President Dick Jay called the meeting to order promptly at 12:20, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting. He let us know that due to one of our speakers needing to leave early that we will hear our program out of normal order today.

 

 

Liz Roth and Joe MaCguire were our greeters today and Liz introduced the members who brought guests:

Gary Pehrson led us in singing “Take me out to the Ball Game”

 

John Griffith introduced our speakers today, State Senator Bill Landon and State Representative Tom Walters. They are here today to tell us about the new State Office building that will be built here in Casper. Senator Landon started us off by telling us that they are co-chairmen of the task force that is working with everyone on the new building. They said that around 2010 the State found out that there are some difficulties with the Midwest building where many of the State offices are housed currently here in Casper. In order to fix and bring that building up to date would cost $8 to $10 million so the more fiscally responsible thing to do would be to build a new facility. With there being about 500 State employees here in Casper they are going to build a place that will hold the majority of them. He then turned the mic over to Representative Tom Walters to explain a little more about the building plans. The building will be over on Collins Street across from NCHS and the tearing down has already begun. The principal access will be on Midwest Street to keep down traffic issues on Collins. There will be an emergency entrance on Collins but that will only be used for Emergency Vehicles when needed. There is a warehouse on the site that will remain for storage and vehicle garaging. There are total of eight State agencies that will be housed in the new building, those will be The Department of Corrections, The Department of Environmental Quality, The Department of Workforce Services, The Department of Health, The Department of Revenue, The Department of Family Services, and the State Engineers Office. The building will be a three story building and will be laid out so that the agencies that have the most interaction with the public will be on the first floor then the ones that have less interaction with the public will be on the top floors. The third floor will be those who have zero interaction along with some meeting space for the legislature and others, and vacant offices for expansion needs in the future. He said that one of the concerns brought forth was that the Department of Corrections with the parole and probation offices would be housed across the street from the High School so they had many meetings with the School District and the HS Principal. There are six other cities in the State with this department across from Schools and there have been no incidents whatsoever so they feel that there will be no issues here in Casper. Also they will be putting in a decorative median in the middle of Collins Street to slow down traffic and insulate the HS further from the building. The State began acquiring property starting with the Goodstein lot East of Racca’s Pizza and they discovered that this site would be too small for what they needed so they then acquired the new site. They have spent about $8.5 Million so far on property. They have appropriated about $45 Million for the demolition and construction of the new building. They feel that they will come in under budget and it is looking good so far. He showed us the pictures of the building design inside and out, it is a nice looking piece of property. They did a mixture of historic and modern which made it a very nice looking concept. Timeline wise, they are about done with the first stage which is the demolition and cleanup. In May they should start the bidding for the next step of site prep, then end of July or so they will have the bidding for the building construction phase which should start around the end of the year with a target completion for 2021. They broke it up into smaller bidding pieces in order to allow our local contractors the opportunity to participate more. He listed off the contractors that have participated so far. He then opened the floor for questions. He said that the building on Midwest they will decide how they are going to handle it at a later time as they are not sure what it will sell for, they may demolish it and just sell the land but they are not decided on this yet. They will be working with the downtown development to make sure it is done properly. They added that factoring in future rents and maintenance and bringing the Midwest Building up to code etc. that this project will have paid for itself within 13 years so it was the most fiscally responsible choice. The Goodstein property will be leased long term to the City of Casper to be used for downtown parking.

 

Deb Theriault gave us some history of the club from 1935-1938, great stuff.

 

President Dick Jay let us know that Dennis Lower turned 90 today! Happy Birthday Dennis.

Charlie Shopp announced that Bob Barnard’s brother Bill passed away this past week.

Glenn Januska let us know that his wife Rayna has returned to Casper six months and seven days after having a heart transplant at the University of Utah Hospital in SLC. She is home and doing great.

Lynn Lockhart told us that her son Tom works as a civilian for the Airforce and he was transferred to Hill AFB in Utah and was just a keynote speaker for their award ceremony, his title is the Director of Engineering for The Airforce Nuclear Weapons Center, very impressive.

Jimmy Goosby let us know that Xeubing Fu who he sponsored for club membership had to go back to China and was expected to return after two weeks but has been gone for over a month and they do not know when she will be back.

Kevin Murphy announced that Grayson Buckingham got engaged on Saturday in a hot air balloon.

 

Peaches Lynch nominated the Devore Family, The DeGraeve Family, and The Boatright Family for all helping out and taking care of our exchange student Francisco this year.

Maribeth Plocek nominated Michael Howe and Phillip Rael for being elected to the Board of the Chamber of Commerce.

 

Liz Roth traded in her red badge for a Blue one today!

Jesse Glasgow gave his classification talk today, he was born and raised here in Casper and graduated from NCHS in 2005. He went to work for his dad’s company at Summit Electric and at the same time was taking some College courses and decided after a while that the family business was what he wanted to get into. In 2015 he got his Master electrician license and just recently started buying the business from his dad. He bought a house in Bar Nunn and shortly thereafter met his wife and they now have two little girls, 4 & 6 years old. He likes the outdoors but most of his activities revolve around his girls and work. He loves Rotary and volunteering and getting to know more people and wants his girls to grow up serving their community. He thanked Casey Allison for sponsoring him into the club.

 

Michele Wistisen announced that they have a Brazilian guest at the Planetarium this Thursday to speak about Brazilian Folk Stories and the Southern hemisphere constellations.

Guy Dewitt announced that he is taking over for Steve Loftin today and needs volunteers to pack food at the Foodbank right after this meeting.

Bill Mortimer said that he will have the Pheasants from the Pheasant hunt to distribute to the hunters since we will not have the dinner this year. Also there will probably be a few left if you did not hunt but would like one.

Darren Divine announced that they are looking for a board member for the CC Board if you are interested please let him know this week.

Richard Schwahn reminded us that the outbound exchange orientation is going on this weekend and they are looking for more help to chaperone Saturday night from 5:30 to 8:30.

 

No Student Today

 

President Dick Jay concluded the meeting at 1:20 letting us know that next week we will be at the Nicolaysen Art Museum.

 

“Be the Inspiration”