A taxing talk

COVID-19 took its toll on the Carbon County Council of Governments’ (CCCOG) meetings for the past four months. The last time the board met was in Rawlins on January 15. CCCOG meets every two months and the March and May meetings were not held due to restrictions set by the state.

The meeting was started at 6:30 p.m. on July 15 at the Baggs Community Center. All but Hanna and Medicine Bow had municipalities represented at the meeting.

After introductions of attendees, the board approved the agenda and minutes from the January 15 meeting. Secretary/Treasurer Travis Moore presented the financials which were quickly approved.

There was no unfinished business, so the board went into new business.

Moore made a resolution to amend the bylaws that require CCCOG to meet six times in a year because of the cancellations of the meetings scheduled for March 18 and May 20 due to COVID restrictions. The two meetings do not have to be made up. The resolution was approved.

Kara Choquette from Power Company of Wyoming came before the board to give an update on wind energy in Carbon County.

“Wind energy development and pipeline construction continued to help boost local economies in parts of the state, like Carbon and Niobrara counties. Both regions recorded year-over-year growth in taxable sales,” Choquette pointed out. “Carbon County has three job creating, sales-tax-paying wind projects under construction. Power Company of Wyoming’s 3000 megawatt Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy projects, and the 750 mega watt TB Flats and Ekola Flats wind projects by Rocky Mountain Power.”

She said according to Wyoming Insight, in a year-over-year comparison of June 2020 to June 2019, sales and use tax collections statewide fell by $7.1 million or 11.5 percent in the state as a whole. June collections for Carbon County grew the most among all 23 counties compared to a year ago by $3,069,100, an increase of 215.9 percent.

She said that there were many attempts to tax wind energy and her concern was the Wyoming Legislature is revenue committee was meeting on August 24-25 in Green River and she felt there was a good chance a wind tax would be introduced, although it was not currently on the agenda.

“Once again, I come to CCCOG to ask for support opposing any wind tax,” Choquette said.

Chairman Morgan Irene offered that CCCOG write a letter of support against any wind tax to go to the revenue committee and encouraged all municipalities to do the same.

Sarah Hutchins from Carbon County Planning and Development was the next to speak about the new map coming out on flood plains. Her position is a planner and geographic information systems (GIS) for the department.

“We are mapping flood plains for Carbon County. FEMA started this process in 2016 and they are pretty happy they are getting near the end,” Hutchins said.

She said the map was coming out soon. She said there would be meetings discussing the map coming up on September 14-16.

“I just wanted to make you aware these meetings are coming up,” Hutchins said. “This is the initial draft of the final master out for your review and then there is an appeal period after public meetings.”

She said in December, after the appeal period, the regulations would be passed.

Next to speak was Lenny Layman, the recently hired Coordinator for Carbon County Office of Homeland Security/Emergency Management.

Layman said he took over from Ron Brown two and half months ago.

“Emergency management is one of those weird areas where we have a lot of responsibility but absolutely no authority, and we get things done by building relationships and having influence,” Layman said. “Most people think emergency managers only work in response, but we also work in preparedness, mitigation and recovery.”

He said emergency management was still a relatively new field.

Layman said he was going to be visiting all of Carbon County to meet with the different town’s officials and the volunteer emergency organizations.

WYDOT District 1 Engineer Tom DeHoff went before the board to go over the road projects that are slated from 2020 until 2026. He was joined in presentation by District 1 Construction Engineer Tim Morton.

District 1 includes I-80 from Pine Bluffs to a small part of Sweetwater County. The district also includes roads in the southeastern section of Wyoming that includes Baggs and goes north to include Medicine Bow and roads that go north in Carbon and Albany Counties.

After the WYDOT presentation, the election of officers for CCCOG commenced.

Irene was re-elected Chairman. Moore was re-elected to the position of Secretary/Treasurer. Jon Nelson, representing Saratoga, replaced John Zeiger as Vice-Chairman.

The next regularly scheduled meeting is at 6:30 p.m. on September 16 in Medicine Bow.