The Mayor’s Minute from Mayor Patrick Collins – Jan. 3, 2025
Published on January 03, 2025
Happy New Year, Cheyenne!
We are blessed to have an Air Force base in our community. With a base comes thousands of military members, and with them comes military spouses. Military members are transferred every couple of years, requiring their spouses to leave their jobs and look for another in their new communities. In many cases, their professions require a license issued by the state, including for physical therapists, counselors, nurses, massage therapists, and many more. I met with a military spouse who has struggled to get her professional license and shared her struggles with Sen. Boner. We are working on a bill for the upcoming legislative session that will recognize the license issued in another state and expedite the new license here in Wyoming. I feel for these military families who serve our country, and we should make every accommodation to help their spouses find meaningful employment they have trained so hard for. I hope the Legislature agrees.
Our new city council member orientation continued this week with the Public Works Department. Vicki Nemecek brought her whole team of managers to meet our two new council members and share the work of the department. The Public Works Department is staffed by 153 full-time, 17 permanent part-time, and six seasonal employees. It is one of our more diverse departments with divisions including Administration, Traffic Maintenance, Street & Alley, Facilities Maintenance, Transit, Fleet Maintenance, Solid Waste, Transfer Station, Compost, and Landfill. They maintain over 10,000 traffic signs and signals, fix potholes, remove snow, manage the Belvoir Ranch, maintain 275,000 square feet of city buildings, drive our city busses, maintain over 1,000 city vehicles, pick up our garbage and recycling, maintain a heavily regulated landfill, and compost our yard waste. It is inherently dangerous work, and they do it with a culture of safety. This department affects so much of our daily lives, and the employees of the Public Works Department truly understand how important their role is.
We continued our orientation next with the Community Recreation and Events Department. One hundred full-time and 200 part-time employees who work 363 days a year provide a wide range of services for our community. Weed & Pest, our Clean and Safe Team, the Civic Center, Fridays on the Plaza, swimming pools & splash pads, cemetery services, the Botanic Gardens, golf, recreational sports, 46 miles of Greenway, Urban Forestry, 27 athletic fields, the Kiwanis Community House & recreation buildings, and 1,000 acres of city parks are all part of the diverse undertakings of the CRE department. Jason Sanchez and his team really understand the “why” of what they do, and they deliver a quality-of-life component to our community that help make Cheyenne livable.
We learned of the death of President Jimmy Carter this past week. His race with Ronald Reagan in 1980 was my first time voting for president. While I did not vote for Mr. Carter, I recognized what a good man he was. I think his time after the presidency was most impactful. With our current affordable housing shortage, I especially respect his decades long work with Habitat for Humanity. He died at 100 years old, and it was a long life well lived.
My worst nightmare as mayor just happened this week in New Orleans. A terrorist drove past barricades and used a truck to murder 15 people and injured many more. We have so many events in Cheyenne with large crowds that are vulnerable to these kinds of attacks and we take precautions to make our events as safe as possible. My heart goes out to the mayor of New Orleans and the good people of that community, and my prayers go to the families of the victims of this senseless tragedy.