By Seth Romsa
Staff Writer
Commissioners hold special end of fiscal year meeting
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WORLAND – The Washakie County Commissioners met in a special session Tuesday, June 30, to finalize bills for the 2019-20 fiscal year and to address other agenda items.
At the beginning of the meeting, the commissioners transferred $13,000 to the public health budget and $20,000 to the road and bridge budget to finish balancing out the 2019-20 budget. Both amounts were transferred from the unanticipated expenses funds.
After transferring the funds, Washakie County Fire Warden Chris Kocher called in to discuss bids to complete the Annie Tolman Project. The current bids that were presented by Mountain Man Wood Projects LLC and Summit Forest Inc. were over the amount of funding that is available through the Firewise grant that the county initially acquired in 2017. According to Kocher there is around $87,000 left in funding through the grant, and the commissioners gave him permission to negotiate either less acreage or a price reduction with Summit whom had the lower initial bid.
The Big Horn Bar was given permission to serve malt liquor during the Ten Sleep Rodeo on July 3 and 4.
Sheriff Steve Rakness came before the board to ask if they could budget for a satellite phone plan, as a need came across in a search and rescue operation last week and he realized the phones were not able to be used. Rakness said they have not needed to use a satellite phone for around six years since he last held training on them. They estimated around a $1,500-$2,000 cost as Rakness requested two phone plans for the sheriff’s office and one for emergency management.
Newly appointed Fifth Judicial District Court Clerk Christy Schneider came before the commissioners to discuss filling an open position after Mirian Hansen recently resigned. Schneider was granted the request to hire someone to help train for six months, but the commissioners discussed the person taking that position becoming a “floater” between the offices at the county courthouse in the next six months to a year.
This was discussed as a potential help for budget in the coming years as the commissioners do not know how long the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will last.
The commissioners went into executive session to discuss personnel with Schneider.
