Testimonials

Neighbors, Friends, Colleagues Speak their Minds on the 3/4-cent Initiative

  • “The three-quarter cent ballot initiative, more than anything else, is Fremont County taking care of itself. No one else is going to come to our rescue. Whether we're looking down the barrel of a healthcare desert or access to the national transportation networks, or just getting down the road, state monies are drying up. It's getting harder and harder. Mineral royalties are always in question, above or below where you expect them to be. So there's never any level of consistency on where this money is going to come from, but it needs to come from somewhere.”

    —Mick Pryor, Fremont County Healthcare Advocat

  • “For me, I think that this initiative will keep in place some things that we really have to have. We want to help our neighbors. That's human nature. But when they're far away, it's hard to do. So we have developed this system over time… where we can help our neighbor by ambulance service, by the bus, by the airport, by bringing resources into the mix. We can contribute to a fund that helps keep these things available to help other people. We're in jeopardy now of losing that. If we don't pass this initiative, these things could be gone, and there are a lot of people that will suffer for it. Nobody wants that. So for a very little, three-quarters of a cent, you know, it's not going to hurt anybody.”

    —Jack Schmidt, Retired Livestock Broker

  • “Having a reliable ambulance service that's on call 24 hours a day does allow us to rest peacefully knowing we can call 911 and an ambulance will always come.”

    —Sarah Trembly, ER Nurse and Former EMT

  • “I don't think people understand how important air service here is to business. We employ just a little under 100 people here in Fremont County. We have customers that fly in. They visit our transloading facilities from across the country. They use our airport. There's a direct correlation there between my businesses and the air service here in Fremont County. And then I put my hospital board chair hat on. We’re recruiting physicians for our new facility, having air service is paramount to those folks. For them to be able to live and work here, to take care of the people here in Fremont County, they want access to air service. And so both from a business perspective and a community hospital perspective, air service is so important.”

    —Corte McGuffey, CEO, BTI Trucking Company, Board Chair, RiverPeak Health

  • “Fewer ambulances means longer response times. For example, an ambulance may need to respond to Lander that's posted in Riverton… You need to have money to buy ambulances, to fix old ones, to buy equipment and to pay adequate wages. Lack of funding for ground EMS could lead to services being available on a volunteer basis, or no services at all. Services can be hit or miss.”

    —Sarah Trembly, ER Nurse and Former EMT

How the 3/ 4-cent Initiative Makes a Difference in All of Our Lives

  • “I think for those of us who live in Fremont County who are aging, or whether you live on a farm or a ranch or travel the highways a lot, there are a lot of opportunities for bad things to happen: accidents, falls, other things. So emergency service and really well-qualified EMTs are critical in our county. I think it's important to note that if people want to come to Fremont County, they're going to look at our emergency services, and wonder whether or not they can have those here. And it's really critical, I think, for new families; they'll look at all of those things, emergency service being one of them. Simply put, families and businesses do not want to relocate to towns where there is not adequate health care and emergency services such as an ambulance service.”

    —Ruby Calvert, Former GM, Wyoming PBS

  • “When you're investing, you don't trade down. You're always trying to trade up. We have a lot to offer here. A lot of trade-ups to offer newcomers: beautiful places, wide open spaces, wonderful people. But if you're trading up requires you to trade down in certain aspects that are critical, that is a much harder sell. Access to healthcare is probably one of the big determining factors on whether someone wants to move to an area, relocate or establish a business here, or bring a business here. That is a non-negotiable in any type of trade. And quite frankly, if we're not willing to make it better for ourselves, why would we believe anybody else would want to trade into that? And that it all comes back to that idea of no one is going to fix this but us.”

    —Mick Pryor, Fremont County Healthcare Advocate

  • “Well, it's evident our community really relies on our county bus line. When I was working at Wyoming PBS, we had a young man who came in and wanted a job, but he didn't have any transportation. We discovered that he could use the bus line to come back and forth from Lander every day. And as a result, he had a job, and we had a great employee. And I think there are many, many citizens in Fremont County who use that bus line every day, whether it's for access to education, for a job, or just everyday life. It's really critical to Wyoming and Fremont County citizens.”

    —Ruby Calvert, Long-Time Resident, Former GM, Wyoming PBS

  • “Some things we just take for granted in this country, such as infrastructure and transportation. But if you don't have transportation, you don't have any economy. You really can't do much for anybody. And so here it's especially critical because we have 40-some-odd thousand people in a very large county. And if we want to get people to businesses and keep those businesses going, there has to be a way for people to get there. Likewise, if we want people to advance in their life for education, they've got to be able to get to school. At CWC, we have people who are really eager to advance their lives, they're not asking for a hand up or a handout or anything. They just want to access education so they can improve their life, get educated, enter the workforce. And without transportation, it doesn't happen. We are not competing against other universities or colleges. Our competitor is the broken truck. Students need the bus.”

    —Dr. Brad Tyndall, President, Central Wyoming College

  • “To put this ballot tax initiative into perspective, I think about what it would be worth to save a life if you didn't have an ambulance. What would that be worth if you had to drive to Casper to catch the airline? What would that be worth? Is it worth three-quarters of a cent, a penny, on your tax bill for different kinds of services? Saving a life makes a huge difference. And that's a very small tax to save a life.”

    —Ruby Calvert, Former GM, Wyoming PBS

  • “Sometimes people just need a little bit of help to get going, that person that doesn't have a car. To give them the ability through the bus service to be able to get to work, to the grocery store, is huge. It may not be huge for you and me because we have a car, we have the ability to do what we need. Not everybody has that opportunity. But if we can give them the ability to carry out that job, earn some money, be able to buy a car, be able to get into an apartment, be able to save money to buy a house, that's what it's all about, building the lives of our people here around us in Fremont County, making this a better place to live, and a place where you can start out at the bottom and work your way up. Along that same line, the senior community may not be physically able to drive where they need to go. Public transportation gives them the ability to still stay in their home, be independent, be able to jump on the bus, go to the grocery store, get to their doctor's appointments, go see their friends, and be able to get back home. And every day that we keep them in their own home is better for them. It's a better quality of life for them.”

    —Mike Bailey, Fremont County Business Owner, Riverton Councilman

A 3/4-cent sales tax or more property tax, how do we fund solutions?

  • “The nice thing about sales tax is, is that everybody that lives here, everybody that travels through, everybody that comes to visit, are contributing to that fund, as opposed to a property tax, where just the people that own property are paying that. And so it really is spread more evenly among all of the folks that come and visit Fremont County and live here. You know, people can hear things like sales tax or whatever and start getting a little jumpy about where do these funds go? Those taxes are going to come in and be used for three specific things. Part of it will go to support the ambulance service. Part of it goes to support the airline coming in here for our commercial air flights, and some of it will go to ground transportation.”

    —Mike Bailey, Fremont County Business Owner, Riverton Councilman

Accountability makes this ballot initiative different

  • “I want [voters] to NOT have a knee-jerk reaction to ‘oh, this is another tax proposition.’ I want them to read the language because it really goes to the heart of critical and essential county services. It's our airline service at Central Wyoming Regional Airport. It's our ambulance service that goes all around the county. It's for our bus line, which is also in-county. And it says in the language of the initiative that the net revenue from the tax proposition will go strictly to those transportation services. So that's what I want voters to think about when they step into the ballot box.”

    —Ruby Calvert, Long-time Resident, Former GM, Wyoming PBS

  • “I don't like taxes either. I want to know where my money is being spent. And through this initiative, we know exactly where it's going to be spent. Air service, ambulance, and ground transportation. Nowhere else. Those three things. I think the people that have put this initiative together have worked in a very pragmatic way, in a conservative way, to do what we need to do to provide services to all our communities and services that are just super important to everyday life.”

    —Corte McGuffey, CEO, BTI Trucking Company, Board Chair, RiverPeak Health

  • “Something that taxpayers worry about is, ‘oh, we're just giving more money for the government to do whatever they want to do.’ This tax has a specific MOA written among all the communities and the county, devoting 54% to ambulance service/emergency services, 31% to supporting the airport, and 15% to ground transportation. They cannot go, ‘oh, we need to put a new water line in somewhere’ or anything like that. They have to use it for those specific things.”

    —Mike Bailey, Fremont County Business Owner, Riverton Councilman

An Equitable Solution for the Whole County

  • “People will often say, ‘oh, I don't use the airline,’ … you might not! But I would tell you your doctor probably does. Your employer probably does. Your elected officials going out to seek other funds and influence others around us? Probably. Your friends and neighbors do. It's not just a way to get to some vacation destination. It's access to the rest of the world. And if we're actively choosing to cut ourselves off, so be it. But I don't think that's where most people's desires lie. I think that realistically, we want to be remote, but we want to be remote and connected, not remote and isolated.”

    —Mick Pryor, Fremont County Healthcare Advocate

  • “To me, it's all about, you know, staying relevant. It's important for my businesses that we keep this air service going. It's important for my employees here. It's important for the future of healthcare in Fremont County. And while some people may not directly use the air service themselves, indirectly they do. Whether it be their friends and family members that work at different businesses that use the airport, or their healthcare providers that are taking care of them when they go to the clinic or they go to the hospital, it's all very important. Everybody, everybody is connected to this airport in some way. Even if they don't know it.”

    —Corte McGuffey, CEO, BTI Trucking Company, Board Chair, RiverPeak Health

  • “Fremont County has a diverse patient population with a variety of medical needs. We are number one for heart disease in the state. We also have some of the highest levels of recreational accidents because of our tourism. We're also really high in the state for horse and cattle accidents. So we have a lot of different people who need emergency medical services. We need to have well-rounded care.

    —Sarah Trembly, ER Nurse and Former EMT