The Riverton State Office Task Force hopes to meet again in late September after a previous meeting scheduled for late July was cancelled.
Wyoming Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander, said the July 27 meeting was cancelled in order to give the State Construction Department more time to complete the directives they received from the task force.
Larsen said those directives include:
-taking “inventory of property for sale in Riverton that a new building could be constructed on,” and
-determining whether “there are existing buildings of the appropriate size with appropriate amenities such as parking, storage space and extra space for additional construction that might be for sale.”
“The SCD is in the process of fulfilling that assignment but has not yet entirely completed it,” Larsen said last week. “I think there is some indication that (they) might be able to provide a report to the task force on their findings sometime in late September.”
Wyoming Rep. Ember Oakley, R-Riverton, who co-chairs the task force, said “we are looking at setting the future date” for the next meeting.
“We believe (it will be) in late September,” she said. “(We) just haven’t nailed it down yet.”
Larsen said the task force “agreed” in its initial meeting that “there were potential benefits to the state and to the community if we were able to consolidate some, or all the state agencies currently in Riverton to one centralized location.”
“In order to make further recommendations, the task force needs to know what it would cost to make such a move and what the return on investment would be to the state, noting it may be cheaper to continue the current practice of leasing office space,” he said.
Wyoming Rep. Tim Salazar, R-Riverton, is the other local lawmakers on the task force.