The Town of LaBarge held its monthly council meeting on Wednesday, April 18, at LaBarge Town Hall. Included in the meeting was the first reading of the proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2019–2020. The next budget hearing will be at the May 16 meeting.

Resignations

The Council accepted the resignation of LaBarge Police Chief Stacy Buck, who is taking a job with Exxon Mobil. His last day on the LaBarge Police force will be May 13. Buck has been the chief for nearly a year.

Public Works director Rowdy Headrick is also resigning. Headrick has been employed with the town since 2008.

“This job has given me the skills and the abilities to go into a different field,” Headrick said in his resignation letter. Headrick also complimented Mayor Larry Stepp on his efforts to work with the public works department to improve the town.

6th penny tax

The Town of LaBarge joined other municipalities in Lincoln County in signing a resolution to place a special excise tax — also known as the sixth penny sales tax — on the November 2018 ballot.

If the joint resolution is approved by the Lincoln County Commissioners and the public votes to enact the tax during the general election, any revenue from the tax will be used for specific proposed projects in each municipality.

The money will be distributed by project proposal costs and not by population.

LaBarge’s sixth penny project is to chip seal all municipal roads — an estimated cost of $515,419.

The town’s project is the second cheapest on the Joint Resolution, with the Town of Opal’s coming in at $400,000.

“Street projects are ideal for this type of tax because it’s hard to get grants for street projects,” said Town Clerk and Treasurer Kassi Lamon.

“It won’t even take the full four years to collect the money, and when the specified money is collected, the tax goes away. The individual taxpayer cost is minimal, because most of the taxes in our county are paid by industry.”

Water Plant updates

Lamon addressed the council about the need to replace outdated filters at the water plant.

“The filters are nearly twice as old as they should be,” Lamon said. “It’s expensive, but it’s something that we just have to do. It should improve our water quality dramatically.”

Mayor Larry Stepp emphasized that even though the filters are older, the plant is still up to code.

The cost for replacing the filters would be $6,400 apiece. The funds would come from the town’s WyStar reserves.

“I would like to take some time before we approve this expense to compare more prices,” said councilman Randall Nelson. “One more month can’t hurt if our water is still safe, especially if it means it would save us that much more money.”

Court systems software

Lamon addressed the council about updating the municipal court software from QuickBooks to Caselle, a program that is used widely throughout the state for government accounting.

“The Wyoming Association of Municipalities (WAM) is really pushing for Caselle,” Lamon said. “It includes fail-safes. The software makes it harder to hide something or mess something up with our accounts. It would make us accountable and save time.”

Lamon said the cost for switching to the Caselle software would be $469 a month, which would include training.

“That’s pretty spendy,” said councilwoman Jennifer Brandt. “I don’t feel like our court is at that point where this expense is necessary.”

Deputy clerk Kelly Shields addressed the council about the need to upgrade the software.

“Quickbooks is outdated, but workable,” Shields said. “It’s a lot more work to stick to state standards and keep a running list of court dockets. I’ve had people request records and they’re nearly impossible to find. But I understand that this change is expensive, and the council has to consider that.”

The council members were still concerned about the steep monthly costs for the program, so Lamon suggested that the council approve the purchase of an upgraded version of Quickbooks to use for court records and accounting.

The town is currently using a version of Quickbooks from 2002. Lamon said the cost would be a one-time payment of less than $500, and the council agreed that was the best decision.