Here’s your Ranch news roundup for the week of March 17th, 2024—warning, this one is a little longer than usual, but I hope you’ll read on:
I want to start with a disclaimer about the content I provide in these weekly SVR News Roundup posts to ensure there is no confusion about what I write as a private citizen and the official operations of either Star Valley Ranch as a town or its homeowner’s association. With that, here I go: “The views and opinions expressed on Close to Home 307 are those of the author and do not reflect the official policies or proceedings of the Town of Star Valley Ranch (TSVR) or the Star Valley Ranch Association (SVRA).” I source SVR News Roundup emails from publicly conducted meetings and other publicly available information. Okeedok—now, let’s move on.
On Monday, March 18th, the SVRA sent an email to members in advance of the Board of Directors (BoD) workshop scheduled for the following day. You can read the email here and we’ll talk more about its content a little further along in this post.
Tuesday, March 19th was the first day of spring—aka the vernal equinox. Looking outside this morning I’m not so convinced. Nonetheless it’s spring y’all! Below is a fun and informative video about the vernal equinox from the website Earthsky.
The view off my front deck this morning. Yeah spring! Also on Tuesday, at 6:00pm the SVRA held a BoD workshop at Cedar Creek Center. The workshop was well attended by residents and for the most part everyone kept their cool. The BoD noted they would be reviewing the SVRA By-Laws to ensure going forward the by-laws align with the Wyoming Non-Profit Corporation Act. There was also discussion at the end of the workshop regarding the previous day’s SVRA email to members and in particular the portion of that email stating an anonymous person or persons had obtained members private email addresses to promulgate “their personal interpretation of [recently] transpired events”.
The anonymous persons were actually in attendance at the workshop and clarified they had purchased a list of member emails from a marketing website, thus no nefarious actions had occurred. They also explained the SVRA Zoom link provided as part of their email (to the list they purchased) had somehow been altered when cut-and-pasting it from the SVRA website and they had no intent to provide a bogus link to anyone who received their email.
The back-and-forth discussion during this part of the meeting was a bit difficult for me to follow as I had not been a recipient of the anonymous email. However, as I noted earlier, the dialogue was fairly respectful which was a good thing.
Thursday, March 21st, was a pretty busy day at Star Valley Ranch starting with a TSVR Natural Resources Board (NRB) meeting at 10am at Town Hall. Here’s the NRB agenda from that meeting. Also on Thursday, at 2pm, the Town Council held a budget work session at Town Hall. See the agenda here. This work session was pretty straightforward resulting in a few final adjustments to the budget that has been in development since January. The Council plans to conduct a first reading of the 2024-2025 TSVR Budget during the April regular Town Council meeting.
Finally, on Thursday, March 21st at 7pm the SVRA held its regular monthly BoD meeting at Cedar Creek Center. The agenda is available here. The first two-thirds of the meeting went along in a fairly benign fashion with a couple of interesting notes to include: the SVRA plans to move the playground located east of Cedar Creek Pool over to the vacant lots on the west side of the pool; and, the lessee of the Cedar Creek Grill intends to pursue obtaining a liquor license in order to resume serving beer from that location. I wish I could say the final third of the meeting transpired in the same agreeable manner, however, it did not. Once the “For the Good of the Order” portion of the agenda came around, I am saddened to say all the wheels came off the wagon. It was very apparent the members in attendance (and there were a lot of them, I counted 22 on Zoom and another 65-75 in the room) were split into two factions—those in support of the current BoD and those who have lost trust in the BoD and are looking for a way to regain that trust. Despite the obvious divisions, it would have been nice if folks could have kept their cool and acted respectfully to one another and to the BoD. Alas, there were a good deal of raised voices, shouting, and accusations thrown about the room. At close to 9:30pm the BoD Chairman abruptly adjourned the meeting, although I can’t say I blame her for doing that as things were going nowhere and fast.
To close out this unfortunate report, I will say I can only hope cooler heads prevail in future and that SVRA members and the BoD can find a mutually agreeable path forward. I will also say that serving on a volunteer board is not an easy task and I appreciate those who are willing to put themselves out there and do it. Less shouting and more listening on both sides will help a lot too.
SVRA’s Cedar Creek Center, March 23rd, 2024.
For brevities sake, the only other news item I’ll note for the week is that as the weather warms and the snow recedes (not counting today of course), Town roads are emerging in visibly rough shape. Vista Drive look more like the surface of the moon than a road at this point. The Town pubic works department will be gearing up in the coming weeks to get our roads back into shape for the summer driving season. In the meantime, thank you for your patience and watch out for those potholes!
This stretch between Vista East and Solitude Drive is in particularly bad shape. Next week looks to be pretty quiet with the following calendar items:
Wednesday, March 27th at 1pm the TSVR Water Utility Board will meet at Town Hall.
Also on Wednesday, March 27th at 5pm the TSVR Planning and Zoning Board will meet at Town Hall.
Saturday, March 30th at 10am, the SVRA will host an Easter Egg Hunt at Cedar Creek Park.
No final thoughts this week—I’ve taken up too much of your time already!
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