Absaroka Street is the main travel artery out of Powell to the north, and its narrow width is going to have to be remedied some day, Mayor Don Hillman told the Powell Rotary Club last week.

The Absaroka Street rebuild is a perfect infrastructure project to be addressed in a package of projects across the county if a proposed 1 cent sales tax is approved by voters Nov. 8, Hillman said.

“Absaroka is not going to go away,” the mayor stressed. “It’s a main artery, and it’s a narrow street. I know as a citizen I’m going to have to pay for it some day.

“I would prefer to have one-third of the money paid by someone else,” Hillman said, referring to estimates that approximately a third of sales tax in Park County is paid by visitors.

Improvements on Absaroka Street between Third and Seventh streets make up Powell’s project in the ballot proposal. The measure asks voters to temporarily hike the sales tax rate to 5 percent to raise $13.68 million. The Absaroka improvements, which go beyond widening, are estimated to cost $4.25 million.

Proposers say the additional 1 cent, if approved, would remain in place for roughly two-and-a-half years. Then the sales tax in Park County would revert back to 4 cents.

Cody, Meeteetse and Park County also have projects in the package ask. The City of Cody seeks $5 million for a sewer lagoon upgrade, ADA ramp improvements throughout the city and chip sealing on designated paved streets.

The Town of Meeteetse would receive $2 million for a sewer lift station rehab and water, sewer and electrical installation to a municipal industrial site.

Park County would receive $2.43 million for three bridge replacements on county roads and improvements on County Road 6WX on the South Fork.

Hillman noted that Absaroka Street carries heavy traffic as the main route out of town to the north and the main route to Northwest College.

“It’s going to continue to develop out of town on the north,” Hillman observed. “Absaroka is going to get busier and busier.”

The mayor took issue with advertising by the Citizens for Responsible Taxation, the group that opposes the sales tax increase.

“They put an ad in the paper saying even the supporters of the tax increase aren’t sure why it’s needed, and they quote me as having said, ‘We don’t have any project that’s really critical.’”

“I’ll stand by that statement,” Hillman declared. “We don’t have projects that are critical because we take care of them before they are critical. That’s our continuous maintenance program.”

“To allow projects to get critical, that’s not the way you run a utility,” he added.

That doesn’t mean the Absaroka Street improvements aren’t important, the mayor emphasized.

In addition to widening the road — by resetting the curbs at the existing sidewalks on either side of the street — 6-inch water lines will be replaced with 10-inch lines; new inlets into the storm drain will be installed at each intersection, new ADA ramps will be constructed at intersections, and new LED street lighting and trees will be added.

“Storm drains are needed,” Hillman said. “If you go down by the mortuary (at Third and Absaroka) after a storm, there’s practically a flood. Some intersections don’t even have an inlet to the storm sewer.” 

“I’m not here to tell you how to vote,” he said. “But I think if you have to do the improvements a block at a time, you can take that $4.25 million for the project, and it’s going to cost four times as much. Powell has always been a forward-looking community. I think it’s well worthwhile.”

The mayor said he could envision a beautiful residential street if the project goes forward.

“With a wider street, new street lights and trees, it would almost be a boulevard where today it’s a street so tight that some people park with the wheels on one side of the car over the curb to keep from getting hit,” he said.

Hillman also disputed advertising by the anti-tax committee that said “the cost of the one-cent increase was $363 per family per year.”

The mayor pointed to figures from Wenlin Liu, chief economist at the state of Wyoming’s Economic Analysis Division. Liu has estimated that a family of three — with an annual income of $50,000 — currently pays around $317 in sales tax each year; if the tax rate is hiked to 5 percent, that family would pay an estimated $397 — an increase of about $80 per family per year.