Amid some skepticism from commission, Park County Public Health buys new trailer

Posted 10/17/19

Thanks to a grant from the federal government — and a narrow vote of support from county commissioners — Park County Public Health is getting a new enclosed cargo trailer.

The $6,000 …

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Amid some skepticism from commission, Park County Public Health buys new trailer

Posted

Thanks to a grant from the federal government — and a narrow vote of support from county commissioners — Park County Public Health is getting a new enclosed cargo trailer.

The $6,000 Pace Outback trailer is set to be used for transporting items, such as a portable office space that could be used as a mobile vaccine dispensary and also for storage.

“Most of the emergency preparedness agencies around the state have a trailer for these purposes,” Public Health Nurse Manager Bill Crampton told commissioners earlier this month.

While officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recently approved full federal funding for the trailer — with no county dollars being spent — commissioners needed some convincing before signing off on the purchase on a 3-1 vote on Oct. 1.

Commissioner Lloyd Thiel said the $6,000 trailer purchase from Whitlock Motors of Cody “caught the eye” of multiple people, prompting commissioners to delay approval until they could discuss it.

“I’ve always said, the grants may be good for the county, but in my opinion, they’re still not free money and if there’s not a need, then we don’t go for them,” Thiel said at the outset of last week’s discussion, adding later that, “I’m just not sold on the justification.”

A three-member majority — commissioners Joe Tilden, Lee Livingston and Dossie Overfield — ultimately voted aye on the purchase, meaning Commission Chairman Jake Fulkerson wasn’t called upon to vote. But had he needed to break a 2-2 tie, Fulkerson indicated he would have joined Thiel in voting no. Fulkerson said the board is charged with “making sure it’s a logical, viable need for the county, and I guess … I just don’t see it.”

In his explanation, Crampton noted that the trailer was part of a grant “wish list” that he was asked to put together last year — and he said “we were kind of surprised” that officials at the CDC approved the request.

Crampton said the biggest reason for the purchase is that he needs a reliable piece of equipment to pick up supplies; he said he never knows whether a truck will be available for, say, a run to Billings.

There are also plans to use the trailer as a portable office, he said, potentially parking it at a convenient location and having it serve as a kind of pop-up vaccine drive-through.

Crampton also envisions the trailer being a place to store signs, barricades for crowd control and other materials that are now scattered throughout the county courthouse in Cody and the annex in Powell. That should free up space and make it easier to transport the items, he said; Thiel and Fulkerson expressed specific concerns about the trailer being used as a storage space.

But the rest of the board supported buying the piece of equipment with the federal money.

As county leaders and staff have brainstormed ways to reduce its current budget deficit, “one of the things we’ve been discussing at great length is going out and looking for more grant money,” Commissioner Joe Tilden said. “And this is obviously something that Bill [Crampton] thinks his department really needs — and he went out and got the grant money for it.”

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