County offers first aid courses to employees

Public Health Nursing Manager Amanda Heinemeyer attended the Washakie County Commissioner meeting on Tuesday, March 19 to discuss the opportunity to offer basic first aid and CPR courses to all Washakie County employees.

Heinemeyer said she received a grant to conduct the courses that would be available to all county employees, and the courses would be offered through Cody Regional Health. Heinemeyer said she will plan on offering four courses at various times to ensure that employees will be able to attend one of the courses during their workday.

The commissioners approved Heinemeyer’s request to conduct the courses.

Heinemeyer additionally had the commissioners approve of the “bad debt list.” According to Heinemeyer, the list is a collection of fees unpaid by previous patients, and the fees are over a year old. The commissioners approved to write off the debt list.

HOMELAND SECURITY, EMERGENCY SERVICES

Washakie County Emergency Management Director Kami Neighbors said she has been working on attaining Naloxone, commonly known as NARCAN for their office, due to the national issue of fentanyl being mailed to government offices.

According to Neighbors, the county can acquire NARCAN from the state with no cost, but there are stipulations. The county will need to have a policy in place, they will need to conduct a training and have a prescription or standing order for the NARCAN, said Neighbors.

Neighbors said she is working on drafting a policy and getting the prescription.

Neighbors is also working on a draft policy for suspicious letters received by the county.

Due to the increase in costs associated with Cody Regional Health providing emergency ambulance services, the commissioners and Neighbors decided to move forward with the decision to start an assessment of Washakie County’s medical needs.

The county will be applying for a state Emergency Medical Services Needs Assessment Grant, and authorized the company SafeTech Solutions to begin the medical needs assessment.

A Washakie County resident Dale Link attended the commissioners meeting to express his concern over a recent experience that he and his wife had with Guardian Flight, which provides air medical transportation services to all Washakie County residents.

According to Link, the company had refused to fly his wife, who was in need of a higher level of medical treatment, to a hospital in Denver, Colorado. Link said that the representative he spoke to over the phone said that they refuse to transfer patients to hospitals out of state.

According to Washakie County Attorney Tony Barton, Guardian Flight does legally have the ability to refuse to transfer patients, similar to other airlines, and they are not breaching their contract by refusing services to certain patients.

Regardless of Guardian Flight’s ability to refuse service, Commissioner Chairman Aaron Anderson said he was surprised to hear about Link’s experience, as Guardian Flight does regularly transfer patients out of state. Anderson and the county intends on looking into the incident and hopes to get some information from Guardian Flight.

RED VISTA VILLAGE II

According to Interim County Planner Mike Robinson, the county planning commission met and approved Cole Smith and David Clark’s amended development agreement, which resolved previous concerns.

The development agreement was tabled from the March 5 meeting in order to revise a timeline for a septic system to be installed by the summer.

See previous Northern Wyoming News article published on March 7 for more information about the county’s concerns with the initial development agreement and final plat.

Robinson said the planning commission voted to approve the final plat contingent upon the county commissioner’s approval of the development agreement.

According to Robinson in a letter addressed to Carol and Cole Smith, survey information indicated that the access road within Red Vista Village is partially on the adjoining parcel to the east, which is owned by Eleutian Technology LLC.

Kent Holiday, who is part of Eleutian Technology LLC, attended the meeting to express his concerns about Smith’s planned actions, stating that his actions go against a purchase agreement from 2009.

According to Holiday, the purchase agreement contained specific easement agreements.

“The reason we had him agree to those, was so he wouldn’t go do crazy stuff with the property, which he now seems to be trying to do,” said Holiday.

Holiday overall expressed concerns about the county approving of Smith’s actions while knowing that they break an agreement Smith previously made with Eleutian Technology LLC.

After a lengthy discussion, Barton said that ultimately, it is a property dispute between Smith and Holiday that should be settled upon in court and should not influence the county’s decision on approving the final plat.

“The contract that Mr. Holiday has provided is absolutely irrelevant for any purposes and for multiple reasons,” said Clark. “This contract was signed in 2009. The statute of limitations has long since expired, meaning that nothing in this contract is enforceable. A court won’t even look at it,” he said. Barton agreed with Clark’s statement.

Barton said, “Mr. Smith has done everything that the county requires of him […] I think if the county is going to say, “No,” to somebody who has in good faith followed it’s rules and met the obligations set forth by the county, the county needs to have a good reason to do so.”

The county approved the development agreement and the final plat, pending Smith’s signature.

OTHER BUSINESS

Building maintenance manager Breck Buer reported to the commissioners about recently completed work, which primarily involved fixing broken equipment and taking inventory of county maintenance assets. Buer said his priorities included repairing concrete steps at the county courthouse and working on the fairgrounds.

CPA Jason Lund went over the Washakie County 2023 fiscal year audit with the commissioners. According to Lund, there was a clean opinion over the audit and financial statements.

Washakie County Library Director Karen Funk requested approval to purchase a new copier machine for the Ten Sleep Library. Funk said the copier is over 10 years old and is no longer functioning as it should. The commissioners approved the purchase of a new copier from Office Shop in the amount of $3,495.