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The Saratoga Water and Sewer Joint Powers Board (sewer board) met Wednesday after a month without a regular meeting to dispense with accumulated business. The sewer board debated whether or not it had the authority to grant permission for a tap for the waste transfer station that is under construction. Board member Russ Waldner said the ordinance made it unclear to him whether the sewer board could unilaterally approve a tap without the involvement of the town council, since the transfer station is outside town limits. Waldner took issue with t...
About 40 citizens came to the Platte Valley Community Center (PVCC) Oct. 10 to attend a candidate forum hosted by the Valley Service Organization (VSO). The forum included three candidates for Saratoga Town Council, four candidates for Carbon County Commissioner, one candidate for Wyoming House Dist. 47 Representative and two candidates for U.S. Congress. The forum started at the town council level, with Steve Wilcoxson, Glee Johnson and Jennie Lou Ivory vying for two open slots. Addressing the...
Vacancies on two boards were filled, Saratoga filed final paperwork to receive state and federal funding for an airport project, and the police department transferred old equipment to Encampment. Routine business was the order of the day at an Oct. 4 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council attended by about five members of the public. The appointment of Cindy Talbot to the South Central Wyoming Emergency Medical Services (SCWEMS) board was a sign of progress for the organization, which faced...
A new daycare and preschool will be opening in Saratoga, offering much needed childcare options to residents. The center, Tomorrow’s Promise, will open at 1012 W. Bridge Avenue in Saratoga Oct. 1, according to the campus director, Priscilla Schmidt. The center will offer daycare options as well as preschool education. The center will offer immersion courses in English, Spanish and American Sign Language. The lack of childcare options has been an issue in the town for some time, with the issue having been discussed at length in town council m...
With less than five members of the public in attendance, the Saratoga Town Council covered a broad slate of items during its Sept. 20 meeting. The council voted in favor of zone-change sought by Trivest Enterprises, the resignation of Saratoga’s representative on the South Central Wyoming Emergency Medical Service’s board (SCWEMS) was announced, and the meeting ended with a 45-minute executive session closed to the public. At the meeting, acting police chief Robert Bifano also shared some inf...
"How do we divvy this up?" Saratoga Planning Commission member Will Faust asked at a Sept. 13 meeting of the group. Perhaps the quintessential question of planning, Faust was referring in this case to Saratoga's area of influence or town buffer zone, which must change to reflect new statutes from Cheyenne. The buffer zone, also called a realm of influence, is an area outside of but in close proximity to town limits. As enforced in the past, this zone extended one mile beyond town limits to form...
A Sept. 6 Saratoga Town Council Meeting began with Cindy Bloomquist presenting mayor Ed Glode with an oversized squash from the community garden. About five people were in attendance, and outside of an update on the prospects for a gravel bar removal project, little of substance was under consideration. Director of public works Jon Winter said at the meeting that he has been working on the gravel bar removal undertaking with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACE). The gravel bars are located in...
“We’re in good standing; we’re up and running; we’re legal,” said Kevin Hefley, owner-operator of Airtime Aerial, a company that performs aerial applications of insecticides. Hefley was presenting at an August 16 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council to explain why unfiled paperwork with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had left the town without an applicator for much of the summer. At the meeting, which was attended by about 10 members of the public, Hefley repeatedly distanced himself from Circle S Aviation, a company Hefley pu...
Write-in candidates in municipal races across the Valley have been notified by certified mail that they crossed the three-vote threshold to be listed on ballots in the general election in November. Those who accept their neighbors’ nomination have five days following the receipt of a certified letter from the election clerk to pay a $25 listing fee in order to appear on general election ballots. In Saratoga, Glee Johnson and Steve Wilcoxson have accepted their nominations and paid the fee to a...
The Saratoga Water and Sewer Joint Powers Board (sewer board) met Wednesday to deal with routine business, but the long-running issue of the sewer line running under Hwy 30 that is causing issues for local business owners became murkier as Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) waded into the fray. The sewer line that serves Happy Tails Dog Boarding and the Saratoga Feed Store has been problematic for months, with complaints to the board going as far back as March. According Pam Waldner, owner of Happy Tails, the sewer line backs up...
The Saratoga Planning Commission will have a full plate for some time to come. In an Aug. 9 meeting attended by about 10 individuals, the commission voted in favor of a rezone request put in by Trivest Enterprises and devoted the remainder of their two-hour meeting to laying out goals for the year ahead. Commission chair Rory Grubb and commission member Chris Duke were absent from the proceedings. The three to one Trivest decision came in the wake of a 20 minute discussion about the developer’s...
At an August 3 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council, Acting Police Chief Robert Bifano had a mixed bag of developments to report to the council and public. About five citizens were in attendance at the proceedings. On the positive side, Bifano said that a suspect had admitted to committing a recent spate of vehicle vandalism in the Valley. “Last Thursday, we had six vehicle windows smashed out with a baseball bat,” Bifano told the room. He said a suspect had been caught and confessed to the cri...
Government officials representing every corner of South Central Wyoming gathered in Riverside July 20, from Melodie Seilaff of the Dixon Town Council to Jerry Paxton, Wyoming State Representative for House District 47, as well as all five Carbon County Commissioners. The group of about 35 represented high turnout for the bimonthly meeting of Carbon County Council of Governments (COGs), and the headline item on their agenda was a resolution opposing increased taxation rates for wind power. COGs...
Outside of a resolution opposing a proposed increase in the wind power excise tax (see: COGs, page 1), there were few actionable items on the agenda at a July 19 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council. Council members Will Faust and Sue Howe were absent from the proceedings, which were attended by about 10 members of the public. The resolution opposing the increase in the wind power tax was passed unanimously after it was first presented at the last council meeting July 5. Kara Choquette and...
About 50 people attended a July 25 Candidate Forum hosted by the Valley Service Organization (VSO) at the Platte Valley Community Center (PVCC). Eight candidates auditioned for three different government positions at the event including Clerk of District Court, Carbon County Commissioner and Wyoming State Representative for House District 47. The three who ran for the House District 47 seat consisted of two Republicans and one Democrat. Jerry Paxton, the Republican incumbent, has served since...
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...
Riverside Town Council met on Thursday to iron out some housekeeping issues in the small town, and very quickly worked though the agenda. After sorting out issues with a lawnmower the town purchased that was not shipped with needed parts by the dealer, the town council voted to accept a food bid for the Riverside Party Days from the Bear Trap restaurant, the only supplier who bid. Margaret Weber, owner of the Bear Trap and council member, abstained from the vote. The board also discussed aerial spraying for mosquitos. Earlier in the month, 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...
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...
Friday, July 1 8 p.m. Live Music The Snowy Mountain Brewery will host Captain Red Eye & The Rhino Hunters. This Americana band shoots for a dance-able performance. The band’s sound is often compared with the sounds of Tom Petty, Allman Brothers and Steve Earle. Live music also occurring at other local bars. Saturday, July 2 7-9 a.m.: Breakfast served at the American Legion Post #54 9-5 p.m.: Platte Valley Arts Festival at Platte Valley Community Center Juried art show featuring Jan Hodson, Chuck Weaver, Jerry Wood, Elizabeth Wood, Gray K...
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...
The town of Saratoga recently was given a copy of the new master plan for the town by Community Builders, Inc., the firm that was hired to produce the plan. The master plan is 254 pages including all appendices, and lays out strategies for town growth, the resources that Saratoga has and issues that may stand in the way of progress for the town as it grows over the next couple decades. The plan notes that a well-diversified economy will help the town grow and become more prosperous. According th...
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,...
Wednesday’s meeting of the Saratoga Water and Sewer Joint Powers Board (sewer board) saw board members stepping out from behind the council table to address their fellow board members as concerned citizens. Russell Waldner was one of the board members who took to the floor as a concerned citizen. At the sewer board’s meeting in April, the board discussed the issue of a backed up sewer line that runs under Hwy 130 that was causing issues at Saratoga Feed Store and Waldner’s business, Happy Tails Dog Boarding. At the April meeting, the counc...
The town of Saratoga is under the imminent threat of flooding and significant river bank erosion,” mayor Ed Glode said at the May 17 Saratoga Town Council meeting. “Extensive damage could be caused to public and private property, (and) disruption of utility service and endangerment of the health and safety of the residents of the town of Saratoga (are possible),” Glode continued. With the river rising rapidly and more snowmelt likely on the way, Glode made a formal declaration of emerg...
