Last Monday, Sept. 13, the Kemmerer City Council met for their first regularly scheduled meeting of the month. Items on the agenda included special ceremonies recognizing long-time employees for their hard work and dedication, considering a fee waiver request for facility usage by the Wyoming Community Foundation and evaluating the three estimates for city hall’s roof repairs.

After the formalities ended and the meeting began, two individuals were recognized for their long-time dedication:

• Chad Nielson was awarded a 5-year service award

• Nicole Stetzenbach was awarded a 10-year service award

Additionally, two pinning ceremonies were held to commemorate the promotions of Jake Walker to Patrol Sergeant and Josh Hagler to Administrative Sergeant.

Afterwards, the council moved on to the next agenda item: a fee waiver request by the Wyoming Community Foundation, who were planning to rent the large training room at the South Lincoln Training and Event Center. Although they were only intending to occupy the space for a brief two-hour stint, a strong case was made for the council to approve the 100% fee waiver as Muir elaborated on the WCF’s vital role in facilitating grant-writing training for city employees as well as the city being an annual recipient of WCF grants.

After the waiver was unanimously approved, the discussion moved on to city hall’s roof repairs. Three companies placed a bid: Mountain Peak Builders, DJ’s Glass Plus, and Lifetime Roofing. Despite some last-minute adjustments to all three estimates, the Council ultimately opted to go with the cheapest option, Mountain Peak Builders, based out of Logan, Utah. The current total cost of the repairs as adjusted is $63,061, against their maximum budget of $100,000.

After those deliberations had finished, City Administrator Brian Muir spoke to the council, explaining that the most realistic timeframe for the roof repairs to be completed was now mid-November, rather than the end of October (their initial forecast), due to the bureaucratic steps that they had to go through first.

Once the roof discussion had concluded, Muir then spoke up about the tremendous success of the Golden Rule Days that had occurred just a few weeks ago.

“I just want to express my appreciation to the community and the council for their support with the J.C. Penney Golden Rule Days. It went very well, we got an incredibly positive amount of feedback from the people who had come in out of town. I was really pleased with how many people were there, especially for the dedication ceremony,” he said.

Then, Mayor Bill Thek also read off a letter of appreciation from one of the guests from the J.C. Penney Golden Rule Days, adding that this had just been one of many letters that the city had received. Thek finished by congratulating the Kemmerer Rangers on their recent victory over Pinedale.

Speaking to the Gazette afterwards, Muir elaborated further on the severity of the leaks in the building. He explained that these repairs have been long overdue, saying that some leaks had been here since he had arrived some two-and-a-half years ago, but were especially bad in the police department’s area of the building. While he did concede that the roof was inherently an older roof and due for repairs anyway, he did stress that the budgeted amount for the repairs did not come from any additional source — just taxpayer dollars that the city had put away in their building maintenance fund.

He also pointed to the three large storms that Kemmerer had seen over the last month as further exacerbating the leaks. Additionally, he mentioned that the repairs were now a race against time to have everything done before the snow starts coming down and complicating the work.

Speaking about future projects for the city, Muir mentioned that they’re looking to focus heavily on street repairs.

“We’ve been putting money into streets, but we’re way, way behind. Last year, we came all out of reserves and did Triangle, Lincoln Heights, 5th West, and worked with Joint Powers on Emerald street,” Muir said.