(Riverton, WY) – The Riverton City Council convened Tuesday, June 15th, for its regular meeting at the City Hall Council Chambers.
Meeting highlights included a firework permit application approval for the Riverton Little League, an approval of the Riverton Municipal Code Section 15.08.060 ‘Electrical Inspector’ revision, an approval of a new restaurant liquor license for Wyoming Smokehouse, LLC, and an approved consideration of a grant agreement through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA).
There was also a bid award in the amount of $167,053 to Dave’s Asphalt Company to go toward the North 16th Street project. This is a 1% Project, which the 1% Committee prioritized due to the many improvements needed and heavy traffic on the road.
As reported yesterday, County Commissioner Mike Jones and Commission Chairman Travis Becker stopped by the meeting to submit an official request of $100,000 to the town of Riverton to go towards the new county ambulance service, Frontier (parent company Priority).
Riverton, Lander, and the Joint Tribal Council are all being asked to contribute $100,000, while $20,000 is being requested of Shoshoni and Dubois, and $10,000 for Pavilion and Hudson.
These ask amounts are based on volume and density of calls for emergency services.
While the County is prepared to pay for the $903,000 in full for the service, according to Commissioner Jones, their ability to do so long-term is not sustainable.
“We see this as a stopgap until the next major election then we can go and potentially ask for a health district or a rural Medical District, and we’re talking to legislators about options,” Jones stated during the Tuesday evening Riverton City Council meeting. “We don’t believe we can sustain this or even all of us together can sustain this long-term with these kind of expenses. We thought it was fair to just ask.”
Councilman Mike Bailey then asked, “Is the County going to continue to own the ambulances and maintain them like they did in the past?”
“Yes,” Jones replied, “It’s in the contract that they will pay maintenance, but we own the assets, we’re not letting go of those.”
Mayor Richard Gard then asked what Frontier will be paying for in terms of leasing equipment, ambulance location, and dispatch.
“They will be paying for their own dispatch in the amount of $234,000, a fee based off of calls for service,” replied County Chairman Becker.
Becker then referenced Frontier’s willingness to look into more interfacility cooperation due to the amount of medical transfers in the county. Through AMR, most of these transfers were through flight services, which Frontier will not provide.
According to numbers provided by the Commissioners, 80% of flight transfers are to Casper, and of those, 50% could be ground transfers, saving the municipalities, the County, and Frontier money on their bottom lines.
“They sat down with Sage West to begin these interfacility conversations,” Jones stated.
“All dispatching will still go through Fremont County,” added Becker, “which will make interfacility data more readily available. At this point we don’t have that data because AMR was using their own for flight transfers.”
To view the meeting in its entirety, click here.
County 10 will provide more updates on the eventual responses to the funding requests as they become available.