Lincoln County Commission Chief of Staff Stephen Allen stepped into the SVI Radio studio to discuss a variety to topics from economic growth and impacts, the proposed EMS district in Star Valley, the potential to go to five commissioners with districts, and the Chief of Staff position and how responsibilities are distributed between the commissioners and Chief of Staff.

In Part 1 of the conversation, Allen discusses economic focuses, impact funding for individual communities, and the proposal for an EMS tax district in Star Valley and the remaining process.

(0:00) SVI Radio Swift 98 and The Spur heading into a guest interview segment this morning on the (0:05) weekday wake up and a chance to catch up with Lincoln County Commission Chief of Staff. (0:09) That’s Stephen Allen joining me in studio today. Stephen, good morning.

How are you today? (0:14) Good morning, Duke. It’s a pleasure to be on board. And thanks for this time.

And, (0:18) you know, I want to thank SVI for stepping up and helping out with the Kemmer Gazette. (0:24) It really is a pleasure to know that we are one Lincoln County and getting the news out to all (0:28) the constituents was so important. So we want to appreciate you stepping up and really making a (0:34) play and helping everybody out.

Absolutely. Well, we were thrilled when the Kemmer Gazette was (0:38) able to stay and there was a moment there got a little hairy for him. So absolutely happy to hear (0:43) that.

So, well, Stephen, there’s all as always, just a million things going on inside Lincoln (0:48) County. In fact, you were just telling me you were making a tour around a visit with each (0:54) municipality individually right now, correct? I am in the middle of my annual tours. I’ve (0:57) done it every year for the past three years.

And this week I was in Afton and in Thane. Next week, (1:03) I’ll be in Alpine. I’ll hit Cokeville and Kemmer next month, and then I’ll finish up with Star (1:09) Valley Ranch in June.

Unfortunately, four cities meet on the same night, and it’s hard to race and (1:15) get to them. So I have to spread them out over four months. But it’s an opportunity for us to (1:19) reach out to the councils in their environment, answer anything that happened with the legislature, (1:25) give them what’s happening in budget session, because that’s when they’re getting geared up for (1:29) budget, especially for sales tax.

That impacts the cities so much. So a lot of things I talk about is (1:36) what’s going on in the industry side, tariff power. They’re really a stabilizing factor for (1:41) us right now.

According to the industrial siting, it’s 5 million a year for sales tax. And we share (1:48) that equally. It doesn’t matter where in the county that dollar’s made.

We share it equally (1:52) with all the cities in the county by population. And so that’s probably the most equitable tax that (1:59) we have. And where people come out of town and recreate and spend money here, we get sales tax (2:05) from them.

So that’s always helpful. I always point out some of the good things the county’s (2:10) done. We actually brought another 700,000 of sales tax into the county.

We found a group that was (2:17) storing about 180 boxes up by McNeil Road here in the lower valley. And we said, well, how long are (2:26) they going to sit here? Well, it’s over 30 days. Well, that’s point of delivery.

And they were (2:30) building a hotel in Jackson. So we made them pay the sales tax here. And we got another 700,000 (2:35) this year.

But as I share with them that the downside is, of course, coal mine is now going into (2:42) remediation. And unfortunately, when they start remediating, the coal assets underneath affects (2:47) our assessed value, because we no longer get to count that coal. So as I told them, they need to (2:51) look at their historical sales tax to see how much that tariff power is affecting them over the next (2:57) several years and so on, so that they can budget appropriately.

And hopefully, the coal doesn’t (3:03) affect us as much, thanks to tariff power. Yeah, that’s certainly the hope and still hope that (3:11) there’s future options for additional coal extraction, right? I mean, those are still things (3:16) being worked on behind the scenes. Yeah, we cannot walk away from coal.

We have the richest, (3:20) best coal in the state of Wyoming, I would even say. And if you talk to Commissioner Conley, (3:25) he’ll tell you in the whole Western United States, if not the whole United States, (3:29) highest BTU and lowest sulfur rate. And that’s really a key element.

So yeah, we hope that the (3:35) coal mine gets new ownership if that happens. And we reopened, we know that there’s 5 million tons, (3:42) we toured it two weeks ago, and they admit there’s still 5 million tons they can work with. And (3:46) they know about the 67 million tons on the north side that’s leased out, but not permitted yet.

So (3:52) we’ll see how all that goes. Yeah, we really hope for that. I think the biggest thing is when we (3:56) look at industrial siting.

I mean, we’ve had four big projects over the last two years, (4:00) that’s brought over $34 million to this county in the cities that were impacted. And of course, (4:05) we were able to tie Afton into the tariff power. And so over the next five years, they’ll get (4:10) another $450,000.

We tried to get them in on Blue Spruce. But it got convoluted with Sublet and (4:17) whether Sublet was going to do a fifth penny, they didn’t. So actually, Lincoln County got (4:22) 97% of $14 million and 4 million of that’s going to LaBarge, who really needs it.

And they’re (4:29) going to be close to that. We’re not going to get as much sales tax out of that, because it’s (4:33) outside the county. But what’s really fascinating is that Cokeville got $1 million.

And Cokeville (4:40) is going to upgrade their sewage plant in order to accept septic. So when we had our issue last (4:46) year with septic, I want to thank Leisure Valley Recreation, because they have a private pond (4:51) system that they expanded, so that the private people in the valley could take septic there, (4:57) and they wouldn’t have to go outside the valley anymore. So hopefully that helped a lot of people (5:01) with the septic.

And then with Cokeville adding that on, we thank them for that, because that’s (5:06) going to be another long term. Of course, you heard that the county is putting a septic down (5:10) south of Kemmerer to help expand their usage and their growth of homes. And in doing that, (5:16) we’re going to accept septic there at the Kemmerer place as well.

And we paid $0 for that. We got a (5:21) $4.4 million Wyoming Business Council loan, and we’re going to use $1.2 million from our part of (5:27) the dry piney to do that as well. So it was a great opportunity.

The other thing we’re doing with (5:31) septic, since we’re on that, is that we’re starting our two-year study. It’s going to feed (5:36) off of the 2015 DEQ study about the migrations into the Salt River. We want to be conservation (5:42) mighty and really know where we’re at with that.

DEQ was supposed to update that three years later. (5:47) They were kind of remiss, so we called them out and said, hey, we’ll join you, Trouts Unlimited, (5:51) and DEQ. We’re going to start the study this year and should have… We’ve got all the same (5:56) testing spots.

We added three or four more. And then we’re going to actually be testing for DNA, (6:01) because we really want to know if there is migration, is that migration human-made or (6:06) animal agriculture? And that’ll help us make some good decisions down the road. (6:11) And that study should come out in 2028.

All right. Lincoln County Commissioner, (6:15) Chief of Staff, in studio this morning on SBI Radio. Well, a couple of items being discussed (6:20) right now by the commission.

Of course, in the Star Valley area, there is that proposed (6:24) a tax district for EMS services that administration with Star Valley Health (6:31) approached the county for and is kind of going through that process. Let’s start kind of from (6:36) the beginning of this, because this is a new process that’s allowed by the state legislature (6:41) that wasn’t allowed just even a couple of years ago. And so let’s start with there from the (6:45) groundwork and walk us this tax district aside, but just with any tax district moving forward, (6:52) how that creation process works now.

Well, generally, it’s done by petition. (6:57) So you have the property owners within a set district decide they want to set up a special (7:02) district. In this case, the state allowed the participants of the district to go directly to (7:09) the commission and ask them to put it a point of board.

The problem with that is in the commission’s (7:15) concern with that is you’re asking the commission to take away the constituents right to vote for (7:21) that under a petition. Then the voters get a vote not only on who is going to be representing the (7:29) district, but also what the mill levy is going to be. In this case, you’re asking the county to set (7:35) up an appointed board that will always be appointed by the commission, and they would have to then (7:39) take the mill levy to the voters.

So voters would still get a chance to vote on that mill levy. (7:45) The other concern with that is, is that even if the commissioners say, (7:52) okay, we’ll form the board, the board has got a really small window because after that decision (7:59) was made, the next choice is that we have to get letters of interest for people to want to sit on (8:04) the board. We can’t even start advertising that until a decision is made.

And I can tell you, (8:10) the commissioners, they have not made a decision yet. They’re waiting for public hearing through (8:14) this process, and they’ll make that decision on May 19th. And at that point, we’ll get the letters (8:20) of interest, then we have to appoint them.

So you’re two weeks out, then that board is going (8:24) to have to get an agenda, do their public official training, do their bylaws, and then make a motion (8:30) in order to put it on the ballot and have that submitted to the clerk by July 15th to even have (8:35) it on the ballot. So we’re really hard pressed to get it done, number one. And number two, (8:42) even if they did appoint this board, when it goes before the vote, the voters may say no to (8:47) the mill levy.

If that happens, and they can go anywhere from two to four mills (8:52) that the voters can vote on from the board’s request, if they do that, we could have a board (8:58) that is not funded for two years because they can’t come back to the voters for another two years, (9:04) and that would be 2028. So there’s a lot of fears as we look into this, a lot of questions that (9:09) still have to be answered. And certainly, although the hospital districts came out and chose this (9:16) path to the commission, the commission can’t promote this, they’re not, you know, they have (9:21) to wait for all the sides to tell them what their positions are, and then take that under consideration (9:25) on the 19th.

All right. And so you answered a couple of the clarifying factors. If this tax (9:31) district is created, and it does eventually end up on the ballot for a mill levy, voting down the (9:37) levy does not vote down the tax district, right? The tax remains in place.

That is correct, Duke, (9:43) the board would still be there still as an appointed board from the commission. Perfect.