The Mayor’s Minute from Mayor Patrick Collins – August 25th

Published on August 25, 2023

CHEYENNE – We said goodbye to our firefighter Aaron Booker on Saturday afternoon at Element Church. It was so sad yet inspirational at the same time. The fire department honored Aaron and his family with a ceremony filled with the dignity befitting a firefighter who lost his life serving his community. It was so gratifying to see firefighters from all over the region attend and support the family and our department members. Aaron’s wife Courtney showed so much courage when she stepped forward and gave the eulogy. I left the service proud of Aaron’s service to our city and proud of the way our department said goodbye.

Visit Cheyenne has been holding Farm to Table events for a while now. Judy and I attended our first event at Hynds Lodge Saturday evening. First the venue was beautiful. I think it has been 50 years since I was at Hynds Lodge. Second, the food was amazing. It all was sourced from Laramie County except one wine that came from the west coast. Smoked trout on toast, flank steak, duck, and bison chili and corn bread. The Old Fashions were made with whiskey from the Pine Bluffs Distillery. We met so many people enjoying the same experience. Domenic and the Visit Cheyenne team are doing a great job highlighting our local producers and making it fun in the process. Can’t wait for the next one.

Spent some time with our city engineer, Tom Cobb, this week. We had a list of things to update: Belvoir Ranch trail systems, protecting floodways from development as required by FEMA, future drainage improvements, timing of future road projects, pavement management, and our new gymnastics building site plan. We have so many projects in the pipeline. It is exciting to see some of them getting accomplished with more on the way.

The Old West Museum is in the middle of building out the master plan that will transform the museum. Kevin Burkett and Lonnie Reese came by to share their vision to expand on our recent Capitol Avenue Bronze Project down Carey Avenue. We have a rich local history with native Americans, railroads, military, and pioneer ranching families. Memorializing these pillars in bronze would help tell these amazing stories. We also discussed how we can work together to improve the visitor experience at the museum and help make the museum more successful. We definitely have things we can and should do.

We have a city council goal to look into solar power. Councilman Tom Segrave and I met with Austin from Black Hills Energy to understand how a city solar project could partner with our local utility. I am excited to see if we can build a community solar project that could help the nonprofits and folks struggling to make ends meet. We also talked about the city helping to meet the huge demand for electricity due to the successes of LEADS. I appreciate Austin’s time and how much we learned about the process. More to come.

Braver Angels started in 2016 in Ohio. Their mission is to “Bring Americans together to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen our democratic republic”. Tom Brantley helped start the local chapter and his political opposite Ed Boenisch stopped by to share their plans to hold a panel discussion on race in October. I was asked to be a panelist and with our recent history, I was happy to accept. What I most appreciate is this panel will help continue our discussion on race and hopefully highlight some ways our community can begin to heal.

We had our bi-annual investment committee meeting this week. If you are tracking your 401k, you know the investment environment is challenging. It was comforting to learn we are on track with our benchmarks. Having local experts help us understand the language from our investment advisors helps the committee and guides our investment strategy. The state law requires the city’s investments to be very conservative and if we hold our investments to maturity, prevents any loss of our capital. Earned interest helps make our tax dollars go further.

I learned this week that Wyoming is in the top five states in the nation for organ donation. Something like 63 percent of Wyomingites are registered as organ donors, and I am one of them. Jennifer Prinz is the executive director of the Donor Alliance. Their mission is to get folks signed up to donate life by donating organs and tissues. We talked about the month of April being Donate Life Month, and the possibility of Cheyenne becoming a Donate Life City. Sadly, 17 people die daily on the donation list waiting for an organ. Today we have 160 Wyoming residents on the list. I hope our attention will help people get the organs they need to live.

I have been meeting with the Southeast Builders for a while now to talk about how we can work together to build our community. The city definitely influences the industry with regulations and fees. We talk about what are the right levels so the city has the resources to do the job without hurting the industry. It is an interesting conversation and an important one. It seems we end our meetings with more questions than answers, but I think we are making progress.

I took a field trip to the police gun range to see what our officers do to qualify for their job, and to see what the range needs to continue serving our department. I learned it is harder to shoot accurately and qualify than I expected, and some of the equipment that controls our targeting system is no longer working as it should. After seeing the process, I will be making a request to the city council to invest in the officer’s training by fixing the targeting system. I also learned about a few longer-term issues we will need to address in the future. It was great to see Chief Francisco, Captain Keslar, and Captain Janes shoot. They are truly professionals. I also got the opportunity to shoot a few World War II rifles. As a history buff, it was a blast.

The Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) approved a contract for Safe Routes to Schools on Thursday. As school started this week, I thought it was a perfect timing for this study. It will look at every publicly financed school in the city to make recommendations on how we can make our schools safer. Kids should be able to walk and bike to school in a safe manner. Please remember school is back in session and keep the distractions out of the driver’s seat.

If you have a question for me, send it to media@cheyennecity.org. I’ll continue to answer them in my following Mayor’s Minute column.

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