SWEETWATER COUNTY — The Sweetwater County Commission unanimously approved for excess 2013 Special Purpose Tax Funds to be disbursed to Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County (MHSC) and Castle Rock Hospital District (CRHD) during its meeting Tuesday.

Sweetwater County voters approved two ballot propositions to be paid for with a 1 percent Specific Purpose Sales and Use Excise Tax (SPT) back in 2012. The first, $60,506,091, was for municipal and county projects. The second proposition was $21,310,321 for county sponsored projects at MHSC and CRHD.

These excess funds are tax dollars that were collected by vendors when the tax was in effect, but not reported to the Wyoming Department of Revenue, Sweetwater County Treasurer Joe Barbuto said.

While the municipalities have already received their disbursements of the excess funds, the Commission had to approve for MHSC and CRHD to receive theirs.

A total of $159,123.17 was collected in excess funds to be disbursed to municipalities and the county, of which $40,013.53 goes to MHSC, and $5,219.22 goes to CRHD.

Commissioner Lauren Schoenfeld clarified for the public that the resolution approved by voters in 2012 designated these funds for specific projects, and the excess funds must go to those same projects.

“In the resolution that was approved on the ballot by the taxpayers, by the voters, it does spell out how these funds are supposed to be used. So it should be used for the construction, operation, equipment, maintenance of the specified projects. So any of this additional overage amount is to go back to those projects for the maintenance and the upkeep, any equipment, anything like that that perhaps wasn’t taken care of,” Commissioner Schoenfeld said.

“It’s not as though we’re collecting extra money and using it for something random or putting it into a general fund. It does have to go directly back into the maintenance of those specific projects that were completed and approved by the voters on the ballot,” she added.

The following outlines the amounts disbursed to each municipality and the county.

Other Business

The Commission voted unanimously for Barbuto to move forward with discussions about Sweetwater County participating in the Wyoming Cooperative Liquid Assets Securities System (CLASS) investment pool. He said Wyoming CLASS is an investment pool that’s available to political subdivisions in Wyoming. 

“Their goal, of course, is to generate income, maintain liquidity, and preserve capital by investing only in instruments authorized by the Wyoming state statutes and their own investment policy, so the same investment policies that we already have to adhere to as a county,” Barbuto said.

Barbuto said he does not yet have a specific dollar amount to put into the investment pool, as that will come later in discussions.