Violet Sanderson, Administrator for the Town of Afton, stepped into the SVI Radio studio on Thursday, October 2 for her monthly report. Sanderson discussed the parade route change, Oktoberfest happening this Saturday and gave a summary of completed or soon-to-be completed projects.

(0:00) Joining me in studio today, Violet Sanderson, Administrator for the Town of Afton. Good (0:04) morning, Violet. How are you today? Good morning, Duke.

I’m great. Hey, (0:08) I always appreciate your time stepping in studio. And well, of course, an exciting weekend for the (0:13) Town of Afton with Oktoberfest.

I did want to bring up the, of course, the homecoming parades (0:18) tonight. So it’s probably a good chance to chat about the new parade route. Give us a little (0:23) background on, well, first tell us what the route is for those that maybe aren’t aware and why this (0:28) change was made.

So the new parade route is essentially taking it down the same route. (0:33) So it will come down Main Street from the fairgrounds. There will be a right turn at Fifth (0:38) Avenue down to Lincoln and then back to the fairgrounds.

And the reason the council had (0:42) made the decision to change that route is just for safety. There were a couple of different (0:48) incidences that we’ve had in the last two years with different parades on the routes and having (0:56) it go down and back in the same location. And, you know, there’s always people running across (1:01) the road because they see it come the one way and then they want to get over to the other side.

And (1:05) so we’re trying this new route out to hopefully make sure that, you know, people are a little bit (1:11) more safe when they’re both for the spectators of the parade and then those on the floats themselves (1:17) as well. Absolutely. So, and this is not just for this parade only.

I mean, for now, this is every (1:23) parade moving forward and after. Correct. Yeah.

And just to reiterate that, you can watch the (1:30) parade on the other streets. It’s not, right. I mean, that’s part of the official route.

So it’s (1:34) not just on Main Street. So they can, I mean, if they’re lining up on Lincoln rather than Main (1:38) Street, you can watch it down that way. So yeah, that’s going to be the new route for now.

It’s (1:44) really hard to change, you know, behavioral patterns, people’s norms of what we’ve done in (1:48) the past historically. And, and really, I just, I just hope people understand that the council (1:53) made this decision in an effort to keep people safe. And that’s really important to, to the (1:57) council and to, to the town.

Lila Sanderson, Afton Town Administrator in studio this morning. (2:01) Of course, October Fest is this Saturday, second annual being hosted by the Main Street Alliance. (2:08) And, but of course the town of Afton involved with, with helping put this all on.

So tell us (2:12) what’s happening this Saturday. There is a lot of stuff happening this Saturday. So from 10 AM to (2:18) 10 PM the, you know, Main Street is going to be blocked off between 4th and 5th Avenue.

(2:23) So we’re going to have the October Fest there on Main Street. There’s going to be food truck (2:28) vendors. There’s going to be other vendors.

There’s going to be live music. We’ve got a (2:33) lot of local talent on a smaller stage, and then we’ve got some bigger talent that we’ve, (2:37) we’ve brought in on the larger stage. So it’s really just another opportunity for their, (2:42) you know, the locals to come down and see what’s really happening on Main Street and, (2:46) and give some love to our local businesses.

You know, we’ve got some new ventures going on down (2:50) there. And so if you haven’t been in Main Street in a while, maybe come down and enjoy the, (2:55) enjoy the festivities. Absolutely.

The thing I love about it is if you were to go to a festival (2:59) of this kind of caliber somewhere else, you’re paying a hundred bucks to get in, right? (3:02) I take it. This is all free. Just wander on downtown.

Yeah. Just come downtown and enjoy (3:06) yourself and, you know, get some great food. We’ve got, you know, some of our local truck, (3:10) food truck vendors coming back to us.

Some of the regulars that we see at some of our other (3:15) festivals or fair are going to be there. So it’s just a fun time to be able to support (3:19) the local businesses. A couple of other things that we have going on for the kiddos is we’ve got some (3:24) pumpkin painting that’s happening as, as well as cookie decorating.

And then there is a Cornhole (3:30) tournament that’s actually being put on by Star Valley Cornhole. I think if there’s any spots (3:35) left, you can still register on Scoreholio. And then there’s also a costume contest that’s being (3:42) put on by one of the local vendors that’s going to be down there, Mountain Power, I believe.

(3:46) And there, you can register at their booth. So they’re just encouraging people to come in (3:52) their best Oktoberfest wear, lederhosen and all of that kind of stuff. Absolutely.

Love it. That’s (3:57) again happening this Saturday, downtown Afton, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and live music all throughout (4:02) with all the vendors and events happening. And you can find the details on it.

More information in (4:06) this week’s Star Valley Independent. Violet, what else is happening within the town of Afton right (4:10) now? This is just always a fun, busy time of year. We’re, you know, wrapping up projects because (4:15) we’re all getting ready for the snow to fly.

Aside from the town’s projects, people’s individual (4:20) projects. So it just becomes a busy time of year. So we are just about completely wrapped up with (4:25) our sewer lagoon project.

We’re really excited about that. It looks great down there. So putting (4:30) the final touches on that.

So it’s completely finished. We also had our road projects that (4:36) were underway this summer, as well as there is still some grading maintenance happening. And then (4:42) we have the 97,000 gallon tank up, our surge tank up by the intermittent spring that we’ve had some (4:51) maintenance done on.

So they’ve been up there in the last couple of weeks working on that. So if (4:54) anybody’s hiked up there to look at the spring, that’s what people are doing up there. Those, (4:58) that retrofitting to that tank have to do with some of the fixes that we were required to do (5:03) with our significant deficiencies found in our sanitary survey.

And so those were the fixes where (5:09) the EPA said, okay, well, we’re pretty sure this is what you need to do. And then by the way, we (5:14) withdraw our predetermination. So we’re ready to get those fixed.

Those are almost done. They should (5:18) be wrapped up up there in the next week or two. And then we will kind of be done for this season (5:24) with any of the capital improvement or major maintenance projects that we have going on in (5:28) All right, so everything kind of wrapping up.

Also, as we head into this time of year homecoming (5:33) and Halloween, and then the holidays, good chance to show off the new star, right? Maybe we’ll see (5:37) some different colors a little bit moving forward. You know, we do have a policy in place and how we (5:41) how we light it. If anybody has watched some of the major home games for the football team, (5:47) when we do have wins, which we obviously have had some wins, we are lightening it up to show, (5:52) you know, show our show our love to the Star Valley Braves.

it’s just one of those fun (5:57) things. We have had a lot of traffic to the star in terms of people getting up there. I love to see (6:02) the pictures on social media of everybody enjoying the view from up there.

We do also have the live (6:07) webcam that’s up there that you can see from our you know, afton wyoming.gov website. So that’s (6:12) always fun to see. You can look down, see if maybe you can see your house down here.

(6:17) Yeah, just we we got a lot of great things happening in Afton and we’re really excited (6:21) for the future. As administrator Violet Sanderson this morning with the town of Afton anything we (6:25) I’m not necessarily on any of our projects, but if I could do just shout out to one of our (6:30) employees. So Julie Hardy has been managing our pro shop for the last almost seven years.

And (6:36) if you have ever golfed at the Valley View golf course, you know, Julie, she is key to, you know, (6:43) our ability to keep things going. She’s a wonderful friendly face. She really is the epitome of (6:50) customer service that I love to see our Afton employees provide and Julie is moving on after (6:56) this season.

So we’re not going to have her next year. And it’s been such a pleasure to have her (7:01) and to be able to work with her. And I just wanted to shout out to her if anybody knows Julie, if you (7:05) plan to go golf up there, if you see her, just give her some love and let her know how much we (7:10) appreciated having her and what she’s done for the town because we certainly are going to miss (7:13) her.

So absolutely well deserved shout out for sure. That’s Violet Sanderson this morning Afton (7:18) Administrator. It’s the weekday wake up on SBI radio.