Four running for HSC County Commissioner

Four Republican candidates will be vying for a single Hot Springs County Commissioner seat in the 2024 Primary Election. The top vote earner will move onto the General Election in November where they could still face a write in candidate.

We are including candidate bios/submitted descriptions and information from the Thermopolis-Hot Springs Chamber sponsored candidate forum held in July.

Bob Aguiar

Bob Aguiar has been a resident of Hot Springs County for the past 11 years.  Currently he is the Republican Party State Committeeman, a member of Hot Springs County Predator Management Board and a 4-H Shooting Sports Leader for many years. 

He graduated college at Regis University in Denver and has spent more than 35 years in management positions in Colorado, Montana and Wyoming, retiring as Human Resource Manager for Crown Manufacturing in Worland.  

“As county commissioner I would like to see more fiscal responsibility from local government, boards and others utilizing taxpayer dollars. I am in no way advocating any manpower reductions, just more prudent spending. Manageable, sustainable growth for our community without an undue tax burden on our citizens should be one of our priorities.  I am also a strong advocate for term limits on elected positions,” said Aguiar.

He added, “My efforts will always be for the benefit of the community.  I have a firm grasp of the needs of our youth, our working class and our seniors and will strive to keep Hot Springs County the most desirable, affordable place to live in Northern Wyoming.”

Mike Chimenti

Mike Chimenti is a Wyoming native, born in Fremont County and raised in Dubois. In 1974, he moved to Thermopolis when he accepted a job with the Thermopolis Police Department. After 43 years he retired from the department. He has an Associate Degree in Criminal Justice.

“I am trained in budget preparation and implementation. I served two terms as Chief of Police and one term as Thermopolis Mayor. I have no other obligations than to serve the people of Hot Springs County, said Chimenti.”

He added, “Some of the most important issues I see facing Thermopolis are:

Budgets - The budget is at the top of the list. Without a strong budget everything else slows or stops.

Water - Maintaining and supplying the town and county with a clean, regular water supply.

Job Market - Bring in small, clean industries.

Agency Cooperation - Co-operation with all county and city agencies.

Opportunities - Provide opportunities that attract a younger population to our community (jobs, child-care, recreation).

Hot Springs County and Thermopolis have given to my family. Now it is time that I give back by serving the people of Hot Springs County as your county commissioner. The citizens of Hot Springs County deserve my commitment.

If elected I intend to serve as your County Commissioner without receiving compensation or benefits from the county.”

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give” -Winston Churchill

Joe Martinez

Joe Marinez and his wife, Becky, moved

to Thermopolis in 2004, choosing it as the ideal community to raise their kids and ensuring they graduated from Hot Springs County School District.

“Over the past 20 years, we’ve loved being part of this amazing community and have been actively involved. I’ve served on our church board, volunteered at various events, been on the Hot Springs County Fair Board, and served as a school board trustee for Hot Springs County School District Number One. I aim to set an example for my kids, showing them the importance of community involvement and service,” said Martinez.

He added, “I want to help our community grow and thrive responsibly. I’m committed to utilizing our fairgrounds to benefit community members and attract events that support local businesses. Investing in these fairgrounds is crucial to keep events coming and provide quality facilities. The fair building’s roof has been leaking for over six years, and addressing such infrastructure issues cannot be delayed any longer.”

“Our community deserves a reliable water supply and efficient trash disposal services. I will work with necessary entities to ensure the best possible service for all Hot Springs County residents. I also believe in respecting and protecting individual property rights and will work to resolve any disputes fairly. I am dedicated to listening to the community’s concerns, questions, and comments on county matters,” said Martinez.

Phillip Scheel

Phillip Scheel is seeking reelection as County Commissioner. He is the co-owner and CEO of Tumbleweed Propane. Phillip is a native Wyomingite from Pine Bluffs. He went to college at LCCC in Cheyenne, where he served as the Student Senate President. He was the Thermopolis Citizen of the Year in 2015. He is a graduate of Leadership Wyoming Class of 2019 and Leadership Academy class of 2024.He served on the Thermopolis-Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce board for 11 years and is a Past President. He is a member of the Thermopolis Rotary Club, and is a Past President. He is the Wyoming County Commissioners Association’s Elections, Land Use, and Governmental Operations Committee co-chair. He is a founding board member for Thrive Thermopolis, which is our new Economic Development Organization.

“As a county commissioner, I have helped secure two SLIB board grants, one for the Senior Center roof replacement and a Business Community Readiness grant for the old airport reuse. I have worked tirelessly to secure federal, state and local funding to rebuild the county section of Black Mountain Road. I am working with other stakeholders to provide a local presence of Central Wyoming College in HSC. I am most excited now about the potential work on a new Community Center,” said Scheel.

“I understands that to accomplish these important goals that move the community forward, a commissioner must be forward thinking, optimistic, and civil, putting the community needs first,” he added.

Answers to questions asked during the candidate forum

Are you for or against the Hot Springs County Water District Joint Powers Board, and why?

Bob Aguiar:

Well, that’s a good question, am I for or against? I am actually for the Joint Board, I don’t necessarily agree with some of their decisions, but I do think we need a board. I think water is a big issue, one of our primary issues in any town in the west. I do think we need to address that issue. And I like having the board. I’m not happy if they drill a well 25 miles away trying to run a pipeline to town. But, I guess we’ll see what happens with them. I do support them and I hope they make the right decision.

Joe Martinez:

I think the Joint Powers board is a good idea. If you think about it, we have multiple water districts within this county. We’ve got Kirby, we’ve got Lucerne, there’s Red Lane, South Thermopolis Water District. There’s Thermopolis itself. There’s also one going out west. There might be another one that I’m not aware of. But really, everybody is trying to tap into the same water resource. Lucerne and Kirby get their water from Worland and it’s a good quality water. It’s safe. And the pipes are already there. The infrastructure has already come to a certain point. So, why not? We had an opportunity years ago to continue to bring that into Thermopolis. And yet that opportunity was shut down. I think the Joint Powers Board is one that really they’re there to do the research, find out what the community wants and try to drive that so that it can happen and bring the type of water that this community wants for everybody involved. Thank you.

Phil Scheel:

The Hot Springs County Rural Joint Water Power Board is a group of people that come together from multiple water districts. I see the folks from Owl Creek water district are here. I live in the South Thermopolis Water District. The town of Thermopolis currently produces water, I see a councilwoman here. East Thermopolis supplies water from the town of Thermopolis. Currently all the water users around here purchase water from the town of Thermopolis and the aging water plant where they take river water treat it and that’s how we get water. Water is life. It is super important. Sage Valley was a subdivision that was plated 35 years ago. They finally sold all the lots as soon as the Owl Creek Water District line came into town. So water is life and it improves everything. The county is a unique player. We’re not really in the business of selling water, but we are in the business of taking care of county residents. The county has a seat on the Joint Powers Board. It’s been working with Wyoming Water Development, who pays 66% of the cost if they produce water to get it to here. If so, we move onto the Big Horn Regional water system, which is the largest part of the water system in the state of Wyoming. There’s 3 or 4 giant wells in the Madison Formation to take care of users all the way over from Shell, Ten Sleep, Worland, Basin, Greybull. We would just be hooking onto that. I think it’s a great idea. I’m super excited the county is involved.

Mike Chimenti:

Being a former mayor and working with our water situation, we got our water out of Boysen reservoir, coming down the river, and there’s nothing that our water plant cannot take out of that river water. Anything that’s dumped in the river, diesel fuel, anything else will be taken out of that water by our water plant. Now the regional water board, I’m not against the regional water board. I think it’s a good idea. We need to have people on there that keep track of what’s going on. But then I think what we need to do is we just take a look around at the white hairs here. If you hook into that regional water, your water prices are going to go out of sight. I see one of you shake your head over there. Right now. When I was mayor, we paid $23.83 for water a gallon. The first 1,000 gallons are free. I talked to a man that lived out north of town on the regional water system. He left his water hose on in his yard and forgot about it. His water bill went over $500. Now if you talk about what is good water? What we need to do is start looking at what’s going to cost us to repair our infrastructure in the city of Thermopolis to our water plant. It’s the water lines that are bad, it’s not the water plant and not the water. If you go down to town hall right now and talk to the mayor, he’ll show you the old water lines that were taken out of Richards Street when we redid Richards Street when I was the mayor. Take a look at those water lines and see what it looked like on the inside. That’s why the water looks bad. Yes, I do support that regional water district, but that’s as far as it goes. Thank you. 

What are your goals for the county?

Joe Martinez:

My goals are really to listen to the community, bring what you want, the direction you want to see our community go and try and use that to see what are the resources that we can utilize to make those things happen. Economic development is one of those things. Unfortunately, we had a business park just south of town that did nothing. It didn’t bring in the business that we were hoping would come in. And I think that happened right after I moved here, right around 2005. We’ve got the airport. There’s opportunity there. There was at least one proposal that I’m aware of for somebody to buy that property and turn it into a private airport, which would mean housing development. And when you have housing development, you’re going to have our local construction companies that are hopefully hired to build houses up there. We have other areas, unfortunately, in Hot Springs County, there’s a lot of BLM land. So we are a little bit landlocked in that sense. We just have to see what sort of development can we do, where can we have that development and what sort of resources can we bring into the county to help support that development? Thank you.

Phil Scheel:

My goals for the county are some big fat ideas and mostly to finish the big fat ideas that we’ve been working on. For example, for about ten years, we’ve been working on finding a way to repave seven miles of the county section of Black Mountain Road. There’s only one road that is paved that goes east in this entire county, that is Black Mountain Road. The state’s rebuilt their section. We currently just went out for bids to actually rebuild the county section of Black Mountain Road. That might seem like a small thing. Most town residents probably don’t drive up Black Mountain Road. It’s part of the county. The county road is a big job for the county. So we’re working on that. Joe mentioned the old airport. We have a brand new airport. It was commissioned in 2015. An amazing facility that the residents enjoy. I would guess if you go to the river and find somebody fishing that isn’t from here. They came on a big jet, which is from the new airport. It’s an amazing resource. The old airport is something we’ve been working really hard on. We secured a $1.3 million business grant from the Wyoming Business Council to do some reconstruction. They’re going to demolish the whole runway, use that material to fix Black Mountain Road and redevelop them. I’ve got a lot of goals, most of the things we’d like to continue, including adding community college services from CWC here in Hot Springs County.

Mike Chimenti:

I’ve got a lot of ideas. The one big thing that worries me is taxes. We’ve got a pretty good size senior population here. I want to see our taxes stay about the same to protect our seniors. And when we’re talking about protection, also, I want to see everybody in Hot Springs County protected. That means law enforcement wise and otherwise. You know this world is going downhill fast, and just because it hasn’t hit  Thermopolis, doesn’t mean it won’t. I want to see our people protected. I want to watch the budget. I want to work with the county agencies to watch their budgets. I’m not going to try to cut any of their budgets. Those people are elected and appointed to do that job, not the county commissioners. We oversee that as an elected official, but it’s up to them to run their offices. We can discuss their budgets with them and see the best way to put those budgets together to benefit the people of Hot Springs County. Phil talked about Black Mountain Secondary. That sucker as a road is a people killer. That road needs to be fixed, but I don’t know if the way the county commissioners are doing it is the right way. I haven’t been to enough of their meetings to say, one way or another, but I think there are some ideas that can be taken out of from what our existing commissioners are doing and follow through with those and finish those projects. Thank you.

Bob Aguiar:

My goals for the county. As a county commissioner my primary goal would be a controlled, sustainable growth. I mean, we need to grow. Every town grows. I can see Thermopolis hasn’t grown in the 12 years I’ve been here as far as population wise. But we need to grow in a controlled, sustainable way. We need to encourage businesses to come into town, businesses that our children can have employment. Right now there is almost nothing. And we wonder why when the kids get out of school, they all leave. What is here for them? Really when you think about it? But there’s two groups that are really near and dear to my heart. Like I said earlier, the kids. I have a warm spot for the children. I will continue to fight for the children. Anybody who bothers me or is against me, knows that I will fight you for the children and the seniors. Like Mike just mentioned, we have almost 30% of our community in Hot Springs County are people over 65. And that most of those people are on a fixed income and as taxes go up and the cost of living goes up somebody is going to suffer. We need to take that into consideration. If we’re going to look at a project, we need to make sure the community benefits from the project, not just a few select individuals. The community needs to benefit. Thank you.

If property taxes are reduced, what a part of the county budget would you cut or replace?

Phil Scheel:

In Wyoming property taxes are divided by mills. And then we take about 80 mills. It’s kind of confusing. This year when we were putting our budget together a mill in Hot Springs County equals about $200,000. The county gets 12 mills. The school gets 24.7. The city gets eight. That’s how all the property tax is divided. Given special districts, the Senior Center wants a district with two mills. I support that. That’s a good way for us to say yes, that’s important to us. Let’s spend some money on that. If property tax is decreased, this is really a state legislature issue. They’re the ones that raise and lower taxes. The assessor assesses the value, the treasurer does the tax sort of thing at the lower level. The state Senate sets the levels of taxation. If property tax is reduced, there will be lots of local services cut. The fire district gets three mills. …If the county would have less than its twelve mills, the county…that’s not all the money the county uses, things that we would have to decrease, hopefully we wouldn’t have to decrease jobs. It’s just really difficult. That’s the joy of being a county commissioner. We have to set the budget. It would be a difficult choice if we had to reduce property tax.

Mike Chimenti:

I think we have to be careful about cutting jobs. When our taxes go down we have to look at that. To me, I think we need to sit down with our county officials, public officials to see what areas could be cut out of their budgets before we start laying people off. The workforce is the important part. And if you don’t have a workforce you don’t have a government. We’ve got to have people on Road & Bridge, we’ve got to have people at the assessor office, at the treasurer’s office. If we don’t have those folks then the work doesn’t get done. So we have to look at the budgets in each department to see if we cut some of that money out of those budgets, including when it comes to the county commissioners are able to allocate. See what we can do, see what we cut out, what we don’t have. What we can keep and not spend. We spend better off lean. When they cut our taxes we just have to look at and see what are the best options. Thank you.

Bob Aguiar:

I think we need to get a little clarity on this tax reduction. We’re talking about residential property tax, which amounts to 26% of the amount of revenue that we get. Now, when you have a 50% reduction on that, that’s 13%. Most people in here have homes and they realize that your property taxes have doubled in the last six years. And so it’s not going to be anything that’s so critical that we’re going to need to cut jobs. I’m not an advocate of removing any jobs. I think we need to tighten the belt. I think we need to reduce spending. We need to make intelligent decisions on how we spend our money. There’s no reason we can’t survive just the way we are and not cut any of our facilities with the property tax reduction. And the seniors in this town desperately need that reduction. Like I said before, most of them are on a fixed income. This is hurting. When the wintertime comes it gets cold and everything has gone up. I mean, you only have so many dollars to spend, something is going to sacrifice. So I don’t see any jobs being lost. I’m not an advocate of that, just intelligently reducing spending.

Joe Martinez:

They all make some really good points, but one of the things I think that was forgotten is the state legislature has talked about if those property taxes are affected, then they’re trying to find a way to shore up those monies lost, to each of the counties and cities. So they want to try and figure out how they can still make it so that there aren’t those significant budget cuts. But if it does happen each department should already be looking, should already have a list of what are our priorities. Number one, on down the list, and you look at those highest priorities. These are areas that we have to fund. All of these other areas below are the nice to haves. That’s what you have to look at. List those out so that way it makes it a little bit easier to say, okay, these are the nice  to haves, the very bottom of the list. We can start by cutting these first. Everybody wants to have their roads cleared in the wintertime so that they make it to town as they need you, whether it’s for groceries, for work, get kids to and from school, those are important things. And so we have to make sure that we’re able to continue to support that. It can be any number of things. That’s just really the way I see it, a list highest priority to lowest, and that’s where you start. Thank you.