Park County opens Cooke City–Silvergate resort-tax applications; commissioners cite missing revenue totals

Park County commissioners and staff opened submitted applications for the Cooke City–Silvergate resort tax on Feb. 27 in Cooke City, reading a list of projects and noting that the most recent resort-tax collection figures were not available at the meeting.

The panel read requests that ranged from a $7,500 search-and-rescue overtime reimbursement line requested by the sheriff’s office to a $72,000 operating request from the local chamber of commerce. "This was a project that I worked on with the MSU extension," said Tad Dykesha of the Park County Sheriff’s Office, describing the SAR reimbursement plan. "The $7,500 would sit in a budget line and then when we had overtime due to search and rescue specifically in Cooke City, that money would be requested just to help cover some of those overtime costs." Dykesha apologized for not attending the earlier needs-assessment meeting and said the application deadlines were met.

Officials also read an application for Cooke City School District No. 9 seeking $2,000 for deferred infrastructure costs; the Park County superintendent of schools said the district has limited staffing and preferred not to pursue a tax levy. Josh Pierce, representing the Cooke City Water Board, described an older accounting dispute with the sewer district and said the water board would prefer to recoup roughly $9,000 of engineering costs rather than pursue interest on an $18,548.81 invoice that appeared in the record. Pierce told commissioners that a direct repayment from the sewer board could jeopardize that board’s eligibility for certain grant programs.

Other requests included a $15,000 application from the Upper Yellowstone Snowmobile Club for grooming infrastructure and safety improvements, including signage and storage; a $10,000 marketing request for the Forget Me Not festival, which organizers said generates more than $100,000 in local economic activity; and a $75,712 request for community council building operations plus a $15,000 request for a whole-building backup generator to keep restrooms and a warming area operable during outages. Applicants from emergency services described a need for heated storage containers to hold sleds and medical equipment and discussed coordination with the fire department; the dollar amount read in the record for one storage item was unclear in the transcript.

Commissioners acknowledged there were several applications that had arisen after a needs-assessment meeting and that not every project had been discussed at that earlier session. "There are surprises that weren't discussed at the last meeting," said Susie Hahn, who asked whether the applications could be reviewed against a resort-tax balance. County staff said Erica and Kevin in finance would provide the updated collection spreadsheet; staff noted that the latest third-quarter report was from Oct. 29 and that more recent collections had not yet been posted.

The commission set a next appropriations meeting for March 11 at 10:30 a.m. and said the spreadsheet with up-to-date collections would be circulated to stakeholders prior to that session. No funding votes were taken at the Feb. 27 meeting.

The meeting adjourned after a brief period for additional comments.