Seeking a safe stop

Weston County School District No. 1 is seeking a safe, year-round bus stop location for students in Osage.

Troy Allen, the district’s director of transportation, said at the Aug. 27 school board meeting that the bus stop has been problematic. The bus route used to go down Sheridan Street, but road conditions — which the district “can’t get anyone to fix” — are now preventing that, according to Allen. When Allen began working for the district, the bus had traveled down Sheridan Road and stopped in front of the post office and the fire hall and then continued to U.S. Highway 16, he told the News Letter Journal. The stops were working so they didn’t change it, he said. But the problem now is that Sheridan Road’s conditions are poor, and nobody’s taking care of it.

“We can’t get there (the post office) without going down Sheridan Road or finding a place to turn around, and there’s no place to turn around,” Allen said.

The district had considered using the post office’s parking lot to turn the bus around, but decided because of the lot’s incline that it wasn’t a good idea, according to Allen.

Metz Street had been part of the route before Kitty Moats School, where there had been a stop, closed in 2007. The road is too steep. One winter, a bus “did like a 180 on it,” he said.

“We can’t use that. It’s just trying to figure out how to pick up those stops at the post office or the fire hall,” he said. “It’s just that we don’t have a way to get to those without going down hills that we can’t go down or do a 3-point turn in a school bus on a highway, which is not the best idea.”

In the 2024-25 school year, the district moved the stop to the water filling station, but the Osage Water District doesn’t want the school district to use the station as a stop, Allen said at the board meeting. Last year, the district contacted the owner of the Sagebrush Bar.

“It was turned over to the lawyer for a release of liability, and last year, they were kind of against it, but I think we’re re-examining that,” Allen said.

This year, Osage bus riders get picked up at the first turnoff on Wyoming Highway 451, also known as Oil City Road. That site is about 250 feet south of U.S. Highway 16, on the opposite side from the unincorporated oil boom town community. Allen told the NLJ that Superintendent Brad LaCroix had suggested having the stop there. Allen and Amanda Purviance, the district’s transportation secretary, decided it was a good idea and suggested it to the school board, which approved the change, according to Allen. 

However, Allen said at the meeting that the district has received phone calls from parents concerned about the safety of children crossing the highway.

“When we proposed the stop, we never thought that kids would cross the highway,” Allen said.

Instead, they  believed parents would bring the children across the highway and wait with them for the bus, he said. Allen said he spoke with the bus driver, who said no children have crossed the highway by themselves.

“We’re trying to figure out what’s going on there, but we are concerned about the kids’ safety, and we’re trying to decide what the best thing to do is,” he said.

Trustee Sean Crabtree offered to have the bus stop be on his property on Nefsy Avenue, which is also known as Old U.S. Highway 16, across the street from Beer Hut and the post office and about a half mile north of U.S. Highway 16.

Touring Osage

On Sept. 4, the NLJ went to Osage with Allen and trustee Jason Jenkins to tour the community’s past stops and meet with Crabtree to take a look at his property. Allen said Crabtree’s location could work, noting there was enough space for the bus to turn around. Crabtree said that the only concern he has about his property is that the property, which is surfaced with shale and covered with vegetation, would need about three or four loads of gravel. Each load costs about $600, according to Crabtree.

Rodney McMeekin, an Osage resident and former Osage Water District board member, decided to join the group on Crabtree’s property. He said that the bus stop had also once been in front of the fire hall and that somebody expressed concern that a vehicle was blocking the fire hall’s doors.

“We just need to figure out a safe way to get the kids on the bus,” Crabtree said.

Road conditions

Weston County School District No. 1 trustee Jason Jenkins told the News Letter Journal that there will be a public meeting with the Osage community regarding the efforts to identify a bus stop in Osage. The district will invite Weston County commissioners, the Weston County Road and Bridge Office, and Wyoming Department of Transportation officials. Jenkins told WCSD No. 1 Transportation Director Troy Allen on Sept. 4 that he’d like those officials “to say on the record why they are not maintaining the roads in Osage,” because the responsibility must belong to somebody. 

The meeting’s time and location have not yet been set, but more information should become available at the Sept. 10 school board meeting, Jenkins told the NLJ on Sept. 7.

“Hopefully we can get some answers once we get this meeting scheduled and hear from everyone from Osage and everyone else, and hopefully we can come up with a better decision on how to get the kids to school,” Allen said.