Mayors look ahead to coming year

As 2021 gets underway, Moorcroft and Pine Haven Mayors Dick Claar and John Cook outline the concerns and plans they foresee for the coming year.

Moorcroft

A solid waste district is foremost on Moorcroft Mayor Dick Claar as the new year begins. “There’s some pushback,” he says of the Crook County Commissioners, but he hopes to convince the body and see a district started before the DEQ chooses closure, leaving no other options for Crook County as a whole.

The last phase of the Powder River Water and Sewer Project is also on this list. A few remaining blocks will complete, for the most part, the updating of Moorcroft’s water and waste system to the tune of around $3 million, according to the mayor.

“I don’t know if we can afford to do it this year, but we’re going to look at it,” he says.

Two other projects the Moorcroft mayor hopes to see started before year’s end is moving Town Hall to the MTC and the long planned splash pad slotted for Noonan Park.

Claar admits moving Town Hall “is a financial burden we can’t fund at this time”, so will probably not make priority this year while the splash pad may be a contender.

“We’ve got to research some grant money and some money of our own because it’s probably a 50/50 grant if we can find one, but I think we can get a splash pad put in this year,” Claar says.

Pine Haven

Pine Haven Mayor John Cook is reluctant to advance any projects or plans before the town enters into their budget process, which begins mid-February. He is also waiting to know how much the county will be disbursing from the one percent sales tax.

“We don’t know what kind of funds we’re going to have to do anything,” he explains. “We haven’t even really approached anything for this year [because] any plans we have for the future would be based on those funds.”

As the year is in its infancy, the mayor said that they are “planning on just status quo; doing what we have to do to keep things running and fixing anything that comes up, making sure that we’re just taking care of the town for whatever the towns people need more than anything. Right now, that’s about all I can say about our plans”.