Town applies for pandemic funding

Moorcroft Clerk/Treasurer Cheryl Schneider has completed the application for a pandemic-related CARES Act funding grant from the State Lands and Investments Board in the amount of $203,000, which was approved and signed Monday night by the council to help the town pay back wages to police and clerks during the time of the pandemic. The application had to be submitted to SLIB by October 28.

Officer Injured

Also during Monday night’s meeting, the council heard that residents won’t be seeing Officer Jory Tadlock in uniform for the foreseeable future due to an accident encountered while hunting recently. Chief Bill Bryant and Eric Henshaw will be working more on-call time, according to the mayor and, if needed later, assistance will be sought from the Crook County Sheriff’s Department.

Blown engine

To bring the needed compaction up to date at the landfill, another compactor (scraper) was rented about a week ago. According to Public Works Director Cory Allison, with the town’s equipment down for several weeks recently, the work had fallen further behind than could easily be rectified without this assistance.

In the course of covering the open face of the extension with the mandatory four inches of dirt, this machine hit “a soft spot”, according to Allison, who explained that “It hit some mattresses.” The scraper rolled to its side and the engine was destroyed.

“They shouldn’t be in our landfill, but there wasn’t any place to put them so that’s where we put them. We’re going to bury them, but we’re going to have to put them in a certain spot so [right now] we’re just separating them,” he told the council.

The crew has been removing mattresses from the general area for the last several days. Allison reported it a “no fault” accident. The scraper has been valued at $75,000.

The director’s crew has completed compaction and coverage of the active part of the dump, though, and has returned a second machine rented to complete the work, mitigating the fly-away trash. His crew will be gathering garbage from the surrounding area again this week as well.

At the time of this report, the rented equipment with the blown engine was still at the Moorcroft landfill and the council was concerned that the rental agency would continue to charge the town for the machine as allowed by the contract.

Change of ordinance

There has been a change to the ordinance regarding municipal snow routes. The new signs stating that all snow routes will be closed to parking from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. from November 1 to April 1 will be in place within a few weeks. The change is that snow does not have to be falling.