The Park County commissioners are planning to look at fees across all departments at the end of the year to determine what fees should be raised to keep up with costs. 

“We’re not looking at this as a revenue source, we just want to cover costs,” Commissioner Lloyd Thiel said. “We haven’t done this in three, four years.”

One fee that will likely be raised is waste tire disposal, which has become a losing venture for the landfill. 

The review will be a way to ensure, as Thiel said, the taxpayer is not subsidizing the cost of some services. 

On Oct. 6 commissioners approved Wyoming Steel Services, based in Cody, at $230 per ton to haul away tires at the landfill. 

The landfill only charges $180 per ton to dispose of tires. 

“It’s just getting super expensive to get rid of tires,” County Engineer Brian Edwards said. 

Edwards suggested the commissioners look at raising the fee per ton, and noted other counties in the area already charge around $230 or more per ton. 

Fremont County, for instance, charges $232 per ton and Campbell County charges $325 per ton. 

Edwards said the high cost of diesel fuel is a big reason for the increase in cost. 

That fact, as well as the issue with having to store shredded tires at the landfill, was the reason Edwards didn’t recommend the lowest of three bids. That bid, by Tire Reclaim of Caldwell, Idaho, proposed a different process where, instead of hauling the tires away, the company brings a shredder to the landfill, is helped by local staff, is reimbursed for all fuel, and shreds the tires on-site, the remains of which then need to be disposed of at the landfill. Fremont County has used its services. 

Edwards said when you account for having to pay fuel, provide an employee for assistance with a machine and the requirement to store the shredded tires, negates almost all of the savings in the bid, which Edwards said initially came out to roughly $130 per ton. 

“It’s cleaner and easier to let the market drive it, haul them off and not take up our air space,” Edwards said. 

Two Tough Guys had the third bid, at $240 per ton to, like Wyoming Steel, haul the tires off.