Ten Sleep Senior Center nominated for award
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WORLAND – The Ten Sleep Senior Center has been nominated for the WYTRANS [Wyoming Public Transportation Association] agency of the year for 2018.
Cody Council on Aging and Star Transit in Sweetwater County have also been nominated. The winner will be announced at the WYTRANS annual conference on June 20 in Riverton.
“When we first received the transit quarterly [newsletter], if I had false teeth they would have fallen out. I wasn’t aware that we were going to be nominated. We are really pleased and happy and proud of the fact that the state has recognized us as a nominee even if we don’t win at their conference. It’s still quite an honor to be nominated,” Ten Sleep Senior Center director Randy Firnekas said.
According to WYTRANS Jaime Hunolt, “Each year WYTRANS presents awards to transit providers across the state in six different categories; driver, trainer, dispatcher, volunteer, outstanding service and Transit Agency of the Year. For the agency of the year, the nominees are submitted by WYDOT [Wyoming Department of Transportation]. The staff in the local government control division of WYDOT oversees public transit funding and each year they submit three nominees for this award. The nominees — along with those in all of the other categories — are sent out to WYTRANS members (public transit providers across the state) and each agency gets one vote.”
A write up in the WYTRANS April newsletter states that the Ten Sleep Senior Center was nominated for a number of reasons. “The Ten Sleep seniors are always ready to answer our call for information when we are preparing materials about our various programs. Randy [Firnekas] and his staff always meet our deadlines for budget requests and their billing and ridership information is among the first to arrive each month. Requests for funding are consistently supported with appropriate documentation and they always have a request to match their current needs. Ridership for the first quarter of FY18 [fiscal year] showed an increase of nearly 19 percent over the same time period in FY17. In FY17 Ten Sleep Seniors reported ridership of 2,480 in a community of 304 residents.”
The newsletter went on to say that the Ten Sleep Senior Center makes good use of workshops and informational seminars offered by WYTRANS and that the center earned eight out of 10 points for attending various offerings during the 2017 conference in Jackson. The Center also participates in the monthly Dashboard quizzes and includes support documents for reimbursement requests and farebox reports each month.
According to the newsletter, “Ten Sleep is a perfect example of a small provider who is doing everything right.”
