• Susan Hales honored for trail work

The Town of Star Valley Ranch continues to  work on fencing regulations in the community through ordinances.

“We had a couple of ordinances. The one that’s been a bit controversial is a ordinance we’re trying to get through, to update our regulations for fencing along the golf course, or at least on properties that border the golf course. We’ve tabled that ordinance a couple of times,” explained Mayor Ru Rok. “Then we read it once, and now we tabled it again. We’re just having some back and forth with our homeowners association on the best way to go after that. We do currently have a 30-foot setback in our town code for fences that border any kind of recreational property.”

The ordinance will be reviewed and prepared for further  consideration by the council. “A couple of our councilmen decided to take that ordinance back and do some revisions to the wording,” she said. The issues center on property lines and the golf course with the placement of fencing.

“We’re going to rewrite the language to give ourselves a bit more flexibility with that,” the mayor noted.

Package delivery

The Town of Star Valley Ranch will continue working with the U.S. Postal Service on package deliveries for Thayne area postal services. The mayor noted intermittent delays because of staffing problems.

Bear awareness

The town will also be launching an awareness campaign for residents to secure homes and trash facilities for potential bear problems.

“We’re gonna start our fall bear awareness campaign here in town early, just because there have been some sightings out on the trails of black bears, and we know with the dry season, we might expect to have a few more roaming in town,” the mayor cautioned. “We want to make sure everybody keeps their garbage put away and their pet food.”

Road projects

Road projects remain on the schedule for the ranch as the summer season concludes. Town Administrator Trevor Aitken highlighted the work.  “We’re still working on some chip-seal projects, at plat five,” he said. “We still have maybe 300 yards left,

He continued, We’re doing the prep work for Plat 20. We’ll have to cut out some sections there and then we’ll do a maintenance layer there.” In additional, he recalled, Prator Canyon was returned to dirt last year and “we’re going to try to get that back with 3 layers of chip seal there.”

Aitken said two engineers will be helping with road planning in the coming years.

Water meters

Water meters improvements are already showing a savings for the town.

Aitken reported,  “We’re still working on our residential water meters. We’ve got 253 installed, and that project’s been a little slow. We’ve found some billing issues from our last meters, but we’re going make sure we do this right. We’ve already found several million gallons of un-billed water.

He continued, “So we’re gonna make sure the meters are installed correctly and then match our billing records.  It was important to go back in and take a closer look at the whole water system and update it with these meters. This was a project that was long overdue, and it’s a big deal to get caught up and do it correctly.”

Susan Hales

Star Valley Ranch Resident Susan Hales was honored for her ongoing trail work as the town cooperates with the Bridger-Teton National Forest on a local trail system. Hales received the community service award for August and was honored at the SVR Town Council meeting.

Non-motorized

The mayor  reminded the public that trail system associated with Star Valley Ranch is non motorized.

She noted motorized trail use had been found with the trail system, “and it has been causing some damage, but we’re trying to work through that with the Forest Service and then also just with continuing to educate folks so that they understand, that those trails are non-motorized. There’s plenty of others where they can ride motorized vehicles.”