spent by the end of the year – specifically for farming and ranching businesses across the state. Th...
CHEYENNE — Just a few months removed from a Supreme Court decision forced by heavy caseloads and understaffing for the agency, the Wyoming Public Defender’s office could soon be thrust into another constitutional crisis, thanks to the 10% budget cut announced last week. Last year, State Public Defender Diane Lozano warned the Legislature that her office had been overburdened by heavy caseloads and struggles to retain attorneys. The issue entered the spotlight in May 2019, when Lozano said her office could no longer accept misdemeanor cases in...
A newly reported coronavirus-related death has been confirmed involving a Wyoming resident who had tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) in a press release Friday, Sept. 4, 2020. An older adult Natrona County man with health conditions recognized as putting patients at higher risk of serious illness related to COVID-19 has died. The man had been hospitalized. Deaths among Wyoming residents are added to the state’s coronavirus-related death total based on official death certificate information. If d...
Sheridan - Black bear hunters are alerted that the fall black bear season in hunt areas 1 and 2 closed at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2020. The closed areas are located in the northern Bighorn Mountains. The 2020 fall black bear hunting season closes for each hunt area or group of hunt areas when the female mortality limit has been reached or on Oct. 31, whichever comes first. The female limits are used to ensure that overharvest of female bears does not occur. Black bear areas 1 and 2 have a combined quota of seven females this fall....
JACKSON — One group is taking the brunt of the coronavirus outbreak in Teton County, and it’s not young people. Though Latinos make up just 15% of the county’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 estimates, they account for 32% of local COVID-19 cases since March. That number has been even more pronounced in recent weeks, rising to 57% of the cases from Aug. 25 to Sept. 7. “That is very overrepresented for the Latinx community,” Teton County Director of Health Jodie Pond told county commissioners Aug. 31. If the coronavirus...
CASPER — Lawmakers alternatively poked and chafed Tuesday at the boundaries of Wyoming’s education system and the court decisions that protect it as they look to solve a yawning revenue deficit and stay on the right side of the state’s Constitution. Legislators are well into recalibration, the process by which state-hired consultants study Wyoming’s educational system. The process is used to decide what constitutes an adequate and equitable education for every student in Wyoming, and then determine how much the state must pay to meet that ma...
GILLETTE — An oil and gas company’s proposal to trade land with the state has angered landowners in southern Campbell County. In July, EOG Resources asked the Campbell County Commissioners to support a proposed land swap between the oil and gas company and the state of Wyoming. There are eight sections of state land in southern Campbell County and northern Converse County measuring 5,120 acres. EOG proposed trading eight sections of land in Laramie County, southeast of Cheyenne, to the state in exchange for the land in Campbell and Con...
SHERIDAN — Clayvin Herrera, the Crow tribal member cited with taking big game animals out of season back in 2014, has again appealed his case, postponing the answers to several questions regarding tribal hunting rights in and around the Bighorn National Forest. Herrera was cited for killing an elk in the Bighorn National Forest out of season in 2014 and as a result was sentenced to pay more than $8,000 in fines and court fees and have his hunting privileges suspended. Herrera didn’t deny taking the elk, but questioned the illegality of the act...
Wyoming is collaborating with the Trump administration to develop strategies to extend the lives of the nation’s aging coal-fired power plants — the primary customers of the state’s coal mining industry. The suite of initiatives announced Thursday by Gov. Mark Gordon and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Acting Deputy Administrator Doug Benevento include a rollback of an Obama-era rule that would have further limited the volume of toxins that coal plants can dump into waterways — a change they say will save coal-plant operators an estimat...
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