Council - Regular Meeting

6 PM.

you you . . . . . . . . you . . . . . . . Thank you. you

september 15th 2026 regular meeting of the riverton city council order at 7 pm councilman bailey has agreed to lead us in the pledge of allegiance after which councilman larson will give us an invocation if everyone could please rise and remove cover i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to

Our eternal Heavenly Father, we are thankful for the opportunity to be here, City Council, serving our neighbors and friends. We would ask that thou would watch over and bless those individuals that are serving us out in the offices, patrolmen and safety people watching and keeping us safe. we've been asked that thou would bless the first responders and those in need of watching over us father we're thankful for the opportunity to serve riverton we ask that thou might bless us that we might only do our very best for the citizens of riverton which they deserve we're thankful for thee and thy son and we say this name thy son jesus christ amen

Well, we have a lot of people here today, so there must be some sort of occasion that's leading people to be here. And luckily, we have that right near the beginning, so that's perfect. We'll go ahead and start with a roll call, though. If you could please conduct that for us, Director Harris.

Yes, Your Honor.

Here.

Council Member Jerica Preston. Here. Council Member Mike Bailey. Here. Council Member Carla Borders. Here. Council Member Kyle Larson.

Here.

Council Member Karen Johnson. Here. Mayor Tim Hancock.

I am here and declare we have a quorum. I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda as presented.

So moved.

Second. Councilwoman Borders with the motion. Councilman Carr with the second. Any discussion, additions, corrections, modifications? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. I vote aye. Motion passes. Introduction and oath of office, community service officer and dispatcher. Police chief, could you tell us about these two fine individuals who have brought a lot of fine people to our chambers today?

Good evening, your honor and council. Tonight we welcome two more members to our public safety team. Talk a little bit about each one and ask them to come forward in just a minute. First one, Josiah Divers, he was born here in Fremont County. He's lived here all his life. Before here, he was a substance abuse technician for White Buffalo where he served our community and helped those that were under substance abuse and were also starting from alcoholism. He's also served as security supervisor for the Wind River Hotel and Casino. He's always wanted to be in law enforcement and we look forward to having him test and soon promote to police officer, but first we'll do the first step of community service officer. uh now i'd like to ask josiah and his brother antonio to please step forward while we do the official opinion of the badge

Nicely done. All right, stick around, we'll swear you in. I was just telling your next candidate here that we have yet to have any accidents during this pinning, and I'm really grateful for you, Antonio, for keeping that streak going. I would be tempted if it were my brother.

We've had some nearbys, it's been close. Next member that's joining our department has been a lifelong resident of Riverton. She was raised by Allen and Kelly Davis. They have three children and she's worked for Wyoming Department of Workforce Services before joining our agency. She loves coaching high school students and likes focusing on workplace communication and she's excited and honored to join our police dispatch team. Now I'll ask Afton Ortiz and her husband Reese to come forward for their opinion.

Nicely done.

Now your honor, they're ready for their oaths of office.

All right.

I'm going to swear you guys in, too. All right, go ahead and raise your right hand. It's not the first time.

I get tempted every time.

All right, so I'm going to say aye, and then you're going to say your names. I'm going to say aye, and then there's going to be an awkward silence unless you say your name. Okay, and then just repeat after me. All right, I. I, Afton Ortiz. Do solemnly swear or affirm.

Do solemnly swear or affirm.

That I will support, obey, and defend.

That I will support, obey, and defend. The Constitution. The Constitution. Of the United States. Of the United States. And the Constitution. And the Constitution.

Of the state of Wyoming.

Of the state of Wyoming.

That I have not knowingly violated.

That I have not knowingly violated.

Any law.

Any law. related to my appointment, nor caused it to be done by others, and that I will discharge the duties of my office

And there's a traditional 30 minute speech.

That we can dispense with here. Go ahead and put the date to 91526.

Alright, perfect.

And then if you can just shake hands with everybody. And if you want to have a picture with the whole crew, we could either have both of you up here at the same time or we could separate it out by family.

Let's separate it out. Welcome. Thank you.

Congratulations. Welcome aboard. Congratulations.

Thank you. Congratulations.

Congratulations.

And then you have to shake hands with everyone in the audience. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Let's go ahead and start with Afton, just because you're closest. So anybody who was here for Afton, if you want to come up and take a picture, you don't have to, but just a fun way to commemorate that you were here.

I know it. I know it.

He always pushes me to the side.

Just come up here if you want. It's the easiest way to do it. Perfect.

And the flowers, if the flowers need to be in there, that looks great too. All right.

All right. And Afton, just give us a quick rundown of who the most important people are here.

My husband, my father-in-law and his family, my dad, and my husband's grandparents.

Perfect. Good.

Oh, and the kids.

Okay. They had to make sure you remembered them. Three of them here? Yep. Fun. All right. Good deal. Thank you. And we don't stand on ceremony. If you want to take off, you are welcome to. You're welcome to stick around, too. Josiah, why don't you bring your crew up? I mean, we do stand on ceremony some. You know, Robert's Rules of Order, stuff like that. But coming and going is pretty... Oh my goodness. Is this yours?

No, this one's mine. Oh, that one's yours. Thought it was Josiah's.

All right. And Josiah, who do you have here?

Not everybody, just the ones that you've got. This is your girlfriend? This is my girlfriend. Okay, and your brother?

This is my brother.

Sister-in-law.

Perfect. My other sister-in-law back there. All right. Grandma-in-law. Grandma-in-law. Perfect.

I have to say, everyone here,

Glad they're here. And I was asking Josiah that earlier. And it's hard when you're on the spot to have to name everybody. So I understand. Well, thank you all for being here.

Congratulations.

It is very clear that Josiah and Antonio have a good relationship. I know I want to have my brother. All right. Well, next up we have council committee reports and council members round table. Um, How about we start with Jerica, Councilwoman Preston. Tell us what you've had going on.

Since we last met, I had our first Leadership Fremont County meeting, which was a success. We've had the biggest class that we've ever had, 31 members, so that was a lot of fun. And they have a great dynamic, so I'm excited to see how that turns out. And then I did attend Paws and Pearls on Saturday, which was an amazing event. And kudos to Councilwoman Borders because she worked her booty off.

It was fun to watch. Did you help a lot? No. she did i don't feel like i helped enough but she did good but that's all i've got and i think uh i don't remember did um tim nichols end up being in leadership framework county oh good and so is max batista so oh yeah good i've heard of max batista i have good guy well good glad that we have both of them in there that's great all right councilman carr

Thank you, Your Honor. Since our last meeting last week, I have not attended any meetings. Not much to report this week.

It's like we've had a lot of meetings lately here. Fair enough. Thank you. Councilwoman Johnson?

Yeah, about the same. I attended that. I did have an opportunity to go on tour for Everfound in Fremont County, and that's a pretty amazing place too. I did not get to attend Paws and Pearls, but I did hear that it was a good event. So that's all I have to share.

Sounds good. Councilman Larson.

Your Honor, I had a fun time talking with a representative of Lost Cabin, or not Lost Cabin, excuse me, soldier lost soldier oil field outside of suey water station there and Talk to them about their 4.5 mile Link with 48 inch gas line that they're going to be shipping to California and they have two producing well, they're drilling a third one and It looks like Fremont County will have a source of revenue for the future for a long time to come because of them.

That's great.

Yeah.

So they're going to have a, we're talking natural gas, I'm assuming.

It's a sweet gas. It's not going to be, there's not going to be a sweetener plant like at Shot Creek or at Lost Cabin. It's a sweet gas and it's a sizable field. I mean, good size.

Good.

Anyway, that's all I have.

Exciting. Thank you for letting us know about that. Councilwoman Borders?

Your Honor, last night we had our rec board meeting, and they're just working on getting bills. They've had people that have submitted their receipts, so they're getting those paid, and it's pretty amazing what they're doing. If you look around town, there's a really cool playground down at Willow Creek, and I believe it's the middle school has their weight room. It sounds like it's finished. So pretty awesome stuff. And then, of course, as Councilwoman Preston mentioned, Paws and Pearls, it was an awesome event. I worked the event serving mango margaritas, which was a lot of fun. And it was just a very nice, very successful event. And a lot of people put in a lot of work into that. So it was pretty awesome. And that's all I've got.

All right, great. Councilman Bailey, you thought I was gonna forget you, but I didn't.

Go ahead, what do you got to report? The only meeting I had since we met last week was yesterday I attended the force committee meeting where obviously they work on the different road projects that we're doing throughout town. The slurry seal project was completed They are still working on some of the concrete repairs around those areas. Riverview is getting closer. They have got the utilities pretty much all in. They're doing the curb and gutter and sidewalk here in the next couple of weeks. They're combining Riverview with the safe roads, or safe walk to school. They're gonna be putting a Eight-foot wide sidewalk all the way from Willow Creek up to major and of course They've already done up the hill major to Main Street and then that sidewalk will also go down east from the intersection All the way down to I think Spire or somewhere close to that and then they Got the underground in so as soon as that's done. They'll be ready to pave the east section I think and so I We're getting closer to getting that done. They're also working on some engineering for the bicentennial subdivision that I think is in front of us tonight. We're up there on Sunset and 8th Street, the northwest side of that intersection. Those roads up there are really in bad shape and stuff, so they're working on the engineering to get that repaired. and some you know water and sewer and a uh french drain because that area up there has got a lot of moisture underground and so they're going to try to eliminate eliminate that causing the street to get tore up again And then they're working on a few projects for next year, engineering-wise, and so they just continue to work on that. So again, that committee is extremely frugal and careful with what they do to make sure it meets the specification of the one cent tax initiative that, again, will be coming forth for renewal on November 3rd, so. I hope everybody gets out and supports that. We've done a lot of really good things. Generates a little over $2 million a year for Riverton that we've put to work repairing our streets and helping with water and sewer programs and all of that kind of stuff. So that money's deeply needed. If it was up to the city alone, we couldn't do near what we're doing now. And we're behind the curve even as it is. Behind the curb. Curb and curve both.

okay thank you your honor if i could i just i just thought of something else so the fall festival is september 26th and they are looking for people to donate cakes for the cake walk so if anyone's out there that would like to do that you can find them on facebook and make that arrangement and that is going to be the downtowners association that are putting that on

doesn't have to be a huge cake it could be like cupcakes and stuff like that absolutely we'll take anything that has cake in the name pancake maybe not maybe zucchini bread might work zucchini bread zucchini cake yeah that would work too yeah okay thank you you're welcome mr butterfield let us know what's going on with city staff please thank you your honor just a few things to make mention again the planning commission is this thursday at 5 30.

There will be a consideration of a replat and then also we're working on a vacation of some plats up at the airport. And then the airport board will be meeting this Friday at eight o'clock and the public are welcome at both of those meetings. As we talk about the work that the Community Development Department's doing and Planning Commission, we'd like to highlight that a building permit was taken out for the northeast section of the Eastern Shoshone Business Park for a FedEx facility. We're excited about that. There are other exciting things that are also going on in town, but we'll just highlight that one right now. I had opportunity last week to attend a meeting sponsored by YDOT and one of their consultants about NextGen911. This is the byproduct of some work from last legislative session where the legislature has commissioned a study to explore the advent of NextGen911 in Wyoming and had opportunity to learn a little bit more and enjoy time with members of our team who were there as well, one of whom was Lieutenant Smits. and at risk of embarrassing him, I'd like to highlight the fact that because of his hard work and efforts with another LPD officer, they thoroughly embarrassed the fire department in the wood splitting contest at Porter's last Thursday. And definitely appreciate him representing us so very well. Your Honor, I'd like to turn the remainder of my comments over to my colleagues. First to Police Chief Hurtado and our Public Works Director, Brendan Thoman. As you know, our policy when we see grants is to bring them forward to the council and included in that policy is retroactive approval. Sometimes these grant deadlines come in between council meetings And there was a grant situation that we felt was important for us to explore. And Chief will provide a little bit more information on that. And we'd like your concurrence retroactive as it relates to this grant that required no matching funds from the city of Riverton. After his report on this submitted grant, I'd ask Brendan Thoman to provide a little bit more of a construction update, especially as we're nearing the end of the construction season. Thank you, Your Honor.

Thank you.

Chief first. Thank you, Your Honor. Like it was mentioned, the legislative session had allocated some statewide funding at about $3 million to be used for next-gen dispatch center activities. Of that $3 million, there was money set aside for a survey, to do a study, to do a survey. Anyway, there was money left over. The 30-some PSAPs, or Public Safety Answering Points Dispatch Centers, more commonly referred to, all were competing for the remaining funding. A few months, a couple months ago, our lead dispatcher, Sarah Nelson, had applied for $150,000 for some improvements and basically keep the lights on here at our dispatch center. Thanks to her grant writing, we actually were able to get $172,000, so more than we'd asked. Shortly after the announcement, the state said, by the way, there's about $500,000 left if anybody else could use it. Sarah Nelson didn't spend too much time waiting. She immediately said, we will gladly take what we can get. And out of that $500,000, we've asked for an additional $225,000. And we should know maybe by the end of this month if we're going to be able to receive any additional funding. from what was remaining. And I'll highlight the two areas, targets for the funding. One is our Vesta Next upgrade. Our current system is due to basically be non-workable not supportive in the next few years and that was about 150 000 for the ask to get our system replaced before it's no longer supported and also sending $5,000 to basically replace our consoles, furniture that are in our dispatch center. As you know, we've done some patchwork over the years, so we feel it's time if the state's willing to help us upgrade our consoles and desks to support all the new hardware, then we'll ask the state for that. So those are the two items we asked for. Again, we were kind of in a hurry trying to put our name in the hat for that remaining funding, so we're just asking for your concurrence if we can continue with seeking that grant funding. With that, Your Honor, I stand for any questions. Anybody have a problem with? Okay. Go for it. Thank you.

Sounds good. Thanks, Chief.

Mr. Tolman. Thank you, Your Honor. A lot of good things have been said on the construction side of things. I'll just add a couple items. Some miscellaneous water work is going on throughout town. There's a water line bursting, occurring between Broadacres and East Park, or excuse me, West Park Avenue. That line is a transit line that's getting replaced. There's already a Monday morning construction crews went in there and put in a temporary water system. So Viper Underground is doing that work. I believe they notified everybody in the area and then we also put an update on the city Facebook pages on that as well. And then we're gearing up for a little bit of water line work, about 500 linear feet of line to be placed in on East Pershing Avenue. These are capital projects that were approved for this fiscal year. So we're just working through those projects. One of the highlights with the Willow Creek project is about 90% of the curb and gutter was installed over the past two days. That work is going to continue around into the Riverview project, and then which will allow sidewalk and the street to go back together fairly quickly. So the only other items is the water plant will be shut down September 25th. After it's shut off at that point, then city staff will work to begin the rehabilitation of the two million gallon tank at the water treatment plant. So that was a project where about $660,000 worth of grant funding would be applied to that project. And then you'll notice at Sunset Park there's a bathroom, a restroom facility going in. The Lions Club is nearly solely responsible for that. They've partnered with Public Works to help as best we can with the city, but it seems to be going up pretty quick. And that's about all I have.

All right, thank you, Mr. Tolman. Splash Blad's closed for the season. And then JC Restrooms, when are we thinking that those will be back up and running?

Your Honor, we have a couple weeks on the restrooms at JC Park. There are some temporary facilities there but we're just finishing up getting quotes approved for the work to be done there.

I just know it gets used. I mean, that's the one that I take my kids to because we can walk there, but I just, and not that it matters that much. We do have something there. Just when you have a five-year-old sometimes who is picky about what restroom she uses. It's not a personal thing. It was something that I also had someone else ask me and say, why are they closed down? And I was like, I don't know, but I did find out.

Very nice. We had experienced some flooding in the once the bursting of some pipes. So we had to close those down and then we're just getting them put back together as quick as we can.

And also planted a lot of trees lately, replacing some that we had gotten rid of as a part of the inventory. When was that last year or the year before?

Absolutely. Yeah, they planted just three trees yesterday and then a bulk of them throughout Monday and then the last week. Excuse me, yesterday was Monday, so last week. Great.

Yeah. Okay. Good deal. All right. Well, first off, let's do this. I've gotten two different people asking if we would do a proclamation for National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week because requests didn't come in until after the agenda was already published. I'll just share them now. Whereas more than 43 million Americans can't read or write at the most basic level, well, 6.2... I'm sorry, 62... 7.7 million lack basic math skills, maybe including me when I read that wrong, as well as the credentials and skills necessary to succeed in post-secondary education. And whereas every year one in three young adults drops out of high school, and whereas American Action Forum estimates America has short an estimated 7.5 million private sector workers across all skill levels, Whereas adult education programs contribute to solving these challenges by helping Americans move along the continuum in their educational journey to achieve basic skills and get prepared for college and career. And whereas adult education programs in high schools and adult schools, community colleges and community centers offer low cost, high value programs that upgrade the skill set of our citizens. And whereas, Riverton, Wyoming celebrates Adult Education and Family Literacy Week as a proud participant in the National Educate and Elevate Campaign, which helps our citizens learn about all of their adult education options to attain their professional and personal goals. Now, therefore, I, Mayor Tim Hancock, proclaim September 13th through September 19th, 2026, as Adult Literacy Week in the City of Riverton and witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the State of Wyoming to be affixed. This 15th day of September 2026. So. Sometimes when you talk about something like this, people are like, well, wait a minute, that's. I my friends all read or the people that I know all read or they're all. It's more prevalent than you realize. We actually have people sometimes that come through the court system and our defense attorneys will sometimes. try to make sure that they can read in really nonchalant ways because people that can't read sometimes they're embarrassed about it. They might not want people to know about it and frankly they get used to faking it in a lot of different ways. So it's something that we have here in our community. We have people that are not reading or writing at a basic level and so I think recognition for this and Just helping people understand it's something that you can overcome. You can get the education you need. You can reach your goals even if they seem so far away to you right now. It can happen. And I think there's a lot of people that are dedicated to making that happen. And community colleges are one of the best partnerships that we have. And CWC does a lot of work in that area. So anyway, just wanted to share that proclamation first. If you have been like me and you have recently enjoyed having people in your community or in your neighborhood putting in broadband, which we've all loved, it's been a ton of fun. It has not been fun for me. I've actually been complaining to my family because I just barely, a couple of years ago when they replaced the driveway, they did a lot of work in our neighborhood and they had to replace some of the concrete so they could raise the road. And they had to replace the very bottom of my driveway. So when they did that, they killed my grass. Not all of my grass, but just the grass right on the corner of the driveway. And so, I did not want to fix it because I was a little bit angry about the fact that my grass was dead and I didn't want to have to go and fix that little like one foot by one foot spot. Well, this year I decided to do that. I planted some grass there. It was coming in nicely. And then they came in and put in broadband in my neighborhood. And where did they connect it to but that same spot of grass that I finally this year decided to plant some grass seed there. I say this not because it's the end of the world, but because there are those little annoyances that happen in life. And I would encourage you if there's been any damage or anything done when they've been bringing in fiber, which by the way, I'm really glad of. I think it's great. It's gonna bring Riverton into the 20th century. Okay, 21st century maybe. But I'm really glad that it's coming in and I think it's awesome that it's there. But if you have had some issues, We have been talking about some issues that people have had with like maybe property damage or that kind of thing. I would encourage you to reach out to our community development director who's been trying to work between some of our citizens who have been dealing with some issues with broadband getting installed. There has been a little bit of misinformation out there that when some of the people were talking to folks that were putting in broadband, they were saying, oh, this is the city doing it. I am telling you, the city is not doing it. It is on a right of way for utilities. So, yes, we have to make sure that they can do it and they have permission to do it. But the people that are putting it in, it's part of a contract. They are allowed to do it. It's there. It's okay. It's not the city. But if you do have issues, please feel free to reach out to Mr. Michaud, and he can get you directed to the right place. All right? And no, I'm not going to go to them and make them replant my little one foot by one foot plot of grass. I will probably leave it until next spring and then it will remain dirt next spring too, but maybe.

Just spray paint it. Just pave it.

Get somebody to put some.

It'll still look good.

Spray paint. Oh, green. I like it. Green spray paint. There we go. How to get your yard looking well from Councilwoman Johnson. Don't take your advice. Your lawn always looks great. Your yard looks good. I guess the other thing I would talk about is just There will be some news coming up with some changes and everything with ambulance and I'll let the county sort through announcing all of that to everyone. So just keep your eyes open for what's gonna happen in the future with ambulance. So be aware of that. But that's all I have. communication from the floor citizens comments if there's anyone in the audience who wants to address the council about an item that's currently on the agenda please feel free to come up during the agenda item and speak to us then if you want to talk about something that's not on the agenda feel free to come up to the microphone tell us your name if you're with an organization what organization you're with try to keep your comments to five minutes we don't like throw you out if you go over five minutes but i will tell you that your five minutes is up and ask you to please sit down if you're part of a group we do give you 10 minutes so if you have like three or four people who are speaking you can kind of take turns with the other people with your group but i'd ask regardless especially if you're going to speak during an agenda item try to keep it focused on the agenda item if you're going to speak now i just ask you to refrain from Anything that's going to be disruptive to the meeting. So, I see a young lady here who is wanting to come up and speak. Please feel free to come on up. Two young ladies.

Hi, we're from the Berman Light Riders 4-H Club. My name is Brindle Beckin. I'm Easton Beckin, and I'm also representing the Riverton FFA chapter. We came here to request to put up flags during National FFA Week and National 4-H Week down Main Street and Federal. The weeks are, for National 4-H Week, it would be the 4th through the 11th of October, and then for National FFA Week, it would be the 20th through the 27th of February. These are some really cool weeks where we get to promote all the cool things we get to do.

All right. Is that it? You still have a couple minutes if you want to just filibuster right now. All right. And then what was your name? Aspen? Did I get it wrong?

Brindle.

Brindle?

I'm Easton.

Easton. Okay. Brindle and Easton. And you have the same last name, so I'm assuming you're sisters.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, good. Well, I guess the first question for you, Mr. Butterfield, because you're kind of the keeper of the calendar for flags. Do we have anybody else for 4th through 11th of October or the 20th through the 27th of February?

Not that I'm aware of. Ms. Harris is looking at that right now. I think we're okay. Okay.

I'm sorry, the date's in February?

February was the 20th through the 27th.

We would hopefully be able to hang the flags up the Sunday before and take them down the Monday after.

Okay, so just a little bit, eight days about. Yeah. That's fine. Okay, are we good then? Any problem with the council?

No, no.

Well, I think you're good to go.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for coming here. Appreciate you both, Brindle and Easton. Is that your mom who's taking pictures? Good. Yeah, they did really well. You didn't even have to come up and bail anyone out. All right, anyone else? If you're coming up to talk about the 4th through 11th of October and the 20th through the 27th of February and putting up flags.

They got us.

The answer is no, they beat you.

No, but we're not going to filibuster either. I'm Mary Axon with our recreation.

Oh, and I'm Addie Thomas.

And before we start, we just came to give you a quick report on our summer programming and just touch base with you guys since you're our funder and let you know how wonderful our summer was. But we are so grateful for your funding. We're grateful for the investment in our community and that you trust us to offer these services to our community. On one random weekday in early May, we opened registration, and in the first 30 minutes, we had 448 registrations. We didn't crash the system this year. Last year we did. They were ready for us this time, so it was really exciting. And to put that into perspective, yesterday was our largest day so far for the fall, and we had 21. So we had 450 registrations in 30 minutes in the summer. The summer was wonderful. We offered a lot of programs. We do our summer academy program, but in addition to that, we had 40 different programs in addition to the summer academy that hit all age groups ranging from twilight tots to beginning band to gardening and women's self-defense. We had tried to hit every topic. Now we're moving into our fall programming and we had to make some changes this fall due to the lack of the opportunity to receive District 25 rec board funding to compensate for the city funding. So what we've done is we've removed in the fall any programs that were free to the community that involved an expense. For example, for the last two years, we've hosted a tailgate party at one of the football games. We're not doing that this year. We completely overhauled our basketball program. That was a costly program to us, so we completely overhauled that. We're going to have to discontinue the ice skating at Tonkin, which is hard one for us but we just can't justify the cost of the staff to staff the rink and then we did raise fees across the board we were gentle and hoping that that was was enough and didn't discourage people so we've entered fall really excited and i'm going to pass these around while addy talks about

Yeah, in the brochures you can see all of these class opportunities that we'll have, but we have some old ones such as like adult league volleyball and pickleball and a large variety of toddler programming. We are bringing back that Jingle Bell bus ride that we did last year. This year we are changing it slightly where we are making it more in the evening so they'll drive around and look at Christmas lights while on the bus. So we're excited about that. We are also introducing some new classes such as the teen budgeting and holiday money management to help families budget around the holidays. There's also introduction to sourdough, candle making, hunter safety classes, and obviously much more that you guys can all look through. Yeah.

So we just want to thank you guys for the support. We don't take it for granted. We appreciate it. It's an honor to get to serve our community on your behalf. So thank you. Looking forward to the rest of the year.

Is the rec board, are they just not wanting to fund at all?

So they passed a policy sometime after the initial request that they would not accept any late requests.

so there is the option for doing that next year but this year didn't work and then um okay and then i don't think the city had provided as much funding as we have in years past either towards our rec either yeah so we did take some proactive steps towards that proactive on our behalf okay not for the community necessarily but it is good to know that part of the consequence of that of course is it's like okay we've got to be thinking and that means we're not going to be able to do the ice skating

And you guys know everything's so expensive. We just got these brochures printed and they're two thirds as expensive, more expensive than they were last year for less. Like we got less this year than we did last year and it was two thirds more expensive.

Well, and I liked the description for sourdough 101. Learn the basics of everything sourdough with Mitchell Barnett, Wyoming born and bred. That was good. Who wrote that?

She did. She wrote that. We're not that clever.

Are you kidding me?

That's Mitchell. Have you ever chatted with her?

I knew Mitchell when Mitchell was a little girl. And I don't think she would recognize me if she saw me. I probably wouldn't recognize her if I saw her.

Sign up for her class. You can learn all things sourdough. So thank you. We just want you to know how appreciative we are and we're working hard and trying to put your money to the best use.

Thank you, appreciate it. Thank you both for coming in. Anyone else? Okay, Ms. Harris, Administrative Services Director, could you please read the consent agenda items by title only?

Yes, Your Honor. Minutes of the September 1st, 2026 Regular Council Meeting. Minutes of the September 8th, 2026 Council Work Session. Minutes of the September 15th, 2026 Finance Committee Meeting. Finance Committee Recommendations from September 15th, 2026. Municipal Court Report for the month of August 2026. Riverton Fire Protection District Letter of Support for Grant Application. Lease Agreement, Central Wyoming Amateur Radio Club. Lease Amendment Number 4, ComNet Cellular, Doing Business as Verizon Wireless, and Memorandum of Understanding, Fremont County School District Number 25, School Resource Officer.

All right, and then Finance Committee Director, or Chair, if you could please let us know what the recommendations were from the Finance Committee. Thank you, Your Honor.

The Finance Committee met at 6.45 p.m. tonight and recommend consideration of claims to be paid in the amount of $641,656.53, Elon credit card in the amount of $5,576.71, payroll and liabilities for September 4th in the amount of $252,794.69 for a total of $900,027.93. I'd entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. So moved. Second. Councilwoman Borders with the motion, Councilman Bailey with the second. Any discussion?

Your Honor, I'll abstain from the Bailey Enterprises line item on the Finance Committee report.

Okay. Any other discussion? Anything we want to pull? I will note, just for people, MOU between School District 25. This is a contract we've used for many years for the school resource officer. conversation between the Chief and Mr. Butterfield was this is probably something that needs to be actually signed, or not signed, but needs to be approved by the City Council and give the Chief signatory authority for that. And then for anyone keeping track of what happened with the Verizon wireless lease, well, they finally decided they wanted to approve lease amendment number four with the terms that we had given Mr. Butterfield authority to go back with. So that's that there as well. So just for anybody keeping track of what's on the consent agenda today, things that generally aren't gonna require a lot of conversation. So conversation with Mr. Butterfield was those would make sense to put on the consent agenda.

All right, any other discussion?

All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. I vote aye, motion passes. Eastern Shoshone Business Park presentation, all dreams. Mr. Butterfield, or should I go to Mr. Wilson? All right. Is your computer still working, or did I? Oh, look at that.

I'm going to pray that it is, and there we go. Well, good evening, mayor and council members. For those of you that don't know me, I know a lot of people here. I've been involved in the Eastern Shoshone Business Park since its inception and purchase back in 2016. Spent a lot of time in front of this group. many many times so a lot of familiar faces a lot of faces i just met this evening and uh very excited to uh spend some time with you uh tonight and bring you up to speed on some uh current events and things that have happened out there uh i know that uh Mr. Butterfield brought up that, and I'm going to switch slides here for just one second. I know that Mr. Butterfield brought up, and this is an updated master plan on the project, brought up that we have recently closed on the FedEx new distribution center, which we're really excited to see that happen. I was out there with them today talking to them, and they're well under construction. They want to do everything they can to... get that building vertical before the snow flies and they're hard at it. They've been chomping at the bit to make that happen. That's a great thing. I also would like to just to mention that we have had the opportunity to over the course of the last five months or so to be introduced to a special group called All Dreams. And I was introduced to this group by the Wyoming Business Council and Kevin Kerschnick, who said, hey, Steve, I've got this group, and Patrick Edwards said, hey, Steve, I've got this group that is interested in some unique opportunities for the Riverton market, and I think you guys ought to connect. And so I had the extreme pleasure to come to Riverton and actually made a drive down here, because I live in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and made the drive down and got the opportunity to meet this group and start to spend some time with them and understand what they're thinking. And that's what our presentation is going to be about tonight. I would like to introduce you to the two gentlemen that are part of All Dreams. They're the CEO of All Dreams and also another board member of All Dreams. So let me introduce Marcelo D'Amelio. If you want to stand up, Marcelo. Marcelo and I are going to tag team tonight as we kind of give you this presentation. Also, Leolio, and I still cannot pronounce your last name, so I'm not going to butcher it for you.

Ravagnani? There you go. Ravagnani. That's good. Ravagnani. I'm assuming it's Italian.

Well, for my English, I'm Japanese. For my French, I'm Italian.

So we're going to give kind of a quick presentation because I know it's a lot to absorb, but it's pretty exciting and it's been a great opportunity for me to get to know these gentlemen and we started off with a big presentation in front of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe and SIDA who are actually the owners of the business park and have had the opportunity to enter into a MOU with them to work with them side by side to create this hopefully real reality this opportunity. So pretty exciting. I took the liberty to drop off a package on everybody's desk this evening of the presentation so you can follow along as we go through it. I also gave you a copy of an updated master plan of the overall project which I just had up here a second ago. and i also dropped off another site plan and sometimes this takes seconds to load of the first phase of this project which are some apartments we'll talk more about those in a minute and so the apartment one you might have to share between you because i didn't have this many because i didn't realize everybody was going to be here so but i dropped enough of them off that you can share and and i'll make them available electronically to everyone as well so with that uh I guess I'm gonna turn over to Marcelo in a minute. The whole idea about this project is when they first came to me and they said, Steve, we have something that we've been working on in Wyoming for quite some time. And we started off at the governor's office and the Wyoming Business Council, and we started talking to them about the opportunity to bring what do I want to call it, movie production and that sort of thing to Riverton. And I said, I got to get my head around this. Does that really make sense? He goes, but there's this ecosystem in Riverton that's just, it's perfect. He goes, you know, the governor first sent us to Cheyenne. We spent time in Cheyenne and it just, there wasn't a fit there. Then we went to Casper and we spent time in Casper and they showed us all kinds of sites and properties and we were in Casper and that didn't work and then the business council brought us to Riverton and Kevin and And we started seeing what was going on here. And we took a look at the Eastern Shawnee Business Park. And we took a look at, my gosh, there's an airport here that's huge, can accommodate all kinds of aircraft. There's a college here. I think I could train all these people. There's a brand new hospital, state of the art, the most exciting hospital in the state of Wyoming, as a matter of fact. That's going to open, which I just found out today, like January 2, which is pretty cool. And you've got a project that's got all the infrastructure in it that we've been looking for for years and you got enough property to make this happen. And so when we dissected all this and we understood everything that was going on, it was like, okay, we really need to get into the weeds and let's see if this is something that makes sense. And the more I got into it, the more excited I got because I couldn't get my head around it, just like you probably can't get your head around it yet. But once I did, I'm like, okay, these guys know what they're doing. And I understood their team and the people that they have on their their depth chart and how it all works. I'm like, I believe in this project. The Eastern Shoshone tribe believed in this project and we said, let's try to accomplish this together. With that, I'm going to let Marcelo start to talk a little bit about it. I'm going to run this and he's going to walk around and try to talk out of that mic he's got to hold right up against.

Yes. Thank you, Steve. Good evening, everyone. My name is Marcelo Melo. I'm 52, married to Renata, and we have a little princess called Charlotte. Before I walk you through the presentation, I'd like to give you a background of how we started nine years ago. So my background is I worked for several big corporations such as Kraft Foods, US, and things like this. And I quit my job in 2009. I set up my own fintech. I see Mr. Larson has a fintech t-shirt. So I set up my own fintech, and I sold that fintech. And then I start looking for a new opportunity in business. And then I start researching different sectors and I found out that the digital sector, the creative sector was growing very, very fast. And then I put together some numbers and then I came up with a project called, at that point the project had a different name. in a different state. It was going to happen in Florida. So Laila and I have been friends for forever. Laila has been living in Wyoming in Dubois for almost 20 years. And then I put all those numbers together and I said, oh, there is something happened in the creative industry. So we don't read newspapers anymore. We get information from our phones, from our WhatsApp, from everything else. So the world is becoming more and more digital. And then after doing a long research, I came up with a number that I said, there's a business here. There's a business here. So we put this business together around the creative industry. Creative industry could be, at that point, human TV, some virtual reality, augmented reality, and things like this. So we put this project together in 2018. We raised 135 million US dollars in 2019. We were ready to go in Florida, and then boom, COVID-19. So the money just disappeared. The world was shut down, and we couldn't go ahead with that. So I parked that project for four years. And I revisit that project in 2024. And then I said, now I'm going to, my retired brother was in Wyoming, Dubai, in this beautiful place called Lava Creek Ranch. And I said, let me bug him a little bit. I didn't do this first time. Let me do it again. Then I called Lely. I said, Lely, I have a project for you. This is the project. This is how it looks like. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, give me two days. And he got back to me and said, Marcelo, I'm in under one condition. It has to be in Wyoming. There are too many Brazilians. I'm Brazilian. There are too many Brazilians in Florida. I said, OK. I said, Wyoming, okay, tell me a little bit more about Wyoming. And then I started visiting the state. As Steve said, I just, I'm glad we didn't do this in Florida for two reasons. And I'm telling this from the bottom of my heart. First of all, the technology we're going to be able to implement at that point is way more advanced than it was eight years ago. And second, the main foundation of all dreams is the community sense. This is a legacy. This is a long, long-term project, and it will only work if the community and everyone else is behind it. And that could happen only here in Wyoming, in Rivertown. Okay. I'm just... tell a little bit about their projects. The reason why we chose Riverton, so I want you to keep a word in mind throughout the presentation, ecosystem. All dreams are an ecosystem. It's all about creating jobs, training people, building communities and working together, living together, having fun together and generating more and more jobs and more and more development. all together. So we chose Riveter for the reason why Steve mentioned, but there are a few things I would like to highlight here. First of all, community is very important for us, and we found this here. We've been talking to a lot of people. A month and a half ago, we spent one week talking to several people here. That includes Mr. Butterfield, CWC, we spent a lot of time with them, with Idea Inc. and a lot of other people around the city. So there's a strategic location for us. CWC is super important because you're gonna see that it's part of our ecosystem too. generate jobs, but we need someone to train these kids to be employed by our companies, by the companies that are going to join our ecosystem. So CWC is very crucial for us. Our piece of land sits in an area called Opportunity Zone 1.0.

I'll just say a few words about that, but this is very important for us.

Opportunity Zone, it's not us saying that. It's the most knowledgeable tax lawyers in the country. It's the most powerful tax incentive that ever existed in this country. Because you have two incentives. You can bring money from anywhere. You just sold your portfolio, your Google shares. and you have tax to pay, you bring money to an opportunity zone business, and you get your tax deferred by five years. Because this is a rural area, you get a discount of 30%. So in the end, you're going to end up paying 50%, 30% discount. But five years is going to bring down to another 50%. This is a big incentive. And if you hold your investment for 10 years or more, it's zero tax on capital gain. So if you brought a million dollars, and your million dollars in 10 years were $3 million, you would have to pay tax on capital gain on top of your $2 million. So that is 50% on top of that. You just don't pay that money. So that's good. That's a big tax. This is good for us because you attract a lot of investment, and we need a lot of investors to pull it off. So why Eastern Shoshone? Because of the infrastructure, the partnership, the vision, and everything else. We are very happy that we JV with the CETA, which the Eastern Shoshone LLC. So for the business park, we're very happy for that. So since we're building a community, since we're building an ecosystem, we try to find out what makes a great community great. So education, then we decide to partner with CWC, right? Housing, we're going to build a few houses here. So we're going to... We're going to tell you a little bit more about this small business. It's all about local community health care. We have a state of the art hospital coming, as Steve said, in two months, three months time. One minute walk from our headquarters, so it's OK. One thing that is very important for us We are here to build on a proud legacy. So the Eastern Shoshone tribes, they have four rich cultural traditions. So that's what we're looking at. Local families have built businesses. Dedicated educators created opportunities for all. Public servants built essential trust and infrastructure and healthcare entrepreneurs. So we're building on something that is already in place. We're not reinventing the wheel. and our sense of community needs that kind of thing. So as Steve said, we started talking to the governor's office last year, and we've been talking to a lot of people. at state level, at county level, and now at city level. So they all pretty much said the same thing for us. We need more opportunity for young people. CWC president told us, we train people here, they end up being employed somewhere else. So we'd love to fix that. So we need more opportunities for young people. We need better career paths. We need housing. We need economic diversification. We need to keep families together. And we need to attract talent without losing the community character. So that's what we were told. So that's exactly what Old Dream is about. And this is perhaps the most important chart. We're not here to change Rivertown. We're here to help Rivertown to become even more Rivertown. That's our drive here. OK, best of local, best of global. That's what we're doing here. Please, next slide. OK, you're going to see a few circles like this. So as I said, all started with we have the perfect location and the perfect culture and community sense here. Central Wyoming College, Regional Airport, Medical District, East Shoshone Business Park, and downtown Rivertown. That means small business and local businesses. So those are our four commitments with Riverton. Good work for local people, reasons to stay, reasons to come home, a place that feels alive, and show what community-led growth can do for the local area. That's how it started back in 2018, when I first designed that project. But when I reassessed that project in 2024, the numbers were six times bigger. Because not only digital has to do with what we think it's digital, with cinema, television, and everything else, but it's everywhere. So our idea is to set up some offices here and bring companies from all of those sectors. And those sectors are bigger than they appear. For example, I'll just tell you, the gaming sector, this is not gambling. This is gaming. It's 2 and 1 half times bigger than Hollywood industry all combined. The film and TV industry all combined, not only Hollywood. Why? Because kids are playing games across the world, anytime, anywhere, and you don't have a budget, you don't need a budget, all you need is a computer, right? But someone is creating those games, and those games, not only are for entertainment, but they are for training. I'll give you an example. Kraft Foods invested last year 55 million US dollars just in the first three months to use games to train people. Because think about this. They have in the US 22,000 salespeople. And they come up with a new product, a new Oreo. They own the brand Oreo, the biscuit. So rather than handing out some papers so 20,000 people can be trained, they can just gamify that. The word they use is gamify. They create a very interesting game. So salespeople can compete. Whoever wins gets a trip to Alaska or to France or wherever. So that's the way they train people. It's way more fun. And you can really tell if someone is actually learning or not. and in a fun way. So that industry is another big thing. So our idea is to attract people behind that, people who are developing that kind of gamification to sell to Kraft Foods, to Google, to anyone else. That's a company. So education, television, and sports content is another big business. I mean, I was born in 1974, so sports for me was pretty much running after a ball. Now it's different. People really make money and become professional esport men. So next one, please. This is just an example of what has been developed in the US recently. Next, please. of our solution. Our solution for that kind of demand is to put together the next generation infrastructure, cultivate local talent, global and local integration, and create a vibrant ecosystem. That's our solution for the pent-up demand I just mentioned to you. I just gave you a few examples a couple of minutes ago. Next, please. OK, this is a long, long-term project, right? So next. In the beginning of next year, we're going to build 216 apartments. But the entire project will take 10 years or more, hopefully more. So I promise my partners that I'm going to be here for the next 10 years. So I'm going to hand out someone else younger than me who could just take this to the next level. But hopefully, this is going to be something that will be around forever. And that's our idea.

So at this point I've got to interject a couple things here, Marcel. So what got my appetite really fired up was, and this is an interesting statistic, is Paramount, Netflix, for example, Paramount year before last had a $13 billion budget for film and TV production. And that budget covered the entire world, right? So they were only able to spend about $9 billion. So they left. four, four and a half billion dollars on the table because they did not have any facilities. There was nowhere to produce film, TV, movies, all that kind of stuff. It's a staggering number to look at. But if you look at every, I mean, and these studios are scattered across the country, But it's a staggering number when you think about they can't spend all the money that they want. And it's not just Paramount. It's not just Netflix. It's all of them, Hulu, HBO. They all have these extraordinary budgets, and there's nowhere to produce this kind of product and content. And so there's such a pent-up demand for it that it's like you tell us where we can go do this. We want to come, and we want to do it. And the more I got into the depth of their organization and the people that they have on their board and the people that work on this, we're talking executives that were with Sony, executives that were with HBO. These people know everybody in the industry. They understand everything that's going on. They have the ability not only to create the studio and the whole thing, program, but they also have the ability to direct the traffic and say, you know where you need to go and where you can go is let's go to Riverton because Riverton's got capacity right now and you should be in there and we should make it happen. And so that was one of the most staggering things I heard about the entire presentation once I really got into it and I understood it. So, Marcelo, I'm going to let you pick up, but that is a staggering number when you really start to think about it.

Yeah, thank you Steve. Not only are we building 30,000 square feet studio, but we're also building 300 square feet studio for young people creating content. Because these people, they part with their friends and they go backpacking in Europe. And they broadcast that, and that becomes content. Content not only just what we see on CNN, Netflix, BBC, ABC, or whatever. It's something that people create, and that generates a lot of money, generates a lot of jobs, and that's the future. Please, next.

I think we ought to talk a little bit more about the first phase, because the first phase is what's really exciting. It's got film and TV studios in it. It's got virtual production studios in it. It's got production offices. It has AI infrastructure in it. All of these things need education, and we believe that Central Wyoming College can provide that education for students coming out of their program to be able to come here and be able to work and be able to provide the necessary employment requirements that need to happen here. So that's pretty cool in itself. We also believe that in the first phase, there's housing. Marcelo brought up apartments. We're going to talk more about apartments, town homes, that type of thing. We had a huge housing study done by a nationally recognized housing firm that has told us what the existing demand is in Riverton, and I'll talk more about that in a few minutes as well. It's not going to surprise anybody because you all live here. And I've been here for 10 years working on this project, and I know what the situation is. And the education partnerships, when we had the opportunity to meet with them and the excitement that they understand and they realize, it was pretty realistic. It was pretty cool. So let's keep going. I'm sorry. I just had to chime in here.

Next slide, please. This is phase two. Phase two is a little bit more about bringing more businesses to the city, to the ecosystem, increase the creative productions, significant job growth, growing resident population.

Can you get a little closer to the mic? Yeah, sure, absolutely.

Expanded retail service and new hotels and conference facilities.

Next, please.

This is the second circle we're seeing. That means companies attracted by available talents, talents drawn by diverse job opportunities to find local careers to build a future, secure profitable cash flows and families with a strong community sense. This is phase three. This is in 10 years' time. That's our projection.

Can you stay close to it there, Marcelo?

Yeah, sure, absolutely. Oh, there you go. Yeah, okay. Next, please.

And I should say Marcelo's about to lose his voice, so that's why he's . Oh, has he?

Yeah, yeah.

We've been having you talk a lot.

No, no, that's fine. That's fine. I'll be fine within the next 45 minutes. Then my voice will be gone, but that's fine. So in a simple phrase, our mission is to create a master plan and community at the forefront of modern content creation. That summarizes what we're trying to build here. Next, please. So there are several opportunities. We already talked about some of them, but opportunity number one, it doesn't mean it's the most important. It's just a random. So film and film production. Next slide, please. And this is very important because not only the ecosystem will benefit from that, but everyone else in the city and in the county will benefit from that. So that means if you have an equipment rental, and I've seen someone who's got an equipment rental t-shirt here today. So these people we need to rent cars, we need to rent equipment, we need to rent things. So we hopefully can foster the entire economy that goes beyond our ecosystem, beyond our city and throughout all the county. So more schools, more retail, this is a part of our land that's gonna be dedicated to a retail transportation. We're talking about the creative industry, that means local artists will have an opportunity to show their abilities and things like this, photography or whatever. Next please, Steve. Second one, we already spoke a lot about it, the gaming industry. As I said, this is two and a half times bigger money-wise than the film industry. And then we also believe there will be a local impact, which is on the next slide. So again, it's education. This is latest technology. So kids are going to be trained by CWC. And they're going to be employed by the companies joining our ecosystem. Obviously, these kids like very much an event. So we have a calendar of events. One of the first things we're planning is just an international e-sport competition. And the finals are going to be hosted here. So it all starts virtually. But in the end, we'll have a physical event here where probably we'll have 500 kids coming here and for the finals. So this is very important. Here you can read, Old Dreams is not an AI company and not a commercial data center operator. We use AI. We're not bringing another data center to AI and we're not an AI company. We use AI technology for post-production. 10 years ago, 20 years ago, you would spend 6 percent of the time and 7 percent of the budget in post-production. You would shoot the film and to post-product that film, it would take you twice the time they took you to shoot and twice the money. Now, we can use AI to finalize that. in a month with a fraction of the budget. So that's the kind of thing we're going to be using here. Growing local talent is very much our partnership with CWC. We're going to train those kids and those kids are going to get employed by the companies that are going to join our ecosystem. Next, please. That's what we think are the benefits of having partnerships, local force, skilled graduates, self-renewing community, and innovation and entrepreneurship. Next, please. As I said, we're going to have a calendar of hospitality and events. So we can, throughout the year, we're going to have a lot of events, lectures, competition, contact, and things like this. Next, please. That's a reservation. I'm going to let Steve say a few words about that. But we're pretty much planning single family homes, apartments, workforce house, and then townhomes. If you want to say a few words about that.

Let me expand on the residential piece. So we had the opportunity to hire a company called Danter and Associates. They're one of the leading housing consultants in the United States, well recognized. And we had them come to Riverton. And they did a housing analysis based on the current demand in Riverton, as well as placing the new demand that's gonna come from the hospital. So we spent time with Cort and his new CEO and his group. And so we got all the information of the 250 employees that they anticipate having within the next 24 months after the hospital opens, which is pretty exciting. We also got to understand what the salary requirements or salaries are gonna be for all those employees. We know what's happening here by all the demographic information that's available. They did a complete market analysis of what's available in Riverton, in Fremont County. We went to every surrounding community. And I don't have to tell you the answer to that, but there's like zero, anything available. And so they came back to us and they said, Steve, there is what we can project with outputting this project on top of that, which would be a couple of years down the road. What we see today is a pent up demand for 216 apartment units, of one, two and three bedrooms and a mix. And I've given you a handout and I've also provided a kind of a location. So this is the overall master plan to identify. This is Walmart at this end. Tractor supply is right here. Clear up on the north end is FedEx right here. The new FedEx facility, Amazon's right here in the middle. And so right behind Walmart on the north end, we've planned 216 apartment units, which we hope to, and here's a detail of that, it's gonna generate uh one two and three bedrooms like i said we hope to and this would be a market rate apartment project nothing exists in riverton this particular type so it's a market rate project that we would hope to be into the city with building plans and permits and that type of thing by uh late this year early next year and as soon as the frost comes out of the ground and it says it's okay to go we could start we would start construction this project would uh come online in the summer of 29 i'd say spring summer of 29 and be completed by the fall of 29. in addition to the 216 apartments they also came back and said there's a pent-up demand for 150 townhome condominium type or condo type duplex type units as well. Two and three bedrooms, garages, that type of thing. So we've also started the work on planning in this area right here in the business park, how we can lay those out and how we can get those going. We would follow the start of the apartments with probably the start of the town homes, that type of thing. In the summer of 28, next summer, we come in for permits and hopefully get those on. So there'd be about a six month lag time between those. Those will come online two years later as well. It's about 24 month construction schedule up here to get all that kind of stuff done. mr bailey did you have a question okay sorry so go ahead steve yeah no no worries so it's it's uh great news we also found out that you know the the the pent-up demand here for just horizontal movement between where people live today and where they would like to live and where they want to move so we'd see transition that way as well so it's it's pretty exciting and just that's just with what you have today so we know that we have the ability to accommodate that with with the existing infrastructure in the business park and things that we have going. So that's pretty exciting. So we're excited about that. I'll talk more about a few other things after Marcelo keeps going, but that's going to create a lot of a lot of you know construction jobs contractors we've been talking to i mean we're going to try to hire whatever we can locally i had that conversation with mr bailey earlier and how what a struggle it is to find people in this job market to this community in fremont county to work everybody could do a whole lot better but if we can you know get this thing moving i think it's an incredible opportunity for everyone marcelo let's keep going yes kind of a feel of what we're thinking about from a residential community type field so uh there'll also be retail opportunity you know we've started with some retail we've been talking to uh we've had interest from another grocery store so we've had interest from coffee shops we've had interest from uh other retailers that are excited restaurants so i'm hoping that we can get some everybody said to me steve we need some new restaurants in riverton and Mike, we're working on that really, really hard. We've got George at Home Stores helping work through all that. We've also reached out to some brokers in other communities on the retail side that are retail specialists to help bring things for them to take an opportunity to look at Riverton. With this hospital opening, that's going to be just huge. Everybody's been waiting for this to happen, for it to happen and actually become a reality. That's going to be a great thing and a great incentive for a lot of people on the retail side to say, okay, I think the time is ready and things are ready for Riverton. So Marcelo, I'll let you pick back up.

Yes, absolutely. Those are the benefits of having retail. So as I pointed out for the other opportunities, so enhanced strata-committed bonds, sustainable vitality, and local economy boost. Next please, Steve. OK. We did economic impact research. This is 10 year, and this is for the Fremont County, not only Rivertown, but Fremont County as a whole. So we expect to generate 3,500 direct jobs within the next 10 years, 5,000 indirect jobs. This project is budgeted at $4,000. 500 million US dollars, private capital, no public money for that. And we expect the impact to be over a billion dollars. Because we think for every dollar we're going to invest, it's going to be probably $1.3 or $1.8 in side opportunity investment for there. We're bringing half a billion, it's probably gonna be over 1.3 billion, 1.8 billion impact for the entire county in 10 years time. So we're working with CWC to create, obviously we're gonna be measured by square feet of development. On the left hand side you see square feet of development. Total investment deployed, number of jobs and et cetera. Those are the traditional KPIs, but we're working on several other KPIs, such as number of young people choosing to stay in Rivertown. So we know out of the 10 kids that finish at CWC, a large number of them just leave the city, leave the county, and leave the state. So we can measure that, the impact that ecosystem we will have on that kind of element, let's put it this way. New business opening and flourish locally so we can kind of track if our ecosystem is generating new business and new ventures and et cetera. Teachers and key workers finding affordable housing, families returning to build their lives here, growth of tribal entrepreneurs and local ventures, small businesses, and a renewed sense of community. So we're working on those KPIs so we can add to the traditional finance KPIs, those KPIs that are, let's say, community-oriented. So I'm not going to say, I'm not going to walk you through the biography of each of us, so if you don't have anything to do tonight between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., you can just start reading our biography and immediately sleep, but... I just want to highlight that everyone here is on board because of the legacy behind that. Not only that, everyone has a lot of experience in the sector. For example, Saul Padilla has been with Sony Professional and Sony Technology for over two decades. And his last position was president, number one of Sony Professional Solutions in the US. So Keith is the same kind of track record. George is the same kind of track record in different areas. So we're planning here to have one hat for each of our verticals. So for the verticals in film interview, we're going to have someone hatting that. For the vertical of AI, we're going to have someone hatting that. For the vertical of game, we're going to have someone hatting that. And that means it's people who have a good track record and bought our idea of creating this ecosystem here. Those are the two requirements that we're going to use to qualify people. So we're still building our board. We have invited a few people from Riverton and from Fremont County. The names have not been... have not been communicated yet, have not been published yet. But once we close there, once we convince them to become part of our board, which is not difficult, has not been difficult so far, we're going to let you know. As Steve mentioned, why we believe this works in Riverton, we believe we have an experienced and committed team. That's very important. We think Riverton have the strategic advantage, as we mentioned before. We think we made an excellent partnership with the Shoshone tribe, and we were very lucky when we found the business park. And there's an unprecedented era of content production, and that includes the different verticals I mentioned here before. Next, please. So I would like to end my presentation by reading this. This is what we believe. our long-term vision is. Imagine 10 years from now, a young filmmaker studies at CWC, starts a company inside all dreams, raises a family in Riverton, parties with the local business, works alongside Eastern Shoshone entrepreneurs, and enters the next generation. That's our vision of future. Thank you. Next slide, please. Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

I guess real quickly, I just wanted to walk you through our updated master plan, let you kind of know the areas that we think this opportunity takes place and like I said before so that the hospital is new hospitals at this general location and on the northern half of this site is 305 acres in size so there's about 250 acres left that has not been developed yet after you take out FedEx and the hospital and the other existing facilities there. But we envision the studio project and all the things that we talked about to be in this general area right here. We envision all the housing and that type of thing down in this area, down in here. We envision the retail to be along the Federal Boulevard corridor in that area and this area. I think we didn't mention, but the opportunity as this comes online is going to create the opportunity for additional hospitality needs. So I envision additional hotels and that type of thing coming to the community at some point during the course of phase one. So that's the location of that kind of stuff in general in this master plan. So with that, I think we maybe open it up to a few questions if you had some, and I'd love to do what I could do to answer them all. Where was the conceptual studio location? I couldn't see the mouse. Where was the conceptual? Oh, the studios, if you can see the mouse, I'm sorry. It's in this general location.

Oh, okay. It's general location right here. I'm sorry.

Okay, so.

However, I mean, this almost seems like it'd be the idea would be sub-developer, so to speak, where it'd be like all Dreams is wanting to they've got this microcosm envisioned and would just need to get investors, get people that would have to be interested in moving a studio here or whatever there might be that they would be looking like. Is that?

No, no. This is going to be in all dreams and sit a joint venture project. I mean, the fact that we've got the Opportunity Zone 2.0 and the investor dollars that can come into this are, it's staggering. I mean, to get the investors to come in. This is what sold me on the project, and I said this earlier, is the fact that the team of people here that are going to manage this and run this and operate this facility and this project have years and years of experience. They know how to get it set up, get it running. We'll build it. We'll pay for it. We're not out here asking for... dollars, we're here saying, hey, this is a community effort. Everybody's going to have to participate in this for this to happen. The money is out there. The opportunity to raise the money and get the money is available. And the demand of this market is just growing at an incredible pace. And this project just happens to be perfectly situated in Wyoming to take advantage of it. And so I don't know.

Let me just clarify that, Mr. Hancock. This is 300 acres, OK? So the Shoshone has already sold 50 of them. OK, that means FedEx, the hospital, Walmart, and everything else that you see there. we join venture for that to build old dreams across the 250 remaining. We're going to build the offices, we're going to build the homes, we're going to build the studios, We're going to build the hotels. We're going to do everything. It's our responsibility to bring companies to join us. And by joining us, you get a discount to use our studios. To join us, we're going to distribute for us. One thing that we found out, there are over 2,000 small and mid-sized production companies in the U.S., They produce good content, but they cannot sell to Netflix. They cannot sell to Amazon. The reason being is they might have two or three titles a year. So Netflix is never going to sit down with that. But if we manage to get 100 of them with us here, each of them produce two or three titles, that's 300. Then we sit down with Netflix, and then we sell 300. Not only that, we invite Netflix and those guys to have a small office here, small space with us, so they can tell us what they need. They say, if you look at three or four years ago, a lot of documentaries came up because there was a big demand for documentaries. You see documentaries on everything from Mike Tyson to I don't know, Burger King, right? So that's what happened. So that's the ecosystem. It's our responsibility not only to develop that, but to get this going, get this over the line, and get this to a point where it's self and fit themselves, the business fit themselves, yeah.

Any other questions?

Yeah, and I do have a couple of questions. Just real quick, because I'm sure we'll be asked. In regards to the housing, what kind of housing is that? Is that low-income housing? Is it tribal housing? Is it housing for anybody?

Is it market rate housing? It would be garden-level, three-story apartment buildings for the apartments, and one-story townhomes, garages, A single car, two car garage. It will be market nice.

Okay.

So something that doesn't exist here.

And my second question is everybody gets excited when you hear new retailers are a possibility and new shopping opportunities or new restaurant opportunities. Has there been any studies about how it will affect small business bringing in retail?

No. We have not had any of that discussion.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions? Going to give Pixar a run for their money?

This is a lot to absorb, just so you know. And I've done this presentation now, all of us, a few times. And so we've gone back. Tomorrow or Thursday, we're going back to IDA Inc. And, you know, we'll download with them again. We'll be back at CWC, download with them again. So it's a lot to absorb. And you're going to have questions and you're going to, you know, things are going to come up. And I'm here. I've been here for 10 years since this project started. And I'm always available. I know a lot of you, like I said. And we'll come back and we'll give updates and we'll let you know as things are starting to move and and that sort of thing. So I've been very good about doing that the entire time since we started this project.

So who all do we have here? We have Mr. Ravagnani. Ravagnani? We have Elio.

Okay.

Lelio, that's how you introduced yourself to me. And then we have Marcelo. Are these two gentlemen with you as well? Okay. Separate. Well, you could be. I don't know. Yeah. All right. Well, it sounds like an exciting prospect, and I think keep us updated as to how things go going forward.

We will, by all means.

Certainly excited about a lot of things you have going on over there at the Eastern Shoshone Business Park.

Thank you.

Keep up the good work.

I was going to say you had an award before. My voice is very .

Come right here and talk.

But the real thing is besides thank you very much for hearing us and knowing what I got in this project was understanding our time is passing too fast. And the group of people was being put together to make something. It's like a legacy for the rest of our lives, which is this miracle tomorrow. We don't know the past. We know today. And I thought to give a little back for what I could and what I done during my whole life until we to get to this stage. Most of the team we put together is team which have the same feeling. We want to make something happen before we end. And more importantly, we want to see kids happy and they stay in this state. Visiting CWC, we knew they have everything possible to make these kids progress in having dreams in their lives. But fact is, if we don't create the opportunities, they go from other places. And being here for 22 years, I know farming will be not as good. I used to be also a rancher in Brazil, and very hard in these days to have people ranching. And when I learned and I went too deep about this artificial intelligence, all the great thinkers in the game My granddaughter was seven years old. She can do more on my phone than I can myself. And this is why putting that English work in Sony and all these very top companies and decide to come with us make us feel very good about it. And I guarantee you guys it will be something special for you. for this region, and this is why I got the phone. I like to let big guys talk, but sometimes it's Appreciate it, Lelio.

That's just what I'm going to go with. All right. Well, thank you both for telling us about what you've got going on. Great vision, look forward to seeing what happens. Let's go ahead and take a recess right now if we could. 8.43, let's go ahead and take a recess till 8.53, kind of weird, we'll do that. Next up on the agenda, we have Contract for Service Funding Agreement, Paws for Life Animal League. Mr. Chief.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The City of Riverton is responsible for protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the community through the enforcement of city ordinances. This responsibility includes but is not limited to addressing issues related to dogs, cats, running at large and vicious animals through impoundment and quarantine. The city had signed a service agreement for set services between the city and Paws for Life, which expired on June 30th of this year. Well, under the previous service agreement, there's been several areas which required some clarification uh staff has been worked has worked cooperatively with board members of pause for life animal league in riverton to draft the service agreement that is before you tonight i just want to thank lieutenant smiths i had to go out of state for a little bit so he took the lead on working things out with PAWS, and before you tonight is an agreement that our AM Control, Lieutenant Smith's and PAWS board have reached an agreement as far as the wording and any clarification. With that, Your Honor, I'd stand for any questions that you may have.

All right. Thank you. I'd entertain a motion to approve the service agreement between the City of Riverton and the Paws for Life Animal League.

So moved. Second.

Councilwoman Borders with the motion, Councilwoman Preston with the second. Discussion on that.

I'll speak. I think there's a lot of things that come into play and are a factor in this agreement. I was under the understanding, and I'm sorry, please correct me if I'm wrong, that we weren't going to discuss this agreement until we decided if that's the route we were going to take, if we were actually going to consider a pay per animal. concept model whatever you want to call it um i have a couple of concerns i understand that pause has made an announcement that they are going to be building their own facility or moving to a new facility which i'm very excited for them for but i think that leaves the city in a position to look forward to alternatives as well and i don't want to get caught with um no plan in place with that. I have concerns that they haven't been able to accept animals over the last few months and Forever Found in Fremont County has been absorbing that shortfall and they've been doing that without payment. And I think that that needs to be remedied as well. But for the first time tonight, Mr. Lewis, he's in the audience and I'd like to hear exactly how many they have taken in for the city. And I still believe that I don't think we should contract with one specific organization independently. I think we should leave our options open to ensure that all animals have an opportunity of placement and having the ability to choose between multiple different organizations, I think is a good option. But I would like to hear from Mr. Lewis and what a contractor, what services with the city would look like with them as well. before any decisions are made.

Okay. Chief, tell me, just in general, what's different between this agreement and one's past? Or maybe Lieutenant Smith's would be better? I don't know. Yeah. Just some highlights. We will be glad to give you those highlights.

Yes, thank you, Your Honor, Counsel.

Oh, wee.

So a couple of the main differences here, one of these under Section 9H, it outlines that PAWS will take... any impounded animals from the city of Riverton, any dogs or cats. It then outlines that any housing fees, vet, or emergency costs incurred while it is housed, if they cannot accept it, that they have to have an agreement with a third party. The cost of the uh vet costs housing fees or any emergency cost that is going to be dependent on mutually agreed upon agreement between pause and that third party so that's kind of one of the main ones and then a couple other ones are some of the reporting that pause will do and provide to the city of Riverton

And then I guess so just to back up, we've had an agreement previously with pause where we've said. Pause is going to have five kennels that are basically available for the city for. Impounded animals. And then last year's agreement, if I recall correctly, basically said if the city, if pause doesn't have room and the city goes and would find somebody else to take the animals, then pause would bear that cost. That was the agreement last year. I think with that a little bit, but that was well, I mean, I guess that wasn't the agreement that was part of what was the contentious at part of the agreement that was not actually agreed to. And yeah, thank you. Councilman Bailey. Then. But this is a little bit different than that in that this is saying no matter what pause is going to take the animal and then if pause has to have somebody else. take the animal because they don't have room. What happens then?

Correct. So this says outlines that there must always be space available for newly impounded domestic dogs and cats, which are impounded by officials of the city. in the event PAWS is unable to accept any impounded domestic dog or cat, PAWS will be responsible for securing and funding alternative housing for such animals. Any housing fees, vet, or emergency costs incurred while any domestic dog or cat is housed with a third party, the cost will be the responsibility of PAWS or the third party, dependent on their mutually agreed upon agreement.

So then the idea would be, so this is a little bit different than we had tried to do before where the part of the agreement was okay pause if you don't have a space for the animal and we go find a space for the animal then you're going to basically pay us back or however that was going to be worded with the agreement that we did not actually end up passing to be clear but this one would be saying no matter what they're taking the animal and then if they end up contracting or basically subcontracting with another organization, whatever their agreement with that organization, they're gonna bear the cost of that. So we're saying we're gonna pay pause if you don't have space and you go through Forever Found or somebody else and that person would be taking the animal then you're going to be bearing that cost, because we're paying you as the contractor, and then you could pass the, you could have the payment that would go to the subcontractor, basically, is what we would trust PAWS would do, is that? That is correct. Okay.

Councilman Bailey. So that means no matter how many animals we take in, PAWS will take them and either handle them themselves or find somebody to do it. Would be the idea. And so we will never have a case where they say we are full and we cannot take animals.

Which, by the way, I would note in our weekly report, we had just had them take a lot of cats and seven, seven cats. Holy cow.

Seven out of nine of the animals and two dogs.

So, okay. So that would, I think, with this agreement, take care of some of the concerns that Councilwoman Johnson had in terms of saying, okay, if someone else is gonna be taking dogs or cats, we would want the money to go to them, but there would have to be an agreement between PAWS and that organization. But then, now the question is, is that going to happen where the city has been providing some dogs and cats to Forever Found, What's gonna happen with that? Are we gonna say the city's not going to continue that? and we're just gonna go through PAWS and let PAWS sort it out or what?

That is correct. The way I envision that is any animal, domestic dog or cat that we take will then be taken directly to PAWS. Again, then it is up to them to make arrangements. If they are full, make arrangements with the third party for either fostering or to house them for that period of time. Okay.

Then we've got some folks here from Forever Found. Do you have anything that you wanted to chime in? I know Councilwoman Johnson was saying you wanted to speak. Why don't you come up to the mic and tell us your name too?

I'm Mark Lewis. I'm the president of Forever Found in Fremont. And the current issue, I have to get my briefcase. is that over since the 11th of last month we have taken in 29 animals from the city of Riverton and it's a little concerning that they just recently took in animals yet we took animals in on the 14th but of the 29 animals that we've taken in We had 13 dogs, five puppies, 11 kittens. Of those, nine of them were all claimed, most of them within two to three days of being brought in. A large majority of them were the same day. We have four up for adoption. We have eight on hold for medical and age requirements. We won't adopt animals out under a certain age. And then we had one jailbreak. And then we have one pending adoption.

Did we recover the jailbreak, or was it successful?

It was successful. It happens. Our concern is that we have medical bills. And the only thing that we're really asking is that we get reimbursed for the medical. we're not interested in the city having to pay us on a per animal basis or reserving kennels we take every animal that they brought in and we make sure that they get the treatment that they need and constant treatment and we're really just looking to get reimbursed for just the medical side of and so when you've been taking in animals have you had any contract that's saying we're going to be covering medical at least for the impoundment period no we have no agreement with the city okay

Council and orders.

First of all, are you charging a reclaim fee for the dogs that are reclaimed by the owners?

Yep.

So you are recovering some of that. So. I really like what Lieutenant Smith has presented. I feel like there's been an adversarial kind of situation between pause and forever found, and I would love to see you all work together. That's what I would like to see. I think that there's just been too much negativity and I'm not saying it's you, but I'd like to see you and PAWS work together.

Would that be possible? I mean, because what we're talking about with the contract would be that PAWS would be responsible and they could go through anybody else and figure out whatever they need to figure out. Do you see that working with Forever Found or do you see that you'd need something else?

I'm not opposed to any agreement. Like I said, right now, the only thing that we're wondering is where do we recoup our medical costs?

Well, and we do need to talk about that, and I appreciate you coming in. I want to stay focused on the agreement with PAWS for right now, but I do think that that's something we need to make sure we get addressed. So we'll keep talking about that.

So in this agreement, would the agreements that PAWS would have with other providers be part of what the city would look at? I mean, or is that just totally not our problem?

Lieutenant? So, Mayor, if you think of it as just a single point of contact, we would all filter everything through pause. We'd have to pause to look at subcontracting out for other organizations. If they are not able to house all the animals that are coming through their doors, if that answers your question.

Here and I have a follow up there, your honor. The problem that I see, I'm not pointing fingers at anybody, but. I foresee us having an issue where all sudden pause. Can't take animals again. they don't, let's say they have a falling out with whoever else is available and they don't have anywhere, then what are they going to say? And do we have a recourse if they say we aren't going to take animals, are we gonna say that means it's $20 a day or, you know, I don't know what a number would be. but there needs to be a in a contract if you don't perform you have to do xyz and that needs to be in there somehow i guess hold on a second lieutenant smith's do we have anything in there that would have any

So under subsection G, there is a breach of remedies that has been the same from the previous contract. There be a shall notify the other in writing of the breach, including within such notice the facts of conducts constituting the breach. It says the parties agree to meet within five working days of such notice to discuss and resolve the breach. And then if the breach has not been cured within 10 calendar days of such meeting, then either party may take such steps as it deems necessary to enforce its rights under this agreement.

Mayor, so the council could.

Mr. Lewis, you could probably sit down and we'll get you back up if we need to do just so you're not standing there wondering. Chief.

As Councilman Bailey mentioned, if the entity does not follow through with the terms of the MOU, then staff would notify through the city administrator that we would consider that a breach of contract and then it can go before council for resolution.

Okay, Councilwoman Johnson.

I guess I just need a point of clarification. This is the MOU for the contract service funding of $20,000. When they vacate the building and they're no longer getting that for a dollar a year and their utilities paid and all the stuff that goes with that and the obligation to take city animals is no longer on the plate, how does that work? Because if they breach the MOU, that's just for the $20,000. That's not for the use of the building and actually intake of city animals. So when they vacate the building, what happens? Because they're not bound to take them then.

So I don't think there's any discussion from PAWS that they're going to be out of the building before this contract would... I mean, it's not going to happen within the next year. I think that the discussion has been this is something that we're looking into. We're kind of outgrowing the space that we're in. And so I don't think the idea is pauses leaving within the calendar year. This would be what we're going to be doing until next year. Councilman Carr.

I think at that point we're still under contract with an entity. Where they're located doesn't have anything to do with, now it may change some of the terms or conditions that are in the contract, but it's still the contract with the entity that we are delivering animals to. So I don't think, even if they did move, now if they dissolve, then that would certainly be a breach that we could exit the contract from. I don't think it matters where they're located.

So your point is, is whether they had a different building or not, at least this contract would be in place until next July.

Well, and I guess my point on that is that's not even a full year at this point.

Right.

Because, I mean, we are halfway through September. So this only goes through June. Like you said, there's really no way that they're going to be able to do everything by then.

Yeah. You can come on up if you'd like. And tell us your name. Mr. Lewis, sorry. I know it's hard when I'm just kind of pointing out there into the ether.

Back behind you. I'm Devin Kellerhall with PAWS. And I would just like to clarify, in the event that we do get moved, yes, it will not be less than a year. I mean, that's a miracle. It must be. Windfall of money. But our intention is not to cut our relationship with the city. Our intention would be to expand our capacity to serve the city. There had been previous conversations that we had had with Amanda Wood, who was also a part of Forever Found. Our intention was to ideally work with their group and their organization. We've had a lot of good meetings with Amanda with intentions of doing that. In fact, she has stepped in and helped us in some cases with some tougher animals that were not doing well in our shelter. So from our perspective, and I know things are not always that way in the public eye, but our relationship we do not believe is adversarial. Our intention is not, I mean, we have more dogs in this county to multiply multiple shelters, sanctuary situations between the county reservation and the city limits alone. I don't think there are enough shelters here to accommodate those animals. So our intention would never be to just be like, okay, bye city, we're not using your building anymore. But I think it's been very clear based on all the discussions that have been happening over the last several years, including our pause for cause meetings that the capacity of that building just doesn't satisfy what is out there right now. We have brought forth some thoughts that might help to accommodate that building make things work and it's been told to us very clearly that will not happen so we are trying to search out their avenues so that we can help the city in a bigger way we can help the county in a bigger way and maybe build a relationship with the reservation because what we have in this city is not just within the city limits we are having reservation dogs dropped off here this is not just oh hey we live in this little box and these are these dogs that's not what's happening so you know our goal is really to expand our ability to help all the animals within the city we would love to work with forever found we'd love to work with charlie's angels we'd love to work with wind river humane friends of humane there's a lot of great organizations in our town i think having a network of us would be most beneficial to everybody but our goal is never to leave our city relationship. You know, we just want to be able to expand that relationship and really provide a better service to the community and give the dogs a better living situation that we aren't able to do in our current facility.

You think this could be a solution then that what would happen is you'd be taking dogs and cats no matter what and then just finding a place to put them if you don't have the space in your facility and then that would be subject to an agreement with a different organization?

So based on the discussions that we've spent a fair amount of time, the only reason that we're saying is bring them to pause and we will disperse is because then we do have a written third party organization agreement with that other group. Now, where Mr. Lewis is saying he'd like to recoup vet funds. Yeah, well, so would we all, right? And I don't think anybody could say that $20,000 even touches what happens. If a dog gets hit on the road, in the city by a city driver and brought to the vet by RPD and it has to get euthanized, POS pays for that. That doesn't get paid for otherwise. We handle, we shoulder those burdens unless we can find the owner. So that has been a large expense for us. And so in order to be able to say here's the food that we're going to provide you for this animal for five days here's the vet care because we want to make sure that they're vaccinated we want to make sure that they're spayed and neutered if they're not reclaimed then we can control that expense if we have five different people going to stock dock saying i have an rpd dog um pause is paying for it and we don't know about that that can just cause a lot of confusion and issues so our hope is to funnel that

So part of your hope then is to basically have pause be. Taking all the animals it would be your hope is that it would be.

I think that makes it easy again to have one point of contact. They come in, they get put in through our system. We are able to track, did they buy a city license? Did they do any of these things? Again, I'm not familiar with their procedures, but say somebody comes in to pick up their dog, Were they required to get their city license? Did they get their city license? It's not going to get tracked through our system. So now if we have two or three shelters that are all doing things differently, maybe are we making sure they're vaccinated? Are they getting charged for not being altered or, you know, without knowing and tracking it through a system? Again, there's just too many cooks in the kitchen, so it can get a little messy.

Anyone else up here?

Thank you, Devin. So in that case, go ahead. If they bring it, you know RPD brings a dog to Oz. They end up shipping it off to in this example forever found. Is the owner of the dog paying a re reclaim fee to forever found or to pause? And then who gets the money for that?

How would you interpret that in terms of what we have in the MOU here? Chief through pause, pause, everything's filtered through pause.

I think that they would recoup between.

So then pause would have to have an agreement with forever found to that this is per day what we would pay you for housing the animal and we're supplying you the food and we'll take care of the vet bill like we're already doing.

Okay.

All right. Anything else? My main feeling is I just don't want the city being stuck. on a Saturday with the officer having two dogs they picked up and no place to go, like we have in the past. That's where the problem really comes down. And I deeply appreciate all the rescue efforts and the adoptions and all that, and that's all great, but the city's gotta have a place to take animals, period. That's our first job is to get the animals off the street, hopefully get them back to their owners, hopefully give them a better chain on their gate or whatever it takes so that we're not having to deal with them and we don't have vicious dogs running around biting people that are walking their dog or riding a bicycle or whatever, so.

Well, I think that's part of the benefit that the city has with this proposed contract with PAWS is it's saying PAWS is going to be taking the animals rather than having Shannon go and make 10 phone calls to try to find a place where a dog can be staying, come to PAWS, and PAWS makes the 10 phone calls to figure out where the dogs would be staying.

Okay.

Any other discussion on it?

If that can happen, I think that gets us a lot farther than we have been in a long time. It opens up room.

Your Honor, I think I pointed this out at our last meeting that in 20 years, PAWS has been providing this service to the city. I think with a pretty good relationship, they've been having some issues with space, which is perfectly understandable. And I think it's great that we've got all these entities that can work together and let PAWS do the tracking and filter things out from there. But that was my main point. They've never breached the contract. with anything other than the space issue which is kind of out of their control sometimes so i'd like to see a fresh start let pause handle it the city will be covered and everyone should be happy hopefully well i'm not going to be happy i'm just kidding it takes a lot to me we needed a laugh thank you

okay any other discussion in terms of what we have here i i do think whatever we end up having going forward with facility and that kind of thing the pause might be able to get um we'll have to keep talking and figure out what that'll look like i do and i understand kind of the predicament pause gets put in right we've got this space that's provided by the city city wants us to be taking in dogs but we have limitations on space And so that gets difficult. And I understand what you're saying, Devin, in terms of, you know, we're wanting to make this expansion or whatever, and the city is saying, well, we don't want to do it this way. I get that. That's difficult. So it makes sense to say, hey, we're going to have some more space. Really appreciate Forever Found in Fremont County stepping up. have to keep talking about what that can look like i i i guess visit with the chief and see what we need to do and what we can cover or what we've traditionally covered if you know what i mean we'll have to look at that i think generally speaking what we've done is the city has covered medical stuff that comes up with an animal is within that five days before their um Before they're adopted if they aren't reclaimed, but I I don't know. I can't speak to that and we'll have to figure out what that looks like so. But I just don't want to have us getting way out into the weeds on that right now with this agreement being the discussion on the table. Alright, anything else on the funding agreement?

Call for the question.

right all in favor of approving the service agreement between the city of riverton and pause for life animal league say aye aye any opposed say nay nay i vote aye motion passes all right thank you appreciate you all being here and thank you mr lewis for coming in even though we didn't have you specifically on the agenda

Your Honor.

Yes.

Should Mr. Lewis get with Chief Hurtado and Mr. Butterfield about getting some payment back for what they have taken in and taken care of? Because quite frankly, they shouldn't have to take city animals without any kind of form of payment whatsoever.

We'll have to... I mean, at this point, they've done that. there's not been an agreement that they will be receiving payment for that so what that looks like we'll have to discuss with the council um so we could put that on the agenda though futurely probably would be a good idea have some discussion about that in particular so yeah We'll put it on our next meeting to discuss that and figure that out. Come to us with some proposals or whatever you think we need to do, Chief. Or Lieutenant. Or both. We. Okay. Consideration of bids, Central Wyoming Regional Airport Self Fuel Station.

Mr. Tolman. Thank you, Your Honor. The recommendation in front of you tonight is the approval of a bid award for United Uptime Services for construction of a self-serve fuel station at Central Wyoming Regional Airport. This project was originally bid in 2025, last year. Two bids were received, and they exceeded the engineer's estimate, and they were also rejected for not fully meeting FAA requirements. After securing additional funding and then modifying the projects, which now include a 3,000-gallon tank instead of the original 1,000-gallon tank, this project was rebuilt in June of this year. So bids were opened June 30th, and one bid was received. This bid was from Kubit Company, which is a United Uptime Services subsidiary. They were the sole responsive bidder, and they submitted a bid of over $900,000 for the project. What was allowed for the project was just right at $672,000. But being that they were the sole source bidder, negotiations were able to move forward. Ardara worked with Uptime, United Uptime Services. They were able to bring the bid into a closer range of $672,199.24. This is $23,388.92 above the grant award amount. And I did misspeak, the grant award amount was 846,350 dollars, but then subtracting out engineering services, it left that $23,000 overage. So with that, they still needed to take care of electrical work to connect the power feed station to the, the power feed to the fuel station. Modern Electric was able to provide a quote for this work, and they worked through Century Companies, who currently has a contract at the airport. Our DURA then also agreed to reduce their construction observation fee by $8,000, and then helped reduce the offset of the additional electrical costs. So in the end, the final product is a fully self-contained avgas fueling system, complete with a card reader interface, also a filtration system, a lighting system, and then associated fueling equipment. The project in total will cost $846,350. Excuse me, the total funding available is $846,350, and then it will require, in the end, $39,318.43 in additional city funding. These funds are available. There was a $72,000 match for the Safe Streets for All project, which received full funding. This came from a state grant, and then this left previously budgeted city funds that will be unspent. The budget amendment will be required to transfer the funds, and in the end, city staff recommends approving the bid for United Uptime Services for their port fueling project, and the project does exceed the overall grant funding, but the additional $39,319.43 can be covered with existing unspent city funds, so no new funding source is needed. Thank you, Your Honor. Thank you.

I'd entertain a motion to approve the bid award to United Uptime Services for the self-serve fuel station at Central Wyoming Regional Airport. And I need to verify, what is the amount? Is it $886,268.43? Is that the bid amount?

Your Honor, you'd only be awarding the bid amount for uptime with this action. So that would be, and please, Brandon, correct and verify this, but the bid from uptime was received in $912,522.12, and it was negotiated down to $672,199.24. Okay, I see that now. Okay, so that would be the...

I'd entertain a motion to approve that with that bid amount as indicated by Mr. Butterfield. So moved. Second. Motion by Councilman Bailey, second by Councilman Carr. Discussion?

Your Honor, is that typical? Why is that close to a million dollars for a 3,000-gallon tank? I mean, is it autofill and auto this and auto that, or is it just the precautions of that type of material at an airport?

Mr. Tolman. Yes, Your Honor. Thank you. The equipment itself is almost $200,000. And then the install and then the contract services to provide the containment unit plus the power plus the interface for the card reader brings that cost to additional funds. Last year, those two bids that we opened were $600,000 and $700,000. And then we did upsize the tank and then brought in the bids this year So the bids are comparable last year to this year Yeah, it is a high price. I will I will concede that it is an avgas fuel system So it does have to meet all of a requirements and the contractors installing that have to meet all of a requirements It is federal funds federal grant funds always Cause a project to be a little bit higher as well last question

What's the amortization schedule on that? What's the payoff on that? Is it in my lifetime or somebody else's who's two years old?

Your Honor, we did figure with the Avgas, with the approval of a higher flowage fee this year from our $0.06 to a $0.12 per gallon flow fee, and now with our new FBO operator, which promises to have additional fuel come from the airport, that that payoff will be a lot higher. will be increased. We did put together about a $25,000 increase in fuel flow just by approving the additional amount that we'll charge for the flow fee this year.

You still haven't answered the question. How long is it going to take you to pay that off?

So you're under two variables in there. Make that a little bit hard to determine right now. But we did. So we figure we earn about $50,000 right now currently from fuel sales a year. So with expanded fuel sales, we can use $50,000 as a benchmark, $50,000, $650,000 piece of equipment. 12 years, about? 13 years, yeah.

Your Honor, if I could, I think it's important to note that of the total cost of this project, only $60,000 will be paid for from the city fund.

In other words, for our piece to be paid, it'd be about a year.

It's about a year payoff.

Councilman Bailey? Your Honor, that's what I was going to throw in is As with all of these aviation federal projects, we only end up paying 2.5% range. This one has a little additional cost because of the overrun over what we were granted. And I think for the general aviation side of our airport, this is very, very important. We lose a ton of traffic coming to Riverton because we don't have that. If it's after hours at all or on weekends, there is no fuel available unless you want to pay them for a call-out fee, which is like 100 and something bucks. So it basically makes people fly to Lander instead of Riverton or Grebel or someplace like that where there is fueling available. And so that additional traffic, I think, will increase our gallons. The other thing is that if we just say we're going to just throw this thing out and forget it, we still have to pay a dura their fees for the 152 yes somewhere over 152 000 and that money comes directly out of our pocket not the grant funds so as distasteful as this is for me to approve eight hundred thousand dollars for a fuel tank that if i was doing it for behind your shop and your business i could do it for a hundred thousand dollars and it would be gold-plated, you know, Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz approved to fuel, but it is what it is, and everything aviation costs more money. I was going to say, it wouldn't be FAA approved.

Yeah, it wouldn't be FAA, just Mercedes-Benz.

Your Honor, I think it's important to note to the council as well that as part of the negotiations that Mr. Tolman and his team in Ardura have gone through with Uptime, It was conceded that the unit would be installed as if there was power at the site. And so you'll notice in the table that was provided in your packet that there's that additional roughly $25,000 that would need to be invested to bring power to the site. That is not going to be grant reimbursed. Mr. Tolman has worked through our budget, and there are funds that we can use for that because he was so aggressive in getting grant funds from the governor's office for another project. The way that that is going to be handled is how we propose it should be handled, excuse me for my presumption, is to request a change order from Century Companies who's already working on the airfield and have their electrical subcontractor run the necessary conduit so that we can have that site ready as it's been negotiated down. and that change order is being worked on right now we will bring it back to you for consideration but i want to make sure you have that at the forefront of your mind so you you see how some of this is going to come together over the next few meetings let's and i appreciate all the work that you've been putting into this mr tolman and mr butterfield because

We've been talking about the FBO just about every meeting for the last three months in terms of getting everything in place. Which I think, as Mr Bailey says, you know, we've got all these this traffic air traffic that's going elsewhere, and so having that here would suggest that that 50,000 that we would normally be getting an approximately a month would increase significantly would be the hope with a self fuel station. So.

Just a quick question. Do we have an estimate on what kind of increase we're going to see in GA traffic-ish?

Your Honor, I have seen something a little while back, but I would be really stretching to try to recount that.

28%.

I was going to say 25%.

But that's part of the, it's 87% of statistics are made up on the spot, so... If it's 28%, I want credit for being the one that... I think it's 90% of statistics are made up on the spot. I had heard 87.

I really could answer that.

We could do a study, I guess.

Regardless, thank you for all your effort on this. This is a big win, yeah. And for $60,000 versus a little under a million, that's great dollar-for-dollar usage.

Well, and I think the discussion when we had said we're not going to accept the bid previously is we'd have to be covering that $300,000 difference. And it was like, we're not going to do that. Not with this being so far over. And I think everybody was surprised that it was so far over. So being able to have the negotiation that gets us so much closer there makes sense. There was some discussion about whether this was gold plated tanks or not. Any other discussion on this motion?

All for the motion.

All right. All in favor of approving the bid award for United Uptime Services as indicated, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. I vote aye. Motion passes. Consultant selection, Safe Streets and Roads for All. Public works directors report please.

Thank you, your honor. The recommendation tonight in front of the city council is to provide staff direction to select the top rated firm engineering associates for design and for study and design services for the safe streets for all action plan study. And that study was the city did receive a grant in December of last year. The grant data include a 20% match that is now being covered by the state. So there's no city budget impact in this project. The city focuses on improving transportation safety throughout the community and include an ADA transition plan, which then will allow us to go after more grants to provide projects throughout the city. It'll evaluate problem intersections, including West Main and Hill Street. West Main and Cooper Road, and then East Pershing and Tenth Avenue, among many others. It'll assess trail crossings on major roads, identify safety improvements around schools, develop plans for better connected sidewalks and walking paths, and also create a preliminary conceptual design for safer sidewalks, roads, and intersections. The city did receive five proposals in response to this. The bidding period did take place in July of this year and asked for requests for qualifications. Five firms sent statement of qualifications and a five person selection committee evaluated the firms. The top ranked firm, Engineering Associates, scored 453 points out of the possible 500 points. They narrowly beat out HDR, which scored 448 out of the 500 points. The third place firm was 20 points behind the second ranked firm. so with that um four of the five um evaluators did rank engineering associates at the top um and then this gave staff the recommendation to uh to recommend this firm um to be included for uh um to proceed with contract negotiations this is a 360 000 grant of that is 288 000 is covered by federal funds and our um the city match which now is the state match is 72 000. This is all, Your Honor.

Thank you.

You bet.

I'd entertain a motion to select the top-rated firm, Engineering Associates, for study and design services for the Safe Streets for All Action Plan study and direct staff to begin contract negotiations. So moved.

Second.

Motion by Councilman Bailey, second by Councilwoman Preston. Discussion on that? Mr. Butterfield, we're getting kind of chilly up here. I don't know if there's anything to be done.

Your Honor.

Except for Councilwoman Borders, who keeps the space open. apologize for the temperature we'll see if we can do anything i don't know if we can do anything right away i didn't think so but something to keep in mind just with the weather changing i guess all right go for the question all right what are we asking about are we asking about weather and no all right all in favor of uh the motion in terms of selecting ea for the Safe Streets for All Action Plan, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. I vote aye. Motion passes. Tonight is engineering night. Contract agreement, Enberg Miller Engineers for the Bicentennial Subdivision Design. Mr. Thoman.

Thank you, Your Honor. The recommendation from the council tonight is to approve an agreement between Enberg Miller Engineers and the City of Riverton for design services for the Bicentennial Subdivision Reconstruction Project in the amount of $117,100.00. The project was recommended by the fixer road citizen committee and the city solicited solicited qualified firms in train firms to begin this project in inberg Miller was selected as a top rated firm in the city council authorized city staff to negotiate a contract with inberg Miller. A project meeting, scoping meeting, was held August 20th. The scoping meeting did finalize and address storm drainage improvements, groundwater mitigation, sewer and water line upgrades, roadway and surface drainage improvements, ADA compliance upgrades, and then additional servicing and water line work to occur at the North 8th Street and Sunset intersection. The North 8th and Sunset intersection water line work is in addition to what was advertised for the project. Completing the water line work right now will help to phase out this area and provide more control of the water system in that location as other projects are being considered in the area. The $117,100 engineering fee exceeds the original $80,000 budgeted, and that's largely due because of the North 8th Street intersection work. The engineering fee will be paid from the Fixer Road Citizen Committee Fund. If approved, $3.448 million of the $3.475 million in the budget will have been awarded during this fiscal year. Staff recommends to approve the agreement with Enberg Miller Engineers and then to begin with this design process of the subdivision reconstruction and related project improvements. Thank you, Your Honor.

Okay. I'd entertain a motion to approve the agreement between Enberg Miller Engineers for design services for the Bicentennial Subdivision Reconstruction Project in the amount of $117,100. So moved. Second. Motion by, okay. Motion by Councilwoman Blumenthal. i was just going to choose one of you so whenever there's two motions i just randomly but motion by councilwoman borders second by councilman carr did i get that right or did i say it was louder okay uh any other discussion In case you're wondering, because we talked about this two meetings ago, I think the bicentennial subdivision is Independence and those there. And as we discussed, came about, first construction was about 1976, which makes sense after the bicentennial.

Independence, Flag, and Liberty Tribes. Yep. Good names.

All right. Any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. I vote aye. Motion passes. Regrettably, we do have an executive session tonight. Not regrettably, but I mean we do. I know everybody just wants to go home because it's cold. So I'd entertain a motion to convene to executive session for the purpose of litigation pursuant to Wyoming State Statute 164405A3. So moved.

Second.

Motion by Councilman Carr, second by Councilwoman Johnson.

Any discussion?

All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. I vote aye. Motion passes. We are convened in an executive session at 9.47 p.m. I would invite Mr. Butterfield, anybody else we need in there? Mr. Butterfield to attend the executive session with us.

I had updates to do.

I don't want to do it here because it might take 10 minutes.

Or longer.

So then I'd get home and then I'd... And then it's going to go beep, beep, beep. Exactly. I'd entertain a motion to reconvene into regular session. So moved.

Second. Everybody. Everybody's on time.

Motion by Councilman Carr, second by Councilwoman Johnson. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. I voted aye, by the way. We're now reconvening in a regular session at 1012 PM. I'd entertain a motion to adjourn.

Second.

All right. Councilwoman Borders with the motion. Second by Councilwoman Preston. All in favor say aye. Any opposed say nay. I vote aye. Adjourned at 1012 PM.

If anyone says nay.