Teton County officials hear IT, emergency management, roads and planning briefings; agenda approved

The Teton County Board of County Commissioners approved its meeting agenda and heard department briefings covering cybersecurity and information technology, emergency management and shelters, river recreation and access management, public works priorities (roads, solid waste, facilities), and planning and building workloads.

County Chief Information Officer Russ Barnum briefed commissioners on the Information Technology Department’s staffing and security posture, saying the department operates roughly “2.8” full-time equivalent positions supplemented by interns and currently has about 80 active projects. Barnum told the board the county faces continuing cyber threats, reporting recent firewall logs showed millions of blocked connection attempts in a month and warning that cloud-hosted services substantially increase risk; he recommended increasing multi-factor authentication adoption and continued employee phishing training. Barnum also described ongoing projects including domain consolidation between county and sheriff systems and a planned data-center refresh stretched across two budget years.

Emergency Management director Ron Carlettini told commissioners that weather-driven incidents and infrastructure failures are increasing community risk and described plans to keep shelters ready in each city with generator hookups at Victor Elementary, Driggs High School and Tetonia Elementary. Carlettini described efforts to rebuild local shelter capacity, restart a Community Emergency Response Team and cross-train volunteers for shelter management, and to sustain partnerships with the Red Cross to limit county liability for mass care. He said the county seeks mitigation grants and plans to revise several emergency plans on a five‑year cycle; he also described public-notification tools used in outages (the sheriff’s CodeRED sign-up system and nationwide cell-tower alerting) and ongoing work on an “alert and warning” annex.

Representatives of the Waterways Recreation Advisory Committee described the county’s multi-year response to sharply increased summer use of the Teton River, including a community survey and a June 2022 county ordinance that established rules covering group size, leash requirements and commercial shuttle limits. Committee members noted river use rose from roughly 51,000 users in 2018 to about 65,000 in 2022, and said available funding is limited; the county has implemented a river-ambassador program, hired a campground host at Big Eddy and is drafting a river-management plan and grant requests to improve access sites and parking flow.

GIS manager Rob Marine and other staff updated the board on mapping and data needs. Marine said his team moved GIS to the cloud, saves the county money on servers and runs dozens of critical map layers used by many departments, but warned the GIS position is a near-term succession risk because it has been a “one-person shop.” He urged the county to plan for a replacement or a contract alternative and noted GIS’s potential to support river-recreation planning and water-use analysis.

Fairgrounds board members presented a recently completed master plan and described continued fundraising and a phased capital campaign to add sheltering, emergency operations capacity and community space at the fairgrounds. The fair board said volunteers and community partners provide substantial in-kind labor and that pavilion expansion and other projects are underway.

Public works director Daryl Johnson and supervisors reviewed road and bridge priorities, solid-waste operations and facilities. Road and Bridge supervisors said reconstruction and gravel-stabilization work are costly (rebuilding gravel roads can run in the low- to mid‑seven-figure range per mile depending on scope) and asked the board to prioritize projects; the department proposed contracting out magnesium chloride (dust‑stabilization) spraying to free crews for other work. Solid-waste supervisor Dan O’Donnell said the transfer station manages recycling, composting and a construction-and-demolition cell; the county diverts roughly 37% of incoming municipal material for reuse or recycling and is preparing to deliver some loads to a regional transfer facility being developed by partner counties. Facilities manager Suzanne Ascol described building-maintenance needs and a pending energy-efficiency grant to fund projects such as weather stripping for bay doors and targeted HVAC work.

Planning and building staff reported a continuing heavy workload: the planning department has handled dozens of subdivisions, boundary adjustments, floodplain permits and other land-use applications and said some parts of the county code and permitting process will require attention to streamline reviews (the department is short-staffed and has experienced turnover). The county’s floodplain maps are being updated by FEMA and staff said the county must revise local floodplain ordinance language once new maps are finalized, with an appeals window and adoption expected this year.

Probation director Tiffany Hicks summarized probation operations and said the office is expanding accountability measures (random drug testing windows, monitored ankle-bracelet monitoring that is now monitored 24/7 via vendor) and community-based supports such as free naloxone (Narcan) distribution and partnerships with recovery organizations. She said juvenile‑probation hiring remains an urgent need.

The board voted early in the meeting to approve the agenda. The session concluded with a motion to adjourn.

Why it matters: commissioners received cross‑department updates on public-safety readiness (cyber and emergency response), infrastructure planning (roads, river access, fairgrounds) and planning/building workloads that carry budget and permitting implications. Staff highlighted specific near-term asks — funding for data-center refresh and road projects, continued support for river-management and shelter capacity, and replacement planning for critical single-staff roles such as GIS — that will factor into upcoming budget and policy decisions.