Council - Regular Meeting

you . . . . . Let's pray. . . Thank you. you you This is a very important part of the process. This is a very important part of the process. . . . . . . you . . .

I now call the July 7, 2026 Finance Committee meeting to order at 6.46. The chair would be looking for a motion regarding consideration of claims.

Your Honor, a motion for consideration of claims to be paid in the amount of $1,300,244.66, manual checks in the amount of $8,495.82, payroll and liabilities for 6-26-2026 in the amount of $495,902.78 for a total of $1,804,643.26.

Second we have a motion and a second. Are there any discussion on any of those items? Okay, all in favor aye aye And I vote aye it passes. Are there any other items before the Finance Committee?

At this time Mr. Turner you I have nothing else to add tonight.

Thank you If so, I would call the meeting adjourned at 647

Thank you. you . . . . So, Thank you. you . . you you you you Thank you for watching. Thank you. Amen. Thank you.

July 7th, 2026 regular meeting of the Riverton city council to order at 7 PM. I will now lead us in the pledge of allegiance. If everyone could please rise and remove cover after which. Dale Adams will be coming up here and giving us an invocation.

One nation under God, amen. Let's go to the Lord in prayer, shall we? Father, we invoke your name as we come together for a time such as this. Praise the Lord that you are a God of full creation. You sent your son Jesus to die that we might have life and have it more abundantly. Father, you have ordained the powers that be. So each man and woman and will to be accomplished. My prayer is, Lord, that you would humble each heart, allow them to seek your face and your will and your purposes to be accomplished. I pray, Father, for the strength that you give them day by day, the courage to make the right decisions, the ability to communicate what goes on in their hearts to the people. Lord, in all of this, our desire as a nation truly is to honor you. So I pray the decisions that are made will be made for your glory and for your honor. Lord, as we face these trying days, for these people who represent this city, I pray your blessing upon them, your watch care over them. and the wisdom they need in all things. And we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

Thank you, Mr. Adams. And off he goes for other things.

He's a busy man.

Thank you.

Thank you, Del.

All right. Ms. Harris, if you please could conduct the roll call.

Yes, Your Honor. Council Member Karen Johnson. Here. Council Member Kyle Larson. Here. Council Member Carla Borders. Here. Council Member Mike Bailey.

Here.

Council Member Rebecca Brothers.

Absent.

Council Member Eric Carr.

Absent. Here. Oh, here, via phone. Hey, thanks, Eric. I didn't know you were going to be here via phone. Nice job.

Thank you.

Mayor Tim Hancock. I am here. I declare we have a quorum. I'd entertain a motion to approve the agenda as presented.

So moved. Second.

Motion by Councilwoman Borders. Second by Councilwoman Johnson. Any discussion on the agenda? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. motion passes Councilwoman brothers resignation acceptance I think everyone well everyone not everyone in the audience but Councilwoman brothers had sent notice and has been telling people that she intends to move to another community we will miss her however unless we actually officially note that there is Oh, how would we word that, Mr. Butterfield? It's not that the seat is vacated, but that there is a...

Your Honor, there are two steps. You need to formally accept her resignation and then declare a vacancy.

Oh, thank you. That's just the only word I needed. So she's notified us that her last day that she was intending on serving as a council member was last month. So we have two things. Number one, we would have to accept her resignation. And then number two, we would have to declare a vacancy. The way that usually is done, at least the way it has it in the statute, is it would be the council is going to consider the question, does a vacancy exist for the seat that was previously filled by Councilwoman Brothers?

And then we would vote on that and decide that there is or isn't a vacancy.

So first off, do I have a motion to accept the resignation of Councilwoman Brothers as a member of the Riverton City Council?

So moved.

Second. Councilwoman Borders with the motion. Councilman Bailey with the second.

Any other discussion on that?

All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. I vote aye. We could mess around with things and do things like say nay or say, you know. We're not going to accept the resignation, but that doesn't make sense. I think we've got business to get done, and we should probably get it done and get somebody in the seat. So then the next question we have is, does a vacancy currently exist in the council for the seat that was held by Councilwoman Brothers? And I guess, I don't know. We don't need a motion on that, but we just need to be able to consider that and agree that there's a vacancy. Is that correct, Mr. Butterfield?

Your Honor, the municipal code states that the council must immediately consider the question, does a vacancy exist in the office of, and as you mentioned, it would be a council seat for Ward 2. And then you'll also need to immediately solicit interest for that vacancy. And you might want to set the prescribed deadline to receive those and then also communicate when you'd want to do those interviews. Um, I'm always a fan of motions just because it's clear for the record, but I think it's up to your prerogative.

Well, and it's almost hand in glove with saying that we're accepting a resignation, but at the same time the resignation and the vacancy aren't quite the same thing. So. TO MAKE A MOTION.

I WOULD MOVE THAT WE DECLARE A VACANCY IN THE PREVIOUSLY HELD POSITION THAT REBECCA BROTHERS HAD IN WARD TWO AND HAVE STAFF IMMEDIATELY ADVERTISE FOR CANDIDATES TO REPLACE THAT POSITION. ALL MOVED. SO THAT'S THE MOTION, AND THEN YOU'RE A SECOND?

YES.

OKAY. SO WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. ANY OTHER DISCUSSION ON THAT?

Your honor if it's okay staff will move forward with that advertisement and if it's okay with the Council, we thought to set the deadline for applications at the end of this month, so it would be. July 31 that's a Friday said that for noon, then we could take the information and the applications we received put it in your Council packet and then you could consider it at the following meeting, which would be that Tuesday, I believe, the fourth of August.

And I think we would want to make sure that letters of interest would be provided by individuals setting out their qualifications. But qualifications isn't just I would be good because of x, y, and z. But you have to be a qualified elector In other words, you have to be someone who's 18 years of age or older, who has resided in the ward boundaries for a year prior to your appointment, and you would have to be otherwise eligible to vote. That's why we say it's a qualified elector. You're eligible to vote. You don't have a felony. You don't have anything that would keep you from being able to vote. But those are the important things. So yes, set out your qualifications in terms of saying, I am someone who would be good because I'm involved in this, that, or the other thing, but also setting out that it's clear that you're eligible to fill that position. But anybody have any issue with the end of July being our window for that? And then we would consider the applicants at our next regular meeting, the first meeting in August. Councilman Carr? Eric.

No objection.

Okay. Well, I can look at everybody else in the eye and stare them down and see if they have anything to say, and I can't do that with you. So if I ask you, just realize that's why. Perfect. All right. Any other discussion on that motion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. I vote aye. Motion passes. Well, Councilwoman Brothers, if you're watching this, which I'm sure you are, we'll miss you. We've appreciated having you on the council. You've provided a good perspective, and there's things that you have been trying to push for that I think will have long-reaching effects in the community and appreciate your hard work. So thank you for being there. All right, the next item on the agenda I have is oath of office for a community service officer. However, I have it on good authority that that community service officer's parents are coming and they're not here yet. And they're coming through Shoshone and I don't want them to speed through Shoshone.

Oh, no, it would be bad.

So what I would actually ask is if the Council doesn't have a problem, if I could do the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence Proclamation, and then we'll proceed at that point if your parents are here. Okay. And then if not, we can just go to our reports and comments and get to it right after that. We'll be okay. We can be flexible.

What about the little girl down there?

They will be here when we do the reports.

Oh, okay. That was my plan.

Okay.

Don't give stuff away. Okay.

I just didn't want you to overlook them, Your Honor. No, I will not.

Okay, I have a proclamation. This is the same one that I read at the park on July 4th, but I'll read it again and we'll sign it, and this will be the one that we'll put in our official minutes and everything. So, whereas on July 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted announcing to the world the birth of a new nation, the United States of America founded upon the principles of liberty, equality, self-government, and the unalienable rights of all people. And whereas the year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of this historic event, known as the United States Semi-Quincentennial, providing an opportunity for Americans to reflect upon our nation's history, celebrate our achievements, and renew our commitment to the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence. And whereas the people of Riverton, Wyoming recognize the courage, vision, and sacrifice of the nation's founders and of the generations of Americans who have worked to preserve and expand the blessings of liberty. And whereas this anniversary serves as a time to honor the service of our veterans, military personnel, first responders, public servants, educators, and community leaders who contribute to the strength and vitality of our nation and community. And whereas the semi-quincentennial offers an opportunity to engage citizens of all ages in learning about our nation's history, encouraging civic participation and fostering appreciation for the freedoms and responsibilities of American citizenship. and whereas the City of Riverton joins communities across Wyoming and the United States in commemorating this significant milestone in our nation's history. Now, therefore, I, Tim Hancock, Mayor of the City of Riverton, Wyoming, do hereby proclaim 2026 as the United States' semi-quincentennial year in the City of Riverton. encourage all residents to participate in educational historical patriotic and community activities that honor the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence and celebrate the enduring principles upon which our nation was founded and witness where of i have here unto set my hand and caused the seal of the city of riverton to be affixed and the date we have here is july 4th 2026 but that's all right so I would encourage folks this year to find different ways to be able to celebrate and recognize the 250th anniversary of the United States. In case you didn't know, I am a big fan of the Declaration of Independence. As a matter of fact, you may or may not know this, my fifth child is named John. And if you put that together, you would realize his name is John Hancock. Now that's because I like the name John, and my mother had a brother whose name was John. That's what I told my wife. But the real reason was that I wanted to have my son be named John Hancock. And she also knows the real reason too. But the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America are both documents that I think are inspiring to be able to look at and realize where we have come from. But it's the work of people every day, including public servants in many different capacities, military personnel, first responders, just everybody that makes it work. It's the respect for the rule of law. It's the fact that every single person, no matter what position you are in, has to respect the law. And that is a unique thing that we didn't invent in the United States, but we certainly have had some of the most stick-to-itiveness to it in terms of recognizing the importance and how it can be a government that can be long-lasting. So I'd encourage you, as we are celebrating and thinking about things that go on this year, sit down, talk with your kids. If you haven't told them where the United States comes from, Have that conversation. Maybe have it along with the conversation about where babies come from. They could just kind of work together and educate our populace a lot better. So as we continue throughout this year, let's make sure we do things that celebrate the semi-quincentennial. And I really enjoyed being able to have a parade this year, and I certainly hope we have one next year, too. All right. Well, Billy, we can move on to the next one. How does that sound? We'll keep going. Here's what we'll do. I want to introduce two young ladies who could come up right now if they are willing to. And they are Tinsley Dower and Peyton Westmoreland. And if we could just have you come up to the mic. And Tinsley, I know that mic is pretty high up there. But we could probably put it down for you.

want to try that out see if we can pay.

There you go and could you just tell me why you are wearing such a cool sash and what it took to get it.

It took to get it.

You went to a beauty pageant okay and what did you have to do there. You can say it in your own words. I know you can do it, Tinsley.

We were pretty dresses and made a lot of friends.

That is cool. Okay, so what is your official title? Are you Petite Miss Wyoming? Is that what it says there?

Yes.

Okay. You did good work. I was just speaking about it, and I don't think we've ever had petite Miss Wyoming and teen Miss Wyoming in the same year from Riverton. And you're both from Riverton? Are you from Riverton? Okay, that's cool. Well, that's great. Thank you for being here. And did we take a couple of pictures? Good. All right. This is something that you can remember, and we definitely recognize you and celebrate you today, okay? Keep up the good work. Keep just being beautiful, because you are beautiful inside and out, kiddo. Tell us a little bit about what you had to do, Peyton.

I had to talk about a lot of my platforms and what my community service I did for my town. did you do for community service i spread around seat belt safety i was in an unfortunate bus accident when i was younger so i tried to put seat belts in the buses i also go around to eat different daycares to teach about child literacy and read them books and everything that sounds really cool well thank you for being here and we're

So just so people know, we have Tinsley Dower, who is petite Miss Wyoming. And we have Peyton Westmoreland, who is teen Miss Wyoming. And I'm not gonna forget Peyton's last name because her grandma happens to be a- Mom. Mom, I'm sorry. Sorry, Angela. Her mom happens to be one of our city employees. And she's awesome. And I see her driving around and she's very dedicated to her job. So if you see Ms. Westmoreland driving around, definitely ask her about how Peyton's doing and congratulate her for Peyton.

So, all right.

Ladies, come on up here. Just shake hands with the council real quick. Come on. You can shake hands with Max first.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, thank you both for being here. And you are definitely welcome to leave. We don't really stand on a lot of ceremony here in terms of people coming and going. So Tinsley, I know it's not a school night, but you still got to get some sleep, kiddo. And how old are you now? Five? Holy cow. My daughter is five. You guys got to go be friends, because she loves Elsa and Anna, and so she's big into the whole crowns thing. You guys would probably get along. She'd be like, oh my goodness, a real princess. She'd go nuts. Yeah. All right, well, we'll keep delaying things just for a few minutes. Don't stress it, Billy. We can keep delaying. It's not a big deal. We'll move on to reports and comments and do our roundtable right now. So Councilman Carr, what do you got going on this last week or couple weeks?

Thank you, Your Honor. No meetings, but definitely wanted to send a heartfelt thank you to all of the wonderful folks

Councilman Carr, we lost you after no meetings.

Volunteers that make the semi-concentennial a pretty wonderful celebration. Oh, I may have bandwidth issues.

I have bandwidth issues.

I just wanted to send a heartfelt thank you to all the volunteers that made the semi-quincentennial celebration a wonderful success. Very much appreciated and it did the city well. Thank you.

Yeah, I think they really did the city proud. It was good. Thank you, Councilman Carr, Councilman Bailey.

Thank you, Your Honor. Again, I did not have any official meetings since our last meeting. But again, we did meet for the 250th celebration committee and made the final touches. And I think the 4th of July celebration just came off amazing. We drove in the parade, and boy, the streets were just packed. There was a lot of people out. I have no idea how many, but several thousand, I'm sure.

More than 10.

And we had 10 people, no doubt. And 51, I think, parade entries. And we had a nice celebration at the park. buried the time capsule and your proclamation and a lot of nice stuff. They had some live music and recorded music and people just, I think, had a really nice time. We fed over a thousand people at the lunch, plus all the food truck people were pretty busy. And it was just a really nice experience. And so I agree. I think we ought to do it again. But I don't think we should tell Cindy that for a while. She's a little stressed out. It was a lot of work, but she really spearheaded the effort and did a fantastic job.

Yeah, speaking of bandwidth, I think she recognized that she did not have the bandwidth to take that on next year. That's right. We're going to have to have somebody else carry that baton. Maybe Rotary.

Let's see how June feels about that.

You've got an in, you've got the rotary president to me. All right, Councilwoman Borders.

I just, I can't say enough about our celebration. I'll try not to get choked up because it was amazing. It was amazing. First of all, hats off to the mayor. I don't know if everyone saw him and the impression that he was wearing, but that was awesome. I have a picture. I just posted it.

Nobody in my family took one.

I'll get it to you. It was just so nice to see the streets lined with people and flags waving and the patriotic floats that we had and it was just I can't say enough and that's the only meetings that I had last week where the parade meeting and the the meeting about the general event. It was hot. It was very hot, but it was just a great day. I'm so proud of our city and I hope that it continues. That's all I have.

Great. Councilman Larson.

Not to mimic the other two, I feel that the parade was really cool. I was in the audience watching the parade at downtown and I noticed Karen's parking lot was full so she helped out. But the most important thing was I noticed the kids were having fun. And so I went into my office and got some candy to throw out there. And it was like seagulls and crickets. And it was rather enjoyable. But the last thing I have to mention is John Hancock was the largest signature on the Declaration of Independence. And at that time, he wrote it so that King George could see it without his glasses. That's the significance of John Hancock. And when they said, put your John Hancock here, that is synonymous for signature. and insurance and your yeah well yeah but uh i wasn't gonna go there but that's a noble name and i hope your son lives up to it that's all i had your honor thank you we have his first signature actually and we'll see how it changes over the years councilwoman johnson yeah um so i attended the fourth of july festivities as well i went to the parade i'm not

to say anything that hasn't already been said i think it's it was amazing um thank you to the committee that worked hard on that but most importantly thank you to the community who showed up and supported the work that was done and the work that it took to put that on so um i think that there's there's good people in this world and um We did our small town well. Aside from that, I... participated in four meetings since our last meeting, two of the special council meetings, and then two of the PAWS committee meetings. The first, just a little bit of an update there, the first meeting we established some bylaws and some just general structure as to how it was going to operate. And the second meeting we kind of dove into some data. And we've got a lot of work ahead of us, but we're hopeful that we can work through it. And that's all I think I'm gonna report on this week.

Okay. Thank you. Mr. Butterfield.

Thank you, Your Honor. Without echoing everyone, I just want to say thank you as well. My kids had a blast. I had a blast this last weekend, so I'm proud of our community. I also want to make folks aware that the Chief of Police and his team and community members are again planning a national night out. That will be for August 4th from 4 to 7, and we're really grateful that they have made a tradition of that for our community. I want to let the Council know as well that staff has been working to respond to a request for proposals from WAM to host the 2028 Summer Convention. We need to submit our response to that RFP and we're receiving a lot of help from our internal team, the Chamber, and also the Visitors Council. So we hope that we'll be successful in that bid and two years from now we'll have a lot of folks come into town and and we'll put riverton on display there will be a fix our road citizen committee meeting this upcoming monday at 11 o'clock there will also be a tree board meeting this upcoming wednesday at five o'clock we also want to make sure that the public is aware that there is a public meeting scheduled for wednesday the 15th that's next week at five o'clock and the purpose for this public meeting is to discuss uh some funds that we're seeking to replace one of our wells in our water system this well is currently located at airport hill near the terminal and we want to relocate that well and take it out of service and put a new one in service because we think we can get better service by doing so Paving for the Riverview Road project is expected to begin this week, specifically on Riverview, moving west of the major intersection. And as construction progresses and weather dependent, we hope to have major hills, see some paving next week. We definitely appreciate the patience of our community as they work around this construction zone. But I always love seeing construction good zones because that means we're making our community better. So even though it's inconvenient, that road will be a benefit to our community for the next 20 to 30 years. So I'm really proud of the team for doing that and grateful to have a good contractor. I wanna share my well wishes for Councilwoman Brothers. I know she's in Europe right now, so if she's watching, I should say she has better things to do. But she's been a wonderful member of the council, always supportive of staff, always supportive of her ward, and really supportive of the youth in our community. And so we will miss her. We appreciate her service and wish her well in the community she's going to be serving in the future, I'm sure. Finally, we end on some sad news. Former dispatcher Ann Metzler recently passed away, and we want to say thank you for her service and share our condolences to our team members that knew her well and worked alongside her, and then also her family. With that, Your Honor, I will stand for any questions. Thank you.

Well, I would echo two things in particular, one about dispatcher Metzler. Ann was always very professional, willing to step in where she was needed, and just someone that I enjoyed having the opportunity to get to know over the years. As a prosecutor, we sometimes get to know some of the dispatchers, But I was also the city prosecutor for many years. And so I'd be over there in dispatch getting paperwork and that kind of thing. And so would have an opportunity to visit with Ann occasionally. And she just was a special person. And she'll be missed. I would just say that it, yeah, that's it. She was a good person. So we'll miss her. Parade was tremendous. I guess what I would encourage, that was paid for in part by Winter Visitors Council TAD funding. I would encourage that we make sure whatever we do or however we work out the Wind River Visitors Council TAD funding next year, if we keep doing what we've been doing where we have a subcommittee that looks at it and considers those, that we include funding for a parade in our budget next year. Whether it's feeding people or whatever it needs to be that we do, it's also my understanding believe they did not use all their funds so i think that means that's going to be funds we're going to have to consider next year so that's good news however it works out whether it's that the city that steps up and does it or there's another organization that's willing to do it um the parade was great i already want to start thinking about what we do next year so include a drone show yeah a laser light and drone show um i actually so one of the things i wanted to share in particular about that i had an individual who came up and and spoke to me after we had done the program uh the initiating kind of program where we had done an invocation and had the proclamation and everything and he came up and said that he was from No, no, no, sorry, not Casper. There's also an individual from Casper, New York. And he had moved back. He said he had previously lived in Lander, and actually when he had moved back, he was now living in Riverton. And he just wanted to compliment us that he's like, you know, not all parades still do things that way, or not all communities do things that way, where they open a program with a prayer. where they recognize veterans, where it's something where we aren't ashamed to say, hey, we're proud to be Americans. We're proud to recognize that there's a power greater than us out there in the universe. He was really impressed with that and I was really glad to hear that. We did have another family that was from, I don't remember where they were from, Ohio or something with their kids and they came over here and they just loved it. One of her kids particularly liked my outfit because she and her husband both went to George Washington University and he would not stop saluting me. I was like, dude, I am the last person you need to salute. But I think he was 10, great kid, great family. It was just so fun to meet people. If you wanna meet new people, one of the best things you can do is get on some sort of a unique outfit, costume, impression, because people will come up and talk to you. If for nothing else to say, aren't you hot in that? And the answer is yes. But the real answer is the worst part about that wasn't the heat, it was the shin splints that I've had for the last three days because I was wearing these shoes that have no arch support for hours on end. Anyway, it was a ton of fun and hopefully that can be something that we continue in years to come. Other things that I would make as a report, I guess, would be that we had had a meeting with some of the county commissioners that was kind of quasi-FCAG, but we'll hear a little bit more about that later, so I won't give much of a report on that, but I'll discuss that as we get to that item. Next up on the agenda, though, let's go ahead and do our swearing in for our community service officer. I think we have everybody here now. Chief? Chief?

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Tonight I'd like to introduce Billie Elkins, who is joining our police force. She was born in Bowling Green, Ohio. She moved to Lusk, where she was raised by her mother, Kathy and David. She stayed in Lusk until she was 16, where she moved to Natrona County and graduated from Casper High, or Natrona County High School. She's a proud mother of two children, Andrea and Chase. Before joining us, she spent 10 years as a restaurant manager for a major chain. And she moved to in February, where she came to live with her fiance. At this time, I want to welcome Billie to the law enforcement family. She's started a week or two ago, and we're happy to have her. She's a good fit, and she's pretty active in our community. She's our first female community service officer, and we're excited to have her on our team. And now we're going to have family. Dallin? Dallin's going to pin traditional badge on Billy, after which we'll do the oath.

Dallin?

Just stand across from me here.

Now we're just going to do this. So if I'm going to say aye, then you're going to say your name. I'm not going to say it. I'm just going to repeat after me. You've got to raise your right hand. And if for any reason I mumble or you can't understand me, you can read it right there. So aye. Say aye first. Aye. There we go. Do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support, obey, and defend. Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of Wyoming that I have not knowingly violated any law related to my appointment nor caused it to be done by others that I will discharge the duties of my office with fidelity All right, and then if you can, go ahead and shake hands with everyone. And then we have planned a 20-minute speech.

Only 20? Well, congratulations. Thank you.

Officially welcome. Thank you.

Billy, because they came all this way, could you introduce us to who you have here as your guest, please? Well, this is being broadcast, and Councilman Carr in particular is probably curious, so that's why we're getting you close to the mic.

That's great. Kathy Heth and David Heth. David has been an amazing role model for me. He's been my father since I was two years old. So amazing to have them here. This is Gallon Apodaca. He's my fiance and his parents, Joe and Doris Apodaca. So I'm just, I'm very glad that I had both parents here with me, all parents.

Perfect. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being willing to serve. We're excited to have you there. I already saw you hard at work. You were leading our cadets around, and they were very willing to be led around by you a little bit at the Independence Day celebration.

It was a lot of fun.

Good job. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. If I could, I just want to say something about the cadets. They were amazing at the event in the park. What a great bunch of recruits. You should be proud. I thought they were doing a great job. They were great to talk to. Thank you. They're carrying themselves very well. Yes, they are.

They were great helps.

They were great. They were not like Officer Fancher who, he did not smile at me until he had been here for at least a month, was the first time I saw Officer Fancher smile.

And I say that in jest, Jesse.

But he's just such a great guy. But they did very well at not look, they did well at carrying themselves professionally, but still being willing to look like they were enjoying themselves. So you did really good work with them, Billy. All right, well, next up then, we have communication from the floor. Anyone in the audience wishing to address the council regarding an item that's scheduled for a public hearing will be given an opportunity to speak during that public hearing. If you'd like to speak about an item that's not set for a public hearing, We don't stand as much on ceremony in our meetings. I mean, we try to keep order, but if there's an item that you want to speak about, I would encourage you to get my attention when the item is called and then get up and speak to the council at that time. However, I would ask whether you speak now about an item that's not on the agenda. or later about an item that is on the agenda that you keep your comments to five minutes that you keep your comments directed to the question at hand i.e if we're talking about fireworks don't start into something not to do with fireworks we're not going to talk about fireworks tonight so help me actually we are we do have an item i just forgot about that But if we're talking about fireworks, don't go into an item that doesn't have to do with fireworks, for example. Keep on topic. But I'd also ask you to avoid comments that will get into direct criticism or attacks on another person or that might constitute fighting words or that kind of thing. We are having these proceedings being broadcast through our YouTube channel. So I'd ask you to, when you come up the microphone, tell us your name, speak directly into the microphone, and I'll cut you off when we get to five minutes. And I think Max has a way to kind of have the alarm go off on the timer. So if you'd like to come up and speak now, please feel free. If not, just wait until the agenda item you're interested in gets called.

Thank you, members of the council. Tim Nichols with Wind River Transportation Authority here to provide a, I think it's a monthly update.

I think I did get here last month.

I can't quite remember. Everything's blurring together. But if I didn't, I do apologize. Quick oversight. I'm going to start with the bad and I'll end with the good. is that anybody who's read the paper maybe realized that there were some unexpected funding reductions across the state of Wyoming for transit programs under the 5311 program managed by YDOT. I will say that WRTA weathered better than almost all of our colleagues, and that in part, well, I'll get to that in a minute, but as we do at WRTA, we approach all of these as an opportunity to improve, and we immediately collected the phone and dialed the YDOT and asked them how we could help. So we are in contact almost daily with YDOT to strategize on ways we can quickly overcome the shortage of 5.4 million, both short-term and long-term. Yeah, a bit interesting situation that nobody saw coming. So my colleagues and I had a fun round table last month as well. But nevertheless, with any form of funding reduction does come very difficult decisions. And in preparation of a very difficult decision, large decrease in capacity funding in our capacity, we are going to be strategically reducing services over the coming months to ensure that when we hit the federal fiscal year start date of October, we've stabilized so that way there are no unforeseen job loss or anything like that so the idea is to slowly reduce what should have been likely a reduction that transpires over a year in the course of three months um as best we can That said, our fare-free summer campaign will continue to the remaining services, and we owe a huge thank you to our corporate sponsors, by the way, all of which are Riverton headquarter businesses, by the way. They really rallied behind it, and they account for a whopping $7,000 worth of fair coverage for the summer, which does account for our projection, the entirety of the fair free summer program through August. So a huge thank you to the corporate sponsors that that provided funding for that. So onto the good, well onto the better, I should say, that's very good. We did attend, or WRTA staff and myself did attend the 2026 Y-Trans Conference where I did offer a very stern lecture to the board, which is our public association for their lack of attentiveness to the situation as well as Y-DOT. I felt there was some onus to be had with that board. BUT, NEVERTHELESS, WE DID WALK AWAY WITH THE 2026 AGENCY OF THE YEAR AWARD, WHICH WE'RE VERY HUMBLED TO RECEIVE. THOSE NOMINATIONS COME DIRECTLY FROM YDOT STAFF, SO IT WAS VERY HUMBLING TO RECEIVE THAT. BUT ALSO CREDIT TO THE CAPACITY OF OUR STAFF, AS MANY OF THE SESSIONS HAD, OUR STAFF WAS INVITED TO CO-TEACH OUR COLLEAGUES. And we did have the opportunity to provide our own session on lessons learned through the integration process with the Riverton Senior Center. And I'll close with anybody who was in attendance to the Riverton 4th July Parade saw the unveiling of our 250th year and 30th anniversary bus wrap, or not courtesy, but courtesy in part to Star Trims for doing fine design and installation work on that bus. I'll also end. with a bragging point is that we only sent two vehicles to the lander parade so we we made sure the river trip parade not not only uh received the the unveiling of that bus but they had five vehicles and one trailer from wrta so but they also had you though tim yeah you know i couldn't give everything so i decided to walk and throw t-shirts so you know I wouldn't consider it an equal tradeoff by any means.

But my son and my daughter, or no, my two daughters, I'm sorry, really enjoyed riding on one of the WRTA buses. They did well at making them feel special.

Yeah. So with that, that'll conclude an update. And if you have any questions. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Nichols. Thank you.

Okay. Let's do the consent agenda next. Administrative Services Director, Ms. Harris, could you please read the consent agenda items by title only?

Yes, Your Honor. Minutes of the June 16th, 2026 regular council meeting. Minutes of the June 30th, 2026 special council meeting. Minutes of the July 1st, 2026 special council meeting. Minutes of the July 7th, 2026 finance committee meeting. Finance committee recommendations from July 7th, 2026. Contract for service funding agreement, Eagles Hope Transitions. Contract for service funding agreement, Fremont County Association of Governments, Doing Businesses WRTA. Contract for Service Funding Agreement, Juvenile Justice Services of Fremont County. Contract for Service Funding Agreement, Our Recreation. Contract for Service Funding Agreement, Riverton Chamber of Commerce. Contract for Service Funding Agreement, Riverton's Mercy House. Contract for Service Funding Agreement, Riverton Volunteer Fire Department. Open Container Permit Application, Bar 10, Friday Night Cruise at South Broadway Avenue, July 17, 2026, from 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. Open container permit application Hilltop Liquor, Friday night cruise at North 6th Street East, July 17th, 2026, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Open container permit application Push Root Brewing Company, Friday... Night Cruise at North 3rd Street East, July 17th, 2026 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Open Container Permit Application Bar 10, Balloon Glow at CWC, July 18th, 2026 from 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. Open Container Permit Application Push Root Brewing Company, Balloon Glow at CWC, July 18th, 2026 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. All right.

Let's see, who ended up chairing the Finance Committee? Mr. Bailey, could you tell us about the items approved in the Finance Committee?

Thank you, Your Honor. Tonight we met earlier on the Finance Committee meeting, and we approved a motion to put forward consideration of claims to be paid in the amount of $1,300,244.66. Manual checks in the amount of $8,495.82. Payroll and liabilities for 6-26 of 2026 in the amount of $495,902.78 for a grand total of $1,804,643.26.

All right, I'd entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Your Honor, I just wanted to point out on the June 30th meeting in the final vote, my name was omitted. So I thought it was important that I mentioned that in the final roll call vote.

Oh, that's a good point. Can we get that corrected, Ms. Harris?

Absolutely, apologies, Council Member Porter.

So I gather that your motion is to approve the consent agenda with that noted, Councilwoman Porter?

That sounds good to me, Mayor. Do we have a second on that?

Second by Councilman Bailey. Any other discussion? Just to make sure we're clear on that, it was a aye vote on that, right? It was, yes. The 20th, not 20th, 30th. Thank you.

We'll make sure that gets in there.

Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Aye vote aye. Motion passes. Now this is why I was saying I didn't want to talk about fireworks. We have a fireworks discussion. Public hearing and consideration, fireworks permit application, Riverton Rendezvous Balloon Committee, July 18th, 2026. This is a report from you, Max, if you don't mind. Mr. Batista?

Yes, Your Honor. Mayor and Council, before you this evening do your consideration of the fireworks permit application for the 46th annual Riverton Rendezvous Balloon Committee, the Riverton Rendezvous Balloon Committee is planning to host live

soccer field, followed by a fireworks display launch from the Riverton High School Career Center parking lot on Saturday, July 18. The day's events are scheduled to begin at 6 a.m. and conclude at 11 p.m. with the fireworks display anticipated to begin at approximately 10 p.m. pyrotech professionals llc has submitted a certificate of liability insurance for the fireworks display additionally the committee has received verbal approval from fremont county school district number 25 activity director max mills to utilize the career center parking lot as the fireworks launch site in addition to presenting this agenda item i am also representing the riverton rendezvous boom committee this evening on behalf of the committee i would like to provide the mayor and council with commemorative riverton rendezvous balloon rally pins stickers and brochure as a token of appreciation for the city's continued support of this annual community event. At the time the firework permit application was submitted, staff recommended approval of the permit contingent upon receipt of written approval from Riverton Volunteer Fire Department Fire Chief Jesse Cassidy. As of 1.33 p.m. on July 7th, Fire Chief Jesse Cassidy provided a letter not approving the firework display scheduled for July 18th due to current fire risk conditions that have reached an extreme level. Based on current conditions and the absence of fire department approval, staff is presenting this matter to the mayor and council for consideration and direction regarding this permit.

Okay, thank you. Well, we have a public hearing on these questions and so let's start with that and then we can get to some discussion on where to go next. So I would entertain a motion to open a public hearing regarding the fireworks permit application. So moved.

Second.

Motion by Councilman Larson, second by Councilwoman Borders. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. I vote aye. Motion passes. I declare the public hearing open. Hearing is gonna be conducted in accordance with state statutes and other applicable laws. If you'd like to speak about this item, please come on up, tell us your name. Same spiel I already gave. I swear, I take too long giving the spiel. It takes more time than half of the people take speaking. But if you'd like to come up, just tell us your name and tell us what you're thinking about it and try to keep on topic. Anybody who wants to speak?

Ryan Preston. I'm also on the balloon committee. And for the most part, I mean, I just wanted to make a couple of comments. You know, we may not have approval, but the majority of all that land is, you know, maintained land. It's not open fields. It's not like there's not a water source that is nearby. It also is, you know, right next to the training facility up there. So I understand why, you know, they wouldn't want to approve the permit, but it's not like it's Mike or Tim going and buying fireworks and blasting them off in Kyle's parking lot. This is a professional company. They do it for a living. The committee is paying up to $10,000 just to do this event. It's a yearly event. I don't know of any fires or any incidences that we have ever had. You know, so I would ask that to be taken into consideration. You know, this year has definitely been a trying one as far as water and resources. But it's also been a great one. You know, we did have the 250. We had the event. You know, we had the parade. We had the party in the park, which, you know, is all great things.

But this is also the 46th annual Riverton-Ronnieville Balloon Festival.

I mean, if we're going to ban fireworks but yet allow a balloon glow where we have balloons sit there and they fire off their propane and their tanks and we light up the sky with big old fireballs, I don't see the difference in lighting off fireworks. Like I said, most of that land is irrigated land. It's wet land. It's in the high school parking lot. There's not a whole lot of danger that I could foresee. But again, I'm not a fire chief. I'm a citizen and a volunteer of this community. And I think it's one of those things that we should allow to go on, only because, A, it is a professional company that is going to be doing this. Several weeks ago, we let the baseball league do it, and the conditions were even worse. How much rain have we gotten since that point in time, since we allowed the baseball team to do their fireworks show? So with that, I would appreciate it. Please allow us to do it. We think it's going to be a great event. And thank you for your time.

Thank you. And Mr. Preston, just to clarify, Mr. Batista had kind of said we're wanting some guidance from the city council. Is it your understanding then that the committee is still wanting to have this fireworks permit go forward? They're wanting to do fireworks? Yes, we do. OK. I just wanted to clarify that so we could be clear. Thank you.

My name is Rafael Delgadillo, and I'm in support of this permit.

I think it's a professional company. They have the liability insurance. They know how to do this properly. The real danger is unauthorized fireworks in the city, maybe in the vicinity of this location. It's just for citizens to be very vigilant. They see something like that, notify the police so that it can be stopped. And if there is any problems that arise, it can't be attributed to this event. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Delgadillo. Anyone else? We have a motion to close the public hearing.

Seeing none, Your Honor, I move that we close the public hearing.

I'll second.

Motion by Councilman Bailey, second by Councilwoman Borders. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. I vote aye. Motion passes. I declare the public hearing closed. Does anyone have any motions?

Your Honor, I will move that we pass the permit for the fireworks on July 18th.

Approve the permit for the July 18th, okay.

Fireworks, yes.

Do we have a second?

I'll second it.

Second by Councilwoman Johnson. Discussion on this item.

Your Honor, I had a question for Max or Ryan. Will the fire department still be on standby for this, even though they've said no?

Councilmember Borders, I am not sure. I have not gotten that far with Fire Chief Cassidy. Okay, thank you.

Any other discussion?

No discussion other than it puts us in a crappy situation. I'll just be real honest about it. If we can't celebrate 250 years, now we're looking at celebrating balloons, which is a huge part of the community. One of us is going to take some lumps out of it.

Well, and it's hard. You know, I really appreciated the fire chief advocating for safety in the community, and I really appreciate that Chief Cassidy does that. I don't want to take anything away from it, and I don't want to take anything away from the fact that I want to listen to what he has to say, right? I do agree though, to a certain extent, I think with Mr. Preston, there is a little bit of a difference between a free-for-all, where I don't really appreciate suggesting that Mike and I are not professional fireworks, lighter offers, I don't even.

Lighter offers.

Hyrotechnicians.

Hyrotechnicians.

But I will accept that that's what you think, Mr. Preston. But there is a big difference. We had discussed when we were really struggling with the fireworks ban for the 4th, the fact, and I think I appreciate that you brought it up also, Mr. Preston, that this is irrigated land that we're talking about. and we're in town. There's also, I think, a big difference between one show versus multiple shows, which is what we were going to get with the Little League when we were discussing doing that, which would be as many people as go down there and want to light off fireworks are doing it. I understand and respect Chief Cassidy. I understand his concerns. I do think though, to a certain extent, it's different when you've got a professional fireworks company and they're needing to be insured. We're wanting to make sure things are done right. We can take the steps necessary. It's a hard decision. Your Honor.

Yes, sir. He did say CWC, right?

No, the high school.

The high school parking lot. That is not a populated area. There's not a burnable. There's a field west of it. Okay? And north and south is vacant. I mean, it's as sterile an area as it could be. Secondly, the professional people know what they're doing. If there's going to be some catastrophic event, they're going to cancel it because they can't afford it. Let's let the professionals be professionals.

I say it's a little redemption.

And the other thing, too, as I'm thinking about this, we have a balloon meister that, for example, always does very well every year before balloons will launch. And they're looking at conditions. And that's going to be the wind conditions. That's going to be how dry it is. That's going to be everything going on before they launch a balloon. So getting to the point of, you know, we do this and we have balloons doing it. you know, they're setting off their propane and that kind of thing into the air. And I think the balloon meister, the folks that are doing the show, if they see that conditions are adverse, if there's too much wind, if they think that there's gonna be a situation where it's not gonna be able to be done safely, they need to make that call.

Just on a side note and all joking aside, taking Mr. Cassidy's suggestions seriously, maybe even reaching out to homes in that area to make sure that their lawns are wetted down and their roofs have been read down too, just to take extra precautions.

Well, that's an interesting thing too, because we advertise, you know, every time we have the cannon go off, And I might have people come and complain to me about the cannon after the cannon goes off when we have football games. But when the meeting is there, nobody comes and says, hey, I have a problem with the cannon. And I think you're right. The notice kind of is the fact that we have it here, and this is a meeting where people could come and discuss it. But I do think it's not a bad idea to try to We have the text mygov that we could send out a notice on that just lets people know there's going to be a fireworks show on this date if it's approved. And, you know, just be aware.

And the pyro whatever company, they're assuming full responsibility?

I believe they are, yes, council member.

I mean, we require them to be insured in order to be doing shows.

Yep.

Okay, Mr. Bailey. Your Honor. Oh, Councilman Carr, go ahead.

Sorry for the interruption. I just wanted to bring up, I do agree that this is a much different situation than commercial grade fireworks in the hands of private citizens. However, I do have concern about the helipad or the hospital and the potential for at least issuing a NOTAM, Notice of Air Emissions, Notification, I don't know how long those take, but the FAA typically controls that airspace very tightly. So if we're launching from the high school, which is less than 750 feet away, that could be a potential real concern.

For anybody that didn't hear Councilman Carr, and I don't know what's going on, but we can't hear you very well, Councilman. I was able to hear you. What Councilman Carr had expressed concern of is that where these would be launched is not too far away from the helipad at the Sage West Hospital. And just ensuring that we, you said it's a Novum? Notam.

Notam.

N-A-T-A-M. Ensuring that we're properly noticing and making sure that we're doing things right via the FAA because of the helipad there. And also, were you expressing some concern about that just because of how close it was or just wanting to make sure we do it right, Councilman Carr? I'm sorry, I

just making sure that we don't step on ourselves oh wow that was just we can hear you now okay thank you councilman bailey your honor and again i think there is a lot of difference between just a professional fireworks show and just allowing you know free free rain to let off fireworks anywhere in town that we want so i i think there is a difference and again i think they're professional and will call off the program if there's too much wind or anything like that. And I guess I'd also like to compliment the citizens of the city of Riverton because on 4th of July, you know, we had people telling us that if we approved them that people were going to do it anyway and all that kind of stuff. And I think we had very little really fireworks going off in town. There were some, but it sure was not rampant by any means. And so I appreciate people you know, following the law to the rules that are set out there and, you know, being more careful.

So I agree. I was very impressed with that.

Your honor.

Yes.

Just, I noticed miss Harper's in the audience and you're on the ambulance. If there is, um, a flight that has to come in, can, Regarding Councilman Carr's concerns with the helipad across from the career center, in the event that there is the need for a helicopter, can you shed any light on it? So you're still taking flights from down there until you're not going up to the airport? It depends on the weather, you know.

OK. Mr. Preston, you looked like you knew something. I'm sure you know things, but.

We actually have Guardian Flight and AMR that actually stay at the hotel. So we do have pilots that are currently at the hotel that I can find out from them and give direction to Max to relay over to you guys.

Mr. Bailey? I think Bruce and the crew up at the airport would know how to file a NOTAM also, which is something they do regularly if there's other activities going on in the area. So I think they can file a NOTAM, which notifies all the air traffic during that day that there will be a fireworks show going on from X time to X time. Okay.

Any other discussion? All right. Are we ready to vote then? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. I vote aye. Motion passes. Councilman Carr, I don't ever mean to put people on the spot, but I think I had registered you as an aye vote. Is that correct?

That's correct, Your Honor.

Thank you. So we don't have the same issue. No, we do not. All right, thank you, and thank you for presenting and coming and speaking to us, Mr. Preston and Mr. Batista.

Your Honor.

Yes, ma'am.

I'd like to move that we take a break, please.

Sounds good. I was just thinking that same thing myself. We're at 8.11. We're going to go ahead and take a nine-minute recess, and we'll come back at 8.20. We will be in recess.

Session, are you there Mr. Carr?

Yes, OK. I know how it is when you gotta find the unmute button. Yes, we're at 820 back in session here. Next up on the agenda we have consideration of resolution 1561 emerging contaminant grant application. If you could tell us about that item, please.

Thank you, Your Honor.

Mr. Tolman, to be clear.

Thank you, Your Honor. Resolution 1561 authorizes the city to apply to the Wyoming State Loan Investment Board, or SLIB board, for a state revolving fund, SRF fund, to replace airport number two water well. Not only is this necessary for proposed future expansion of the terminal building, if it's pursued, excuse me, but testing of the well of new and emerging compounds by the EPA is triggered at the EPA trigger level has allowed Riverton to qualify for this SRF loan. This will be 100% principal forgiveness loan, meaning the project can be effectively funded without repayment of the loan principal. The proposed project will include engineering site selection of a new well, design of the well, and that'll be about a half a million dollars, construction of a new well, including drilling, testing, pumping the pump itself, the well house, disinfection equipment, backup power, security fencing, skated controls and then abandonment or repurposing of the existing well, which is approximately $3 million. And the city has also been pre-approved for the loan. It's called the loan, but it is in essence a grant We must submit the application by August 5th and then to be considered at the December 3rd SLIB meeting. So there will be a public meeting on this project as well that's required by the loan itself. This public meeting will be held here in the council chambers next Wednesday, July 15th, not tomorrow, but a week from tomorrow at 5 p.m. The purpose of the meeting is to allow citizens to review and comment on the City of Riverton well replacement project. The financial consideration of this project is not the project itself, because it's 100% principal forgiveness, but it's managing cash flow during construction of the project. This will take place shortly after the proposed West Main Street Water Line project. Staff believes the project is financially feasible, and then 100% principal forgiveness will significantly reduce the long-term financial burden on the city as well. Thank you, Your Honor.

Thank you. Let's start with reading the resolution by title only. If you could do that for us, Ms. Harris.

Yes, Your Honor. Resolution number 1561, a resolution authorizing the submission of an application to the State Loan and Investment Board for a loan through the State Revolving Fund on behalf of the governing body for the City of Riverton, Wyoming.

I'd entertain a motion to adopt Resolution 1561. So moved.

Second.

Motion by Councilman Bailey, second by Councilwoman Borders. Any discussion? Your Honor.

Yes, sir. What well... Are we replacing, and whereabouts is it?

Your Honor, the well in question, the one we'll replace, is right next to the terminal building. It's about 50 feet directly. It's at the airport? Correct, west of the terminal building, or east.

And what's its problem?

At this point in time, Your Honor, there was one test that came back positive for emerging contaminants. That test was... followed up, so that was in May. It was at the trigger level for emerging contaminants, not at the maximum exceedance level. So once what that's been put out in the actual, excuse me, it's been put out to everybody in the annual. Water report? Confidence Report, CCR. Thank you very much. So that notification has been put out. And then because it's only at the trigger level, it probably would warrant additional follow-up testing. So rather than go through the process of doing follow-up testing, this grant came up and gives us the opportunity to actually move that well. Is that out?

Mistaken. This is one that's not too far away from the terminal. If we were going to expand the terminal anyway, it would make sense to have another well anyway.

This would be an excellent time to move that. Any terminal expansion is going to go to the east right now. And that well house at that point in time will need to be replaced or removed.

Councilwoman Johnson? Your quizzical look, I take it, is wanting to speak.

No, I just had a question on here. It says that the contaminant found at AP2 is most likely caused by firefighting foam used by firefighting. How does that infiltrate the well?

Your Honor, I'm not really sure, but that is probably the source of that contamination, that well.

So this is a flame retardant material that as part of training and that kind of thing would be used up at the airport. Other firefighting kind of materials would not necessarily use this. It's because of federal regulations that that was something that we would be using at airports and that kind of thing. So the thought is, and nobody's even sure in terms of its, as Mr. Tolman said, we're talking about an emerging contaminant. It's something that they're trying to figure out exactly how things can be impacted, all of that. But the EPA is wanting to be paranoid, for lack of a better word. And so they're saying, if we have this emerging contaminant, it's going to be leading to a lot of other things we're going to have to do down the road. And we're saying rather than having to fight that, it makes sense to dig a new well.

So we won't see this in other wells. It just happens because it's a specific foam or whatever likely the cause.

Although the reality is the fact that we've had a test, but we haven't had anything that's been like follow up that's been above the levels that they've indicated. is not something that is, it's not like some huge, I think, public health concern. It's more of a, we want to make sure we're dotting all our Ts and crossing all our Is.

Okay. I was just wondering what it is. Thank you.

We had something on this at WAM. So that's why I was able to answer some that Mr. Thoman did not. Not because Mr. Thoman isn't very versed on everything, but we had discussed it.

There was a rather large lawsuit at Camp Lejeune over fire suppressant foam. And there's a lot of people that were disabled by that. It's interesting that somehow that got into the water well. How far are we moving this new well's location?

Your Honor, and a couple of points to note. So on that, we'll select the site. Most likely it won't be on the bench at the airport. We'll probably move it down lower so the drilling costs would be a little bit less expensive and put it into an area where it'll be more advantageous in the water system so it can supply all zones. throughout the water system. This, what is called a PFOS chemical, it just was detected at the trigger limit for the EPA. So most likely what they actually asked for then is follow-up testing at that point. It's not at the maximum exceedance level or anything like that. When it was discovered in May, the well's been shut down. We don't typically use the wells in the summer anyway. So the well will stay that way. And then when we put in the new well, then it'll come back online. There's 14 wells in the city of Riverton. So these are measured at parts per trillion. When it was first done and actually measured two years ago when they started to look at these unregulated contaminants, they called them at the time, they're measured, they thought maybe even just testing was a lot of times would trigger positive test results. And just the way they were tested, just the glove from the person testing it. So they're so, it's such a parts per trillion, it's so finite how they're tested that, There's a lot of room for error on the original testing, so.

I think the point is we're wanting to be careful. We're not wanting to have anything where this is going to be causing any issues. It's not any cause for concern at this point, I think. And to make sure that it's not a cause for concern, it's like, let's move the well.

It's an expensive move.

It's an expensive move. And we're hopeful that it will be something that we can get paid for by the state, which is the whole purpose of the resolution. Okay, any other discussion? Good questions, good discussion. Thank you, Mr. Tolman, and I didn't mean to steal your thunder.

Thank you, appreciate it.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Aye vote aye, motion passes. Amended memorandum of agreement, optional three-quarter cent sales and use tax. I had had a report in here from you on this, Mr. Butterfield, but if you don't mind, I'll just kind of bring it up if that's all right.

Yeah, if you don't mind, but in your report, would you also mention that the county approved this today as well?

Yes, and I was made aware of that, so that's good. The point is, we just recently, if you recall, had approved the MOA, which was regarding the use of the three-quarter cent sales tax if it passes during our next primary election, which, by the way, primary election is coming up in August. in case you guys didn't know, primary election is coming up, what is it, August 18th? 18th, primary election is August 18th. I'm gonna do like the radio does, where they say it like three times, primary election is August 18th. So, primary election is coming up on August 18th, and... In order to prepare for that and to have all of us on the same page in terms of if we can get that passed, how the three-quarter cent sales tax would proceed, where the funding will go, what the agreement is towards it, we had been the first ones who stepped up and said, hey, we'll approve the MOA, leading the charge. Afterwards, it went to Lander, and then it went to the county. It went to Shoshone. Shoshone didn't pass it, if I recall correctly. But... They didn't vote. Yes, they also didn't vote. That's a good thing to talk about. But the point is the change, when it was brought forward to Lander, Lander recommended a pretty small change. And so the question before us now is if we want to accept that change. And I think the recommendation is, yes, I think it would make sense. The change is helpful, it's good, and I think it's the right move. Paragraph 8 will say, annually, the service providers for emergency medical services, commercial air service, and ground transportation shall report to the parties during a public meeting, which I think is a very meaningful, helpful thing that I think is appropriate, adds to transparency, and adds to voters knowing what's going on, as well as the parties. So what we have before us now is the MOA that would pass with that modification. Did I miss anything, Mr. Butterfield? Other than the county passed it today with that modification and then Lander had as well. Anything else?

No, Your Honor.

Your report was really good, by the way. I didn't want to steal your thunder. I did, though. I'm doing that a lot today. I'm sorry. It's your show. So I would entertain a motion to approve the amended MOA between the governing bodies of Fremont County regarding the three-quarter cent optional sales and use tax.

So moved.

Motion by Councilwoman Borders, second by Councilman Bailey. Any other discussion on that item? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. I vote aye. Motion passes. So now we're at three parties to that now. County, Riverton, Lander. RACIC, Regional Ambulance Service Evaluation Committee presentation. Mr. Butterfield, I'll let you talk about this one. How's that sound?

thank you honor and i'll defer to mr pryor you have a group of individuals in the audience today that have put a lot of work towards the question of how to improve and sustain the ambulance service we have throughout the county this group presented its final report to fcag just last week if memory serves me and we wanted to make sure that you as a council can receive the most up-to-date information. And so we'll defer to Mr. Pryor and give him opportunity to present the hard work and some of the options and solutions that this committee is bringing forward.

And Mr. Pryor, you're the vice chair, is that correct? And so the chair just decided to slough this off on you today.

No, not at all, Mr. Chairman.

This is all, or Mr. Mayor, this will all... At the end of this, I will step aside and allow you to sling whatever curveball questions you want at the chairman. The vice chairman gets to throw these to you. Wonderful. Mr. Mayor, Council, thank you so much for allowing us an opportunity to present this to you. If you remember, seven months ago, we came to you with some information regarding our findings from the JFKCS. We've used so many acronyms. We have almost wheel of fortune this thing out of existence. So thank you for your time. As Kyle said, my name is Mick Pryor. I am the vice chair of the RACIC committee, and I couldn't tell you what that...

Regional Ambulance Service Evaluation Committee.

There you are.

That one. So I'll give Kyle a minute to... How was your committee started and what is its mission?

Sure. So this committee is the offshoot or the logical follow on from the JFKCS committee that FCAG initiated back in September of last year. So more or less, many of us have been working on this for nine or 10 months now. Yeah, let's call it 10 months. It's been an interesting adventure through data anecdotally as well as hard data to kind of get to this point. And I think, you know, my hope is that when we finally get to the end of this, things become abundantly clear on what we need to do and how we need to pursue it. So I, we're gonna, yeah. So I, This presentation is colloquially the ambulance problem. And I put problem in quotations because I think there is a real opportunity here for Fremont County, as well as the cities and towns, to actually create something better from what we have. I really miss Mike Enzi. I think, and I don't think I'm alone in that, but one of the things that I am often reminded of that Senator Enzi used to say was, if we can find, you know, Most of America is dealing with an 80-20 type of issue system, right? We agree on 80% of the problems, but we seem to focus a lot of our effort on the 20% that we disagree with. If we were only to just focus on the 80%, we'd get a lot done, and most of us would be in a lot better situation. So it's important, I think, that I give you a little bit of an orientation. Not necessarily because you don't know this, but it kind of frames things. Fremont County has 9,266 square miles of area and a population density roughly of 4.3, 4.27 if you want to be exact, based on the 2020 census. If you look at it from a demographer's point of view, what that means is completely rural or frontier. And in medicine, we are absolutely frontier. We are frontier medicine. We are not rural medicine. one shade below that with respect to how austere our conditions are. As you have probably been paying attention for the last decade, we have gone through several different ambulance companies since we abandoned our public municipally run service. If you remember that service was run through the county. Back in 2015, or actually, let's go back to 2014. In 2014, our county's ambulance system was running a small surplus, roughly about $200,000 to $300,000 a year. That $200,000 to $300,000 a year was enough to kind of keep things running well. You could replace an ambulance every once in a while. But most of the service was reliant on volunteers with a slow trickle into a professional group of EMTs, paramedics, and other medical providers. In 2015, the payer mix changed, and it flipped the economics upside down. So wherein the county was generating a $200,000 surplus, suddenly it found itself in the situation of a $200,000 deficit. Now, we've always lived very close to the just squeaking here in Fremont County, and that certainly put the commissioners into a panic. At which point, based on recommendations, and we can argue about the, not necessarily the validity, but ultimately where those, the motivation for those recommendations, but ultimately the county found itself uh seeking a contractor to substitute for its hybrid volunteer paid paid employee system and so we started out with guardian if you remember guardian did this in a pro bono. They utilized county-owned equipment and county facilities and basically paid a small subsidy actually to the county to basically have the privilege of running our ambulance system. But as time and economics continued to grind on, this became less and less economical even for Guardian. And since then, we have had several iterations of new ambulance providers, each one successfully asking for a little bit more, a bigger subsidy and a bigger subsidy to where we find ourselves today, which is a $1.8 million a year subsidy to Frontier Ambulance that is fronted entirely by the county. So there are a thousand different things that are kind of pressing on what's going on with respect to our ambulance. But if you had to kind of boil it down to several, it is a payer mix that is not favorable. It is a workforce that is in dire demand across this country, creating a workforce shortage here in Fremont County. And it's just the effervescent budget constraint that we always find ourselves in at about this time of year going forward. So this most recent, well let me go back. So there's I think one other thing that I really, I think is extremely important and I wanna put up a comparison. Sweetwater County to our southwest, has roughly on paper about the same kind of situation, but it's a little bit different. So in Sweetwater County, there's a little less than 10,500 square miles of area and a population that's a little bit bigger than Fremont County. So taking that square miles or population divided by square miles, you end up actually with a population density that is more remote than Fremont County. It's about four people per square mile in Sweetwater County. And that's about where the comparison stops. If you think about Sweetwater County, 95% of the population is clustered between Rock Springs and Green River. About a six to 12 mile span is where the majority of Sweetwater County's population lives. There's a little bit of a population center up by Farson and Eden and one out by Whomp Sutter, but that is more or less it. Now compare that to Fremont County, Fremont County. We have six municipalities. We have an Indian reservation with arguably two population centers as well. We are spread out in a relatively speaking, you know, that 4.3 people per square mile is actually, I bet you if you threw a one mile grid square, you might be able to find four people within it at any given point in time, relative to Sweetwater County. The other component here is if we look at the payer mix, our payer mix relative to Sweetwater County is more aged, It is a little bit, generally speaking, we have fewer folks on private pay. We have a slightly higher percentage who are on Medicare, or pardon me, Medicaid, or other public assistance. And so we find ourselves in a situation where we have more people spread out across a wider area, and folks who are less apt or able to pay for these services in a way that is economically functional. So as we started down the road of understanding all of this, I mean like the demographic stuff is pretty straightforward. That's book, that's just textbooks and understanding maps. But what we really also wanted to understand was how does our public perceive what we're doing? And so I think the first thing to bring your attention to is something that is often Sometimes our public officials say it, not necessarily with the intention of a threat, but it is something that is kind of jarring. It jars me every time I hear it, and that is that EMS is not a mandated or essential function. And factually, they're correct. It's not outlined in the Wyoming Constitution. It's not outlined in statute. The one thing that it is outlined by the legislature is if you want one, you can have one. That's basically as far as it goes. But we did several surveys here in Fremont County of medical professionals, government officials, and the general public. We put that question in multiple ways to the public. And what we came back with was a very fascinating understanding. Public, and keep in mind, I would hazard to guess that most of the public is not necessarily well read on the Wyoming Constitution or state statute. They might be, but For the argument here, let's assume that they know what they need and they know what government should be doing. When we polled our population, 94% of them view EMS as an essential service. So we find ourselves in a little bit of a paradox. Paradox is the best word I can come up for it relative to where we're at. It's not a complete juxtaposition, but it's enough of one where the public views what we are doing, pardon me, the public views ambulance and EMS as a morally and publicly essential service but yet it is not a legally required service. So we're kind of in a weird spot here.

Which is kind of weird when you think about things like, for example, not that I'm trying to dis libraries, but a library is actually something that you have to have one in the county seat. So now if you were to do a similar poll, would 94% of people say that a library is an essential service? I love libraries, I go to libraries all the time. So to me it's essential, I love it. But it's an interesting juxtaposition paradox there as well.

Right, it very much is. Literacy is imperative and constitutionally mandated, saving a life, it's up to the county. Yeah, if they're gonna pay you enough. So one of the other insights that we gathered, and this is anecdotal, but also understanding just the economics of ambulance. This is not something that we can basically flog into profitability. Ambulance in frontier settings and in rural settings is a really tough ask and you know I was recently at a Wyoming Hospital Association meeting You know and kind of informally polling hospital operators and and folks who who run EMS services and generally speaking outside of a couple of places and you know notably urban Cheyenne no one is running this type of service at any level of profit. It's just not a profit center. It's important, it's part of a functional hospital system, it's part of a functional healthcare system, but it's not by itself a profitable thing. The trick is you only gain efficiency. You can get closer to break even as you get closer to population density and payer mix that's favorable to a service that can pay for itself. realistically Fremont County is not in that situation and not likely to remedy it soon. And quite frankly, I would probably poll everybody here and I think I would find that do we want a more dense, do we want Fremont County to get more densely populated? I suspect while we would love the economic growth, I doubt we really want that many more neighbors across the street and up the road. But suffice it to say, this is not exclusively a Fremont County problem. But what I will tell you is I firmly believe that if we can solve it in Fremont County, there is no county in Wyoming who can't do something similar if not take our lead and make it better. And I firmly believe that Fremont County has an opportunity here to demonstrate to the rest of the state how well it can be done. pulling back to the earlier committee, one of the things that we started to hone in on was cost to operate an ambulance service. And so interestingly, the state of Wyoming had done a little bit of a survey to understand economic costs across Wyoming. And the funny part is, Here in Fremont County, we're right at the top of the curve. We're neither the most expensive to operate nor the cheapest to operate. We're more or less right around the average, maybe a hair above the average if you look at it from a distribution curve. But realistically, if you break it down a little bit further into cost per person, we're actually one of the cheaper. On a per person basis, it costs about $90 a year to operate our ambulance service per person. It's not terrible. The trick is when you look at where and how. And this comes back to the tyranny of geography. The blue is Riverton. Or actually, let me clarify. These 82501 zip code. Not all of those are inside of the city limits. That's anybody who is receiving mail with a Riverton address. And so that's Riverview Road. That's north of town. That's east of town until you hit Kinnear. That's up to Morton and up to the gas fields. Yes, sir. It's quite a wide dispersion. Even the data can lie to you at certain points if you're not asking the right questions. I will tell you, that's probably one of the most challenging things that we've had to deal with in the last six months is the data tells us something, but it's not to say that the data is lying, but there are nuances to the data. So the orange is Lander. And if you want to break it down percentage-wise, that's roughly, let's call it 30%. Riverton, as you can see, or A2501, is just a hair over 50%. The rest of the county is that sliver. The gray is primarily the Fort Washakie-Ethidy area. So you can kind of see the mix here. There's a lot of stuff to cover, and only two or three really obvious places where you ought to be addressing your efforts. If we break it down a little bit further, you can kind of see, these are the 2025 numbers based on percentage. I think it's important to note, and this is no knock on Dubois, but you'll notice that the 82513 zip code had 127 calls for service last year, or 2.6%. But arguably, Dubois is one of the most remote parts of not only Wyoming, but of the lower 48 states. It's imperative to have things in places where, you know, if a call for help is asked for, it is answered promptly. And so there's a lot of, this is the hardest part of trying to figure out a system like this, is how do you deploy your resources in a fashion that effectively gets as much catchment as possible, but also ensuring that those who might be the furthest from care can get it addressed. And so what you're looking at here on this map is how we're basically allocated right now. Right now, as of right now, there are five ambulances deployed here in Fremont County. There's one in Dubois, I believe there's one in Lander currently, and there are three in Riverton. One of the things that is, there is also a, pardon me, it's a two, two, and one. Two in Riverton, two in Lander, and one in Dubois. And there is a part-time transfer truck that moves between hospitals. We'll talk about that here in a second, but note that component. But as you can kind of see from this map, the little dots that are in there are basically the calls for service. We broke them down not just by zip code, but we broke them down by rough location. You can see that those three circles, which is about a 20-minute response time, covers a good chunk of them, but not all of them. And I want to bring your attention particularly to just north of Lander. There are quite a few out on the reservation in the Fort Washington area that are just outside of that coverage area. The interesting thing that we found was Lander would use their truck. I mean, like one of those Lander trucks was often responding to those cases. And it would take that truck often about two hours out of service. And so you put yourself in a perpetual kind of juggling match. And if you've ever driven on Wyoming roads at various points in time, you will sometimes see an ambulance sitting in Hudson, you will sometimes see it at the diversion dam rest area, kind of flexing back and forth. They're all over the place because what we're trying to do is juggle relative to service demand where those ambulances, it's kind of like playing a real time, literally a life and death whack-a-mole. which we really don't want to be playing too much. So we started with this map, but how do we make it better? What we ultimately came up with, I'm going to show you where we would like to be. This is not where we need to be in the near future, but I want to show you where we should be. And that's this. So this is an eight truck system with five in reserve. What you're looking at with this map is three trucks in Riverton, one in Lander, one in Dubois, one in Fort Washakie, and then two additional trucks allocated for inter-hospital transfer, and then five volunteer trucks, basically attached in the way they used to be to a fire district hall. So one in Jeffrey City, one in Shoshone, one in Kinnear, and one in Crowhart, so that ultimately we have coverage across the county in places that do get calls, but maybe not in a frequent enough basis to have a full-time ambulance there. But quite frankly, if we can get a volunteer there quickly and basically provide an intercept, we solve a lot of the problem. This is where we would like to be. The interim between there and here is five permanent trucks. It's gonna take time to develop a volunteer system for the other parts. But ultimately what we need to do is develop an eight truck system that has adequate coverage to ensure that A, our providers are not strained to the point of breaking, we are able to effectively respond in a quick manner, and ultimately provide a system that is functional more than anything else. It's working, but if we don't do something, it will break. It will continue to degrade until it's, and like realistically, your best shot is inside of a municipality of some size, namely Lander and Riverton, maybe Dubois. But I want to show you one other thing. What we ended up doing was, so all of this was compiled and ultimately We used AI and we enslaved it and basically built a couple of models and then checked the models to make sure they were working right. And I'm going to pass these out. But what we started looking at is, OK, we know what this probably should cost in the ideal situation. We know what we can probably collect. We certainly don't want to compel people to dial 911 just to ring the register. So we based it on what we know we can generate as far as revenue. And we came up with a pretty good plan, I think. So I'm going to pass these out. But for those who are watching at home, but just to kind of understand what we're looking down the barrel of, is to run an eight truck system, you're probably looking at about a $6.8 million outlay. Realistically, you can probably expect to collect about $3.5 million on that system, which leaves us with about a $3.3 million deficit. There's another component to this that's really, actually two components that I think are really important to note to you and the public, is right now our providers are paid arguably less than living wage. We have EMTs who are being paid less than $20 an hour. For that same rate, you can get a fairly good job at a fast food restaurant. But we are asking these people to make life and death decisions for ourselves, our neighbors, our friends, our family, and anyone else who might find themselves in peril here in Fremont County. That, in my opinion, is an unacceptable situation. We need to be paying them what they're worth, probably a little bit more so that they are committed to Fremont County. I think we developed a good plan to do that, and that's what this integrates in. The other component that I think is also important here is right now Fremont County is subsidizing $1.8 million. The trick is we're not putting anything back into our system. We haven't replaced a truck in two years. And the replacement that we did put in two years ago was a grant, kind of manna from heaven, might not show up again. We can't rely on those types of random acts of kindness from the outside to do this. Ultimately, it has to be a Fremont County taking the reins and leading the way. I'll pass these out, but I think it's important to note one of the other components here is those two transfer trucks. And I just want to bring that little tidbit to your attention. Right now, Fremont County is running a part-time transfer truck. Realistically, we should be running two. And this is mainly to ensure that from a fiscal responsibility standpoint, we're generating revenue That's revenue that comes from hospital transfer to another hospital. That generally is not necessarily directly borne by the patient. The patient will pay some of that, but that's done between hospitals. That's one of your most assured ways of getting reimbursed. It's actually one of the higher margin things that an ambulance can do. Your primary function should be picking up folks in distress on the side of the road or in a neighborhood or a community, but realistically, the revenue is generated by transferring between hospitals. One of the reasons that we have such a high density of air transfers is because we don't have the availability of ground transfers. And I would tell you that that's irresponsible, not just from a safety standpoint. I mean, like, anytime you get in the air, you are, I mean, like, it is a risk. But more importantly, It's financially irresponsible, not only to the patient, but to the payer. And if we think about it from a federal government standpoint, more than a little bit of our population mix is Medicare or Medicaid or Tribal 638. Realistically, it is irresponsible for us to be ringing the register at a higher rate on air ambulance relative to the more cheap option of ground ambulance.

Well, that's going to make it so that if If insurance is the one that's gonna be paying for that, if it's not Medicare or Medicaid, but if insurance is going to be paying for that, what does that mean for all of us that are insured? That's gonna raise our insurance rates and the risk of us, you know, just how often I grew up here. When I was a kid, I don't think you know, it was a life flight. It was not somebody being flown for a broken arm, maybe. And it was, it's a different world now. And so saying, you know, well, don't get me wrong, I'm so glad that we have the crews that are here from Guardian and that kind of thing. But the reality is that there's a demand for it such that we have a crew that lives here in town is interesting to me.

Very much so. And realistically, it is no knock to those folks. But let's think about that resource as an extremely valuable one when care at a higher echelon is absolutely necessary. If we're transporting broken arms, what it means is it's not available for the heart attack or the stroke or the, God forbid, the trauma incident that is beyond the capabilities of our medical system here remotely.

But part of what you're saying, though, is because we don't have the ground ambulance coverage, ground ambulance cannot be doing those hospital-to-hospital transfers anyway. Correct. So it's making it so that there's more demand for air ambulance.

It's almost an artificial demand to a degree. They are responding to a deficit created by our ambulance system.

Interesting.

Well, OK, so we have your report here.

Mr. Bailey, I think you were wanting to ask something. OK.

So as you see what we've come up with, there's a deficit of somewhere between 3 and 3.3 million. Your numbers show a little over 3 million. The hard part here is nailing down what are the right numbers for all of these things. And we think that we are well within the 95% confidence line. But ultimately, this is going to take consistent management, consistent attention. It's not something that you can just hand off to a qualified party and hope that they make a go of it. I think one of the reasons that I'm here, not only to kind of show you questions that you had posed seven months ago, show you the answers to some of those questions, but what I'm also asking is for commitment from this body in participating in an ambulance system. I know that the county very much wants to see leadership not only from them, but from the other municipalities to make sure that this system is not only working, but sustained. And I think that that's, I think it's the responsibility of any government body to do that. It's not legally required, but it's absolutely morally necessary.

I appreciate the question too, Mick. I will say, and I'll be a little blunt here and somebody might quote me on this and they might not like it. I have heard county commissioners say that Riverton has refused to cooperate or refused to work with them in terms of trying to ensure that ambulance service continues. This is the first time that anybody has formally made a request that we do anything for ambulance in a city of Riverton council meeting. If somebody wanted some sort of help from the city of Riverton in any form or fashion, no request has ever been made until today. So I'm a little bit more blunt than I should be, and somebody will probably get mad at me, but people sitting there and razzing Riverton for not being willing to help out with ambulance when there's never been a request made since I've been mayor is a little disingenuous in my mind, off my soapbox. Any comments or anything for Mr. Pryor? Mr. Kojai, anything to add? Chair Kojai?

Mr. Mayor, mayors, council, thanks for having me here. I did not have the time to have a nice slideshow presentation for you, but I want to echo all the comments that Mick made and the contributions from the committee. I think we have analyzed everything we possibly can for this to come up with these models. looking at the demographics of Fremont County as well as the needs of Fremont County and the sentiment. It bears it out on that. Really quick, I just want to briefly go back and address a comment from my Councilman Bailey on about Shoshonia, the three-quarter cent tax. Shoshone is a little unique. Four years ago, when I first got involved in all this stuff, we didn't have the ambulance there, obviously, and we had 40-minute response times, sometimes longer than that, and that's just unacceptable. I think we can all agree on that, which I went to a meeting with Frontier and the county commissioners on that issue with Mayor Highsmith and came out of that meeting that, you know, this is the system we have and that when I proposed that I would build an ambulance service for ourselves, I was met with a little bit of consternation and that's not going to happen. Well, we in fact did that. But that was a response to a need to fill that gap, not to take over or not cooperate. And the three core syntax as it was presented, HAVE A SERIOUS NEED FOR AMBULANCE. AND SO THE OTHER ISSUES ON THAT WITH THE AIR TRANSPORTATION, GROUND TRANSPORTATION, JUST IN SHESHONE ITSELF, AND I BELIEVE IN DUBOIS AS WELL, SOME OF THAT WAS A LITTLE BIT MET WITH SOME FRUSTRATION, I THINK, ON NOT HAVING ANY CHANGE IN THE STATUS QUO OF THE AMBULANCE SERVICE. AT THE TIME, SENDING ALL THAT MONEY FOR AN ANIMAL SERVICE THEY DIDN'T RECEIVE THE BENEFIT OF WAS KIND OF THE ISSUE. THINGS HAVE CHANGED. THAT'S ALWAYS BEEN STATED. AND ON THURSDAY, WE'RE ACTUALLY, AT MY REQUEST, IT'S BEEN ADDED TO THE AGENDA FOR A SPECIAL MEETING TO RECONSIDER THE THREE-QUARTER CENT MOA, AS WELL AS Shoshone joining requesting it by resolution in support of FCAG for ambulance service, which I believe we were talking about later on in this meeting. I think that's important to note that I believe where this is heading and the information and the cooperation of all the municipalities within Fremont County is possible. I believe every municipality honestly has a vested interest in having an ambulance service, especially the ones on the outlying areas of Fremont County. I mean, here in Riverton, ideally you can hop in a car and drive to the ambulance, but not everybody has that option. WITHIN FREEMONT COUNTY SOMETIMES YOU CAN'T AND EVEN IN RIVERTON SO I I THINK THAT UH THIS CHANGE THAT HAS COME ABOUT THROUGH RACIC AND I CAN'T EVEN PRONOUNCE THE JCFKS THAT ONE HAS CHANGED CHANGED THE UH PERCEPTION OF THIS AMONG THE OTHER MINISPALITIES AND I DO BELIEVE THAT UH I KNOW SHAHONI IS GOING TO RECONSIDER IT AND I DO HOPE THAT PAVILION AND DUBOIS WILL ALSO JOIN SHAHONI IN THAT AND I THINK IT'S a large testament to the change of perception of the ambulance service and so i that is i think an opportunity for the municipalities as mayor hancock pointed out um to never been asked but i think all would join in support of this The bigger thing is too, is Mick pointed out the transfers. And so that funding gap, that's at full staffing with the current payer mix and not taking into account the additional revenues from that. So the hope would be, and when I say hope, I believe it's very doable to be operationally sustainable within four years. And when I say operationally sustainable, I'm talking from the operational standpoint, maybe not necessarily the capital side. Because replacing ambulances, it's very expensive. But also that funding gap, that also includes capital expenses that's not currently being included by the county with the current framework of their ambulance service.

Just to be clear, so are you saying then that this $3 million funding gap is taking into account capital? Correct. So the idea would be this is going to be ensuring that we actually have enough ambulances that aren't going to have, oh, I don't know, 450,000 miles on them and get a flat tire on the way there or the— We've got in place with this is going to be the idea of regular capital improvement, kind of like we do two police cars a year is our plan.

Exactly. And same thing like what you're showing with our police fleet, our city vehicles. We have that plan in place, and that's incorporated within this plan. So it's not just on the operational side.

gap it's also incorporating the capital improvements that are not currently being budgeted or accounted for in the current framework that we have and this 54 with the moa and i'm not trying to get off topic but i am trying to kind of stay on topic 54 with the moa how much is that anticipated would be brought in for ambulance in a year then

I don't have the number in front of me, but this is 3.2, 3.5, 3.5 million.

So we're talking, this is pretty close.

Yes, and that's including the full thing. And my, we will, I'll save it in a second, but as I said, with the transfers, we do believe that following that model, that as we capture that market share, because looking at this from a business perspective, and that is a market share that we can capture and take advantage of, that income and revenue that directly comes into the service over a four year period can slowly reduce that gap and not necessarily be dependent after that initial period of operational sustainability of needing a subsidy or a very small subsidy compared to what it currently is requiring to operate the service. And that's actually expanding service too. It's not just keeping it the same. That's adding more units, more rigs, and keeping better personnel. When I say better personnel, it's probably a misquote. Keeping current personnel that have the experienced knowledge of Fremont County and have the operational abilities within this county and the population they serve in Fremont County and not losing those people somewhere else and bringing in new recruits that have no idea as providers. So it takes them time. So we lose that institutional knowledge. And that's what we want to retain.

Well, I think some of also what we've discussed, and if I hog some of this too much, I'm sorry. Feel free to chime in. But we've been talking about this a lot in FKIC. This has been an ongoing discussion. RACIC is... RACIC or ROSIC, I think I've heard it both ways. I don't know if anybody's ever watched Psych, but he says that a lot, and it's funny. But RACIC has given reports to FCAG, and this is kind of where I was saying I would lead into. We had just barely had a report from RACIC at FCAG. But... part of the discussion has been back and forth what are the solutions for ambulance service you're much the same as with commercial air you're not going to get an ambulance service that's going to come in and say we're going to run at a three percent or a three million dollar shortfall and just run at risk you're not going to find that same thing with commercial air Whatever it is, if you see it as a necessary service, there's going to be a need to have that gap funding, for lack of a better way to put it. I think that's kind of how you'd put it here, and that's a good way to put it. uh... the nice thing about the three-quarter set being just a little bit more than what we've figured here is number one it's figuring in our math is maybe not one hundred percent for doing our best but there's a lot of things we don't have the answers for it's also figuring in number two if we want to get to the model that you're proposing eventually that's going to require additional funding if i'm not mistaken as well that's correct so there's going to be an initial need for

well, replacing assets that are aging out. So there's going to be that initial higher cost. But the longer this goes on, the higher that initial cost is going to be. So if we do this now or if we wait five years from now, that cost is just going to increase like everything else. And it's paramount that this service remains but is improved because it's it's the degradation of the service it's looking at it from that perspective but it's really the providers you could have all the ambulance rigs you want if you have no providers to work them same with law enforcement or any other professional out there you can have all the cop cars you want there's no cops to drive them it doesn't do any good and that's what's really I guess lost sometimes in the conversation and part of us pay. There's a lot of burnout because when you're running short staffed as everybody is everybody is that burnout becomes you know it becomes accumulates and then it just it's not sustainable and so we have to do something better and the best way to do that um is together and i i know i i share in your sentiments about what you stated earlier so i i've been there too so i i agree that that is something that can be overcome and i think that I believe strongly that with the right leadership, the right vision, and the follow through, that this model not only can be successful, but it can be a testament and an example throughout Wyoming on how things can be done.

Well, and I think it's important, too, to get a little bit to the nitty-gritty in terms of why we're even having this discussion at this meeting, which is the Rural Transformative Health Care, what is it?

There's so many acronyms.

Rural Health Transformation Funds.

Rural Health Transformation Funds. That's where I was going next.

Department of Health through the Wyoming Department.

So tell us about those funds and tell us about where, what the city of Riverton can do next to make it more likely that we would be successful in getting those funds to transform our healthcare in Fremont County.

So there's a, like any program, there's always eligibility requirements. So one of them is you have to have an entity. You need to have the required, in this case, it's two or more, because it's regionalization is the goal. And so you need to have two or more ground service units that combine into one overall unit, basically, or a CAH, Community Critical Access Hospital, which we don't currently have, or a fire district. So what we're looking at we've talked with Chief Wimpen and he's we have a meeting tomorrow, but he's very strongly in support of our using the fire districts and the previous model that goes into this that Mick talked about and Combining those in one being Shoshone Shoshone has an active license. We are an active participant County does not The county relinquished that when they contracted out. So currently, there's only one viable way, I believe, and Nick can talk about this too, that we can proceed for this grant. And that is to take Shoshone and then the current service with the county that's contracted out as well and the tribes and meld that into a full contract. Regionalization proposal for funding and that is What we would ask for that and that would be to basically purchase the assets that are currently owned by the county and bring that under the entity. And when I say entity, it needs to be a government entity. So it could be Shoshone, but in this case, FCAG is the mechanism as a joint powers board that's already set up that we would apply through that is the intention of Shoshone and to use our license to regionalize the whole area under FCAG.

so the county has been discussing this part of what i had talked about is there was a meeting that was with mick mick mike jones and larry allen both of them had expressed and it was put to a vote today that the county rather than just being the only people that are doing ambulance, they would like to have a joint powers board that would run ambulance going into the future. Now we need an organization that would be the organization that will request the funds. That organization could be any organization theoretically, but it wouldn't make sense for it to be Shoshone when it's going to be benefiting the whole county. The county doesn't want to just have it be them alone because that's kind of the model we've had. They're expressing interest in a joint powers board. And so rather than trying to create a joint powers board from whole cloth, in like two days because we're trying to get uh... grant together august first time i had yes and i was exaggerating two days but i was only slightly exaggerating two days because we'd have to get things rolling quickly it would make sense that what we would do is roll into the idea of a joint powers board namely f cad that would be a part of this grant the proposal would be among others Would be the F CAG would receive all the assets as a part of the grant, so there would be payment that would go to the county. With some of that being kind of, if you think of it almost like back payment, you know right where. There what they've been investing in ambulance for so long. The assets then would be passed to F CAG. And F CAG would then run the ambulance going forward. Intel or unless, and who knows where this will go going forward if there were a different joint powers board that would come up, but it would be FCAG.

Am I saying anything wrong, Chief? I think you pretty much summed it all up.

I've heard the spiel enough to know.

Yeah. But for the members of the council, time is imperative. And obviously having a joint powers board that was set aside just for the ambulance would be great. And maybe that will be something that happens down the road. But I'm sure, as you all know, that you don't form a joint powers board with six municipalities in a county in a month.

Or in two weeks, which is what we would have to do in order to have any time to then get a grant proposal together.

And the other thing I heard was the county was going to apply for a business license for an ambulance and try to retroactively apply that so they could be the ones that apply. I guess the Department of Health breaks all their rules just to make that happen and sets a precedent that might happen. However unlikely it is, we have the assets. We have... everything we need in this package to do this and submit for that application for those funding. I believe they have 20 million set aside and, or 40 million set aside and 20 potential groups that are gonna apply, so I think they're,

So this is not a silver bullet, just to be clear. This is $44 million allocated towards ambulance with basically a maximum cap per application of about $2 million for this fiscal year, $1 million for equipment and things of that nature, and then a performance payment to be paid at some point later on that basically is looking at did you improve? And so it's not a foregone conclusion that this, the million will, any money will certainly help, just to be clear. But it is imperative to understand that this is not, this is a good kickstart, but it is certainly not the thing that will get us over the top.

But the idea is it would help get us more trucks which is part of the payments that we're having to be making going forward into ambulance.

It would definitely jumpstart the process of getting things done in conjunction with the three-quarter cent and the funds from that being applied to the whole model.

And wanting to get to a model that looks more like this rather than where we are where there's basically three areas.

Correct. There's one other component that I think cannot be understated enough, is that a joint powers board of this nature needs to involve tribal voices and tribal perspective. Doesn't necessarily need tribal funding if we're using a three-quarter cent tax. Everyone is paying that. But realistically, especially if we're going to site an ambulance system or an ambulance barn in the Fort Washakie-Ethidy area, we need to make sure that

it's it's in alignment with what those tribal those tribal governments who assumably are speaking for their people want as well do we have any questions or anything is this a good time to kind of get to the council a little bit yeah like i said i'm not trying to hog it all it's just this is something that i've been living and breathing for a couple of months and so

You actually answered the questions that I had. Score.

Councilman Larson.

You mentioned that there was a time where we were receiving revenue and then all of a sudden it just changed. Were we able to identify the change that caused that problem?

Yes, sir. There were two primary changes, and they kind of happened at about the same time. One was a licensing requirement that was pushed down basically... basically that kind of prompted more professionalization of EMS services. So you couldn't, it wasn't impossible to be a volunteer EMT, but it was a lot more difficult. And so we saw a drop off in volunteers. And so there was more of a reliance on professional paid folks. But in addition, In 2014, you also, so this is kind of at the beginning of the, I'd call it the hard parts of Obamacare, where reimbursement rates also went down for ambulance. So you had kind of a two-fold problem. You had a workforce problem that kind of forced costs up, and you had a payer adjustment that forced revenues down. And so those two violent forces on either side of the seesaw put you in an imbalance.

So we had a license. difficulty or professional difficulty and then the government withdrew money correct yeah it was kind of a one-two

Well, and I mean, it's the same thing we've been dealing with with a lot of different things. There's a lot of regulations that change, and they completely modify an economic model that has been working for years. And you could get me started on the federal government, and I would never stop.

Their inability to understand what frontier medicine looks like at all, and they have a tendency to make rules and then cut the amount of money they make that you have to enforce the rules that you have to put in place. Unfunded mandates. When I was on the hospital board, it was the same thing. The psychiatric care basically got reduced because the federal specifications got raised to the cost of a million dollars a room to improve the room for psychiatric patients. And then they also cut the funding that they would give the hospital for taking care of those folks. So it was a very similar situation to what you're talking about, where, yeah, they force you to do something and don't give you any more, and give you less money to get it done, so.

Well, I think it's probably important for this body to understand that the Rural Health Transformation Grant is kind of a similar rope-a-dope. Wyoming is receiving about $2 billion over the next five years, assuming that the big, beautiful bill is seen to completion. What's not often told is that after those five years, there will be dramatic cuts to how the payer mix, particularly for Medicare, but especially Medicaid, will affect our hospitals. Now, I'm told by the Department of Health it has minimal impact here in Wyoming, But time will tell. The devil is always in the details, and I don't think we've seen all of the rules promulgated yet. So we're receiving money on the front end, but realistically, the economics are going to change in five years anyway. So it's important for us to get ourselves into a position of strength as fast as possible before the next wave of unintended consequences hits the beach.

which is why i go back to this model was developed with the idea of being sustainable operationally within four years um how much that you know that gap shrinks you know time will tell but that's was at the back end of this from the very beginning was to make sure that whatever we leave this with ends with where it being operationally sustainable from a financial point of view um irrespective of any changes from And the rural transformation is a big bonus, and that's why I guess the biggest thing is I hope that Riverton will consider that EMS services through FCAG resolution seriously in conjunction with Shoshone and lead the way in getting this formulated so we can apply for these fundings. All right. Any other questions?

Your Honor, I'll just say, aside from my own personal thoughts on the situation, what I hear back most from people regarding this is how it's being presented on the ballot. I don't think that there is a lot of people in this county that's going to say ambulance service is not necessary or that they're willing to pay for it. I think that a vast majority of them would support a tax that supports adequate coverage throughout the county. and ran professionally, and seeing that our EMTs are paid adequately. Transparency and accountability. That is not the issue. I think that the issue is that it's been presented alongside WRTA and Commercial Air Service, and not everyone feels the same that those are in the same boat i think some of them feel that they should have say whether they support those two other entities versus ambulance service so i think that the struggle here with this three-quarter percent tax passing it and getting ambulance service that's needed in the county has been presented wrong i think it never should have been bundled as a package and many people feel differently about that I like the model I appreciate the work you guys have done I think you guys have put in an incredible amount of time it makes sense If people want more rural coverage, you got to pay for it. Costs are going up, and that's what it is. But I think the way in which it's been presented is not going to go well, and that's unfortunate. But that's my personal opinion. I support the resolution. I think it's great. I think it makes sense. But I think it's going to be difficult for voters to say yes to this and yes to everything that's on the ballot. I think that's going to be a struggle for most people, and it's either going to make it or break it.

So the question that the county had, and I don't know, the county did not specifically pass a resolution, but they did say that they supported FCAG being the body that would um handle ambulance and that that would be how we would go forward with uh the re with a grant application is that am i correct there mr pryor or mr kojai so if i'm

I believe the county was very vague in their resolution today or their motion today, but basically was in favor of participating in a joint powers. They didn't enumerate on any particular joint powers today, but in conversations from work sessions last week, I don't, and I did make the appeal to this morning in front of the commission to consider FCAG. It was not met with any opposition, but it certainly wasn't agreed to specifically named. Correct.

Gotcha.

And I guess whatever we do today, we we don't have a resolution specifically or anything like that that we would need to pass. I think my recollection from meeting with the with Commissioner Allen and Commissioner Jones was that their question for. The city of Riverton is would Riverton be willing to participate in? A joint powers board for the purpose of ensuring ambulance service goes forward. That was their question. And so I guess the question for the Council is, do we have consensus from our Council that that's something that we would want to do? Is. Enter into a joint powers board, whether that's F CAG and that seems like that'd be the best move right now because we have it and we have a. A director in the audience who is really quiet today except for. But I mean, we have the mechanism in place to where that could jump in and do that. So I guess my question then for the Council is. A, is the council supportive of a joint powers board for purposes of ambulance service and B, for right now or even for permanent, who knows, however it goes, would we be supportive of FCAD being that board? You want a motion?

I would be supportive of a joint powers board. I think it could warrant some further discussion who would be most appropriate for that. but you have to do it quicker than not if you need to apply for a grant.

Yes. I think I would sure support that. And I think FCAG is the obvious tool that we have available right now and in the future if that ended up getting split off into its own joint powers board just for ambulance, not FCAG managing WRTA and the other things it does, but I think this is the tool we have available, And I think that's a far preferable tool as to having the county do it on their own because then all the municipalities have input into the scenarios and can give more data and I think implement one of these plans depending on what everybody thinks. And I'm the last guy that's gonna stand up and say government should do more. But I don't think this is an industry that private industry can operate without subsistence from government. And I don't like the idea of having private entity and government trying to do things together because whether Frontier makes any money on this deal that they have now or not, we don't know. And so as stewards of the taxpayers' money, we need to know because are we just pouring money into them and they're walking off with millions of dollars or they may be losing money too, we don't know. And so I think if we run it ourselves, we have control over that, we have the data, we have the ability to go out and take advantage of opportunities that come up like this grant that are not available to private industry And so I I think this is by far the best option we have forward and we have the tool in place ready to go that we could probably get this. Grant going in time. And then we could all between all the municipalities we could come up with more detailed. Operational type of stuff, but I think in general this is a good idea.

So so that was your motion.

That's a long motion motion that we move forward with FK being the joint powers board. To operate the ambulance service.

Until otherwise decided by the municipalities, Your Honor, the point of clarification, though, is before before we go further is. Are there any other entities that would even come close to that have put interest in in in running the ambulance service aside from the county and if keg? Is there any other entities that should be considered?

Kind of in that Shoshone could do it. I don't think Shoshone is necessarily wanting to do it. Dubois has kind of said they want to do their thing, but it's not trying to say we want to do it for the whole county. So if you're talking about an entity that can. Actually do a grant that would be this very thing. There's nobody else. There is discussion with where we could go with the grant that part of the grant is looking for regionalization. And so Cody Regional Health has kind of been a little bit of a. A discussion here and I don't know where that has gone or whether that's going to be a part of the grant or where that could go. But that's it.

So just one more quick question. If, say, Dubois does not opt into this agreement as they've stood their ground on, how does that look going forward with FCAG and them having a representative at FCAG?

So just to be clear, what we're discussing today in the motion specifically from Councilman Bailey and the second by Councilwoman Borders, just saying that for the heck of it because we want to make sure we're clear of what's going on, is for ambulance to become basically a joint venture between the city of Riverton, the county right now, because those are the two that have expressed they're willing to do that, and anybody else that will join in so that rather than just saying, that's yours, county, do with it what you will, we're expressing... we're gonna be a part of the solution, so to speak, for ambulance. It is not the same as the MOA. The MOA had already passed in terms of where the money is gonna go, but what we would be discussing now is just going forward, we're wanting to be able to figure out solutions that are gonna involve at least Riverton and the county for the ambulance. Fair enough, Mick?

I just wanted to clarify the only other entity that would have any ability to do this would be the fire district. And unfortunately, because of their The way they are constructed in the way that they interface with not only emergency management here in the county, but volunteers and everything else, they are not equipped to do it. They would be and they've indicated that they want to support, but they can't be the main actor on something like this. Just just to clarify, thank you.

I appreciate it.

And I think to be clear, I will say one of the things that Rasek is trying to do is. Turn over every stone. That's been their goal.

I think out of all the information that's been provided thus far, they've provided the most and they've done the most work and there's been more data provided through that. Um, And I'm not an easy turn, but that's, you got to laugh, but it's a fact. I demand statistics. I want transparency and accountability to taxpayers. If I'm asking taxpayers to pay this, then I want to know why, and I want to know all the answers to give them. And I don't think that that's unreasonable. to be fair, you have to be honest back. And that's what it is. So like I said, I think so. And I think that FCAC is going to be the best choice for that. So thank you.

Yeah. Okay. Yes, sir. Can we just get clarification again on the motion and the second? Yes. Just a quick week because we want to make sure we get it in the minutes for what the motion was. What was the motion?

Can you do that?

Early onset Alzheimer's. I don't remember what I said. No, I'm just kidding. That the City Council of Riverton would support fcag being the joint powers board for us to move forward with operating ambulance service and the avenue to get to apply for the grant to get the rural ambulance funds if that's the right term to us on the recommended model yeah that's been presented

Clear enough. I'm saying clear enough for them because part of the thing that's going on and I know it sounds weird. There's a lot of moving parts. Shoshone is going to be discussing this. The county had kind of started this discussion in terms of saying we want to know are the other communities interested in a joint powers agreement that will make sure that we apply for these funds and we have a board going forward that's going to be ensuring that ambulance service continues. And so county has discussed that today. Our vote would be what we'd vote today. And then Shoshone Thursday?

Yes, Mayor. I had it added to the agenda for Thursday with three core syntax as well.

After that, I mean, Lander and Dubois and everybody talking about it and saying we're in.

Our, I believe, race six intention is to go around and every other community as well, Dubois, Pavilion, Lander, Hudson, and try and get a unified front because it's that important. And I know Nixon, to win it, I'm the same. I'm not going anywhere until we get this solved because it's that important.

And then you're going to leave and not be the chief in Shoshone anymore? I'm just joking.

I came here undressed, you know. The police left here, so I'm on my own, I guess.

Mr. Butterfield, did that clarify or do you need more? Your honor, that's helpful. We have the motion. And then I thought I'd just share a few items that Mr. Allen, Commissioner Allen had shared earlier today. He mentioned that while the county supports the formation of a joint powers board, they wanted to make it clear that all parties would belly up to the bar, so to speak, in help funding that. And so I think you have a couple conversations going, the long-term operation and success of ambulance service and the model to do that, which I think has been very well presented. And then the governing body to take care of that, which would be the Joint Powers Board. I think it's important to note that if the optional tax does not pass and you do form a Joint Powers Board, I think the expectation of the county is that they are not the only entity that would fund ambulance service. And so I think that's something to be aware of, as it was mentioned by Commissioner Allen today. And then he's also mentioned that they may still have interest in applying for those funds. Commissioner Allen had been on with the Department of Health, and it looks like there's some information still to be, I think, finalized. But just be aware that the commission did express interest in the county sponsoring the application. and it looks like there's also opportunity to have other people sponsor that application so just be aware of that as well obviously that's a more short-term issue and I think that coordination should happen over the next week but I think it's important that the council members understand that I think it's important I mean our discussion is number one if I'm not mistaken

I think that the council is united in saying we know that ambulance is important and we want to make sure that it continues. So yeah, if the tax doesn't go forward, I think the expectation is we're in it.

We're participating.

The question I think that Mr. Bailey brought up is making sure that that can be in a vehicle in a way that we're all able to come to the table and discuss it and be able to figure out what it's going to look like. FCAG seems like that's the best vehicle, which I'm very aware that we're talking about WRTA as vehicles. I'm just sorry. I like puns. So FCAG would be the best vehicle for that, but I don't hear anybody on the council saying we're going to shy away from the fact that going forward we believe that ambulance is something that We need to be making sure it's happening, and if that means financially, like if this tax doesn't get paid, we'll have to figure out what we can do.

And make cuts to make it work.

Yep.

And the intent of my motion is to show support for this concept. to the other municipalities and the county so that we can move forward and create something that would be finite and defined and we would all have a reasonable expectation of what we're gonna do moving forward. And a lot of that depends on whether we get the grant, whether the tax passes, all of these things factor into that overall decision which we can't make now because we don't know.

But I think that's and that's the clarification, you know, just for the county commissioners to know, I guess from this body, are we in agreement that let's say everything. Lack of a better word goes to hell and we don't get any money, you know. I mean, are we comfortable saying we're going to have to figure out a way that we can contribute from the budget? And I think.

And we at least want to be at the table for the discussion as opposed to the county just deciding what they want to do all by themselves.

You're on. Okay.

Does that clarify that? Yes. Thank you.

I'm just curious if Councilman Carr has any.

I was going to ask you. Thank you. Yep. You're spot on, though, Councilwoman Porter. Councilman Carr, I know it's so hard because I've been in your shoes. remote and I just want to see if you had anything you wanted to add or or where you're at before we put this to a vote.

Thank you, Your Honor. Yes, and thank you, Councilwoman Borders. I really appreciate the acknowledgement as well. I will be extremely brief. I am really glad that you mentioned regionalization. Funding agencies typically highly prioritize regionalized systems because what it shows is solidarity. Now, in this case, it's solidarity towards a solution to a problem that we have being as frontier medicine as we are and as remote. So I fully support being able to be part of the conversation as a whole for Fremont County and the city of Riverton. So yeah, I think this is a good move. And the more that we can get on board in Fremont County, the better odds we have of fully implementing a success. We also are very lucky in Fremont County that we have the infrastructure, i.e. with FCAG and a very consolidated group there to carry this forward, at least for the beginning of it. So thank you.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Carr. All right. Well, it is 947. I would like to hit the road to Casper tonight. I know that sounds crazy. That's what I'm doing. So I would like to vote on this. Does anybody have anything else to say before we do? All right. All in favor of passage of the motion regarding expressing our willingness to participate in a joint powers board regarding ambulance and FCAG being the vehicle that we would use for this grant. Say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. vote aye motion passes and uh you've been in contact with the commissioner allen so i guess if you can kind of let him know a little bit of where we're at mr butterfield that be appreciated thank you racic members for being here i know that we have More of you here than just the two that spoke. Lisa Mellon, glad you're here. I finally have pronounced your name correctly now, I think. And we have Ms. Harper here. Do we have anyone else that I didn't note? No. And Kyle didn't make it today. This was a funny story for you. We had a gentleman who came in and was speaking about RACIC at our last FCAG meeting. Not our last one, but the one before. And so basically he was expressing concern and saying, hey, this is what we need to do with ambulance. And we promptly turned around and said, would you like to join the committee? Voted for it and got him on the committee that day. And I will say since then, he's been phenomenal. uh and so it's exciting he's uh he actually works with cwc and so they're wanting to have this go even further than what you're seeing here which is having there be not only this be a vehicle for change i'm using the phrase vehicle a lot today but having cwc a vehicle that we can use to be getting in emt's paramedics so that's great news all right i would entertain a motion to adjourn so moved Motion by Councilwoman Johnson, second by Councilman Larson. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed say nay. I vote aye. Motion passes. We are adjourned at 9.50 p.m.