Commerce Bank has been selected by the county treasurer as the bank Sweetwater County will put its depositories in.
At the Sweetwater County Commissioners’ meeting Tuesday morning, county treasurer Robb Slaughter gave the commissioners an update on how the transfer of funds out of Bank of the West was going.
The county had $15.8 million of the general fund is with Bank of the West, while $1.4 million is in insurance with them and about $14 million is invested with the bank.
The reason the county decided to pull its funds out of Bank of the West was because of a statement corporate Bank of the West made on its website. Its website “blog.bankofthewest.com/change, stated “We will no longer do business with companies whose main activity is exploring, producing, distributing, marketing or trading oil and gas from shale and/or tar sands. We will no longer finance coal mines or coal-fired power plants that are not actively involved in the energy transition.”
The Bank of the West also stated on the website, its “withdrawing support from companies and business activities that are detrimental to our environment and our health.”
With this in mind, Slaughter checked all local banks environmental statements on their websites and called each local bank to discuss the statements. He then asked for proposals from the banks on what the county needed.
He received four proposals and narrowed it to two.
He said the county already had an existing account with Commerce Bank and the bank told him they would have a team dedicated to helping the county through the transition.
Commerce Bank was good on their offer and five team members visited the county and helped get payroll, forms and computer programs ready.
“We’ve transferred virtually all of the money from Bank of the West,” Slaughter said. “It’s been a much simpler transition then I anticipated.”
He told the commissioners he would meet that Oct. 1 deadline.
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