During the commissioners meeting on Dec. 5, Interim Washakie County Planner Mike Robinson said that he recently spoke with the statewide flood insurance coordinator and will likely fill in the role of the floodplain administrator, a role that is typically held by the county planner.

Robinson said in this administrator position, he would properly address development in the floodplain, which would result in the county and residents having access to flood insurance. Without an active floodplain administrator, this insurance is not available, according to Robinson. He is planning on attaining more details as to what the position would entail and how it could impact county residents.

CHIP SEAL BIDS

Robinson presented the three chip seal bids he received to commissioners and said they have 60 days to make a decision. The commissioners decided to table their decision until the next commissioner meeting on Dec. 19, and will look into Local Assistance and Tribal Consistency Funding (LATCF) for the bids in the meantime.

OTHER BUSINESS

Building maintenance supervisor Ryan Casad said that he has been working on a way to keep better track of maintenance requests, and is wanting a way for people to have the ability to submit work orders using the phone application Pubworks. Commissioner Chairman Aaron Anderson commended the idea and said it would additionally be helpful in producing reports to see where the county has conducted frequent maintenance projects.

The commissioners voted to approve Resolution 2023-397, which released the funds in escrow for the Red Vista Village 1 subdivision. County attorney Tony Barton said, “[Attorney David Clark] and I talked at length and he was able to answer the questions that I had […] After the conversation, I concluded that it was an appropriate resolution for this issue, so I made the suggestion to the commissioners.”

PUBLIC HEARING

The commissioners held a public hearing regarding the Washakie County revised subdivision and development regulations.

Regarding the changes, Robinson said, “The main thing that I discovered as I went through and started looking at the [Wyoming] statute versus [county] regulations is that the statute was quite a bit more involved than the regulations were. Being on the planning commission and as a planner, you figure out pretty quickly that if [people] rely on just our regulations, [they] can simplify the process to the point where our regulations were satisfied but the statute could not be.” He said this results in the regulations being, “potentially misleading,” and so he wanted to tie the regulations and the statute together.”

A draft of the revised regulations can be found online on the Washakie County website.

The commissioners waited to make a decision to allow Barton to read over changes, and they anticipate approving the revisions at their next meeting on Dec. 19.

There were no public comments during the hearing. Commissioner Anderson encouraged people to reach out if they would like to make a comment before the revision approval on Dec. 19.