GREEN RIVER – The Rock Springs/Sweetwater County Airport received good news which will benefit business travel in Sweetwater County. In April, SkyWest will resume the morning flight to Denver.

Chairman of the Airport Board Larry Leavitt was able to share this information with the Sweetwater County Commissioners. Commissioner John Kolb was very excited about the news calling the morning flight the “prized flight to the business community.”

Kolb was also at the Rock Springs City Council meeting to relay the information. Rock Springs Mayor Carl Demshar echoed Kolbs comments made earlier that morning. He said this is good news for the local business community, allowing them to make transitional flights back east much earlier.

In a second bit of good news for air travel in Rock Springs, the subsidy contract between the state and the county will remain the same. There was fear the contract would double in cost this year but it did not. The figure is actually down a little from last year. Leavitt said boarding numbers on the Salt Lake flights are up so far this year by 6 percent.

The members of the airport board who were in attendance at the commission meeting said there was a change which needed to be made in the contract. The term of the contract is different from the fiscal year of the county. The way it is currently set up leaves six months in which SkyWest is without a contract.

Kolb told his fellow commissioners the airport is asking for a six month contract which will even the contract up with the fiscal year.

Later than evening as Kolb explained the situation to the Rock Springs Council, Demshar was again pleased with the news the subsidy contract did not go up as expected but rather stayed pretty much the same.

Kolb also explained the issue with the contract and said to make the change they “needed their partners,” Green River and Rock Springs, to make the changes to their budgets also. The Rock Springs Council asked Director of Administration and Finance Lisa Tarufelli what would need to happen for the city to make the change. Tarufelli said she always thought it was strange how the contract was set up and said they would just need to look at the line item and make a budget amendment to accommodate the change.