Hanna talks reopening

The Hanna Town Council met at 6 p.m. on Thursday at the Hanna Town Hall after delaying their regularly scheduled meeting on April 29. It was an abbreviated meeting since no board reports were presented.

Mayor Lois Buchanan, Council members Bob Patton and Sam Sikes were present at the town hall and council member Linda Schisel was present by telephone. Council member Tracy Fowler was absent. There were no audience members.

The agenda was quickly approved.

The major topic of the council concerned the water bills.

The council approved Black Mountain Software to begin automatic payment options for customers on a utility account.

Next, the council approved Black Mountain Software to begin the option of customer billing through email. This was not available before.

The council approved waiving credit card fees charged to customers paying their water/landfill bills.

The councill discussed programming through Black Mountain Software to allow online payments with a hyper-link.

The council approved waiving late fees, due to the COVID-19 virus causing hardship to some households, for the water bills for the months of April, May and June. After July 14, the late fees would be enforced again.

The council approved a budget workshop for 6 p.m. on May 7 at the Hanna Town Hall. Public works’ budget will be the focus of this session.

The council approved the second reading of Ordinance 387. It is an ordinance designating the amount of general tax to be assessed, levied and collected for the fiscal year 2020/2021 on all taxable real and personal property within town of Hanna.

The mayor went over how the town hall would run for the month of May. Currently, all bills are paid through a drop off or paid by phone with a credit card. All questions for the town are answered by phone or emails. Residents are not allowed in the building and the town hall is closing at 3 p.m. instead of 5 p.m.

“We are doing a soft opening for the town hall far as opening it to the public again,” Buchanan said. “It depends on what the governor says on May 15, but we feel that it might be until the end of the month that we open the building up to the public the way it was before COVID-19 closures.”

Although the Hanna Recreation Center’s gym could open, the mayor said it would entail more hardship than it was worth at the moment.

“Because the locker rooms can’t be used and all the regulations and guidelines to open, including hiring extra staff, make it too difficult,” Buchanan explained. “The gym can’t have people playing games with each other because of social distancing. The pool was drained and is being worked on and won’t be ready for a couple more weeks, and the weight room and aerobic room can only have three people in at a time at most due to social distancing.”

She said the recreation center in Rawlins was going by reservations only, masks had to be worn, plexi-screens were installed at the front desk and the center was closing every two hours to sanitize and clean the building. She said that the Rawlins center had already installed sanitizing stations before the closures. Hanna would also have to make these stations available if the center opened. She said the Rawlins facility was not allowing any person under 16 to come in.

“It would be a lot of work and expense,” Buchanan said. “Rock Springs is also opening their center, but Green River and Evanston are not. Right now, we have decided to keep the center closed.”

She said later in the month the recreation center would be reevaluated on possibly opening.

The next regularly scheduled meeting will be at 6 p.m. on May 12 at the Hanna Town Hall. Buchanan said there was a chance it could change, depending on how the Covid-19 was effecting the state and county.