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minutes meeting date 2026-04-06 · fetched 2026-09-09 · 21556 characters · official file · plain text
BOCC Apr 6 2026 Regular Meeting FREMONT COUNTY COMMISSIONERS MEETING MINUTES April 6, 2026 Present for the meeting were: Commissioners Blair Dance, Rick Hill, and Mark Chandler Also attended by: Clerk Meredith Mattingly, Deputy Clerk Kim Fletcher, Civil Attorney Blake Hall via Zoom, Treasurer Lori Beard, Assessor Carol Blanchard, Sheriff Bart Quayle, Public Works Director Brandon Harris, Parks and Recreation Director Greg Grant, Noxious Weed Supervisor Bryce Fowler, Emergency Management Coordinator Keith Richey, Juvenile Probation Supervisor Darin Burrell, 4H Coordinator Dana Miller, IT Administrator Josh Warnke and IT Manager Chad Quayle Bryce Fowler offered the prayer. Greg Grant led the pledge. Commissioner Dance called the meeting to order and welcomed those in attendance. Assessor Carol Blanchard reported her office is finalizing 2026 assessments and will be preparing to send out assessment notices. The Property Tax Reduction Program deadline is April 15th; these can be done online but people can come in and get help with those applications as well. There has been some legislation passed; registration stickers will not be required anymore for vehicles, so they will be monitoring how that affects us. Everyone will still need to register their vehicles, they just won’t get a sticker. Another that passed is no proration of homeowners exemption, so when people apply for the homeowners tax exemption, they will get that amount for the whole year. Eagle View has started the flyover process; they have done some last week and should be doing some this week. We should receive final images in the next month or two. She will be attending IAC meetings tomorrow in Idaho Falls. Treasurer Lori Beard reported we had some fraud on a bank account so we had to close an account and start a new one. She finally got hold of a parcel that had $40,000 owed in taxes and got it paid in full. She is still working on JustFOIA and hope to get it started on April 17th. We collected $246,000 in taxes in March. We have 13 mobile homes for the Warrant of Distraint sale on April 9th. She is working on pending issues, and has 17 that she sent to the title company that will hopefully come forward. We have $6.8M in outstanding taxes. She will also be attending the IAC meetings in Idaho Falls tomorrow. Public Works Director Brandon Harris reported Road and Bridge has several bridges being worked on. The one on 200 in Salem is going well. The same contractor is working on the one in Squirrel, which is not going so well; it is 2 months behind. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it as a county because it is a State project. All we can do is wait for them to finish and hit them with fines. There are 2 new bridges in Parker that will be started soon. The County also did a bridge in Newdale that we were able to do very quickly. He has a meeting tomorrow for Yale-Kilgore; our side is almost done. For Sewer, the Last Chance treatment plant should be done this year. He will be working with the Treasurer to update the sewer fees for short term rentals. Landfill is going well, although garbage numbers are down. Madison County is 1 cent cheaper than we are, so a lot of people have started taking their garbage there. Sheriff Bart Quayle reported the Sheriff’s office has logged 15,940 activities since last month. This includes 1205 traffic stops, 434 citations issued, and 62 arrests. He anticipates it will be a busy summer. We currently have 37 in custody. They did 29 transports in the last month. They helped with 5 accidents, and created 305 incident reports that required investigations. He will be attending IAC training tomorrow. He will be at ISA meetings next week and will hopefully get a better understanding of what legal changes have happened and will be able to push those changes out in training in July. The Sheriff’s office is going through a lot of software implementations, which they knew would be a big project. IT Administrator Josh Warnke and Manager Chad Quayle; Mr. Quayle reported he has been working on the new jail management system as well as a new ticketing system for Sheriff’s office. He has the project broken down into about 33 steps, and he is about 60% through those steps. They should go live May 14th. Everything looks to be on track. These changes will also affect the city police; they use our software. Mr. Warnke reported our data storage system is due for a refresh but the cost is very high; all of the AI companies are buying all of the high-end storage systems and its driving up the price, so he is working on getting quotes for that. He received a call from Blackfoot Communications; they host our phone system but our current system is being discontinued and hope to have it offline in September. They have a replacement system, but it works a lot differently, and we will have to see if it is something we can do or if we should switch to something else. The Supreme Court is getting ready to switch everything to State’s network. Planning and Building is switching over to Clariti. Sara is helping a lot with that conversion, but they aren’t planning on switching over until late this Fall. They are also working on the JustFOIA, but still have a little work to do. They hope to have it going by April 17th. Parks and Recreation Director Greg Grant reported we have finished the snowmobile grooming season. Through the end of February, we are down 30% on registrations for the year, but we were just under 50% budget utilization, so hopefully things will even out as long as we have a good winter this year. Terry was able to attend the ISSA conference and came back with some great ideas. One of those is to utilize Starlink on the groomers to help with communication in the back country. Waterways; he completed initial walkthrough of all of our access points. We are working on a fee system to allow us to collect fees at our access points along the Henry’s Fork. Golf; the ForeUP system has been implemented. During the first 2 and a half weeks of season, they brought in just over $60,000. We have a lot of new members coming in. He has been working with the Yellowstone Teton Territories, and was just put on their board as our county representative. Noxious Weed Supervisor Bryce Fowler reported they are just wrapping up surplus. Once everything that is currently on the sale is sold, those items that haven’t been put on will be done in the Fall. They are starting up weed spraying ahead of schedule, which means they are trying to find staff. He and Greg will be doing interviews for their shared position tomorrow. There was a lot of interest for the position, so they feel good about it. 4H Coordinator Dana Miller reported they just finished shooting sports registration, and they are going to have 40 kids this year. They will be having a Fun Shoot on May 16th out at the range, and will be inviting kids from all over the district to come and participate. Ryken Anderson will be going to the National Shooting Sports competition in June in Nebraska. We received NRA Foundation Grant. She and Erika are still doing art and gardening in the schools for 4H. Daycamp signups start today. Next week kids can start signing up for 4H camp, which fills up quickly. They did the beef weigh-in, 35 kids brought in steers, and 1 will be going to the State Fair. The swine weigh-in will be on April 24th. Every year they get an AmeriCorp volunteer to come work in their office; this year their volunteer is a local who was one of their 4H kids. She will be starting in May. Probation Supervisor Darin Burrell reported met as a court group to talk about how to expedite and streamline things. Those were some pretty good discussions that included Commissioners, court staff, Sheriffs, public defenders, as well as our Prosecutor’s staff. One issue of concern is that the Governor abolished the behavioral health teams in the area, which created a crisis for local resources in the area. More recently, the Legislature decided they are going to reinstate the community act teams, which is good, but they eliminated regional health boards and gave those responsibilities to entities like East Idaho Health. He has talked with East Idaho Health; they will help as best they can, but they also work for the state so we will have to see what happens, because they will have to do what they are told to do. He is busy, not just with his case load, but also working on building maintenance because his office is still in the 5C building. Emergency Management Coordinator Keith Richey reported he is staying busy. The State received the drought declaration last week. FEMA has always been a mess but with DHS shut down it is even moreso. We don’t know what will happen with grants this year. Part of the issue is that DHS pulled millions of dollars of grants from several states, and they want to redistribute those funds to other states, but that is being challenged in court. Idaho doesn’t want to accept funds and then learn that we have to pay it back later. Because of the way the wind keeps blowing, fire season for this year is a concern. We are 2 months ahead of schedule. He will be gone in a couple weeks for forensic fire investigation training. He also has a meeting with Forest Service on Wednesday to start discussing fire season. Clerk Meredith Mattingly reported she finished getting letters out to the taxing districts last week, with an overview of their levy certifications and market values. This week she is working on budget packets, and she will be getting those out to everyone hopefully by the end of the week. She’s been attending meetings for JustFOIA and ICRMP when she can. Absentee ballots are getting ready to be sent out this week. Last Friday, Commissioners were able to go out to Newdale to make sure their building was compliant for voting, so they will be voting at their City Building for both the May and November elections this year. Her office is currently being painted and she thanks everyone for being patient with the occasional mess. Commissioner Hill reported he attended the BOE Training. He is on the Magistrate Committee; they met on the 18th to do interviews and hired 3 judges: J. Scott Andrew fof Custer County, Trent J. Belnap for Jefferson County, and Jason S. Spillman for Teton County. It is an interesting procedure; there are 20 people on the committee and the voting was unanimous. He attended the East Idaho Solid Waste meeting. Their ribbon cutting is scheduled for May 12th. He attended the President’s Day Republican Banquet and it was well attended. Working on bids for the North Annex suite A and the old mill building. He met with Core and Hummell about the security entrance; there are some concerns about the numbers but they are working on it. Commissioner Chandler reported he attended the Golf Board meeting. He appreciates the time Greg Grant has put in at the golf course. The Snowmobile Committee also had a meeting, there really wasn’t much of a season but they got through it the best that they could. He attended the BOE training. He has been working through 5C’s issues and appreciates Mr. Burrell making sure the building stays running. He attended the RACE meeting, and appreciates that group caring as much as they do about the kids in our community. Commissioner Dance reported he has been working to help re-establish the Board of Guardians; it fizzled out for a few years, but they have asked for quite a large fee of support to restart it. He is trying to find people to sit on that board, who will be willing to go out and help our elderly people that can’t help themselves. He attended the BOE training. He is still very active with the Flood50 commemoration details. RC&D also had a meeting to discuss the budget and other items, including wildfire mitigation projects. Cloud Seeding has been an issue this year, but they are active. It has been a poor year. He is pleased with the new overhead crane at the snowmobile grooming shop in Island Park. He thanked our staff for all of the work they do. He feels we have one of the best teams in the state. Elected Officials and Department Heads RE: Personnel Policy Updates – action item The department heads discussed updating the personnel policy. They discussed the possibility of having an HR person. We had a dedicated HR employee several years ago, but it was a bad experience. There is a possibility of contracting out for the position and that person would specialize in HR. Currently, most of those responsibilities are falling on Payroll Clerk TaGenn Armstrong and Clerk Mattingly, but HR really isn’t part of either of their job descriptions. Commissioners asked each of the Department Heads their feelings about having someone dedicated to this role. All the department heads agreed having someone dedicated to HR would benefit the county as long as it was the right person for the job. The discussion was tabled until next week’s meeting due to technical difficulties. Everyone also felt it might be good to have more time to discuss this and other matters concerning the Personnel Policy. Fair Board Rebecca Anderson RE: Tractor Pulls – action item; Grant – action item; Executive Session IC 74-206(1)(a) – action item Ms. Anderson discussed a company called United Truck and Tractor Pulls reaching out to the Fair Board, they would like to put on an event during the fair. It would cost $15,000 up front, but we would get 100% of the profit from ticket sales. The Fair Board has just under the $15,000 in their current budget, so they would like to look for sponsors in the community to help cover the rest. She has talked to 3 people about sponsoring and is waiting to hear back from them, and there are about 10 more she would like to reach out to. Commissioners asked if this would be in conjunction with the fair. She said yes, they want to do it the Friday night of the fair. Commissioners asked about prizes. She stated all of those are funded by the company putting on the event, so we wouldn’t be responsible for prizes. Commissioner Hill made a motion to approve the Fair Board to contract with United Truck and Tractor Pulls for the tractor pull for the fair in the amount of $15,000 and to seek out sponsors. Commissioner Chandler seconded the motion. A full voice vote was heard with all commissioners voting in favor. Ms. Anderson stated the Fair Board is looking to apply for a grant from the USDA. They are offering one up to $300,000 with match, and they would like to use what funds we can get to put up a new open air livestock barn at the fairgrounds and replace 3 of the current livestock buildings. Commissioner Hill made a motion to approve the Fair Board to apply for the USDA grant for wood structures for a barn at the fairgrounds. Commissioner Chandler seconded the motion. A full voice vote was heard with all commissioners voting in favor. Commissioner Dance made a motion to go into executive session pursuant to IC 74-206(1) (a) To consider hiring a public officer, employee, staff member or individual agent, wherein the respective qualities of individuals are to be evaluated in order to fill a particular vacancy or need. This paragraph does not apply to filling a vacancy in an elective office or deliberations about staffing needs in general; at 10:28 a.m. Commissioner Hill seconded the motion. A roll call vote was taken with Commissioner Dance voting “Aye”, Commissioner Hill voting “Aye”, and Commissioner Chandler voting “Aye”. Commissioner Dance declared the meeting open at 10:47 a.m. Sewer Op Manager Jon Simms RE: Request to Replace Sewer UTV Vehicle – action item Mr. Simms presented bids for a new sewer utv. He has 2 bids. The first is for a build similar to what we currently have. The other is a little different, and is a flatbed, which could be useful, although it is more expensive than the other. He would prefer the more expensive one with the flatbed. Both vehicles would fit in their budget. The Ranger is $29,000, and the Can-Am is $32,700. The specs are different on both machines which also makes a difference in the price. Commissioners stated unfortunately we would have to accept the lower bid, however, because the specs don’t match, if he would like to seek out more bids with similar specs and approach them again, they may be able to approve the vehicle he would prefer. Mr. Simms will approach John Deere, who had a similar vehicle to the Can Am, and get on next week’s agenda. Greg Bowman ITD RE: Project Updates Mr. Bowman updated the commissioners about their projects for this summer. They have received the pedestals for the light poles at Elk Creek. It will effect traffic for about 3 days in May while the poles are installed. They are still working on the Ashton to 87 project. They are waiting on a review from the state; The State office has been decimated and there are only 3 people in the office, down from 20, and they are trying to keep up. He has been told that they are currently working on it so hopefully there will be an update soon. On April 20th, they will be doing road work on the Buffalo River Bridge near Ponds Lodge. It should only be about 2 weeks of work before Memorial Day. Next summer they will be doing some repairs at Osborne Bridge; there may be times they have to be 1 lane but they have really tried to keep 2 lanes open. The Ashton hill will be seal coated next year. Commissioner Dance stated since the restriping project last year on the Ashton Hill, he hasn’t had any issues or near misses. It has been a good change for the county. There is some progress being made on the 300N at-grade closures. They are waiting for our contractor to get them the designs for a secondary option for frontage roads so they can compare the costs of roads versus cul-de-sacs, so they have an option to choose which option would be easier to afford. Assessor Carol Blanchard RE: Appraisal Process and State Compliance Review – action item Ms. Blanchard reviewed the appraisal process and our current compliance standing with the State. We are in compliance for everything except for Ag category 5, but at the time the State was issuing those letters, we were still sending out and receiving our Ag surveys and hadn’t received them all. She told the State to go ahead and give us the “out of compliance” rating, but we will be in compliance by the time assessments go out. She emphasized that people assumed she is the one who makes decisions when it comes to assessments, but property assessments are heavily regulated by the State. They will come back after our BOE in July and re-check everything to make sure we are in compliance. It is very rare that we are not. Coroner Brenda Dye RE: MOA with Bonneville County – action item Ms. Dye was contacted by the Bonneville County Coroner, who had her Commissioners sign an MOA between Bonneville and Fremont Counties regarding the Coroner offices. If we ever have another mass casualty like the one we had last summer in Island Park, they have coolers we can keep our decedents in until we can take them to Boise for autopsy, as well as help from another Coroner if we need one. We have another similar MOA with Madison County. Commissioner Dance asked if Blake Hall has been able to review these agreements. Mr. Hall stated he had not. Commissioners would like to allow Mr. Hall to review the agreements before a decision is made. This item was tabled until our next meeting to allow time for this review. Wanda Adams stated Bonneville also has agreements in place with with Bingham, Madison, and Teton counties, so if we ever did something really bad happen, we would be able to utilize all of those resources. Miscellaneous Commissioner Hill made a motion to approve the claims for April 6, 2026 as presented. Commissioner Chandler seconded the motion. A full voice vote was heard with all commissioners voting in favor. Commissioner Chandler made a motion to approve the minutes from March 30, 2026 as amended. Commissioner Hill seconded the motion. A full voice vote was heard with all commissioners voting in favor. Clerk Mattingly presented Resolution 2026-13 adopting the fee increases at the Fremont County Golf Course. Commissioner Chandler made a motion to adopt Resolution 2026-13 adopting the fee increases at the Fremont County Golf Course, effective April 6, 2026 Commissioner Hill seconded the motion. A full voice vote was heard with all commissioners voting in favor. Commissioners reviewed an addendum to the ForeUp agreement that Commissioner Chandler signed between meetings. It was an urgent adjustment to the agreement that needed to be made for the Golf Course point of sales system. Commissioner Hill made a motion to ratify Commissioner Chandler signing the Amendment to License Agreement for ForeUp for the Golf Course POS system. Commissioner Dance seconded the motion. A full voice vote was heard with all commissioners voting in favor. Commissioner Chandler made a motion to adjourn the meeting at 11:49 a.m. Commissioner Hill seconded the motion. A full voice vote was heard with all commissioners voting in favor. There being no further business to come before the board the meeting was adjourned. _________________________________ Blair Dance, Chairman Fremont County Commissioner Attest: _____________________________ Meredith Mattingly, Clerk HISTORY Recorded by Min. 612442 Regular Commissioner Meeting 04-06-2026 on 4/13/2026
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