Town of Alpine Mayor Eric Green called into the Weekday Wake-Up on Wednesday, September 2 for his monthly report. Mayor Green touched on a discussion during the Sept. 1 town council meeting regarding the town’s Master Plan and vision statement, the temporary round-about and Turley Annexation public hearing scheduled for October 28 in the Alpine Civic Center.

(0:00) Another guest interview segment here this morning and the monthly report for the town of Alpine. (0:05) Mayor Eric Green with me live over the phone this morning. Mayor Green, good morning.

How are you (0:09) today? Doing well, thanks for having me on Duke. Hey, absolutely appreciate your updates with us (0:14) today. Of course, town council meeting held again last night.

Anything you’d like to summarize from (0:19) last night’s town council in Alpine? The biggest conversation we had last night was regarding the (0:27) master plan and just some last minute language that we were looking at. We were trying to finalize (0:36) a mission statement and the consultant came up with a good mission statement that we’re going to (0:43) use, I think. And then there was some language about the school, the new charter school we have (0:49) and whether we should kind of put all of our eggs in one basket and just focus on the (0:55) charter school for the future schooling for our kids or also definitely work with Lincoln County (1:03) School District as well.

And I think town council decided the two-pronged approach is the way to go. (1:09) So that’s the way the master plan is going to read as far as I can tell right now. So we’re really (1:16) close on getting this over the finish line and being able to adopt it.

So that’s very exciting (1:21) because we’ve been working on it for two years basically now. So it’s a long process, I know, (1:27) but we’re very close. So just to clarify that the school part of what you just said, so that’s (1:34) actually something that is intriguing.

And so of course the charter school in their first year (1:39) right now, they’ve started their inaugural school year underway, but it sounds like that there’s (1:44) still some interest in having a traditional public school in Alpine then, huh? I believe there is (1:51) and I think what’s best for the town of Alpine is just get whatever school we can, (2:00) whether it’s K-6 like the current charter school or the traditional like K-12 model. (2:08) We’re always going, I think the town of Alpine should always be looking forward to as many (2:13) different schooling options as we have. As you know, Alpine is growing very quickly.

It’s one (2:19) fastest growing towns in Wyoming and I don’t think there’s any, there’s no slowing down in (2:27) the future from what I can tell. So I don’t know how long it’s going to take for our population (2:33) to grow to the point that we can justify getting a traditional Lincoln County School District (2:38) public school, but I think the conversation should always be had, whether it’s on a yearly basis or (2:46) every couple of years and see what the prospects are for getting a school. (2:51) But of course, we are so happy with the charter school being here and we are looking to support (2:58) them any way we possibly can.

They’re doing incredibly well and it’s only going to be (3:06) improving more years they have under their belt. So we’re excited at that, of course, and we’re (3:13) here to support them, but I think it’s good to keep the conversation open to a traditional (3:18) public school if that ever becomes a possibility. Town of Alpine, Mayor Eric Green on the weekday (3:23) wake up this morning.

Well, as you talk about kind of the plans moving forward for Alpine and (3:28) some of the things, I know the transportation and the master plan has been discussed and it sounds (3:33) like a roundabout, at least a temporary roundabout project, a demonstration project going to be (3:41) rolled out in Alpine. Tell us what this is, how it’s going to work and some of these details. (3:46) Yeah, so we got a grant through the Safe Streets for All grant program through the federal government (3:53) and they’re studying ways to make our streets safer and they brought forward a few different (4:00) projects and town council decided that a temporary roundabout demonstration project would be (4:08) probably the most effective thing to study and really the goal is to try to slow down traffic (4:14) coming through Alpine.

When I ran for mayor four years ago, I said I’d love to slow down the traffic (4:23) and people laughed at that. They’re like, that’s not going to happen. So I guess I’ve kind of always (4:28) had that as a goal of mine and if putting in a roundabout is the way to slow down people coming (4:35) through town, then that’s great.

The byproduct of that will have safety as a real focus coming (4:43) through that corridor, then I think that’s great. So the demonstration project, you’ll see it being (4:49) set up on September 9th and that will run through October 7th and that will be right at the Grays (4:57) River Road intersection on Highway 89. You know, you look at that intersection, (5:04) you talk about the speed and the safety.

This time of year, all summer long, that intersection (5:10) in itself, I mean, you try and turn left onto the highway coming out of Grays River. I mean, (5:15) it’s just, it’s incredible the traffic, right? And so I’m sure that’ll be part of the study as well (5:20) over the course of this temporary roundabout, correct? That’s exactly right and you brought (5:27) up a great point. I mean, people that are trying to turn left off of Grays River Road onto the (5:32) especially, I mean, commuter traffic every morning.

I hear stories of people waiting (5:38) several minutes just trying to turn left to get out on the highway. So I think this will really (5:44) help those people and just slowing traffic down, it’ll help people trying to turn right and go to (5:51) work heading up the canyon. It’s going to seem like it’s very small right now, but we’re just (5:59) trying to demonstrate that what the benefits are in the future.

If they decide that this is a good (6:05) project and a good way to go, you know, we’re going to have to find federal funding. We’re (6:10) going to have to figure out how to even pay for the project. That’s many years to come down the (6:15) road, but I think it’s good for people to understand that, you know, this is just a (6:21) demonstration project and we’re just trying to study what the effects would be of a roundabout (6:27) there.

It’s not going to be permanent in any way, anytime soon. It’s just studying what the (6:34) possibilities are. So temporary, how do you set up a temporary roundabout? We putting up road cones (6:41) to redirect traffic? How do you do that? Yeah, so what we have to do is we have to have it restriped (6:49) and we have to put up like rubber curb stops basically kind of in a circle and then (6:58) leading into the approach.

I’m sure people are familiar with how roundabouts are starting to (7:04) pop up like in Idaho Falls or up by in the Grand Teton National Park or even at Hoback Junction. (7:11) You know, it’s kind of like diverting traffic a little bit, making a little s-curve coming in (7:15) and then getting into the roundabout. So it’s going to be temporary bollards, (7:23) rubber bumpers, things like that to kind of direct the traffic around.

And so we have to (7:29) have the current striping taken off, new striping put on, and then after the project we have to take (7:36) that striping off and put the old striping back on. So it’s kind of a multi-step process to do this (7:43) and our hope is that it kind of proves out that safety and slowing down the traffic will (7:52) be two benefits of doing this. Town of Alpine Mayor Eric Green this morning in the Weekday (7:56) Wakeup.

Mayor, let’s talk annexation that’s been discussed for quite a while as well and the (8:02) annexation proposal, I understand, at least moved forward to the next phase in last night’s (8:08) meeting, is that correct? Right. What happened in last night’s meeting is we decided that we would (8:15) like the public hearing, which is on October 28th at seven o’clock, to actually be at the Civic (8:21) Center instead of just at Town Hall. We want to live stream it so the conversation was around, (8:30) you know, we need the microphones and cameras and we need some audio equipment set up to kind (8:37) make this a permanent thing where we can hold more meetings over there and so this discussion (8:42) was around should we buy this equipment, but in the end we just said basically we’re going to (8:48) have the meeting over there on the 28th and we’ll figure out how it’s going to be live streamed.

(8:54) And this is for the Turley annexation, is that correct? Correct. And the other thing that we (9:00) talked about later on in the meeting were the rules for that meeting and staff had come up with (9:07) 30 minutes for public comment and we decided that we want to give as many people as many chances as (9:15) possible to make their comments, so we changed it to 75 minutes of public comment, which if everyone (9:24) uses their full three minutes, that’d be 25 people. I don’t think everyone’s going to use their full (9:29) three minutes, but we’ll have plenty of opportunities for people to give their public comment.

I would (9:35) also say if people have comments just in general on the Turley annexation, emailing them into (9:44) town council seems to be, to me, the best, most effective way to do that because you can get your (9:50) point across and, you know, hopefully have some facts behind it and the reason why you feel the (9:56) way you do. So on top of public comment during the meeting, you’re more than welcome to email in (10:03) everyone on town council. Perfect.

And so the public comment meeting will take place at the (10:09) Civic Center, not the Town Hall, as you mentioned, and give us the date one more time for that. (10:14) October 28th at seven o’clock. Perfect.

Town of Alpine, Mayor Eric Green on the (10:18) Weekday Wake-up. Mayor, thank you as always. Anything we missed? (10:22) No, just looking forward to watching the volleyball team this weekend.

(10:27) You guys do such a great job covering all the sports and the girls volleyball team has a tournament (10:35) down in Evanston this weekend. So we’re really excited to travel down there. And then the (10:39) following weekend is the Star Valley Invitational.

So I’m sure you’ll be letting everyone know all (10:46) the specifics on that, but real excited for the volleyball season to get going. (10:50) Absolutely. Thank you very much.

That’s Town of Alpine, Mayor Eric Green this morning. (10:53) It’s the Weekday Wake-up on SVI Radio.