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Your source for news in Hot Springs County
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Last week’s meeting of Hot Springs County School District #1’s Board of Directors allowed parents and students to get a glimpse of what the district’s plans are as far as opening the schools for the 2020-2021 school year. Each of the schools, Ralph Witters Elementary (RWE), Thermopolis Middle School (TMS) and Hot Springs County High School (HSCHS) have slightly different plans when it comes to the first day of school. All schools will begin with Tier I, with schools open to students with some...
The Hot Springs County Commissioners have approved their budget for the 2020-2021 fiscal year. Total requirements from the General Fund for the year will be $13,072,237, down $303,000 from the current fiscal year. With appropriations of just over $11.6 million, the commissioners dipped into the cash reserve fund for $1.4 million, $500,000 less than this year. Most line items that have had increases will see modest ones such as the airport budget that is seeing a boost of about $2,000, and less...
Hot Springs County is officially under a fire ban as of July 21 after the county commissioners signed a resolution upon recommendation from the Hot Springs County Fire Warden. Until further notice, any open fire or discharge of any class fireworks is prohibited on all unimproved state and private land within Hot Springs County. There are exceptions, however. Trash or refuse burned between 6 p.m. and 8 a.m. must be inside a container equipped with spark arrestors inside a cleared area with at...
Wyo Wednesday is a monthly event coordinated with Wyoming Main Street and local Main Street organizations and will continue August 5 with the theme, “Be a Tourist In Your Own Town”. Residents are encouraged to see the sites and attractions that their community has to offer and visit their local businesses. Local businesses are being encouraged to post their favorite Thermopolis and Hot Springs County “tourist attraction” and to highlight one or two items in their shops which are tourist or loca...
Will there be a high school football season? What about golf or volleyball season? Well, these questions have been answered through the Wyoming High School Activities Association (WHSAA) SMART Start Guide for fall sports. The guide gives the district insight on how to allow students to participate in extracurricular activities while lowering the risk of contracting COVID-19. The school district plan for fall sports and activities was a collaborative effort between Dr. Vern Miller, the school...
The Hot Springs County Commissioners met last week with members of the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) for the annual State Highway Improvement Program (STIP) meeting. Peter Hallsten, District Engineer for WYDOT out of Basin, presented the commissioners with information on statewide projects as well as local projects that will be coming up in the next few years, including pricing on those projects. Due to COVID-19 there has been a 40-percent reduction in travel creating a gap betwee...
Hot Springs County School District #1 (HSCSD#1) hosted a stakeholders meeting to discuss the various grants the district receives and how they are used. Nichole Ciz, Grant Coordinator for the district led the meeting. As a parent, you may always request information about the qualifications of your student’s teacher, including their education. When it comes to student confidentiality, Ciz said HSCSD#1 is in full compliance with the safeguarding of student information. They are not able to give o...
This year is an election year and the State of Wyoming’s Secretary of State and Wyoming’s County Clerks are doing everything they can to ensure Wyoming’s voters may vote safely during the pandemic. Most have already received a mailing from the Secretary of State’s office that includes a request for an absentee ballot. Absentee ballots allow the voter to fill out their ballot in the safety of their home and return it by mail. In order to vote absentee, you must be a registered member of a polit...
Forty-five page Requests for Proposals (RFP) are now ready to be released to the public for both the Days Inn and Star Plunge in Hot Springs State Park. A meeting last Thursday with the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Committee on Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources held in Thermopolis included a review of both RFP’s and there have been no changes to either document since first proposed. The committee hopes the documents will be out in the next week or two so those who are int...
As we’re getting closer to the end of July a lot of folks are wondering what will be going on with the Hot Springs County Fair in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The answer is pretty simple -- the show will go on. “Raising the Steaks” is the theme for this year’s event which starts this Saturday with the PeeWee, 4-H and FFA youth horse show. All of the events will be happening as they have in the past with just a couple of exceptions. There will be no pig wrestling this year as there w...
The Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Committee on Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources held a meeting in Thermopolis last week to go over a number of items in the State Park system as well as discuss the RFP’s for the Star Plunge and Days Inn. The group discussed a draft bill that would allow more of the money gathered from state park fees to be used to offset budget cuts. Currently, they can only use 30-percent the monies collected for maintenance of the various parks in the sys...
The COVID-19 Incident Command team of Dr. Vernon Miller, Emergency Management Coordinator Bill Gordon and Mary Gordon, Public Health Response Coordinator met with the Hot Springs County Commissioners to discuss where we are with the pandemic. Events or businesses need to submit an exception if there are portions that are not going to be able to be done with the state and county requirements currently in place. The team discussed plans and exception forms, letting the commissioners know they are...
The Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee is meeting Thursday, July 16 at the Hot Springs County Annex building to hear from Wyoming Game and Fish regarding the effect the pandemic has hand on fishing and hunting license sales as well as State Parks and Cultural Resources with further information on its management of state campgrounds and facilities. There will also be an update on Hot Springs State Park and progress on the current concessionaire contracts. In...
Hot Springs County School District’s Board of Directors held a special meeting last week to approve budget amendments, pay final bills and approve the hiring of three new members of the district’s team. Katie Despain was approved as a new hire to be a summer food service cook, Cassidy VanKirk was hired as RWE SpEd paraprofessional along with Kacey Cahill, also hired as an RWE SpEd paraprofessional. Cahill and VanKirk will both start their positions with the coming school year. The board mov...
COVID-19 has taken its toll on a lot of levels throughout the country, Wyoming included. In fact, it brought fewer people on our roadways this year as stay at home orders were put in place across the country. During a recent meeting of the Joint Transportation and Military Affairs Committee the numbers show an 18-percent decrease in daily traffic on Wyoming’s highways since March. That is just one-percent better than nationwide, which showed a 19-percent decrease in daily traffic. After the n...
The Hot Springs County School District has decided to move ahead with a daycare facility for use by district employees starting this fall. In a special meeting last Thursday, Superintendent Dustin Hunt informed the board, with three different scenarios available for the start of the 2020-21 school year, now is the time to begin an in-house daycare for teachers and staff. Hunt said with the three plans in play, the daycare would be the best way to keep the teachers in front of the students....
The Wyoming Main Street “Shop Smart, Shop Safe” campaign kicked off last week and Main Street Thermopolis has been distributing window clings and decals at local businesses that promote safe practices as shopping gets busier this summer. Wyoming Main Street provided the window clings and has provided funding for several other safety promotions in the community, including a billboard on US 20, just north of town. There are also t-shirts being distributed to the shops and restaurants in the his...
With the most recent loosening of COVID-19 orders by Governor Mark Gordon, schools, colleges and universities will be able to resume classes in the fall as long as a few safety measures are in place. Hot Springs County School District #1 has formed a task force, which is looking at various ways the schools can open up while taking those safety measures into consideration. Those plans will be for each school, the transportation department, food service and more. One of the plans being discussed i...
The Hot Springs County School District has another educator to add to their long list of award winning staff – Kinley Taylor, winner of the National University System-Sanford Teacher Award as a top inspiring teacher in Wyoming. Taylor, a kindergarten teacher at Ralph Witters Elementary, was surprised by the announcement and will receive $10,000 in recognition of her work supporting student development and achievement. She now joins the ranks with teachers from all 50 states and the District o...
Athletes from all over Wyoming and several other states are preparing to hit the gridiron here in Thermopolis at the 31st Annual Big Horn Basin Football Camp. Starting on Monday, campers from 23 Wyoming teams, Montana, Colorado, Phoenix, Ariz., Boise, Idaho and Chadron, Neb. will be camping out on the field as they participate in the camp. An amazing group of coaches are on tap for this year’s camp, including several college coaches from South Dakota School of Mines, Chadron State, Black Hills S...
A representative of the Wyoming Association of Risk Management (WARM), the company that takes care of liability insurance for government agencies in Wyoming, attended the recent meeting of the Hot Springs County Commissioners to discuss an overview on the library roof. Through an architect and contractor, the commissioners had sent a roofing bid to WARM that was an upgraded product. The representative told the commissioners their bid was over double what the insurance company feels is necessary...
In spite of many services and concessionaires being closed throughout the State Park system in Wyoming during April and May, numbers of visitors were up – way up. The state boasts 12 State Parks covering over 100,000 beautiful acres featuring just about everything you could want in an outdoor adventure, from hiking trails to fishing, swimming and boating. The five-year average for number of visitors across the state park system in April and May is 225,000 people. This year, that number more t...
Wyoming State Parks and Cultural Resources is back working on Requests for Proposals (RFP) for two properties within Hot Springs State Park – the Star Plunge and Days Inn. The board was preparing the RFPs to go out earlier this year when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, causing most of the government offices to close down in Cheyenne and employees were having to work from home. At that time, Deputy Director Nick Neylon said the work was put on hold and the release of the RFPs was pushed back. Speak...
Former Thermopolis resident, Laura Vietti, is joining other University of Wyoming faculty, students and alumni in a three-part natural history series, “Prehistoric Road Trip”, to be shown on PBS. The three episodes will take viewers through different time periods, focusing on geology, ecology and the environment, covering paleontology and fossil hunting throughout North America. In her segment, Vietti is covering fossilized teeth and how the minerals they are made of can provide insight int...
Traveling back in time is something we’ve all thought about at one time or another, but what if you could travel back 10,000 years? In Hot Springs County we’re rather lucky that we can do just that. All it takes is a short drive west of town to visit the Legend Rock Petroglyph site. You feel as though you’re stepping back in time as you’re surrounded by the natural beauty of the area along with 92 individual panels of sandstone that hold more than 280 different petroglyphs. Carved into the roc...
