Serving the Platte Valley since 1888
Serving the Platte Valley since 1888
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At a July 14 meeting of the Saratoga Airport Board, Dave Shultz of Sage Engineering said that a taxilane rehabilitation project that contractors had been working on since spring passed final inspection and is effectively complete. Now all that’s left to figure out is who owes what. As reported at a June 19 Saratoga Town Council Meeting, the total price tag for the project was around $660,500, but 90 percent of that cost was assumed by the federal government and an additional 6 percent was c...
When the fourth of July rolled around this year, Joleigh and Koen Shahadey wanted to celebrate their patriotism with more than fireworks and parades. The 6-year old sister and 7-year-old brother, decided to raise money for the annual Wounded Warrior Event, which benefits disabled veterans of the armed forces. With a little help from their grandparents Susan and Randy Wallace the siblings set up a table next to Saratoga's Independence Day parade route. The two handed out slices of watermelon to...
“It’s your turn, Joyce,” Carbon County Library System Board (CCLSB) member Joanne Whitson told Joyce Menke. Minutes before, Menke had been elected CCLSB chair at a tear-filled 4.5 hour July 6 CCLSB meeting attended by nearly 40 members of the public. Hours later, CCLSB director Bobbie Morgan was told to hand in her keys. Two days after that, Whitson, who had previously served as CCLSB chair, resigned her position on the board. The exit of Morgan and Whitson signaled a decisive defeat for a facti...
Aided by “red flag conditions” of dry weather and high winds, a fire that began June 19 about 15 miles northwest of Walden, Colo. grew substantially this weekend. With an expansion of about 3,500 acres on Sunday alone, the Beaver Creek Fire had burned 19,464 acres or over 30 square miles by July 12. On Sunday, the blaze forged a path into Wyoming for the first time, crossing the state line in the Big Creek Park area on the northwest side of the fire where it has burned about 300 acres. On the...
Talk of increasing the wind energy excise tax in Cheyenne has prompted the Saratoga Town Council to consider adopting a resolution opposing any such increase. The text of the resolution, written by Rawlins City Attorney, Amy Bach, was read at a lightly-attended July 5 Saratoga Town Council meeting. “We’re already the only state in the union that’s taxing wind energy and now they want to tax it more. Well, I guess my thoughts were that that’s probably a bad idea,” mayor Ed Glode said in suppor...
I spent seven months of 2011 bush-whacking, boulder-rolling and timber-hauling my way through some of the most inaccessible and gorgeous parts of Maine. It was a strangely disjointed and financially treacherous period of my life. The trail work I did with the Maine Conservation Corps (MCC) was perilous, arduous and exhausting. I am convinced there is no better way I could have spent that spring, summer and fall. During my first week in Maine, I did not once see the sun because of clouds and...
One in three Americans will need a blood transfusion over the course of their lives, but only one in 20 people regularly donate blood to help fill this vital need, according to a recent news release. Between 11:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. July 12, the Knights of Columbus and United Blood Services will be holding a blood drive at St. Anne’s Parish Hall in Saratoga to help address this deficit, and all qualified individuals are encouraged to drop by and give some drops to their neighbors. Donors will b...
With last week’s resignation of information specialist Palma Jack, the Rawlins library was left unable to open its doors to the public for the July 1 beginning of fiscal year 2017. In response to the resignation, Carbon County Library System Board (CCLSB) members held an emergency vote July 1 to shutter the Rawlins branch until they’ve had a chance to discuss the situation at their next meeting July 6. It is unclear when the library will reopen. Jack’s resignation was the latest blow to a libra...
A trio of researchers reported encouraging results from a 2012 to 2015 water quality study conducted upriver of Saratoga on the North Platte and its tributaries. Robert Kimbrough, along with his colleagues Sue Hartley and Greg Smith from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Water Resources division, presented findings from the four-year study on June 27 as part of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s Habitat Speaker Series. About 20 individuals came to the Saratoga Town Hall to attend K...
July 8 and 9, the “buck” will be coming back to Buck Springs Arena about three miles east of Saratoga. That Friday and Saturday, the Platte River Rodeo Association (PRRA) will be holding a Wyoming Rodeo Association (WRA) sanctioned rodeo, and there will also be plenty of amateur events for participants of all ages to take part in, PRRA President Allen Youngberg said. Attendees can watch talented ropers and riders from across the state and beyond compete for cash prizes in calf roping, bre...
As of July 18, a fractious Carbon County Library System Board (CCLSB) will have one more position to fill. Rather than continue working in what she deemed a “hostile work environment,” CCLSB director Bobbie Morgan tendered her resignation effective that date at a tense special meeting of the board held 6 p.m. June 24 in Rawlins. Morgan, who has served as director for a little over two months, submitted her resignation in absentia through a letter read aloud at the June 24 meeting by CCLSB cha...
A sleepy agenda and the necessity of reading several lengthy budgetary amendments verbatim may have kept attendance down at the June 21 Saratoga Town Council Meeting. Less than 10 citizens came to the proceedings, which finalized the town budget for Fiscal Year 2017 and saw the resignation of Glee Johnson from the Water and Sewer Joint Powers Board. Johnson has served on the board since October of 2014 and had a full year left in her three year term, which was set to expire in July 2017, but...
From Broadway stages in New York, to the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles to the Wilbur Theatre in Boston to ... the Platte Valley Community Center (PVCC) in Saratoga. On July 12, the four-member retro band "Under the Streetlamp" will be bringing the sounds of an earlier era in America right here to the Good Times Valley. Brush Creek Ranch will be underwriting the costs of the concert as part for their annual "Valley Strong" benefit, and all proceeds from the show will go towards area charities....
A series of last minute financial tweaks roughly sketched out at a June 20 public meeting of the Carbon County Library System Board (CCLSB) will keep all library branches open with significant hour reductions across the board. In total, patrons will be losing 47 hours of access to the CCLSB’s eight libraries each week due to deep cuts in county funding. The flagship location in Rawlins and the Saratoga branch library will lose the most hours, taking hits of 16 and 10 hours respectively. The l...
The thin line separating “guidance” and “pre-approval” was at the heart of discussions at a June 14 meeting of the Saratoga Planning Commission attended by about 10 residents. “We have to have a way to serve the public and give them guidance without doing pre-approvals, and that’s what my intentions are,” commission chair Rory Grubb said describing the delicate balance the commission must strike. At the meeting, area resident (and past commission member) Randy Raymer said he was upset over pr...
In a June 16 interview, Carbon County Commissioners Lindy Glode and Sue Jones described themselves as strongly opposed to closing libraries, but would not back off sharp reductions in county funding to the library system. The county indicates it will cut its mill levy funding to the Carbon County Library System Board (CCLSB) by close to 60 percent, from $558,295 in fiscal year 2016, to $225,000 for fiscal year 2017. Additional county funds of $42,000 from motor vehicle registrations were made...
If budget cuts of 60 to 74 percent are approved, most branches in the Carbon County Library system will be shuttered by July 1. Hours and services at the remaining branches would be slashed under such a scenario, said Bobbie Morgan, Director of the Carbon County Library System Board (CCSLB) at an emergency meeting of the board June 13. Morgan was told to brace for the deep cuts at a meeting of the Carbon County Commissioners June 6. A month earlier, Morgan had been told by the commissioners to...
With one eye warily on the “sensitivity of funding at the state level,” Saratoga Mayor Ed Glode said it would be unwise to allow a loan and grant package to go unused. The loan and grant, to make improvements on the Saratoga lagoon system, was under discussion at a June 8 town council meeting attended by about 20 residents. “There’s a laundry list of things that we can do to improve our system with the overall goal obviously of being compliant and having a discharge that’s as clean as possible,...
As the dirt road got closer and closer to the ocean, I started itching to get sand back beneath my feet, and presently an opportunity presented itself. Fearful of a trespassing charge, I passed up a driveway leading to the “Western Ghana Palm Oil Research Institute.” A few hundred meters up the road, though, a sign pointed toward another coastal resort, and I made my move seawards. At first, the beach here was much the same as I had found at the Green Turtle Lodge – pleasantly sandy and immac...
Students in New York City may take a field trip to the Empire State Building. For kids in San Antonio, Tex., it's the Alamo. Here in the Good Times Valley, students get to take advantage of Grand Teton National Park. From May 13 to 18, 14 Saratoga Middle School (SMS) eighth graders took a class trip to Grand Teton National Park to learn about ecosystems and biology in a pristine natural classroom. Accompanying them were SMS eighth grade teacher Shaleas Harrison and chaperone Laurie Cooksey, who...
Poorly timed spring storms, soft subgrade soil and complications on another project have made for slow progress on taxiway rehabilitation underway at Shively Field this spring. If all goes according to plan, however, the paving process will be completed by June 17, said Dave Shultz of Sage Engineering. Shultz and his colleague Brek Ibach were presenting what should be one of Sage’s last progress reports on the taxiway project at a sparsely attended June 9 meeting of the airport board. In his r...
Two Carbon County Commissioners, one town clerk, one Carbon County Economic Development Board member, four Carbon County Library System Board (CCLSB) members and the local librarian attended a June 2 meeting at the Encampment Library. The officials joined about 30 concerned patrons for a brainstorming session on how to deal with looming cutbacks in funding for the Encampment library and Carbon County libraries as a whole. CCLSB director Bobbie Morgan summed things up by saying, “I think w...
A little after midnight on June 6, Hog Park Reservoir reached capacity and a spillway began directing water that would normally flow into the reservoir back into Hog Creek. Hog Creek is a tributary of the Encampment River, and a press release from the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities (CBOPU) says that residents and visitors to the Encampment River area can expect higher than normal flows now that the reservoir is effectively closed to more water. Hog Park Reservoir is in the Sierra Madre...
This is Part II of a three part story I began telling in a column on May 11. The story takes place in the summer of 2013, when I was a teacher for the Peace Corps in West Africa. I began hiking towards a lighthouse on a remote stretch of the Ghanaian coast, and adventure ensued. For the first half kilometer though the path exiting Akwidaa cut through the jungle it was never out of earshot of waves crashing onto the rocky beach. The undergrowth constantly rustled around me as I hiked, unseen...
Graduating Encampment High School (EHS) seniors Gale Jackson and Cassidy Little have been selected to receive Daniels Fund Scholarships this year. The Daniels Fund provides financial aid to students who graduated from high school in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico or Wyoming and can demonstrate financial need. According to the organization’s website, other selection criteria for scholarship recipients include an ACT score of 17 or higher in each category of the test (math, reading, writing and scienc...