City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Councilman Seagrave, can you just say hello to everyone?

Hello everyone. There's a little technical trouble here.

Dr. Emmons, can you hear us?

I can. Can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for your patience as we work through some technical difficulties in the booth. But at this time, I'd like to call the September 14th meeting of the governing body to order and ask our clerk if she would take the roll.

Recording in progress. Mr. Wolf? Here. Dr. Aldrich? Present. Mayor Collins?

Here.

Dr. Emmons? Here. Mr. Escobel?

Here.

Mr. Laybourne? Here. Mr. Moody?

Here.

Dr. Rennie? Mr. Seagrave?

Present.

Mr. White?

Present.

One member is absent, we do have a quorum.

Would you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Number 4 consent agenda all agenda items listed with the designation of CA are considered to be routine items by the governing body and will be enacted by 1 motion. There will be no separate discussion on these items unless a member of the governing body. So requests and support by 2 other members is received. Any item move from the consent agenda will be considered in its normal sequence on the agenda.

All right, just a little point of information for people watching on Zoom tonight. Apparently our video is not working. People can hear us. If they want to watch us, they have to go to YouTube. And I guess our YouTube feed is working tonight, our camera there is. But for some reason, our video for Zoom is not working. But people can participate online. They just won't be able to see our lovely faces in the process. And with that, I'll ask if there's anything a member of the governing body would like to remove from the consent agenda. And I see Mr. Laybourne, you have your light on.

Number 18.

Concur.

Concur.

Okay, number 18 has been removed from the consent agenda.

And?

And?

Number 26B, D. D as in David? E. Okay. Yes.

Concur.

Concur.

Any others? Hearing none, I would entertain a motion. So moved. Second. Moved by Mr. Seagrave and seconded by Mr. White. All those in favor of the consent agenda with items 18 and 26D removed, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? The consent agenda is approved as amended with numbers 18 and 26D removed. They'll be taken in their normal sequence on the agenda.

Mr. Mayor. Mr. Seagrave. I move to suspend the rules to change the order of the agenda to allow for the consideration of item 29A, appointment of Andrew Sickenberger to municipal court judge prior to item number 6A.

We have a motion and a second to change the order of the day to move item number 29A to be the next item on our agenda. All those in favor of that motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. And those opposed? All right, we'll move that item up. And Madam Clerk, if you would read that into the record, please.

Number 29A, appointment of Andrew Sickenberger to municipal court judge.

Hang on a second.

Mr. Mayor, under Robert's Rules of Order Chapter 6 subsidiary motions, there is an option for limiting or extending limits of debate.

Can we take that after we do this item, please? Sure. I'd appreciate that. Thank you very much. Go ahead and read that for me, please.

29A, appointment of Andrew Sickenberger to municipal court judge.

All right, we had an opening for a municipal judge. We did interviews and one of our magistrates, Andrew Sickenberger, was the person selected by the committee to make that selection. I would entertain a motion to approve Mr. Sickenberger as our newest municipal judge. So moved. Second. Moved by Dr. Aldridge, seconded by Mr. Seagrave. Comments on the appointment? that question yes sir i think mr mayor through you just a couple questions um when was the gentleman to the bar what year um mr sickenberger could you come forward and answer that question because quite frankly i don't remember certainly mr mayor can you push that button and turn the microphone on thank you certainly mr mayor through you mr mayor to councilman moody i was admitted to the bar in september of 2021.

Okay, you follow, Mr. Mayor? Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, through you. And what is your prior experience?

Mr. Mayor, through you, a clarifying question to Councilman Moody, just generally with the law, sir.

Experience in the courtroom, defense attorney, prosecutor, that's what I'm looking for. Mr. Zickenberger?

Mr. Mayor, through you to Councilman Moody, I started at Woodhouse Road in Ames and Brennan during my first year and a half or so of practice. I've practiced in numerous trial courts, family court, general civil litigation, largely dealing with negligence and insurance defense. That was at my third job. After I left Woodhouse Road and I was the public defender for the city of Cheyenne for about a year. And then I left that. I was at Buckhammer and Ward PC for two years doing general practice, criminal, family, that civil litigation, contracts, arbitration. So I have Pretty much since I graduated and before that when I was working at a clinic at the University of Wyoming College of Law. Since that time, I've been doing criminal practice and in courtrooms.

Mr. Sitkenberger, you are currently one of our magistrates working in the court.

That is correct, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions? All right, hearing none, all those in favor of the appointment, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? No. Okay, Mr. Moody is a no. The appointment is approved, and Madam Clerk, would you please swear the justice in?

Raise your right hand and repeat after me. Aye. State your name.

Aye. Andrew Sickenberger.

Do solemnly swear.

Do solemnly swear.

That I will support the Constitution and laws of the United States.

That I will support the constitution and laws of the United States.

The constitution and laws of the state of Wyoming.

The constitution and laws of the state of Wyoming.

And the charter and ordinances of the city of Cheyenne.

And the charter and ordinances of the city of Cheyenne.

And that I will faithfully, honestly, and impartially.

And that I will faithfully, honestly, and impartially.

Discharge the duties of municipal court judge.

Discharge the duties of municipal court judge.

Of the city of Cheyenne.

Of the city of Cheyenne.

To the best of my ability and understanding.

To the best of my ability and understanding.

Andrew, congratulations and your honor, welcome to the court.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Dr. Aldrich, I understand you wanted the floor.

Yes, thank you, Mayor Collins. Under Robert's Rules of Order, Chapter 6, Subsidiary Motions, there is an option for limiting or extending limits of debate in Section 15. It appears that the council may establish limits on debate by a two-thirds vote, which can include limiting the amount of time each member may speak. A motion to limit debate is not debatable. For example, the council could adopt a motion that each member be allowed one speech of three minutes on a pending motion. And once that motion's been approved, the chair can enforce that limitation during the discussion. Therefore, I move that the debate on all items this evening be limited to one speech of three minutes per member on each item.

Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second to limit speech for, as I take it, Dr. Alderson, not only members of the audience, but also members of the governing body?

That's correct.

Okay. It's a non-debatable motion. All those in favor of limiting our time speaking this evening, please signify by saying aye.

Aye. Aye.

Those opposed? No. May I see the hands and the nos, please? Mr. Moody, Mr. Wolf, and Mr. Laybourne, the motion is approved. Tonight we will have a time limit of three minutes per speaker, and it looks like we'll be limited to one speech per item. With that, we'll go into our next item, please. Madam Clerk.

Certification, sir, that's for the members of the governing body.

Yes, sir, that's correct.

Next item is 6A, public hearing to determine whether compliance of annexation conditions required by Wyoming Statute 15-1-402 exists for about 162.42 acres of land located west of South Greeley Highway, south of West College Drive, and southwest of and adjacent to the intersection of Apple Street and York Avenue.

All right, we'll open a public hearing then to take a comment on this annexation. And the first thing we're gonna do is have a brief staff report. Mr. White.

Mayor, members of council, Connor White, Planning and Development Department. There we go. This annexation is for roughly 162.42 acres of land generally located west of South Greeley Highway, south of West College Drive, and southwest and adjacent to the intersection of Apple Street and York Avenue. The city received petition to annex this land from the owners, which was filed with the city clerk on July 13th, 2026. This petition was certified by the city clerk as containing the necessary signatures according to state statute on July 17th, 2026. This public hearing is being held in accordance with Wyoming State Statute 15-1402A. Pursuant to fulfilling the requirements and state statute, staff asks the governing body to consider the following. The land proposed to be annexed is contiguous to current city limits. Specifically, the property is 25.26% contiguous. All city services and utilities are available to the property within the city, will be provided to the annexed land. Extending water and sewer increases the health safety of individuals living and working in this area of the community. Water and sewer is actually adjacent to the property on both the west, south and east side. The area to be annexed is inside the urban service boundary and designated with mixed use residential in the future land use map. This type of development is best supported by being within city limits and connecting to city services. Certified mailing was sent to all landowners and utilities within the annexed area not less than 20 business days prior to the public hearing tonight. According to the calendar, 20 business days was August 14th, and the mailing was sent out on August 13th, and the earliest confirmed receipt was August 17th. Property owners within 300 feet of the subject property were also mailed notice within that time period, and the Sank Station is being, is accompanied by an assigned zoning, a future land use map amendment, and a zoning map amendment. Before I get asked the question, yes, we have had public comment on this. We received a couple phone calls. Most of those phone calls, I would say, were more interested in not really the annexation. It was more about the use of the land, the future land use amendment, that nature. We have had a couple comments. about the annexation, those mostly being from those in, I believe it's Orchard Valley, just being concerned that this annexation would basically make it easier for the city to force annex them. That's not the case. This doesn't create a county pocket. It doesn't make them any more contiguous to city limits. So that's that's not really a concern that they should have. because it wouldn't make it easier or change anything in that regard. Other than that, there haven't been any other public comments regarded to the annexation itself. And I am available for any questions.

And Mr. White, this is a owner-initiated annexation, meaning the owner of the property asked to be annexed? uh mayor through you yes that is correct okay any questions for staff from uh members of the governing body mr white thank you we'll go out to the audience now this is an opportunity if you want to talk to us about the annexation of what i believe is being called the orchard hills area and in order to do that if you could come up to either one of the two microphones uh please give us your name and then we'll take three minutes of your comments please and heather do you want to start us off or You know how to do this, I figure you might be a good role model.

Heather Madrid, Ward 1. I guess my only concern is that I agree, just annexing this one piece of property isn't putting the rest of Orchard Valley at risk of being annexed, but that's typically not how this has been working. It seems like people are kind of creeping, piecing together annexations until It justifies the annexation of a massive chunk of land, although I don't know necessarily that that will happen with Orchard Valley. From what I understand, nobody wants to annex them ever. But that's my concern with annexations in general, is that it's never just one. It's a hopscotch game, it seems like. That's all.

Anyone else want to speak tonight on the... Good evening, ma'am. Welcome.

Janet Tolman, Ward 2. I just would like to ask a question. It just seems like this piece of property that's being requested to be annexed is next to property that isn't annexed. Is that correct?

I'd say that's true, ma'am. It's next to an area that is already annexed, so it's contiguous to the existing city, but it's also next to some land that's not been annexed yet, so it's kind of in between. I think they said 25.26% contiguous to the city, so that means about 75% of it doesn't touch the city.

Okay, and are the homes, are those already in the city, or are there some of the homes not in the city?

The area that's being annexed, I don't think has any homes on it.

It's big. No, I mean the properties that are next to it.

The property to the south is where the meta data center is, I believe, and that is in the city limits, and the property to the north is in the unincorporated county, and those are homes. You can see on the map, now they pulled it away so you can see it better. There's a TV right there in front of you if you make it easier, or behind you might be easier.

mayor i could see the concern that they would have because they're not in the city but then this property south of them is wanting to be annexed into the city and so i would almost be like an encroachment i i'm not aware of the the laws but are the rules of how things are annexed into the city but it just seems like yeah it's more like not well planned and it would it would be a good idea to designate certain areas that could be annexed in different areas that would not be annexed into the city so that there's a major plan instead of just one property asking to be annexed into the city when there's unincorporated next to it to me it just doesn't make any sense maybe it makes sense to other people but it doesn't make any sense to me thank you ma'am mr white

Mayor, Conway Planning and Development Department. I was just going to make a clarifying comment for everybody. The shaded red that's to the south of the subject property, that is what is currently annexed in the city. So basically anything in the shaded red is city limits. Anything that's just not shaded would be considered county. Thank you.

Mr. White. Through you, Mr. Chairman, Michael White, I'd like to make a point of order. If you're going to limit everybody on the council, you'll need to limit Connor White's time frame, too. Point of order. So if you guys are going to start having rules that we have to abide by out here in the public, then you need to make sure that the staff has the same rules.

Mr. White, do you have a comment on the annexation?

The annexation is I believe what the first speaker, the second speaker thought. I go back to Plan Cheyenne and also I go back to I don't hear the report from the Board of Public Utilities because that's under the Southside Surin Water jurisdiction. I think that these council meetings, with due respect for annexation, we need to understand the full comments by everything that goes to the city planning department to be read into the record. I believe also that we need to update the rules for annexation. Annexation is a part of this city and county that we seem to be talking about every council meeting. And to your respect to you, Mr. Collins, I realize that we can only talk about annexation. but I believe that there hasn't been enough information. I believe there's enough people in the room that are gonna share their concerns, but I think this annexation vote should be voted down tonight. Thank you.

Sir, please.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Jeff Nakashima with Trammell Crow Company. I am here tonight to speak in support of the owner-initiated annexation of the 162-acre Orchard Hills property. While there's understandably a lot of interest in future zoning, tonight's decision is strictly about annexation. It is about whether it makes sense for this parcel to officially join the city of Cheyenne. Under Wyoming State Statute 15-1-402, this property satisfies and exceeds all five of the state's legal criteria. First, contiguity. The property is immediately adjacent to the existing city limits, making this a logical, orderly expansion of the city's boundary rather than a leapfrog development. Second. Natural and integrated development. This land is already surrounded by high impact infrastructure. There are already three existing or planned electrical substations on the property, along with a multitude of high voltage transmission lines. Furthermore, we are immediately adjacent to the 900 acre metadata center campus. From an infrastructure perspective, this land is already deeply integrated. Third, service extension. This property is uniquely plug and play. All required municipal utilities are already sitting at the property line. The infrastructure is ready, and we will fund 100% of the cost to tie into those existing lines, ensuring no financial burden to Cheyenne taxpayers. Fourth, health, safety, and welfare. This is where the community wins. Unlike other developments, data centers generate virtually no traffic. Furthermore, by annexing this property, we will help solve a major local transportation issue by facilitating the expansion of the Wallach and Parsley roads. This will directly relieve congestion at the new 5-6 grade school and improve traffic safety for thousands of surrounding residents. And to address neighbors concerns that we've listened to over the past couple of months. We are proposing a substantial 500 plus foot buffer to shield adjacent properties that make better view sheds. And we are fully prepared to put our commitments to strict noise and zero spill lighting mitigations in writing as a binding condition of this project. Finally, utility integration. We are prepared to work with the city to establish necessary franchise utilities. Annexation is not an approval of a specific building layout. It is a vote for smart, managed growth. It gives the city of Cheyenne the steering wheel. By voting yes on this annexation, you ensure that Cheyenne city planners, utility experts, and this city council have the ultimate authority over how this land is managed. We respectfully ask for your support of this annexation. Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir. Aaron, did you want to speak? Yes. Welcome.

Erin Madsen, I'm not sure which board I'm in, I believe.

It doesn't matter, I know you live in the city.

Yeah.

Yeah, welcome.

Well, here's my thing. I'm a biologist. I was asked if I had done any research on data centers whatsoever. Well, you know what, now I have, and the results that I have seen so far are not good. i don't understand why the um what makes the council so sure that we are going to be exempt from all the negative impacts they've had in tennessee and mississippi also i know that they said oh we'll just drill way way down to that water and use that water well That is what the people who do fracking do. And so I start wondering whether the water is going to mix together. It is a possibility. And there is an even greater possibility that we will need that water on down the line. Now, I have to say that since none of you presumably are scientists, I have thought of several things that could go wrong. There's data centers and water, data centers and energy, data centers and environment, data centers and pollution.

Point of order. I apologize, Erin. What we're talking about right now is the annexation. I think what you want to talk about is the zone change, which is coming up a little bit later, you know, in the meeting. Do you have any comments on the annexation itself, bringing this land into the city limits?

Sure. We all know what the annexation is for. And these people, they don't care about us in this city.

Mayor point of clarification. Yeah, this is a correct me if I'm wrong. This is a public hearing Yep, and so no votes going to be taken on this tonight.

That's correct It'll be referred to the Public Services Committee next week and come back in two weeks for the first actual official vote of this governing body Thank you, sir sir, please

My name's Ross Gensel, and I live on the border of this property. And I'm kind of in the world of realism. We know it's gonna get annexed. We're surrounded by some development. I'm not happy about it, I'd love it to stay wild, but that's not gonna happen. So if it is annexed, I think, as Jeff had said, that the data center would be the softest blow to everybody around us as far as traffic patterns, high density, or development, high density development, I think the data center is much better. Right now, We're receiving all the lights from the current metadata center all night long. It's never nighttime in my house anymore. So we know that it's gonna be annexed. We know that's gonna happen. But we're all, at least the people I talked to who live on the boundary, are rooting for the data center. So that would, I know that's coming up, but I wanted to get my opinion on that.

Sir, if you were to look on that map, are you directly north then of the area that we're talking about?

Right off of Draper. See where the power station is? Yes, sir. If you go over two streets, Actually, one, right on the corner there. So it's almost center of the boundary line. So, thank you.

Thank you. Yes ma'am, welcome. Now you got to bring that microphone down and talk right into it for us. There you go.

You're saying I'm short.

I didn't say that, but thank you.

This is Jane Lessinger. I'm in Ward 1 and also in the county. I would like to propose that in the agenda that we put all the things for the same property right next to each other and we follow right through. In the consent agenda, this property is already marked as mixed use, but if you go to, and that's in the consent agenda 24, if you go to 15 and 16 in the agenda, for some of the people who are new to the things here, realizing that later on it's gonna be changing the zoning, and that should be brought to light all at one time. That's going to change the zoning from agricultural to light industrial. So for all the properties that we're talking about tonight and in the future, let's put all this topic about one property together.

Ma'am, we can't do that legally.

You can't do that legally?

The state law says we have to have a public hearing. That's what we're doing now. And then after the public hearing, then we get to put these things on the agenda. So the agenda is not to be discussed today. They're just going to be referred to committee. So the clerk will read them in and I'm going to immediately assign them to a committee. So they won't be discussed at all tonight. And then they will be in order and next to each other next council meeting. The annexation will be first. The assigned zoning will be second. And then the zone change will be third. They'll be actually in order that way. But the law says we have to have a public hearing before we can put them on the agenda, and that's what we're doing here today.

Well, can you reference then from number six to reference 15 and 16 at least, something like that. That makes sense. So others are aware.

Yes, ma'am. And you've made them aware tonight. Thank you for that.

Thank you.

Appreciate you. Yes, ma'am. Please identify yourself and pull that microphone down.

Thank you, Mayor. My name is Susan Gensel, and I just live on the county side of the annexed proposal property. In fact, my fence line is butted up right against it, and I'm not really in favor of any changes right there. I like the natural habitat there, so I'm not in favor of that, but I know a lot of people want it annexed, but my concern is I want to keep some sort of buffer. I don't care if you want to do resident or if you want to do data centers. I want a big buffer between us and them. What Jeff suggested was that 560. So I don't care, like I said, if you want to do residential Further south, I just, I don't want the road in front of us becoming a highway. It's a dirt road, we have horses in the area, we have goats, people raise beef cattle and hogs and livestock.

Understood, thank you. Anybody else want to speak on the Orchard Hills? what we call Orchard Hills, in this public hearing?

Anybody else in the audience? Anybody online, Tina?

Okay, one more time and then I'm gonna close the public hearing. All right, the public hearing is closed. Go ahead.

We just had a hand come up. Just as before you said you were gonna close.

In under the wire.

Yeah. Mr. Smith, you may go ahead and speak.

Can you hear me? Yes.

We can hear you. Go ahead.

Mayor Collins, members of the Council, Charles Miller. This is in regards to item number 6A, the public hearing on the 162-acre annexation west of South Greeley Highway. This hearing has one purpose, to determine whether the conditions required by Wyoming Statute 15-1402 exist. I wanted to point out that item number six has no supporting document attached on tonight's agenda. The only analysis the public could read is buried in the item number 14, staff report. If staff is relying on a separate annexation report tonight, it should be entered into the public record before any finding is made. Based on what is public, three conditions are not met. 1st, health, safety and welfare of persons residing in the area. Nobody resides there staff said the land is vacant. The argument is that a future developer gets city water. That's not a finding about people living there and it says nothing about the families. On Apple and York, who will have light industrial next door. second a logical and feasible addition where services can be furnished within reason no cost estimate no sewer capacity number no water demand figure for a parcel the applicant told staff verbally is a data center within reason means somebody did the math nobody has shown it third can contiguity uh staff's own number uh 25.26 uh percent a quarter of the perimeter touches the city that's a flagpole not an extension and notice uh let's see here the report says the 20 business day deadline was august 14th and the earliest confirmed delivery of the certified mailing was august 17th after the deadline Let's see here. It looks like six days ago the Planning Commission voted six to nothing against the land use change on this exact parcel and your own staff recommended denial. This annexation exists for one reason, to enable a rezone your planners and your commission both rejected. If you could populate this report with the water, sewer, and fire feasibility analysis before you make any findings.

Mr. Miller, thank you for your comments.

We have one more person that would like to speak.

Please let him on.

Go ahead, Mr. Russell, or Ms. Russell.

All right, can you hear me?

We can hear you just fine, ma'am.

Awesome, my name is Russell. I live on the county side of the currently proposed annexation. I just wanted to point out that there have been 5 owner requested annexations that have led to business park zoning, especially important in front of this council in order to address those annexations. Then we would have to address zoning. I know that the council really wants us to talk just about how this is annexation 1st, and then we'll talk about zoning, but every annexation that we've had for the past few years has led to a business park zoning. And so then we're trying to talk about how we don't have a problem with owner requested annexation. And a lot of these cases, what we have is the actual zoning that creates a business park. And I think that those impacts have to be talked about. And so I just wanted to come here and make sure that that was heard as well, that we have seen this continued pattern happening. And we're aware and we're frustrated by the council's decision to continue running this same ploy. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. All right. Is anybody else online?

Nope.

Okay. We're going to close the public hearing. Are there any comments from members of the governing body? Mr. Mayor. Mr. White.

Just some point of information that the developer and folks associated with the proposed project have held three public meetings, and they will be holding another one this Thursday at 7 o'clock at Rossman Elementary.

Thank you, Mr. White. Plus, you have really good barbecue. If you haven't had Fred's barbecue, it's worth going just to have a little piece of their brisket.

We should have received an invitation on that this afternoon. I think we did. Yep. It's open to the public.

Thank you, sir. Next.

Sorry, it is this Thursday night, 7 p.m. at Rossman Elementary in the gymnasium.

So if you came to the meeting before, you should be getting an email from what I saw, and so opportunity to come and learn more about the project if you'd like to. And like I said, they have great barbecue, so it's worth it. All right, the purpose of the public hearing has been here. Mr. Mayor? Yes.

All right. I was wondering if someone could answer the question about the lighting now during construction. So we're talking about the meta property. And when we heard from Microsoft that they had the black shields over the lights after the construction. So is there someone that can tell us what the difference is right now? Mr. Bloom, thank you.

Mayor, members of council, Charles Bloom, planning and development director. During construction activities, they are not required to fully comply with the lighting ordinance because they are required to comply with safety practices in the industry, ocean standards and stuff. However, we do have communications with the project managers if there are complaints on lighting where most of the developers, if not all of them, have been very responsive to moving lights and changing them if there is a glare that goes directly into somebody's homes. But during the construction activities, there aren't the same requirements as a permanent development where they are required to be shielded, they're required to stay on the property so the lights aren't trespassing on neighbors' lands.

Thank you, Mr. Bloom. All right, the purpose of public hearing has been met. We'll go on to the next public hearing, please.

Number 6B, public hearing to determine whether compliance of annexation conditions required by Wyoming Statute 15-1-402 exists for about 652.67 acres of land located south of Interstate 80, southeast of Auto Road, and west of Interstate 25.

Are you ready? Yeah. Please go ahead.

Okay, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, Morgan Dennis, Planning and Development. This annexation is for two parcels totaling roughly 652.67 acres of land generally located south of Interstate 80, southeast of Auto Road, and west of Interstate 25. The city received a petition to annex this land from the owners, which was filed with the city clerk on July 16th, 2026. This petition was certified by the city clerk as containing the necessary signatures according to state statute on July 17th, 2026. This public hearing is being held in accordance to Wyoming State Statute 15-1-402A. Pursuant to fulfilling the requirements in the state statute, staff asked the governing body to consider the following. The land proposed to be annexed is contiguous to the current city limits, specifically the larger property is 64.71% and the smaller property is 80.68%. All city services and utilities currently available to residents of the city will be provided to the properties of the annexed land. Extending water and sewer will increase the health and safety of those in this area of the community. The area to be annexed is inside the urban service boundary and is designated as agricultural rule, open space and parks, and mixed use employment by the future land use map. This type of development is best supported by being within city limits and connecting to city services. Certified mailing was sent to all landowners and utilities within the annexed area no less than 20 business days prior to the public hearing. According to the city's calendar, 20 business days prior to today's hearing was August 14th. The certified mailing was sent out on August 13th, and the earliest confirmation of receipt was August 17th. Property owners within 300 feet of the subject property were also mailed public notice within the same time frame. This annexation is accompanied by an assigned zoning, future land use map amendment, zone change, and a delayed submittal of a expedited plat. And to answer the public comment question that I know Dr. Aldridge will have, we did not receive any public comment regarding the annexation for this project.

Ms. Dennis, this is basically the hitching post annexation, correct?

Mr. Mayor, yes.

And so for the audience, this is where the Pro Rodeo Cowboy Association headquarters, where their Hall of Fame and their museum will go. And it is designed to be an entertainment area. And as I understand, the owner of this property has put a requirement on there that it cannot ever be a data center. Is that fair? Or maybe you don't know that, but I know the developers do.

That would be a question for the developer, Mr. Mayor.

Okay, we can ask that question. So that's what the purpose of this annexation is, to provide water and sewer for the new home for the PRCA. And with that, we'll open this up to the public.

Mr. Mayor? Yeah. I have some questions for that. Go right ahead, sir. Thank you. So could we go back to the map without the? Timing so there in the lower right hand corner is the proposed PRCA area there Near to the McDonald's and the truck stops and so the upper part that You're circling the arrow in is not immediately adjacent so I'm curious about how we're doing both at the same time. Is that what we're doing?

Ms. Dennis? Mr. Mayor, to Councilman Laybourne, clarifying question. Are you asking if we are annexing both parcels at the same time?

Yes.

Yes, we are annexing both parcels at the same time as they have the same property owner. So we can do that.

Well, it's a lot of property. And this is a question that I'm sure will be coming up as we proceed with this. I'm certainly very supportive personally of the Hitching Post project and the PRCA Hall of Fame. When I look at that map, and could we go back to the colored map? I look at that intersection of I-80 and I-25 and I know that over time there's been a lot of discussion about the reconstruction of that entire intersection. And I'm wondering if we can get some information on when and how that might occur, because obviously it's gonna have some serious effects on that area. And I'm really curious, it seems, I know it was an incredible amount of money. I know that we're probably waiting for some future time, but Can someone answer for me what the status of that reconstruction of those interstates is at this time? Mr. Cobb, is that you?

Or Mr. White, do you have the answer to that?

I, full disclosure, I work at YDOT, but this is way out of my wheelhouse. However, what I do know is that number one, that project cost would be in the billions and there is no timeline while everyone would love to have it done sooner than later, it is on no timeline at all currently.

They're working currently on how to get a design done, is that correct?

To continue, Mr. Mayor, I think there's a lot of interest and concern on how that area there off I-25 that is going to be access to the Hitching Post District and that bridge with the crossover bridge do we have any idea when that situation might be improved so that we didn't have a real, there's a lot of truck stops.

Mr. Edmonds, do you have an answer to when the double diamond or the converging, whatever you call that, the diamond intersection?

Mr. Mayor, through you to the council, the diverging diamond, when it was originally built, the bridge was set up to add two more lanes, so that will be, at some point, need to be expanded and widened. We have turned in a traffic study for the High Plains district that the city has and YDOT has, so they're currently reviewing the traffic study, and they will be deciding on when that expansion's gonna have. I do know I believe there was just an overlay was currently on the step to do an overlay in a year or two, but I think they're reevaluating it now that this project is going forward to make sure that they're not overlaying it and then tearing it all up. Um, right away again, so it's in, uh, why that's hands to review the traffic report and the timing of those improvements. I would like to point out what Mr. White, Mr. Councilman White was talking about is the I-25, I-80 interchange. That's a lot further out than the College Drive expansion. If I can speak to the couple of other questions that I do have the answers for. The reason the south blue area is being annexed is the road comes off of there and they actually, PRCA and the Hall of Fame is in the south, I would call it the southwest corner of, yeah, down in there. So we're annexing that other area so that we can plat the road to get from college down to the APRCA and museum. And so that's why there's parcels. The area between the two blue is already in the city. So there is no reason to include that in the annexation.

Thank you, Mr. Emmons.

Thank you.

Anyone else? Okay, up to the audience. We have the Hitching Post District for the PRCA. Does anybody want to speak to the annexation of this area?

Heather, Ward 1. Sorry, talk about everything, but I just have a question. I'm not opposed to this annexation, but I just wonder why we have all these owner-initiated annexations, but we don't hear from the owners. We're hearing from developers and planners. I know one of the property owners, I'm pretty sure, is here somewhere for the previous... um discussion with the Orchard Hills project and I just wonder if their owner initiated annexations why it seems like they should be speaking for themselves and especially if we're going to be held to not talking about data centers at an annexation but the person speaking on behalf of the owner is a data center developer it just doesn't I don't get it

Heather, I think Mr. Emmons was hired by the owner to be his expert and to be here on their behalf to speak, and so that's why they're here to do that.

Yeah, I understand that. What I don't understand is why there is no expectation of any of the owners to speak about these properties that they want annexed, especially if they're here.

It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Anybody else? Mr. Emmons, you want to answer that?

Mr. Mayor, through you, currently Doug Samuelson, owner of Swan Ranch, is out of town. He cannot make tonight's public hearing, but he is scheduled to be at the public service meeting, so he can answer any specific questions at that meeting as well.

Thank you. Mr. Knepper, did you come speak to us tonight? I am coming to speak to you. Welcome back.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, my name is John Knepper. I'm an attorney here in Cheyenne, although I'm not here on behalf of any client. So I'm just here in my personal capacity as a resident of Ward 2. But I did want to sort of highlight a couple of things in particular about this parcel. One, I just want to remind the council something that can get lost in time, which is just how supportive of this city, in particular this parcel, which has been sort of looming out there as something we've all known needed to develop with, you know, years and years of questions about what could actually be built there. And I'll just say that the current owner when we were working with them 15 years ago on issues of annexation and consent to annexation, they put, even at that time, significant amounts of their own money in to make sewer available. Interestingly, the water rights, I think, I don't know if they're officially yet belong to the city of Cheyenne, but there was an agreement made 15 years ago that these very old water rights, are going to be something that, you know, they can use them for ag now, but ultimately they're going to be something that Bopu's going to be able to use to ensure that the citizens of Cheyenne have priority in any kind of drought, you know, to make sure that, you know, the young women and children of our city, or young children and women of our, you know, the families of our city, the ones who are most vulnerable in a time of drought, are the ones getting water. And I'm just very supportive, not because of any agenda, not because of any money, but I just... Having worked with the property owner 15 years ago, they were incredibly supportive of the city and it's thriving. There was not any kind of highway pulled up or any kind of deal that was anything that was other than in the best interest of everyone. The only other thing I would just say generally about these annexations, and this is my experience litigating some of these about 15 years ago, I understand a lot of the concerns that folks have about uh... code construction et cetera i'll just say this the city staff here are fantastic i mean if you want fire protection the city of cheyenne fire department is the place you want to come from if you want uh... if you want people to monitor and help ensure that you have water you know both who is doing seventy five years out planning for water availability For the city of Cheyenne, I just I just I don't think there's anyone better than our staff in terms of making sure that that concerns are addressed fairly and well. And and so if, you know, when you have these concerns, I think it's always better to have them addressed and dealt with through the city processes after annexation than to try to. hold it off and try to see whether or not the county, which has got great people, I think in some areas they just don't have the level of expertise that our city staff have.

Thank you, Mr. Nipper. Appreciate it.

That's all I have.

Anybody else on the Hitching Post District before us this evening? How about online?

Yes. Go ahead, Mr. Miller. Mr. Miller, did you put your hand back down?

Okay, anybody else? All right, hearing none, then the purpose of the, well, let's see if there's anybody on the, we'll close the public comment and go to the city council. Anybody on the governing body want to speak to this?

Just a quick comment, Mr. Mayor. Mr. White. As someone who supported this Hitching Post PRCA project from its inception, just a little bit of background that the county has submitted investment money into this, the city has, the state legislature did, and recently the voters just did. So everybody, literally everybody's got skin in the game on this important project.

Mr. Escobar.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Through you and whatever we do with access, I can tell you it's going to be a heck of a lot better than what Colorado Springs has for access to theirs now. So count on that.

Amen. All right. The purpose of the public hearing has been met. And again, this item will be the annexation and the zone change will all be handled at the next Monday's public service committee meeting and then back here in two weeks. Next item, please.

Number seven, on page two, ordinance second reading annexing to the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, land west of Round Top Road and adjacent to Happy Jack Road, postponed from April 27, 2026.

All right, this is I think is most commonly known as the Cox Ranch annexation. It's an owner requested annexation of 1,252.09 acres. And to my knowledge, the folks who are asking for this annexation have a data center planned for this area. And so with that, we'll open it up to the public to take any comments you might have on item number seven, which is the Cox Ranch annexation. Mr. White, welcome again.

Through you, Mr. Mayor Michael White. At Public Service Committee, I voice my opinion on two properties that aren't owned by the same people, which the Skybox property and then the adjacent property, which is the Board of Public Utilities property. I believe we're setting a bad precedent, and I will say that again. I think I do respect BOPU trying to do what they believed was a good intent, but I think these two items, these two properties, needed to be separated. And I still believe that tonight, whether I'm the only one in the room that believes that. I think that we set a bad precedent when we say we can get two different project landowners and put them in one. That's my opinion only, and I believe that, as I said before, we know what's going to be there on the other one. We're not allowed to talk about it, but I believe we need more ample time to address this, and I ask that this be defeated tonight. Thank you.

Mr. White, respectfully, I'm going to discourage or disagree with you. People always ask us to act as a business, right? To run the city like a business and to try to save the taxpayers money when we can. And when they were annexing the Cox Ranch, they had to go out with their surveyors and do a survey of the ranch in order to do the annexation. While their surveyors were out there, we were able to get them at a much less expensive rate because they're already out there working. And it just made sense for us to do that. There was no attempt to try to slide in annexing city property. We can annex it any time we want. It just saved us money. And if we're going to act like a business, and that's what I think most people ask us to do, we took advantage of that. And there was no attempt on anybody's part to do anything that was trying to slide a hand or give you more. It doesn't add to contribute. It doesn't do anything other than it just saved the Board of Public Utilities people, the rate payers, money.

Well, if that was the case, Mr. Mayor, through you, then it should have been brought up to council a long time ago when the BOPU wanted to annex it. So that's my opinion. I respect your opinion. I'm not saying I said a public service and the people that were public service. I made points to say I were very respectful of Mr. Strong and his staff, and I did not in any way say that they weren't professional. I just said it should have been done where it was two different properties, two different owners, and it should have been separated. Thank you. You made your point, thank you.

Mr. Mayor, Council, thank you for the opportunity to be here. Tom Glissmeyer, ViaWest Group. I'm here supporting the annexation of the Cox Ranch property. I want to speak to that one in particular. It is owner petitioned and meets the criteria. We are supporting it as a co-developer of a project contemplated there. We want to be in Cheyenne, we want to be in Wyoming. We feel like our culture and values overlap really well. The thoughtful design, the way that Wyoming goes about growing and managing through growth is, I think, very admirable, and doing it thoughtfully is something that we really appreciate. I think that this council made a wise recommendation in April to postpone. It allowed us to come up with a great solution with the Cox and black families. It was a privilege to work with Ms. Woodhouse getting that solution finalized. During this postponement as well, we've hosted four community open house meetings. We are hosting our fifth tomorrow at 12.30 at the library. Invite anyone to join. It's a Q&A open. We'll stay and answer as many questions as people want, whether it's about data centers or about the proposed layout. It's also been a great privilege to get to know our direct neighbors, Mr. Isley and Mr. Galeotis. We've got open lines of communication with them. We really value their input and their collaboration in making what we hope is a great project, both from a land use and water conservation standpoint. There'll be plenty of open space for grazing and we really feel like there's a lot of opportunity to do a smart project, particularly as it relates to our most precious resource, water. I'd also like to share that we This is just the beginning for us. We've joined a number of the local and statewide organizations, including WAM and the WBA. We're participants in the county livestock sale is here. have donated to Meals on Wheels, we continue to do that, and that's just the beginning for us. We're committed to the long run. We, as I said earlier, really want to be here for the cultural and the overlapping values of our companies and a lot of the people that we've gotten to meet here. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Sir. Welcome, how are you tonight?

I'm good, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, council members, Rick Kessler, Rolling Hills Estates. I'm here to talk against the annexation, not against data centers, but the annexation. I think we should be honest with each other tonight. Nothing said here is going to change the way you intend to vote on the Cox annexation, but we can still tell you what we think. So we keep hearing that you're only doing what the landowner wants. That might be true if the landowner weren't deceased. So let's stop pretending this is about honoring his wishes and this is about advancing the financial interests of lawyers in Florida and right here in Cheyenne who stand to make millions if you push this through. We've already shown that this annexation does not comply with Wyoming state statutes. We've shown that your own planning department ignored its own procedures, yet you proceed as if none of that matters, as if the law, the process, the people affected are simply obstacles to be brushed aside. While researching this proposal, I wondered how the North Range Business Park was annexed. And the answer became obvious the moment I looked at the maps. It was done the only way it could be done, with smoke and mirrors. Every person in this room should look at those maps. It's a real eye-opener. What your planning department lacks in procedure, it makes up for in creativity. Even David Copperfield doesn't have an illusion this impressive in his repertoire. And because the magic worked once, you're trying it again. Maybe no one will notice, but this time we noticed. The residents most affected by this annexation have no voice in city government. We cannot vote for mayor, we cannot vote for city council members, and yet you can oppose decisions that will reshape our neighborhood, our property, and our daily lives. You hold all the authority, and we bear all the consequences. And I hate to say this, but there is one thing we can influence, and that's your pocketbook. You got a taste of that last month when your municipal building restoration request was defeated. It's too late to affect the current round of six penny requests, but I would suggest that every Laramie County resident, and we are all Laramie County residents, withhold support for any future optional six penny requests tied to the city of Cheyenne until you and our county commissioners represent everyone, not just a select few. Will withdrawing support hurt small towns? Absolutely. And that's precisely the point. It shows just how far the consequences of this annexation will reach, not just for those of us living next to it, but for every community in Laramie County. Are we against growth? Not at all. But we are against decisions made without any regard for how they will impact surrounding neighborhoods. Decisions made without transparency, without accountability, and without the voices of the people who live with results. Thank you.

Thank you.

Guys, I know you're happy with what he had to say, but please refrain from cheering and clapping. Thank you.

Sir. Mayor and many women of the council, thank you for the time. My name is Jack O'Neill. I'm part of the development group, part of this annexation, and I just want to say all criteria have been met for the annexation by state statute and local rules, and also I just wanted to throw out one other thing on top of Tom's note is that if anyone has any questions and cannot make it to our fifth community engagement meeting tomorrow, please feel free to shoot an email to wyoming at skyboxdatacenters.com, and that will go directly to me. We also have a phone number. You can call that as well. It's a 307 number, and I'll respond to that within 24 hours. So please feel free to reach out. Don't be a stranger. We're here to be open, honest, transparent, and continue the conversation here in regards to the annexation. So thank you for the time.

Anybody else want to speak? Ms. Madrid.

Heather Madrid, Ward 1. While I do appreciate the lots and lots of meetings, that isn't the same thing as consent. Just because people come here and participate in these meetings and go there and participate in those, that doesn't mean that we are OK with what's happening. You may have noticed there are a number of people here in green. There's about probably at least 30 people here who don't want this. They might not get up and say it, but you can see them. There are probably some people here who outright hate data centers, everything they stand for, and don't want a single one of them to begin with. That ship left the harbor years ago. We are now operating about 30 data centers at 10 different locations. That number is ever growing, and there are no signs of slowing down. In fact, it's picking up rapidly. Most of us are here because we reject irresponsible development of any kind. We reject unregulated and unchecked growth, arbitrary annexations and rezonings, and mostly we reject being treated as the gentleman before me just said, as an obstacle for developers to overcome with the help of this council and mayor. We are not anti-progress, and if it feels like it's a bias against one industry, that is because you've acted as a concierge service for this particular industry above all others. We evidently want to protect our roads and citizens from the trucking industry, as we should. However, when it comes to big tech, the idea of doing the same is viewed as extortion. We don't want Amazon trucks with three trailers driving on our roads. But if Amazon wanted to build five data centers here, they would get the red carpet treatment. This particular annexation went before the Public Service Committee last week where it was stated by a council member that if the data center development does not move forward, it will become a housing development and will remain in the county. This is also the argument from Trammell Crow and that current property owner. This is problematic for a few reasons. One is it's a scare tactic for adjacent property owners. Two is this is creating a false dichotomy or a false choice. And it's basically an admission that our zoning laws and future land use map mean absolutely nothing. And a property can be developed on completely opposite ends of the spectrum, either high density housing or a data center. And somehow we're supposed to believe that our maps and our laws mean anything. When it actually means that properties can be developed on the whim of the property owner. three is that if this is if this owner initiated annexation meets statutory requirements to be annexed the law states that it shall be annexed not that it may be annexed which is a point that mr seagraves has made previously so why will it remain in the county if it becomes homes but not if it's a data center is it because the city wants as much tax revenue as possible without having the fiscal responsibility of taking care of the humans who live here If that's not the very definition of putting corporate interests above the interests of citizens, I truly do not know what is. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. Please. Welcome. You got to push that button for me. Turn on that microphone, please. There you go.

Susan Rocha, I live off of Round Top where you're talking about the annexation. I hear about the open and honest communication, but then I read things like what's going out there is not one data center, but three data centers. That's not open communication with the public if that is true. You know, The citizens, we're expressing our concerns, and quite truthfully, I, like others, have commented and stuff, I don't feel like we're being listened to. I feel like a second-rate citizen, okay? And you've already stated yourself, you can annex any time. And I think that's been the problem with the country anymore. We're not being listened to as citizens. You're taking, I'm reading here, and I'm sure this is data stored at the data centers, okay? You know, I'm reading here how the growth in the electrical use that by 2030, that these data centers, the increase in use in electricity It's gonna be half by these data centers. Where does that leave the everyday citizen? Okay, there's gonna be an increase in prices. Is the city going to make up for their use? Because they're a business, so they get the cuts. Your everyday citizen does not get a cut. We pay our dues, we pay our bills, we live the best we can. And... Like I said, I am concerned what's going to happen out there. I understand growth and I understand the need of it. But right now, the U.S., we have nine times more data centers, according to the data from the data centers, nine times more data centers in the U.S. than any other country. And Cheyenne is growing like crazy with data centers. So when is it enough? When is it enough money? When is it enough? Because it's just getting out of hand at this point. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Please.

Hi.

You're going to have to bring it up. Can you hear me okay? I hear you great.

My name is Shelly Russell. I'm a local contractor here in Cheyenne. My concern is with the Cox Ranch annexation, I'm against it, as you can see on my shirt. But do you have in that area the resources that you need for fire departments and so forth? Because I know where I live out on Bison Crossing on Terry Ranch Road, we've got all those data centers going in. And back in February, we had a wildfire that happened. We were told to evacuate the area. It usually takes me to get from my house, which is right off of Terry Ranch Road, to get down to the street to that gas station down there, Mavericks. It usually takes me five minutes on a normal day. It took me over an hour. when they evacuated us to get to there. I had people that lived down the street from me that were trying to get their horses out of the area because the fire was right there by my house. So that's my concern for the people that live out there because not only we were evacuated, Meta was evacuated, Microsoft was evacuated, all of it. That was a heck of a traffic jam. So that's my concern for these people that live out there. I think that needs to be taken into consideration also. Okay? Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Council. Gaye Woodhouse, I'm an attorney. I work with Woodhouse, Roden, Ames, and Brennan. I am representing the Mark T Cox IV and Beverly Cox Black, who are the people who have the people who are buried in the mausoleum. And I've explained this a couple times before, but I don't think it hurts to say it again. The reason that this arose as a surprise, actually, was because when Betty Cox, the matriarch of the group, was alive, her son Bill Cox lived with her and convinced her to transfer some rather large amount of land in the Cox Ranch to him. So the mausoleum happened to be on it. And then later, after he died, he willed all of his things to another guy named Joe Cox, no relation, who lives in Florida, an attorney in Florida. The Beverly Cox Black and Mark T Cox IV didn't worry about the mausoleum because Bill Cox, the one who got the land, was also buried in the mausoleum, as well as their mother, their father, and some other individuals. It wasn't a prime concern and then when this annexation came up and they realized the mausoleum was part of that annexation, obviously they were very concerned. We had immediate response in a positive way from BioWest and Skybox. They came that night and started talking to us about what needed to be done in order to preserve that mausoleum and to protect it into the future. And over a relatively short period of time, but we actually had something signed within two months. But they were very understanding. They took into account the ownership of it, the access to it, what the land around it would look like, and things like that. So this is on the easternmost part of the annexation map that you see. And it is done in such a way that probably no development can occur around it for quite a ways from any other, from the rolling hills or anybody else. I just can't say enough about how much they have done, bend over backwards to make sure that this was preserved. The Beverly Cox Black and Mark T Cox IV have a foundation that was created a number of years ago, a family foundation called Chalk Bluffs Family Historic Preservation Foundation. And that will be the entity that takes it over in perpetuity to preserve it and to make sure that it is always kept as a quote unquote cemetery and mausoleum. So anyway, I can't say enough about how that happened. And I have to say that if the annexation doesn't go through, this also will not go through. That's all I've got.

Thank you. Yes, ma'am, welcome.

Donna Dundon, Citizen. Sorry, my phone timed out. Okay. I've got some questions because we've been here before, obviously, about the data centers of Microsoft and that sort of thing. And on May 18th, Mayor, you said during the Public Services Committee hearing that The city staff didn't have the expertise to conduct an environmental study of the sort contemplated by that moratorium that we were here for that time. And you said that you question the city's abilities to conduct independent environmental analysis of data centers and your recent appointment to the EPA's local government advisory committee now I find that a little bit concerning. So I had some questions about that. I wanted to know if, during the recent Cheyenne discussions over proposed data center and the moratorium one, you indicated that you didn't have enough expertise. Yet the city proceeded with major data center related decisions based on the information available. So here we are again, another annexation leading towards more direction of AI and data centers. Now you've been appointed to the Federal Advisory Committee whose work specifically includes and promotes data center population throughout the United States and infrastructure. Could you explain what additional expertise or independent research or technical resources you now rely upon in advising the EPA on those issues that you didn't have before when we were looking for the moratorium? And given your responsibility to the Cheyenne residents, will you advocate for independent environmental water, electricity, rate payer, property value analysis before further large-scale data center development occurs here? even if that analysis could slow or limit the future development? Would you do that for the city of Cheyenne residents? And I'm not questioning your motives or suggestions that your appointment represents a conflict of interest, but I am asking because there appears to be a significant evaluation in your role. Cheyenne previously lacked the expertise to independently study these impacts while you are now being asked to advise the federal government on precisely the same types of AI infrastructure and issues and impacts that other data centers will have.

With all due respect, Mayor, I believe that this is not germane to the topic.

Um, well, it does, because if we're annexing this, we know the direction they're here saying, we could come to hear their. Their meetings, we need to know that what, how are you now qualified. To ensure these protections for Cheyenne, the property, the area, it's all tied together.

So I understand your question. Do you understand where I'm coming from? I think I do.

Thank you.

So let me answer one question first. I still don't think that we are, as a staff, experts in all of the areas that a data center needs to have, but there are 19 agencies that the DEQ uses before they permit a data center, whether they're in the Industrial Siding Council or whether they're going through the process here. So the Department of Environmental Quality takes care of all of those and they look at water they look at air quality and before they give a permit they they look at all of those different areas and they're the experts that we rely on that we can annex the property but before a permit is given for a data center to open they have to meet all of those requirements and so that's how i think this government governing body looks to are the experts we look to to do that And my appointment to the local government group at the EPA is not because I'm an expert, but because they wanted people from different parts of the country to come and talk about the challenges that we face as small communities, large communities, and to talk about those things and bring those to the attention of the director. And so even today I call down to Denver to talk to the EPA down there to find out if there's concerns that they have that I need to bring to this group. And so I think my job is to be a conduit for those conversations, not to be an expert on that group.

And that was my question, will you use that for all of the citizens of Cheyenne, even us that are opposing data centers? Because every day more and more information is available, and we are seeing communities suffer across this country every day.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks for being here. Good evening.

I wasn't going to speak. I don't consider myself prepared, but Mr. Mayor, council members, my name's Sharon Brown-McKirvan. I'm Mr. Kessler's neighbor, next-door neighbor on Burke Road. We'll be facing to the west. The sunsets will never be the same again that I've been watching for 32 years. So, but I've been thinking about all these annexations from east side of town, west side of town, south side of town. We're boxing in Cheyenne, boxing in people, the residents, the residential neighborhoods with all this business, but not north. So my question, where are the maps for the north annexations?

I'm not sure I understand your question.

I wanna know if you're gonna annex north. You're annexing east, west, south. Are you annexing north? Or is the growth in Cheyenne just gonna go north for the people?

I think I'm understanding your question. So the annexations, the vast majority of annexations, almost all of them, maybe not in number but in size, are owner-initiated annexations, meaning it's not the city who's making these decisions. We are responding to requests from people who are asking to become part of the city.

Who are approached by these companies.

Exactly, and so those annexations that you're talking about With the exception of the county pocket annexations where this governing body said if you're 100% surrounded, and we had some jurisdictional challenges with that. Every other annexation has been requested by the owners and asked to become part of the city so they could develop their property in some manner or another, whether that's housing, whether that's commercial, whether that's industrial.

Are there north owners who want to be annexed?

You know, to my knowledge, we have one today, and that's the only one I'm aware of.

It's just odd. And the cities, is that where you want the city to be, is just where it's at now, the population, the people? I mean, we're just kind of boxed in now, you know? We're just a little, so that's what you, your vision for Cheyenne is to be a small, small city with a lot of business around it. Is that what you see Cheyenne becoming and staying? Just a small little people town and just mostly business. I'm just, I've been pondering that. It's just amazing to me that we're not growing, the people we're growing just data centers, businesses. It's sad to me.

Thank you for being here, ma'am. Good evening.

Tonya McCoy, Rolling Hills. Welcome. I don't want any more data centers. I mean, put them up where you want, this and that. I don't want any more by me. I have a whole field full of lights to the south of me. It's a whole other city by itself. My horse has to have a nightlight because of the noise and the lights and everything going on. It's insane. It's nuts. And this, we have to control the lighting and the noise. That's a bunch of BS. I live a mile away from the Microsoft. That's all I hear. It's all I hear is noise all night long. All night long. It's a hum all night long. The lights are incredible. I have photos if you'd like to see them. It's from one end all the way out there to the other end, to Isley's property. Y'all know where that's at. It's nothing but lights. I mean, we don't need any more. We don't. And, you know, more so to these guys, so it's on the record. They come in, and if it's skybox, great. If it's whoever, whatever. They start digging. What happens if or when they mess up our water? Who drills us new wells? Who pays for that? I know I don't have the money to pay for that. And then you guys decide, you know if we have to as a group or whatever happens, we have to go on to city water. OK, great, who pays that? I don't have the money for that either. So who covers all this? That's that's my question.

Ma'am, if I could, one of the things I would share with you is if it's in the city limits, they won't be drilling wells. So it'll all be on city water and sewer. That's what I'm saying. So the development would actually have city water and well, so they wouldn't be drilling into your wells anymore, which hopefully should protect you and your wells, right?

Yes, ma'am. I had a question. Oh, Mr. Moody. I had a question for that person. Thank you for your testimony, ma'am. I just want to say, have you noticed you and your neighbors' negative impacts to your agricultural animals, horses, cattle, et cetera? Has there been a negative impact with them because of this Microsoft campus?

Absolutely. Like I said, my horse has to have a nightlight now. He's anxious. If he doesn't have his nightlight, he doesn't eat. He paces all night long. He sweats. I mean, it's sad. Here's a 1,200-pound animal that has to have a nightlight. It's unbelievable.

Thank you, ma'am. Thank you for putting that on the record. Thank you so much. Yes, ma'am. You're welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and city council members. Here we are again asking you to listen to your constituents and hoping maybe this time you will actually do that. How many times do the citizens of Laramie County have to show up, email, or call asking you to listen? Maybe this time, maybe tonight. So here goes nothing. Tonight I am asking you not to approve the annexation and reclassification of the zoning for the property beside the Rolling Hills neighborhood. As a resident of this neighborhood, I will be directly impacted by your decisions tonight. Yet I have no say in any of you sitting here. I cannot express how frustrating that is. I attended one of the informative meetings held by Skybox and Via West, and I am more convinced than ever that the land should not be annexed and rezoned. I caught them in very contradictory statements regarding the noise pollution and light pollution. They also could not share the intended purpose for the data center. They seem to have a build it and they will come perspective. When asked how many permanent employees they would employ, their number increased three times in their response to me. Quite honestly, this is not the transparency we are looking for. We have heard the same sales pitch you have and we are not convinced. They are simply saying what you want to hear. They think that's all they need to say to the residents too. We are not swallowing the snake oil they are trying to sell us, neither should you. Everyone knows when it sounds too good to be true, it is. They claim to only build on the lowest part of the property now and will not use all of the land for data centers. Well, not yet anyway. They will as soon as they deem it financially beneficial to them. Why is it that you and Leeds are hanging all hope on data centers? You act like this is the only way for Cheyenne to grow and prosper. Have you really looked at the noose you are putting around the city of Cheyenne? The way you are rapidly approving these data centers is creating a barrier preventing our city from growing other businesses and developments. No one is going to come here when they look at the number of data centers and how it circles our city. Why would you do this for a place you claim to care about? This is not about property rights either, as most of you try to claim. This Cox property is owned by a foundation that has zero ties to our community. Data centers need to be regulated and held accountable. Many state representatives across the state have asked for time to let the state address these data centers that are booming in our state. Why do you keep ignoring that? There are zero regulations in place to monitor data center developers. Again, we just take their word that they will do what they tell us they will do. We need to be proactive now before it's too late. We need to have a plan to monitor and regulate any company coming here to develop data centers. Please let the state have time to do that, vote no. Lastly, I'm grateful for people like Heather. All the time and effort she's put into researching data centers and digging to find out what's going on behind closed doors is admirable. Why is it she's doing more than most of you sitting here tonight? Why is she more interested in our well-being than all of you? To those of you who have been or are starting to actually listen to the residents of Laramie County, thank you. As for the rest of you, I implore you to start doing that tonight. Thank you, ma'am. Please start listening to the residents that actually live next to these data centers and stop believing everything they're telling you.

Thank you.

Did you want to speak again? Please, come forward.

My name's Heidi Hargraves.

Heidi, can you bring that microphone up so it aims at you a little bit? There you go. A little taller. There you go.

I'm a little taller girl. There you go. My name's Heidi Hargraves, born and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming. We live out west of town, directly adjacent to the Windmills and the Microsoft data centers and you know as a kid growing up I mean I would take off on my horse go right across the prairie going to the next neighbors going to John Morrison's Every direction I could go and it was our land Now We have this beautiful property out there. Me and my family and my kids are wanting to build out there until now. And part of that is, and they're young. They're in their 20s and 30s. And aren't those the kind of people that we want here in our community in Cheyenne? Not a bunch of old people. Trying to find a new nursing home or whatever. We have a lot of elderly people in our population. I would like to grow the younger population of our community. And we had the prime place to raise our families, for my kids to live there, for my grandchildren to live there. just watching the city become closer and closer and closer to my ranch our ranch or our family ranch and seeing the devastating effects that the antelope have had now we've hunted out there every single year our entire life all of a sudden there's no antelope I mean this is before the snow two years ago, three years ago, I'm talking as soon as the windmills came into play, and now the Microsoft data centers, and all the data centers coming into play, guess what, there's no wildlife either. And so Wyoming, which you guys represent, correct? Wyoming, is a place where people come to get away from the industrials and all the lights of the big city. I can't even look out over Pikes Peak anymore. I can't even see it because of all the lights. I mean, and it's causing tons of conflict with all of our animals out in the property. I have no idea what's going to happen with our water. Our wells are darn near dry as it is. It takes forever to fill up our horse tanks. I mean, it takes over three, four hours to fill up a horse tank. That's crazy. And that's just with what has happened thus far. I mean, what you guys have planned, unbelievable. And I really feel like you should look at the people around here. And think about what you're doing for your state. I mean, aren't you supposed to represent your state? It's pretty sad. I mean, we're all devastated. And people who wanted to come and live here, my family and my generations and my generations, they're not thinking they want to live here anymore. But thank you.

Thank you for being here. Good evening.

How are you guys doing today? Good. My name is Brian Pixley, and I live off of Round Top, and I live over by Treadway Trail, you know, right where the Cox Ranch is, and over by the Microsoft and everything. I hear that son of a gun every night, every night, every night. And let's see here. Since we want to talk about noise, isn't it? Okay. I got security cameras. That's the mad data center and all that crickety sound. That's the sound from the data centers every night. And that gets even louder at nighttime. you know, when we go to bed and all that. So every time when we go to bed, we hear that, you know, because all the data centers and all that decide, you know, we'll just keep the neighbors up at night, you know. I'm against this. I've told you once. I've told you once. I've told you a thousand times. We don't want the data centers here. You guys are listening to the developers in California, Florida, and all the rest of these places. You're selling out Cheyenne. You guys are not about land killers. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your days. And what I mean is that. Thank you.

Hello again.

Okay, hi. Well, as long as we were talking about water, I did find a few facts about water.

Aaron, would you introduce yourself, please?

I'm Aaron Madsen.

Thank you, Aaron.

I do have a few facts about water that I would share with you. In the Dallas, Oregon, Google came in and used 29% of the city drinking water in a year. In Council Bluffs, Iowa, 21% in a single year. Now, I know that these data centers say, yeah, we're going to drill way, way down. We are going to need that water eventually because of the evaporation cycle and the way that climate change has changed it. Now, I think Bopu has looked at water, yeah, and probably energy, but have they looked at, you know, the footprint, the environmental footprint of the construction? Have they looked at magnetic fields, which, you know, in other places, beekeepers are losing their bees. because of those magnetic fields. Heat islands. In Utah, the heat island from the data center that's planned there is expected to, I believe, heat the surface at night 12 degrees above what it should be. The article is in the Christian Science Monitor, the most recent edition, if any of you want to read it. But these are major, major environmental changes that I don't think have even been considered.

Let's talk about water for just a second. We've had data centers since 2012 in Cheyenne that are on the city's water and sewer. Actually, all the data centers right now are hooked up to the Board of Public Utilities. Some of the newer ones are gonna come in the county. Last year, the Board of Public Utilities reported they used 95 million gallons of water. Out of 7.17 billion gallons of water they have, that's 1.3% of all of our water. And so we have the water bills for 14 years to show that water, you know, they don't use 26% of our water. We have the history to show that. So, ma'am, did you want to speak?

My name's Mary Jernigan.

Mary, could you pull that microphone up just a little bit so we can hear you in the back? Certainly. Oh, thank you.

My name's Mary Jernigan. I wasn't going to speak, but I guess I have some questions. I feel like data centers were in the east, and they've done damage on the East Coast and I've heard of the drinking water and I've heard of the noise and the infertility of cattle and all the things surrounding that. And then I feel that we said, sure, come. And so they are. And it scares me at the rate in which it's happening Um, I feel water. I'm glad to hear what you have to say, but I think we have a lot more wind than we have water and I think with their money they can have an engineer or two or however many they need to figure out how to cool their systems with something other than our water. You had told us that you went to Denver, I guess, when the woman had spoke about in May you didn't really, weren't qualified and then you went and as a liaison you said that you had learned some things. I wondered what those things might have been when you went to Colorado.

I apologize, ma'am. I'm not sure what trip to Colorado you're talking about.

Someone had spoke about in May, you weren't qualified as like EPA wise.

Right.

And then you said you are a liaison as far as communicating with them. They wanted to hear what you had to say about us and what they could do. And are there any benefits that you heard when you were down there?

Yeah, my very first meeting is September 25th. Oh, so it hasn't happened. So we just got appointed. We had an orientation, and our very, very first meeting comes up here on the 25th. And so I'll be happy to report back in my mayor's minute what that looks like. It'll be our first opportunity to get to meet the folks and to try to understand what it is they're asking us to look for and what information they're looking for us to bring back to them.

So my voice, basically, I want to say they need our wind and not our water.

Thank you. And ma'am, I think that's why we don't use so much water here, because we are cool and windy here, and it gives them natural cooling, and so it makes it much more efficient than a lot of places. Thank you. Anyone else? How about online? Go ahead, Tina.

Mr. Miller, go ahead. Mr. Miller?

Can you hear me?

Yes.

All right. Okay, I'm going to try to speed read through my speech here because it's a little long. Charles Miller for the record. The official transcript of this proceeding has just been memorialized. It completely strips away your discretionary legislative shield and exposes this counsel to immediate fatal liability in district court. Under binding Wyoming Supreme Court jurisprudence, when you apply statutory criteria to specific tracks and boundary lines, you sit in a quasi-judicial capacity. You are legally bound. My constitutional due process tricks statutory compliance and the substantial evidence rule. If you vote to advance this bundled measure tonight, this transcript constitutes the evidentiary basis for an immediate equity action under Rule 65 of the Wyoming Rules of Civil Procedure for an emergency temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, and a petition for writ of prohibition. The record now proves four fatal defects that will invalidate your vote in court. The city's administrative admissions destroy statutory authority. Under Town of Moorcraft v. Lang, a municipality has zero inherent authority to annex. Powers are strictly construed under 15.1.402 . The city's own presentation tonight explicitly states that this annexation can... I'm sorry. One moment. I just got a little thrown off there. I apologize here. Okay. Okay, in town of Moorcraft v. Lange, the Wyoming Supreme Court established that a municipality has zero inherent authority to annex Powers are strictly construed on any action outside enabling statutory limits as ultra-virus and void. Under 15.1.402A, annexation requires affirmative findings of unified municipal necessity and logical addition. City planners and BOPUL have already conceded on the record that the 10-acre water facility has zero operational nexus to the private 1,197-acre developer track. The mayor just conceded from the dais that the BOPUL parcel can be annexed independently at any time. That admission proves bundling it tonight inside this omnibus bill is an unnecessary administrative maneuver used solely to manufacture artificial contiguity and statutory necessity, tying public utility property to speculative private dirt prejudices this body and denies taxpayers an independent vote. I formally move and demand an immediate roll call vote to sever the BOPU at utility asset from item seven. Now, 15-1402 in West Laramie, statutory annexation mandates protect the public from arbitrary expansion. Under 15142 CBI, an annexation report must legally certify the total cost of infrastructure improvements required within the existing boundaries of the municipality to accommodate the proposed annexation. Thank you, Mr. Miller.

Yes, ma'am.

My name is Janet Tolman. I'm in Ward 2. According to my ballot, according to the internet, I'm in Ward 3. That's why I said Ward 3 last time, because I didn't know, so I looked it up, and my neighbor told me I was in Ward 2. I'm just wanting to know, like, when I went to the Planning and Zoning Committee for the previous annexation, the 3,450, they said that that would be one-third of Cheyenne being annexed in as proposed data centers. And so I'm wondering, I would like to know how much of Cheyenne then you know, with each one that's being proposed, I think it would be good for us to know how much of Cheyenne then will, as it's being annexed in, how much of Cheyenne will be data centers. So do you happen to have that data?

Charles, do you have any sense of a percentage?

40% is what she's saying.

Excuse me, guys.

Mayor, members of council, we don't have that percentage calculated right now, but that's information we could get to you all, and we could have that ready for the upcoming discussion on public services at the next council meeting.

I'd appreciate that. Thank you. We'll get that answered for you, ma'am.

Okay, because I'm thinking, just calculating in my head and not knowing the specific data, it's going to be Almost a half of Cheyenne, and then my concern is, and what I've read is people in regard to electricity and people in regard to water is that the city has to go up against these big corporations. When who decides who gets the water. And it'll be very easy for the corporations to. sue the city for the water because they need it. And we as residents would not have that money to go up against them. And that's a big concern that I have. The other concern that I have is in regard to Cheyenne Frontier Days, the Daddy of Mall. They bring in all kinds of animals. And people spend, I mean, that's their livelihood. And if we're going to be surrounded three-fourths of the way with data centers, they're going to hear that noise. And I'm just thinking it's going to change the whole rodeo, but that's just my personal opinion.

Thank you, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.

Okay, Donna Frost, Ward 1. We're just residents here, all of us in green obviously, that we're just asking you guys to listen to us. It feels like so many people stopped coming to these meetings and stopped fighting because we weren't heard by any of you except for the few that voted for us.

And so- Can you bring that up a little bit? They can't hear you in the back.

Can you hear me?

That's okay. Thank you.

No, we're just asking that you guys listen to us the citizens everybody in green Nobody has paid here in green everybody else their corporations They're paid in some kind of money feels like we are just steamrolled by just a few decisions of what you guys vote Yes, I know you're voted to Represent us, but it doesn't feel like any of us that are here that owns houses that pay utilities We're the ones that are gonna suffer. We're just citizens trying to make a living and And it feels like we are going to be steamrolled by big corporations. I know it brings in jobs. We're not saying stop it. We're saying slow it down and listen to the citizens. At least give us some kind of saying that you're listening to us. But a lot of people stop coming to these meetings because they just don't feel heard. So as long as we're having them, I'm still going to come. Thank you.

We're happy you're here. Tina?

Shea Pfeiffer, go ahead.

hear me yes we can hear you okay um sorry i was unable to attend so i have have just scribbled down some thoughts on paper towel but um just talking about this annexation again as we do over and over and over and over again you are quite simply not listening or taking any of us under consideration. And the few of you that say you have other constituents that email you and that they want these things and that you're standing up for them as well, but where are they in all of this? And then Seagrave likes to throw on our face that number one, the annexation is for the protection, health, safety, and welfare of the persons residing in the area. I don't feel like this is protecting anyone's health, safety, or welfare. Not the people, not the animals, not the nature, wildlife, I mean air, water, anything. So you can't even answer questions regarding number one. I have just in the last couple of minutes over and over and overheard questions being asked of you and you keep saying that, oh, we'll talk about it in the next meeting. Oh, so and so, we need to find that out. We'll talk about that at the end of September, blah, blah, blah. How about we have a town hall to answer the questions that we're having up tonight before we're on the third reading or the second reading before you're like, oh, let's approve it and then turn around and rezone and rezone. Why don't you have these meetings when you know the answers to these questions that we're asking? That's what we're asking. Like we want to be heard. And yeah, people are getting sick and tired of you not listening. It's not consensual. And then who's to say that, okay, so you annex this property and then in 27 and a half days at 1.30 in the afternoon, there's some sort of a secret meeting saying now they want to add some sort of a petroleum belching polluting factory to use even more water. And then you just keep slipping stuff in on us. And we're general public. We're working class people. We can't keep up with all this nonsense that you're shoving down our throats. And as maybe people are going to hate me for saying this, but as far as the mausoleum goes, I personally, I don't care. My family has a mausoleum. I wouldn't use that to pretend that I'm being a philanthropist for the entire community. You know, that's just absolutely ridiculous. I just feel like we need to have a town hall to actually have you answer our questions and not the dog and pony shows that the data centers are putting on, which are very conflicting, like, you know, very conflicting information. They actually don't straightforward answer any questions at all. And, you know, if you've signed an NDA, you should have no vote. You should recuse your vote. You know, if you have... conflict of interest regarding leads or any sort of cash redistribution, you should recuse your vote.

Thank you, ma'am.

No, I'm just saying, no means no. Thank you for your comments.

Your time's up. Anybody else?

Welcome. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council.

My name is Jerry Henderson, I'm representing the Wyoming Business Alliance this evening. Thank you all, I think I have not too much for you this evening, except that the Business Alliance supports sustainable development across the state of Wyoming. We represent about 375 members currently from all over the state, all corners, all size companies, all different sectors as well. And really all I have for you tonight is that we appreciate the due diligence that goes into these types of projects. I think I would encourage folks to work with the company. I've had the benefit of working with the company and they are speaking with neighbors, they're working in the community, making sure that those I's are dotted and those T's are crossed. So I don't have too much more for you tonight other than the Wyoming Business Alliance supports this decision.

I have a question, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Moody. Yep, thank you, Mr. Mayor, through you. Thank you, sir. So how did you, the Wyoming Business Alliance, come to the conclusion of supporting this? Did you have a vote amongst your members? Was it a panel? How'd you do that?

Mr. Mayor, through you and Councilman Moody, decisions like this goes through our management committee, which is effectively the executive board of the organization.

Follow up. How many people is that?

Mr. Mayor, through you, I'll have to double check for you, Councilman. I'm not confident.

Thank you. Thank you for being here. Good evening again. How are you? Push that button. There you go.

Looking at Wyoming, and our governor has talked about the drought and how it's affected clear across the state. In the newspaper recently, beginning of September, they talked about a data center called Juniper. I believe it's down in Arizona, I don't remember exactly. But they overwent their water regulation that was posed upon them, and they're in that kind of situation. So we say we have controls, but controls can be broken. And Mayor, I am glad you're going to get some information now and get some education on how things can be affected. We did have a city plan years ago, and it hasn't been updated. But now we understand we have somebody that is going to our company working on that city planning. A lot of people here have asked, let's pause. Let's take some time, figure out what all is going to be environmental, plan out, have some focused decisions instead of patchwork here and there on annexation because it's asked for. Do your due diligence. Get all the information. Make a plan. You don't build a house and say, oh, I think I want the bathroom here. And later on, you find out your plumbing's on the other end. You put it all together and take our city as one great big plan. People are concerned about it being boxed in by data centers. public radio said, this is a great city to come to. People are wanting to come here because they know what it looks like now, not what it's going to look like in 5, 10 years when things get built up. The other thing AI is concerned about is, sure, all these data centers are getting built, but there's going to be a point where, and companies do this, I've got the money now. I'm going to spend it because it's going to look good on my tax returns, but I can leave that building vacant. You say that isn't going to happen, but it happens. So let's take a pause so we can be smarter or just as smart as some of these other states and cities who have also paused. Let's be as smart as they are. Thank you.

Sir, please. Welcome.

Hello.

Hi, my name is Wayne Lax. I live in the county. Got two things I want to say to you. Appreciate your time. First of all, I think a definite variable to all these statistics about water use is not counting what the power supply facilities that these data centers are going to build uses. I don't care how much you're telling me a data center uses by cooling their systems. They're going to need electricity. They're going to build their own facilities, and they use an S-ton of water. So let's think about that when you're talking about water statistics. And then I got three words for you, for those of you. I'm opposed to this, and my three words are on your watch.

Anybody else wanna speak to the annexation on second reading?

Anyone?

Do you have one, Tina?

Yes, go ahead, Aaron.

Yes, can you hear me okay? We can. Okay, Aaron Fiori, Ward 1. Just for context, there's a lot of people in the audience that are against data centers. From my experience running for City Council, I went to over 4,000 homes and I've talked to hundreds of people and I would actually say that the large majority is kind of in the middle. So I wouldn't say the community is necessarily against data centers as a whole. I think there's definitely some concerns, but there's also benefits. As far as Skybox is concerned, I'd be in favor of the Cox annexation. The reason is because I've attended almost all the company data centers, all the meetings for pro and against data centers. And I would say that As far as a company and the transparency from the Skybox organization has been far above any of the other ones that I've spoke to. Also, the fact that they're privately owned plays the important factor in my decision as far as supporting Skybox. And I just wanted to kind of be the voice that has no interest whatsoever either way. But I think it should be company by company. And I think Skybox would be a great asset to the Cheyenne community. So just wanted to kind of voice that part of where I stand. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else online or in the room? All right. We'll close public comment. We'll go to Dr. Aldrich for a motion.

Mr. Mayor, the recommendation of the Public Services Committee is to approve on second reading, and I so move.

Second.

Seconded by Mr. Seagrave. Comments from members of the governing body? Mr. Laybourne.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll remind everybody that we do have three minutes. I hope I can get this handled quickly but I think that the idea that a council member is limited to certain discussions is really inappropriate in any case i want to mention that i want to talk about is the water coming out of the charard treatment plant and is part of our entire water system This is not water that would ever go into the data center. This is existing wash water that comes out of that plant on a regular basis and there's a substantial amount of it, flows down what is basically kind of a draw or a swale and heads towards Crow Creek. So I think it's, as I've mentioned before, it's very important that we really understand this specific single element of our water use. It is part of how it all works through our entire system. I'm very pleased that I've been able to meet with the developers of this project and really discuss it in detail. I think we're gonna be having an opportunity here next week to tour that area and look at best practices that can be implemented. And the reason they should be implemented is that that water that leaves that Charard treatment plant meets certain DEQ standards. It's clean. And as it flows down through that area and to Crow Creek, it's very important because that flow supplements and really keeps water in the creek. And I think that's only appropriate. So we're gonna be looking at that. I certainly appreciate very much the discussion that we had earlier today. And I think that we can gather some experts from the DEQ, the Conservation District, I hope, the neighbors, and the people that really understand the importance of that single issue. There are many, many things. that have been discussed here tonight. This is one part, and it's a voluntary part, I want to emphasize that, of the developer's attempt to be responsible with that condition. And it's a pretty serious condition because it runs right through the middle of the property. and it really should be handled in a professional manner. I expect we're going to be able to do this. I certainly wish that I could expand upon it more. I think this arbitrary time limit is wrong. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Aldrich.

Miracle answer you first and foremost I want to express my appreciation for those of you that have made public comment tonight and who have sent emails and phone calls and reached out to us during this process and while this has been postponed since April I also appreciate the efforts that have been made by the two developers of this project to meet with area residents to hold public meetings. There was actually a summit or a meeting held at the Civic Center by the City to answer a lot of these questions. There have been meetings that were held not only by data centers but by Department of Environmental Quality or with Department of Environmental Quality. And so I think there's been a lot of information. I know that Mr. Strong appeared at our committee meeting last week and explained that there's only 100, and I believe this is correct, acre feet of water. 150 acre feet of water that is released from that wastewater facility that Councilman Laybourne just referred to, and that's per year. That's not monthly, that's not weekly, that's an annual amount, which is very minimal in the larger scope of things. So I would encourage folks to continue to engage in this process as we continued. I think all of us are still learning more as things are being developed and there's conversations going on. But I do appreciate the expertise of our staff and BOPU as well as those developers and their legal teams that have really tried to address the concerns. I find it very interesting that some of the initial people that we saw in April at these meetings who had concerns, we haven't seen or heard from since that were fairly vocal back in April. And I've reached out to them to find out what has changed and haven't had a response. So I hope to hear from them prior to our third and final reading of this ordinance. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Esquivel. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Through you, I get the sense that people here, and I do appreciate them showing up to our meetings, think that if we don't annex, if we don't follow state law and we don't annex, that means no annexation, no data center. Is that what you guys think? NO. SO THEN THE DATA CENTER GETS BUILT IN THE COUNTY, UNDER COUNTY REGULATIONS. IF I LIVED IN ROWING HILLS, I WOULDN'T WANT THE DATA CENTER DRILLING A DEEP WELL JUST WEST OF MY PROPERTY. I WOULD WANT THEM TO BE MONITORED BY A WORLD CLASS BOARD OF PUBLIC UTILITIES LIKE WE HAVE RIGHT HERE IN CHEYENNE, WYOMING.

Chemists and engineers and hydrologists and they're testing our water every day That's what I would want if I lived out there Mr. White Mr. Mayor I did have a question and I'm not sure who can answer that when we initially postponed this item in April there were As Dr. Aldridge noted, a few concerns from the surrounding landowners. And I know that we really, the reason we postponed it was number one, to encourage discussion and negotiation to try and solve the mausoleum issue. But also the concerns from the surrounding landowners. Has there been a resolution to that? I know Ms. Woodhouse was here. I don't think she's here. Oh, can somebody answer that for me? Particularly, I know we heard from Mr. Isley and Mr. Galeotis. Mr. Isley's here, so he can speak for himself. I didn't see you, sir. I apologize.

Mr. Isley, thank you for being here again this evening.

Mr. Mayor, council, pleasure to be here tonight. I'm gonna hit a couple of things just off the top. There's a reason landowners or property owners don't show up at these things. They're afraid if they're opposition to their neighbors, sometimes we get tarred and feathered, even with the best of intent. We have spent, I don't compromise and I'm not a sellout. No one laments the loss of the Cox Ranch in its current, presence more than I did. Our ranch has been there 120 years. We're not going anywhere. We're going into our fourth generation of family there. But I also have some real concerns having grown up in that neighborhood watching how subdivisions have really taken its toll. That's what's hurt our water table. That's what's affected our wells, our livestock wells, our domestic wells, and our irrigation wells. And our irrigation wells is nothing compared to what City of Cheyenne uses. We've been monitoring that data for 65 years. Mr. King was a king of the numbers and he absolutely was all over that. My father was also in the gas and oil development business. He worked at Dinah Noble for years as head of production and maintenance. He was familiar with evaporative systems. He was familiar with closed center systems. The reality is he hated the evaporative systems because he knew what that was doing. He's always been supportive. He's still alive. He's had perspective on this. He still is a big believer and supportive of the recycling systems. Are they perfect? No. Are they functional? Yes. That water, you fill them once every 10 or 12 years. I have also worked with DEQ on their monitoring, their testing, and all those kind of things. I'm gonna follow this water thing through very closely because that water outflow from the Sherard plant, part of that's ours and I intend to make sure it goes directed back into Crow Creek through a different system because that'll be more regenerative for the water table and the livestock and the wildlife. And speaking of wildlife, we have, More wildlife on that ranch than we ever had before. We actually are documented by Audubon Society. We've got 150 species on that ranch. That ranch is like an island. 50 species on our west, almost 200 species. And more wildlife, more antelope, more deer, even moose and elk have migrated through. So everybody has a right to use their property as they see fit. Your view shed does end at the edge of your property. I don't like the lights and I don't like the noise, but I respect your ability to do that on a willing buyer, willing seller basis. So we're not going anywhere. We're gonna lock our ranch down so that it doesn't happen. There will always be open space there for people. I think one of the things the data centers are trying to do In particular, Skybox, who I've had extensive negotiations, discussion with, and I can see a carpetbagger when I see one. These guys are not carpetbaggers. Everything I've asked for, they've delivered. Everything that we've questioned, they've delved into. I think they want to keep a buffer and a barrier around their operation. I saw the same thing with Microsoft. I spent two days with Microsoft's risk management people. They don't want built up next to anybody. They have a real problem with the public that doesn't like things, that likes to destroy things and vandalizes things. So in my perspective, I think we're heading down the right path.

Mr. White. No further questions. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Isley.

Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, I object to this three-minute limitation, and you'll continue to hear that. Second of all, I'm gonna vote no on this. I'm gonna vote no on the zonings. We have a lot more work to do to develop agreements between the city and the developers. We have about less than a month, but hopefully we'll get that done. I appreciate very much all of you coming and speaking. In fact, I think most of you were here in April, and so I'm glad you haven't gone away. I don't know, Mr. Kessler was here and several others of you. So, your voices continue to be appreciated and heard to some extent. I also want to say that, first of all, you've heard arguments that DEQ regulates data centers or has some role in this. They do not. Anybody who was at that meeting where all the DEQ regulators spoke, you learned almost one thing, which is DEQ regulates from an air quality standpoint only the emergency backup generators, That's it. Solid waste basically has a limited role. There's nobody looking at any of the other issues that have been brought up here, particularly wildlife that doesn't go on, not at the state regulatory level. And the only water issues that get regulated by DEQ are storm water. That's the only purpose they've issued for data centers. So, when somebody tells you that has some oversight of this. Just understand it's incredibly limited. So, and it is not at all what the industrial siding administration does. There's lots more to come on this. There's lots more to discuss. And please participate in whatever parts of the process that you have time to do. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Any other members of the governing body? Mr. Moodles is out.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, through you. Thank you again, everybody. I hear you. I hear you. I'll be a no vote as always. Again, the impact to agriculture, I think that's the one aspect we keep overlooking. It's what we're known for here in Laramie County and Cheyenne. But I'll continue to be a no vote. I have said before, I'm not going to repeat it all, but everybody knows where I stand. I kept my word. Thank you.

Mr. Siegert.

Mr. Mayor, thank you. I'm not going to repeat what everybody else has talked about, but I would like to point out one thing. You've encouraged us to listen. We have. We've also listened and watched the election that was recently conducted. During that election, the vast majority, and I can name them for you, of people that ran in opposition to data centers lost. They lost. At the state level, it was Lucas, Johnson, Brown, Singh, a gentleman that they were running for reelection. Another gentleman who was running for office, XE Brown, he also lost. At the city level, Camargo, Chiro, Manlo, French, and others. The folks that were opposed to the data center's economic development in our community lost. The citizens are telling us that they want economic development in our community. Thousands voted. What, close to 30,000? So we are listening. We're listening to you. We're listening to them. We have to listen to everybody. So, again, I don't want to repeat everything, but I did want to mention that as well. Thank you.

All right, any other last questions, comments? All right, hearing none.

Mayor Collins, can we please let the record reflect that Dr. Ernie joined the meeting at 8.10 p.m.?

Okay, thank you very much. Welcome, Dr. Rainey. At this time, we have a motion by Dr. Aldridge, seconded by Mr. Seagrave, to approve the annexation of the Cox Ranch. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye. Aye.

Those opposed? No.

We see the hands and the nose.

Mr. Laybourne, Mr. Moody, and Mr. Wolf, the annexation is approved on second reading. number eight can we take five we can let's take a five minute break and come back here let's make it 10 minutes at 8 25. lots of talking

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hold that for me. You guys need some more water?

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to call this meeting back to order if you would please. Let's call this meeting back to order please. All right, Madam Clerk, could you read the next item into the record, please?

Number eight, ordinance second reading, amending the official zoning map of the city of Cheyenne, establishing the zoning classification of AG agricultural and P public for land annexed to the city of Cheyenne located west of Round Top Road and adjacent to Happy Jack Road.

All right, this is the city establishment of a city zone required by state law. And guys, what this one does is it basically just gives it a city zone equal to what's already on that piece of property. So it's gonna be agricultural and then the areas that are the border public utilities, it's the P zone. So really nothing changes when it comes to zoning. The next item will be the one that will change it to a business park. And so we'll go out to the audience at this time to talk about the establishment of what is currently the same zone as it is currently, anybody? Anybody? Go ahead, Tina.

Go ahead, Mr. Smith. Mr. Miller.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Excuse me mayor Collins members of the City Council Charles Miller the permanent administrative record item 8 second reading amending the official zoning map establishing AG agricultural and P public or land NX West of Round Top Road and adjacent to Happy Jack Road PUDC 26-37 Cox Ranch postponed from April 27th Three asks in the first 45 seconds numbered for the record. One, continue this item. Your own Section 8 says, quote, shall be in full force and effect until its approval and publication, and upon approval and publication of the affiliated annexation. So this is the second reading of this one. Got that. I would, I'm sorry, split this ordinance. Section one, quote, consists of multiple parcels under separate ownership, including parcels owned by the William S. Cox Revocable Trust and parcels owned by the City of Cheyenne. then quote real property under ownership of william s cox revocable trust is hereby established as ag another ownership of the city is hereby established as p public one ordinance two owners two zones two purposes same bundled tract defect as item seven that voids the ab initio three produce the flum consistency finding staff says future land use is quote urban transitional residential You assign it A, G, and P. Tonight's item 29D admits FLUM amendment for the same area returned September 21st at the Public Services Committee and September 28th Council. Your zoning now amend the plan that justifies zoning later backward. Um, now, why this is a holding zone fraud from your own staff. Uh, staff report quote agricultural zone is the most zone for the land. The zone is also a holding zone, which will allow the land to be resound more easily in the future as the land develops. That is not zoning that is regulatory arbitrage. You assign ages. Tonight is placeholder, so item 9 can rezone to BP. to zone land vp for development next vote staff also admits city parcels quote these parcels are operated by the boku and are owned by the city of cheyenne The current use of the land is a water treatment facility. Based on this information, staff believes that P public zoning is the most analogous zone. That facility already exists, already operated by BOPU, already public. Why does an existing city water treatment facility need annexation and P zoning? It proves item seven annexation is not needed to extend services. It destroys your Wyoming statute 15-1402 AIII logical and feasible finding.

Thank you, Mr. Miller. Your time's up. Anybody else? All right, hearing none. Dr. Aldridge.

Mr. Mayor, the recommendation of the Public Services Committee is to approve on second reading an ISO move.

Seconded by Mr. White. Comments from members of the governing body establishing the AG&P zone. Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed? No. Mr. Laybourne, Mr. Moody, and Mr. Wolfer knows the ordinance is approved on second reading. Next item, please.

Number nine, ordinance second reading amending the official zoning map of the city of Cheyenne, changing the zoning classification for land located west of Round Top Road and adjacent to Happy Jack Road from AG Agricultural to BP Business Park.

All right, I think this is the one most people are here for. This is an owner requested zone change to allow the development of that data center campus, which creates, and they're asking for the business park zone district. And with that, we'll go out to the audience and see if anybody wants to speak to that request for a zone change. Anybody? Ms. Madrid, welcome.

Thank you. Heather Madrid. Ward one, um, just want to touch on the very well funded. By many, um, pro business packs election, which. Absolutely played a role in the way that that turned out. Um. I have just kind of some points, I guess that I was jotting down. Microsoft is already considered by the DEQ in the North Range Business Park to be a tier five major polluter. So adding to that seems very irresponsible. There was a point made about lighting, Having to be controlled or maybe controlled differently during construction because obviously you need to see what you're doing when you're constructing a data center. And I do understand that. However, construction is never ending. Meta is a terrible neighbor. I live close enough to know that their lighting is awful. As somebody previously stated, and they are just continuing to expand. So when will that lighting go away and how many years do people nearby those developments that are inappropriately cited have to suffer with those consequences? That's in the city, so I don't know if, do our ordinances have any teeth? because it's constant for Meta. And I hear it constantly from people who live near the North Range Business Park, which is also in the city. Some of these projects are going to be developing for 20-plus years, and we have to put up with that, the non-regulations of, first of all, water usage is not monitored or regulated. It might be monitored, but it isn't regulated. There's no cap on water usage during construction. And the water usage is immense because they have to keep the dirt down and for whatever other reasons. And again, construction's planned for 20 plus years in some cases. So what are we doing about that? The noises that people have mentioned earlier, that is coming from a business park that is in the city. And the biggest problem I have with business park zoning is that it's used by right in the city. It's not that way in the county. That means that whatever, they decide to do with the property beyond these two or three data centers is not going to come before us or you. It's an administrative decision that they don't have to run by anybody. And I know that they have said that they will allow grazing on that property, but until when? And I wonder if they would be willing to put that rest of that land in a land trust so the adjacent property owners can do whatever they deem fit instead of just it becoming more data centers. Once those owners or operators change hands, they're not going to live forever and they're not going to be around to keep the promises they're making right now. Thank you, Heather. I also just want to say if everybody in green was in orange tonight, I feel like that would be carrying much more weight with most of you.

She must be a Bronco fan.

I am, sir. Mayor Collins, men and women of City Council, thank you for the time. I'm Jack O'Neill with Skybox Data Centers here to speak upon the rezoning item that we have on the agenda right now. Thank you everyone who's come out to save the time and take the time and effort to be out here. It really is important to have engagement and so really encourage anyone to reach out again through wyoming at skyboxdatacenters.com or at 307-275-9525 as well. and that's gonna go to Tom and myself. We also have another meeting tomorrow at 12.30. A couple of things said today, I know you all have your own data on water, but our facility in Austin right now, last year, the entire annual year, used 124,000 gallons. plus or minus about 500 gallons last year. My home in Dallas uses 149,000 gallons last year. I don't have a pool. So for perspective, we have a data center that employs many men and women. It runs a very popular email service that a large group of people use every day, one of the largest email services in the world. And it used less water than one home last year. We want to follow every single letter of the law in terms of the code for everything in our development and then go above and beyond when it comes to setbacks. That's a big reason why we chose this property is that it is very setback from residential to start and we want to go above and beyond on the property in a lot of our conversations with y'all as well as with men and women of the community. We've heard various concerns around noise, water, and light. And we have addressed all of those to have no contamination on the light or noise on the property boundary. We are using less water than about six homes per data center. And if this was five acre ranchettes, you're looking at 250 wells and septics. So for example, we're not drilling any wells, any septic. We're not tapping into any of the underground waterbed. Um, and that's by city law as well, if we were to be annexed, uh, successfully. Um, so that is my time today. Happy to answer any questions. And again, please encourage everybody and anybody to reach out. Not just yourself, but if you have a friend, a neighbor, anyone at all, we're happy to be a resource and this isn't stop in a couple of weeks. If we were to be successful, this is going to go on for the entirety of the development and operation. Um, And this last thing I'll say about Skybox as a company, we've operated, owned, and developed data centers for over 12 years, and all across the continental United States, we've had one person leave our corporate team in that time, and that speaks to the leadership of the men and women at the company, but also the three partners that own the company outright, and we're invested in any community that we come into, and we align really well with this community, and we're hopefully here to be a bright spot and the example set forth of what it is to be a data center or just a developer as a whole in the community. Thank you for the time.

Doctorologist, do you have a question?

I do. Mayor Collins, thank you. Through you, I had actually three questions for you, Mr. O'Neill. The first being there was a young woman who asked about the number of employees that you will be employing when you are fully operational. Do you have a definite number on that? I mean, I understand that things can change, but what you're anticipating that number will be?

Mayor Collins, through you. Go ahead, Jack. That number is generally around 350 to 500 full-time employees for development of this size. Those numbers over our industry have gone up and up consistently over the past about 20 years due to the technicality of the equipment going inside, and so we estimate those numbers to continue to rise, but right now I can confidently say about 350 to 500 people on this campus.

Follow-up question? Yes, ma'am. Mayor Collins. A follow-up question on that is, and that is over three shifts, is that correct?

Mayor Collins, are you? Yes, ma'am, that's correct.

And then I also wanted to find out, how long is the lease that you have with the King Ranch for grazing?

Mayor Collins, through you, we do not have any lease in place with King Ranch for the grazing. We have just had verbal conversations about what that would look like and we intend in every aspect to honor that and just be a great neighbor. I mean, that's what it's all about, right? Is being a great neighbor, going above and beyond and working together on these things. And so we've had a lot of great conversations and plan to upheld them and get a lease in place or something if that's what he's looking for, but we have nothing in place at this time.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Thank you for the time.

Mr. Mayor.

Go ahead, Jeff. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, through you. I had a couple questions. I've heard a lot of concerns tonight about noise and light. You've said many times you want to go above and beyond. What is your strategy to go above and beyond when it comes to containing noise and containing light?

Mayor Collins, through you. So above and beyond on light and noise really ties to a multitude of things. First, it starts with engineering and planning accurately. With very good engineers, you have CFD models for the entire site. On any noise, you take preliminary noise studies before anything's ever done, before a single blade of grass has been moved.

You have sensors out there and you get the baseline.

And then you engineer what equipment is going in there. What's the design of the layout? What's the setback? Where does the wind face in most of the areas? They take all of that into account. And this is done by third parties, not internally at Skybox. There's a multitude of companies that do that, but we work with one traditionally called GZA. And so what you can do is a lot of things. I think you can start with, first and foremost, not having roof-mounted equipment. A lot of times when you have elevated equipment on light, you have OSHA lights on all the doors. The equipment's operating up at a higher altitude, so it's going to carry a little bit further. We have lots of land, so you can have everything ground mounted. We're not land constrained. And then large and heavy setbacks combined with berming and landscaping. This is not... putting in palm trees, it's gonna be high water use either, it's just gonna be using the natural landscape, moving some dirt, having a good berm and buffer, and will be lower at altitude than any other red lights flashing from the wind farm to the west. And that goes, light and sound pollution are very similar in terms of how they're gonna spread, and so the elevation is key, the engineering is key, and I would say not having roof-mounted equipment, and then you have containment in your mechanical yards, There's a lot of technologies that can be astoundingly quiet. I mean, if you drive by and take a baseline reading by Microsoft, which we did, it's below 55 decibels when the wind was howling. And, you know, you go across our land where it was just grass and it was about 50, 55 decibels right around there. Granted, that was I'm not an official reader of those, but that is. generally the sound you're gonna hear coming off of any of these campuses that are not Bitcoin or anything like that, that are an official data center.

Follow up, sir? Thank you. I have a question. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, through you. Thank you, Mr. O'Neill. So you mentioned there's one outside of Austin, capital of your home state. Did it follow Texas law? Because Texas law states you have to do a water usage survey. Did you guys follow that? Because I'm reading that only 30% of data centers in Texas have actually followed that law. And your governor is going after them now.

Mr. O'Neill. Mayor Collins, through you. Our governor, Governor Abbott, did a fantastic job of eliciting kind of a pause on, we have the largest data center requests, some about 480 gigawatts, which is astounding. The entire ERCOT grid's about 80 to 90. And so they wanted a pause to find out who's real, who's not. And so it's a lot of the current operators of what is actually happening. And we were actually the first group listed to approve this, jump on board, and completely comply with all of our sites. And that was posted on Governor Abbott's LinkedIn, on his official site, on the Texas Governor's website as well. I'm happy to share that link with anyone and everyone. It's also been posted on Skybox's LinkedIn if you want to go check that out as well. And we have complied with anything and everything that the governor or ERCOT or the PUC, Public Utility Commission of Texas, has also requested of us. And our chief development officer has actually testified on behalf of the industry as well as just the PUC and ERCOT as well.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Tom, did you want to talk? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Welcome back. Mayor and Council, we really appreciate the time and everyone coming out. We, as Jack said, invite anyone and everyone to tomorrow's open house Q&A. Uncle Fred's catering, so if nothing else, come get some barbecue. He's bringing to-go boxes. I just want to reiterate and maybe underscore that we're... I believe we've been the most transparent group to come before this body and voluntarily we're very serious about entering what we're calling the commitment to Cheyenne, commitment to the community to address a lot of these concerns. We take them very seriously. Jack spoke to the culture at Skybox at Via West. I've been there for roughly a dozen years and over the last decade, I'm very proud to work with the people that I do and grateful. We've won developer or owner of the year about six times over the last decade, and I think that that speaks to the quality of our people. You maybe do that once if it's luck, but over the course of a decade, I think that our people and our culture are, I think that's a testament to the way we approach things. I'm happy to answer any questions. Again, just to underscore, we intend to utilize the property in the most respectful and efficient and environmentally conscious way we are. It's been fantastic getting to know Mr. Isley and his family. I think that he's a phenomenal role model for not just all of us as people, but as industry leaders or business leaders. The way he and his family operate is amazing. And we've had, it's been a privilege to get to know Mr. Galiotis as well, and we've got ongoing conversations with him about how we can improve the site, and we're gonna continue to consult with him going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Glitzmeier, thank you for being here.

All right, is there anybody else in the audience who wanna speak to this one?

My name is Janet Holman. I'm in Ward 2. Just a concern that maybe perhaps at this meeting we might hear these things, but it would be really nice if especially the landowners or the people close to this property would understand. Once again, just the concern is where it's just like Catalan market you know there's so many data centers coming in right now and I think that's the big concern many people have said well you know we aren't hearing many of them but I've talked to just about everybody that I've talked to I've encouraged him to come to the meeting and they said they didn't feel it would do any good because the people in the City Council don't listen and You know, I really didn't have an answer for that, but I just encouraged him to come anyway. And some of the people have said that, you know, where the data centers are being built, many of the people have just given up and put their house up for sale, but they're having a hard time selling their home. So these are, you might just drive around close to where the data centers are and look to see how many properties have been put up for sale. because they don't know how else to deal with the situation when they come and bring their concerns and it's voted in anyway. So it sounds like Skybox has some really good ideas. I like the idea of 350 to 500 people. Will all those people be living in Cheyenne? half of them would be living in Cheyenne because right now as far as I know the representation not everyone is in living in Cheyenne so that's one of my questions that I have and if you see that one group is has an an excellent plan maybe that might be something that you could adapt for the other centers that you're bringing in so that they're more uniform they're more it's more planned out thing instead of saying okay we'll go with that because I was reading that you know like one data center that they said they were going to do closed loop and then after they got voted in they decided that it was too expensive and so they did open loop and at that point the city couldn't do anything about it so what what type of planning are we doing And how many more are we just going to accept because the owners decide they want to sell their property?

Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Isley.

Thank you again, Mr. Mayor and Council. Mark Geis, the owner and operator of King Ranch. I don't have a deal with these people. I don't have anything lined up. It's in paper. I've been promised nothing that couldn't possibly be done. That's not how I operate. I do, however, lease several pieces of property around the Cox Ranch, including the Wallace Ranch, and I think we've had that leased for 40 years, and we've left it in agriculture. That's what the family there wanted. I've also leased some of that property from over at the Galeota Zones in the past, and we had leased from the Cox's also years prior to that. I take that as it comes because that's how we operate a ranch. You have to have enough volume to carry your overhead and then still be profitable enough to raise the family. There's a couple of things that have not been talked about I'd like to touch on and one of them is the traffic and a traffic study. I've watched Happy Jack basically become a death zone with the addition of all the subdivisions and houses that have been built out there. We could not get YDOT to give us an expanded or turning lane because we run big trucks in and out of there, cattle trucks, hay trucks, that sort of thing. I personally have been hit twice by people and families basically afraid to go out there. If we reduce the number of houses, as in no subdivision, and restrict it to business people that are traveling for the data center, that gives me a measure of relief. I also think they would do something to control that congestion and that traffic flow. This is a big deal, and we're talking about serious risk of life and limb. As far as the water, once again, you heard me state earlier, we've got some use agreements in place with the city on some other things. I also operate with the landfill. We're one of your contractors at the Belvoir. I'm grateful for that. However, that wasn't always the case. My predecessor, Jerry King, had quite an adversarial relationship I've worked very hard to restore that and try to make, I've gotta deal with the cards I've been dealt, not the ones that someone else has dealt with a long time ago. I am for changing this so we don't have a residential area. I think that's the worst. That is the real water killer. I believe they'll follow through on their promise to the closed system. It's an efficiency thing. Where they can save money, they're gonna save money and I think, as far as public works and their work, Vicki Nemechek has been a rock star for you guys. Everything that I've been asked about or promised to has been done. It's been a strictly professional relationship and I am very grateful for that. I think that we're on the right track with this and I know some of my neighbors are not gonna like it. I love my friends and neighbors in Rolling Hills. I have to do what's best for our ranch, and that will continue to be an island. I'm a believer in open spaces for wildlife. I think this will do more to continue that with the expansion and a buffer zone, if you will, as I've talked about before. So that's it, Mr. Mayor, Council. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Yes, ma'am. Welcome back.

Again, I'm Shelly Russell. Like he was talking about, I'm concerned about the traffic for the area. Because right now where I live, traffic is horrible. I live right by where Tallgrass is building their power place right now. And then there's Microsoft and there's Meta. The traffic is horrible. I can't tell you how many times a day that people almost get hit by dump trucks, the belly dump trucks and all those that are out there. especially when it comes to where the port of entry is at because they have to go into the port of entry first and then go out of the port of entry. It's a very dangerous situation. So, I mean, the same for like on Happy Jack, you've got one road. Where's all this traffic going to go? That concerns me. Another thing that concerns me too is resale value of these houses that are currently out there. Because I know people in my neighborhood are right now trying to sell their houses and they're having trouble. It could be interest rates. I don't know because those are high. But at the same time, they're having trouble selling these homes. I'm going to be selling my home, but right now I'm trying to find a rental property, which is H-E-L-L right now, because I think we know the housing right now is horrible. So I think those are things to consider, you know, when you're annexing this kind of stuff. And that's my opinion. Thank you very much.

I will tell you Tallgrass is working with YDOT to do some signalization and some expansion of the roads. So that is coming. I know it's a little late, but there's gonna be a lot of money spent in that corridor to try to help improve that, adding additional entrances and that kind of thing. So it's not happening fast enough, but it's definitely gonna happen, and hopefully we'll see that improve that safety issue that you just discussed. Turn your mic over.

That's what I've heard is Tallgrass was talking and working out with YDOT and so forth of getting widening Terry Ranch Road and adding lights over by the one part. That's what I've heard. I don't know if that's true.

So I know and then the MPO is doing a study for that whole area to see what other improvements need to be done and to see what we'll have the data center companies help us with not only the planning but also maybe some of that construction between YDOT, the county, the city, They're doing a big focus on that. And we asked for an expedited study, so they're gonna do that study in about half the time they normally would, so we can get after it. So that study's been led, and YDOT, the district engineer, and Tallgrass are working on those projects. So I know it's not coming as fast as we want, but it's definitely coming. Thank you. It's horrible. Yes, ma'am. Yes, Tina.

Mr. Miller, go ahead. Mr. Miller?

Can you hear me? Yes. All right. Mr. Miller, do you have testimony?

I certainly do. That's why I raised my hand.

Let's get after it.

Okay. Three minutes, right? Okay, this is Charles Miller for the record here. Okay. Okay, so it appears that some council members there have also filed or they've they've objected to the mid ordinance rule change. for their time limits.

Mr. Miller, it has nothing to do with us before us. You want to talk about the zoning? I'm ready to listen.

There's no other time for me to ever talk about it ever.

Mr. Miller.

So I object to changing time limit enforcement mid-ordinates.

Mr. Miller, you're out of order, sir.

As far as the zoning goes?

If you want to talk about zoning, you can talk about it.

Yeah, so as far as this zoning goes, the... Same ordinance. Okay, so introduced April 13th, first reading April 20th, second reading postponed April 27th, and now second reading September 14th. That's this ordinance. There's been different limits. Wyoming Statute 15-1-405 requires hearing 30 to 180 days after petition certified complete. First notice, 15 business days prior with map plus copy of ordinance. Changing procedures made proceeding without new notice violates 15.1.405 and is null and void under 16.4.403A. Action taken at a meeting not in conformity is null and void and not merely voidable. I object under 16.3.114C, arbitrary, capricious, abuse of discretion without observance of procedure, inconsistent findings, due process per Decker 2005... WI 160 inconsistent time limits equals arbitrary, capricious safety net. I object under Topanga adopted in Wyoming per Brody, July 13th at timestamp 259. Findings must bridge analytical gap. Where is finding why three minutes on first becomes two minutes on why they had more time then three minutes to discuss it, and now it's three minutes. How come the developers also get multiple three-minute slots? Because they're all from the same company, except you're allowing them to occupy multiple slots. And so that's technically over the time limit that everybody else is getting. Thank you, Mr. Miller.

Your time is up. Tina, do you have anyone else? How about in the room? Yes, ma'am.

I've been listening to some things and I've just got some questions and some thoughts for he was talking about getting a baseline sound. And I almost thought it sounded like your baseline was going to be the same as Microsoft's noise right now. So I'm confused on how that would be helpful to the community at Rolling Hills. So if you could clear that up. And then I'm wondering if you're willing to do like an MOU with the city and with the people of Rolling Hills about how you plan to operate and put that in writing. And third, and I don't know how this works, but I know the land that I'm on has covenants of things I can't do on my land. Like I can't have a business on my land. Would you guys be willing to have a covenant put on your land that says that's not going to be, I'm not going to expand the business or I'm going to always allow grazing? And I just recall that back when we had a lot more people from Rolling Hills here that were on the edge of the property line saying that, They had talked to Cox, older gentleman, and he said, that'll always be ranch land. I feel that way about ranches. It'll always be there. That's the interpretation I got. And yet, now they're seeing the property being annexed. So I'm wondering if any covenant kind of thing can be put in for perpetuity, I can't get that word out, not only for the annexation, but for Mr. Isley. I hear that from you, that's a rancher, that's what we're going to do, but that's what people heard from Cox as well. So thank you. And I'm sorry, I'm Jane Lessinger, word one.

Thanks for being here again. All right, anybody else in the audience want to speak? All right. Dr. Aldrich, we have a motion, please.

Mr. Mayor, the recommendation of the Public Services Committee is to approve on second reading and I so move. Second.

It's seconded by Mr. Seagrave. Comments from members of the governing body on the zone change before us. All right, hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed? No. Mr. Laybourne, Mr. Moody, and Mr. Wolfer knows the zone change is approved on second reading. Next item, please.

Number 10, ordinance first reading, annexing to the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, land located south of Interstate 80, southeast of Auto Road, and west of Interstate 25.

So we refer to the Public Services Committee?

Number 11, ordinance first reading, amending the official zoning map of the city of Cheyenne, establishing the zoning classification of AG Agricultural and LI Light Industrial for land annexed to the city of Cheyenne, located south of Interstate 80, southeast of Auto Road, and west of Interstate 25.

We'll send this item to the Public Services Committee.

Number 12, ordinance first reading amending the official zoning map of the city of Cheyenne, changing the zoning classification for land located south of Interstate 80, southeast of Auto Road and west of Interstate 25 from AG Agricultural and LI Light Industrial to BP Business Park.

All right, we'll send this one to the Public Services Committee. And those are the three items that will be the hitching post district. So we wanted those all together, they're all together.

Number 13, ordinance first reading, amending the official zoning map of the city of Cheyenne, changing the zoning classification for land located south of Interstate 80, east of Campstool Road, and north of HR Ranch Road, from AG Agricultural to BP Business Park.

We'll send this item to the Public Services Committee.

Number 14, ordinance first reading, annexing to the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, land west of South Greeley Highway, south of West College Drive, and southwest of and adjacent to the intersection of Apple Street and York Avenue.

We'll send this item to the Public Services Committee.

Number 15, ordinance first reading amending the official zoning map of the city of Cheyenne, establishing the zoning classification AG agricultural for land annexed to the city of Cheyenne. Located west of South Greeley Highway, south of West College Drive, and southwest of and adjacent to the intersection of Apple Street and York Avenue.

We'll send this item to the Public Services Committee.

Number 16, Ornan's first reading, amending the official zoning map of the City of Cheyenne, changing the zoning classification for land located west of South Greeley Highway, Southwest College Drive, and southwest of and adjacent to the intersection of Apple Street and York Avenue from AG Agricultural to LI Industrial.

All right, we'll send this item to the Public Service Committee, and those three items are also the Orchard Hills annexation and zone changes.

Number 18, resolution opposing the federal legislation or regulations that increase maximum truck size or weight limits on national highways.

All right, is there anybody in the audience who wants to speak to this resolution about opposing the increase in the maximum truck size or weight limits on our national highways? Anybody in the audience? All right, Dr. Aldrich, can we have a motion, please?

Mr. Mayor. The recommendation- I'm sorry, we have somebody online.

Okay.

Okay. Go ahead, Mr. Miller. Mr. Miller, go ahead.

All right, Mr. Miller's not there. Let's get a motion, please.

Mr. Mayor, the recommendation of the Public Services Committee is to adopt an ISO move.

Second.

Seconded by Mr. Seagrave. Comments from members of the governing body? I do, Mr. Mayor. Yes, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Through you, I have some questions for the sponsor. My first question is, was this resolution constituent driven?

This resolution was brought to us by two entities, one that's called Go Rail and one that is the Coalition Against Big Trucks with concerns about what's going on. And it follows a resolution that was recently passed by the city of Laramie.

Mr. Moody? And then what is the wording in the Build America Act, House Bill 870, and amendments regarding increased weight limit going from 80,000 to 91,000? And if the clock can stop when Dr. Aldridge is answering, please.

I will have to get back to you on that exact wording. I don't have it memorized.

Okay, thank you. I just got a couple things to say about this, and I'm passing something out. If you actually read the amendment by Representative Johnson from South Dakota, if we're gonna take an official position at this, we have an obligation to accurately tell the public what it does. The resolution refers to proposals regarding increasing the federal truck weight limit, okay, however, It's not a nationwide mandate putting 91,000 trucks in Wyoming highways. It's voluntary. We can choose to participate as a state or not. It's not about taking today's standard five axle trucks, simply adding another 11,000 pounds, have to have six or more axles. The program also does not provide unrestricted access. Participating states must issue permits and identify interstate routes. where participating vehicles may operate above 8,000 pounds. And then finally, it has to collect safety data. There are legitimate questions about pavement, wear, bridges, safety, enforcement, taxpayer costs. I agree we should examine them. It might not be best for Wyoming, but this is nationwide. Some states like Massachusetts or South Carolina where it's flat might be better for them. Okay, so that's why we need the correct facts if we're gonna actually have this resolution. I think this is way too premature, and that's why I'd urge everybody to vote no. And we talked about local control. Not really local control if we're telling our federal delegation what to do. And again, other sponsors that nationally might be best for their states, but we have a choice. We don't have to opt in it. And again, it's right there in the amendment presented by Representative Johnson of South Dakota.

May I respond, Mayor Collins?

Dr. Aldrich.

Mayor Collins, I would like to respond to that. I think all of us understand and are aware that federal legislation pivots on a dime. And it depends upon amendments. This is an amendment that was offered by Mr. Johnson of South Dakota. And as noted with a lot of our resolutions and our ordinances, things are amended, and at the federal level, they're amended much more frequently and much more often. So I would suggest to my colleague that this is a preemptive resolution that simply asks for our federal delegation to take into consideration that this will negatively impact our fuel tax collection. It will also negatively, if it is adopted by Wyoming, which there would be pressure to do that if we were to be an island state that was not and our contiguous states adopted this and we did not there would be pressure to adopt it and it would impact our um the maintenance and the condition of our roads i think there's also a concern with our weather that we don't want 91 000 pound vehicles traveling on our street on our roads interstates in bad weather. We've seen not only, and I think that Congresswoman Hageman would be the first woman to and first person to be able to tell you that we've had so many issues with non-English speaking and unlicensed commercial truck drivers passing through Wyoming that adding additional weight to their trucks and also lack of inspections is not good business practice for Wyoming. So I would encourage my colleagues to pass this and let our delegation know it doesn't mandate that they do anything. What it does is it gives them our input.

Mr. Wolf. Mr. Mayor, I wasn't going to talk on this, but since I have an Aldridge permitted three minutes, I'm going to speak against this. not on the substance because what you just heard from councilwoman aldridge is the most that anybody has heard about this at the public service committee which i attended there was no basically zero discussion about the merits of this resolution There was one guy from the railroad who talked about this for less than a minute. Resolutions like this are a waste of our time. They are an imposition of this council into federal law making and this is a classic case where lobbyists go to one member of a council and say, adopt our position. And you must be in favor of because nobody in Wyoming could actually favor bigger trucks, heavier trucks. But we get no other side of this. There was no other discussion of that there are probably a lot of business interests and a lot of other groups that are on the other side. There's absolutely zero discussion of that. The only comment that was made was that Amazon is in favor of the bigger trucks. And of course, we all hate Amazon because we hate Jeff Bezos, but Except for when we order things from Amazon, and then we really might like that they had lower transportation costs, so that it wouldn't cost us as much when we order. And of course, point that Ms. Madrid made, if Amazon came here with a data center, they would be welcome with open arms. So the fact that Amazon is on the other side of this really ought not to sway the opinion one way or the other. But fundamentally, this is just a wrong use of counsel time, counsel effort. We shouldn't allow the counsel to be captured by one side of a vast national dispute. Thank you.

Anyone else in the governing body?

Dr. Rennie is online Dr. Rennie. If you go ahead and unmute yourself.

Go ahead Dr. Rennie. You can get that button to work.

Mr mayor and council members. I, um. I guess I have two thoughts on this one. I did talk to the chief engineer for wide out this morning and the state has yet to take a position on this. They're still evaluating it and their understanding is that it applies only to interstate highways and not our state highways. And also that they think there will either be an opt in or opt out provision. And so the state of Wyoming is still evaluating it. So I guess I'd rather wait for them to take a position. But secondly, the reason I will probably vote no on this is, Mr. Mayor, over the years, I can think of only a couple exceptions. We have done a very good job of maintaining... our focus on local politics and not getting involved in politics at a national level i think that should be what how we handle our business and as a result i will be a no on this resolution thank you

Mr. Laybourne. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd like to point out that not only am I a member of the council, but I'm a constituent and my family certainly is our constituents as well. And this is a difficult situation, but one that affects us all. I was coming back from a trip out west and Saturday night and between Laramie and Cheyenne on the interstate. And I got boxed in by a series of large trucks. One of the trucks started flashing its lights, get out of the way, I'm coming through. And we came very close to a very dangerous accident. A very dangerous accident. And the road was wet. And so I certainly recognize the concern that other members of the council have about us entering into this question. because it is one that flows right through our city with two interstates, and one that is unresolved at this point, but we don't need any more heavier trucks coming into our city on our roads in any way. And I also recognize that this is something that has many, many aspects to it. But speaking out in favor of safety, I think is a good thing to do. I think that when we look at this, we all have to look at our experiences out on that interstate. And we have to consider that this is, a preliminary and relatively, I think you could say, I think it's an important and central issue, but it certainly is one that is gonna be decided far away. But when we look at that, we want to look at safety for our citizens. At the present time, the trucking industry and the manner in which the trucks are operated really needs a lot of attention. And this is one way to express our opinion about that attention. And I also recognize the point that was made about over time we don't generally do this and it is often, it could be a waste of time. I think we wasted a lot of time with these Zoom calls tonight. So if we're gonna talk about wasting time, I wanna talk about that wasting time and I wanna talk about the consideration we need to make. I speak in favor of this motion. It can do no harm. and I believe would be a step in the right direction towards safety. Thank you. Anyone else?

Mr. Mayor, I had a quick question. I remember when the governor was given the State of the State address and they were going through the budget, that the YDOT shortfall for funding was in the half a billion dollars, some astronomical amount of money. And during my time in the legislature, when we talked about the damage that trucks do compared to cars, it was one semi equals 500 cars going over that same stretch of road. So there is reason for this. All right.

Any other comments?

Just one brief comment. There is a salutary benefit from this resolution, which is we have put to rest the question of whether or not Mr. Labor and I always vote together.

All right. We have a motion to oppose federal legislation. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed? No. I see the hands and the nose. Mr. Wolf, Mr. Moody, Mr. Seagrave, myself, Dr. Rooney, Arnaud's, the resolution fails.

Next item's number 26D on page five. Professional services agreement between the city of Cheyenne and House Levine Associates LLC for the Cheyenne next comprehensive plan update.

All right, this is the update to, I think it's our 2014 comp plan, is that right?

Mayor, members of council, Charles Bloom, planning and development director. Yes, the last significant update we had on the comprehensive plan was in 2014. A few of you were around for that update, and that was a time when it initially started as a joint city-county plan, and it ended up going in two different directions. Since that time, the primary sticking point, which I understand was the sweetgrass development, is no longer in the county and that's in the city. But this is a contract with a not to exceed amount for $351,790. It's proposed to be awarded to Housel Levine, their national planning firm based out of Chicago, Illinois. We do have Josh Koontz online. He's ready to comment on this and provide additional information. When we advertise this RFP, we had 11 firms that responded to this RFP. Of the 11, eight of them met the qualifications and we narrowed down the selection to four firms. Those four firms are identified as Cushing Terrell, Housel Levine, Kimberly Horn, and Logan Simpson. All of those firms were great, great firms and we had two sets of interviews. One was just the interviews of our selection committee that were done by reading their responses and the other one were in-person interviews. That selection committee was comprised of a variety of individuals. We had one city council member, Council Member White, on that selection firm. Tony Laird representing the Planning Commission. We had several members of the Planning and Development Department. We had a representative from City Engineering, a representative from the Metropolitan Planning Organization. We had a representative from the County Planning Office. and also a local developer that was on the selection committee as well that had an active role in the previous comprehensive plan. In the end, House Levine was identified as a successful firm and we worked with them to finalize the contract. When we did the RFP, we indicated we had about $300,000 that was available for this update. We also asked for them to provide an add-on estimate for data that we could gather so we could better understand some of our commuting patterns that we would have in the community. So that has been added to this contract. In addition, we have asked for an additional add-on which they had proposed which is a scenario planning exercise which will evaluate different land use scenarios that we can have in our community that are primarily focused around industrial and data center style development and also residential development. The goal for this type of planning document here is to identify what-if scenarios if we look one direction and look the other direction. In the end, in working with them on the price, we were able to come to an agreement on this $351,790 price and also knock it down from the requested 18 months to a 14-month process, which will end up having a complete in November of 2027. Throughout this process, there will be a variety of opportunities for public input. We do expect and we will be using Connect Cheyenne, that is the online web platform for a lot of data. Indicated in there, the attachment to the contract, they've indicated that there will be multiple meetings with stakeholders. and other focus groups. They've identified up to 16 sessions will occur. There will be a steering committee that will meet approximately four times and there will also be a lot of pop-up events that can be managed by staff through a pop-up kit that they're proposing. Overall, we're looking forward to a great product. We think that this is going to be very community-driven, and it will be reflective of where we want to see the city go in the next 25 years. I do have Josh's online if you have any questions for the consultant or if you'd wish to hear from him.

Any questions for staff? Dr. Aldridge?

Mayor Collins, through you. I'm wondering, the scenarios are included in the $351,790, right? Is that correct?

Mayor through to Dr. Aldrich, that is correct. That's the all-inclusive price.

And one more follow-up question. Yes, ma'am. My understanding is that these plans are to be updated once every 10 years, and you said this was a 25-year plan. So what would be the benefit of us doing, I mean, I understand doing a 25-year plan, but that doesn't preclude us from having to update this every 10 years. Is that correct?

Mayor, members of council, Dr. Aldrich, that's a really good question there. Typically when we do look at a comprehensive plan, they are looking out 25 years, but yes, updates every five to 10 years are the industry standard. The updates that would happen in five to 10 years would be, I'm revisiting looking to identify if action statements are still what we want to see if it's still visually want to go where that 25 year window that is more of a complete reboot the 2014 plan that was looking at the previous plan Cheyenne, which was adopted back. I believe in 2004, so we're sitting right around the right time for that revamp and looking at everything and essentially starting over from scratch.

Thank you.

Mr. Koontz would like to make a comment. Who would? Mr. Koontz.

You'll have to wait for a minute, okay? Okay.

He's the consultant.

Yeah, let me get a question from Mr. Moody for staff, and then we'll bring him on, okay?

Yep, just a quick question. Thank you, Mr. Bloom. I know that they're a Esri Gold partner, as I've heard of them before, and they use ArcGIS Pro, and they'll give you the data, so... Are you guys going to be able to do that? I know some of your peers still have ArcMap. Will you be able to take some of that data there? I know it's backwards compatible, but will you guys be able to do that from the data they have there? I'm just looking at it from the plumbing perspective and technical perspective based on experience.

Mayor. Would that be better for the consultant?

mayor members of council it could be a better uh answer by the consultant tom and i did just have a really brief conversation regarding the future of gis at the city and we do understand that there have been some movement towards gis pro and i don't know exactly when that will occur but it will have to happen at some time in the near future so we'll talk with the GIS department a little bit more detail on those issues and stuff that can be worked out between them and the consultant. But we'll hear from what Mr. Koontz has to say.

Mr. Koontz, go ahead.

Welcome, Mr. Koontz.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. Can you all hear me?

We can hear you just fine. Did you hear Mr. Moody's question about the GIS?

I did, yes. We are an Esri Gold partner, as was mentioned, and we do use a variety of Esri tools, and we do use ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online as we develop our planning products. But any data that we would turn over at the end of the project, we would definitely be able to make sure that it's compatible with the GIS that you're using. We can package it up as... a standard GIS data package that includes shapefiles that you could use with the software that you're using now from what it sounds like the software that you have.

Not follow-up, but thank you so much, sir. Yeah, that's great to know. I know exactly what you're talking about. I actually teach a semi-day job, so it would definitely be backwards compatible with ArcMap. That, I can say for a fact, is based on experience and my professional opinion. So thank you so much, sir. I do appreciate that.

Go ahead, sir, if you had some comments for us, please. Mr. Koontz, do you have comments for us?

Oh, I'm sorry. I think when I unmuted myself, I maybe accidentally said I had comments. Other than just to say that we really appreciate the opportunity to be both considered and to interview and to have the opportunity to work with your city. It really is an honor. Like Mr. Bloom said, there are several opportunities high quality firms and it sounded like you received high quality proposals. So just to have the opportunity to work with you is exciting and our firm is really looking forward to it. We take this type of work and your community very seriously. And ultimately that's what we would aim to do is to, as Mr. Bloom noted, to deliver a comprehensive plan that reflects the direction that your city wants to go.

Well, we're excited to get your report, sir, and to use that to move forward. So thank you so much for being with us this evening.

Thank you.

Mr. Bloom, do you have anything else for us?

Mayor, members of the council, I think Engineer Cobb was going to mention, but to Mr. Moody, we are using GIS Pro right now in our GIS department, so we do have that license and we are using that. We also do have the GIS collaborative, which is using more of a focus central point for different data.

Mr. Kopp? Yes, sir. I was going to add that. Ditto? Ditto, yes. We do use PRO, yes. You knew that from our last discussion, so I don't think Mr. Bloom was fully aware. Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

Mr. Wolf, did you have a comment, sir? Mr. Mayor, thank you very much through you. Two questions for Mr. Bloom. First of all, what's the score of the game?

Members of Council, Councilmember Wolf, unfortunately it's over and it appears that it was not how most of us wanted it. It was what, 31 to 10.

I'm going to be in a Kansas City Chiefs jersey again. Okay.

But second of all, I just want to thank you, thank Engineer Cobb, all the people who've worked on this. I mean, this is a tremendous step forward and really look forward to the work that you're going to do over the next year and appreciate you. ALL INVESTMENT OF TIME, COUNCILMAN WHITE'S TIME TO FIND WHAT'S OBVIOUSLY A HIGHLY QUALIFIED CONSULTANT. SO THANK YOU FOR THAT AND GOOD LUCK WITH THIS PROCESS. THANK YOU.

THANKS FOR THE BAD NEWS, MR. BLOOM. ANYBODY ELSE IN THE AUDIENCE WANT TO SPEAK TO THE PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AGREEMENT THAT WE HAVE BEFORE US FOR OUR NEXT UPDATE TO OUR COMPREHENSIVE PLAN?

Yes, I have Mr. Miller on the line.

Mr. Miller.

Go ahead.

Mr. Miller, are you there?

Yes, I am. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay. I definitely have a comment here. Charles Miller, for the record, it looks like the... Okay, sorry about this.

The... Mr. Miller, it's taking you a minute just to get up to your answers here. Come on, sir. If you want to speak to the governing body, be prepared. What would you like to tell us?

Sorry, I just had a little bit of a delay here. As far as this document, this comprehensive plan update, this document will dictate our community's trajectory for the next, what is it, 25 years. It is vital that we balance development with infrastructure reality. Well, sorry, my notes just disappeared for me. But basically, it seems as if you guys are rushing to get this pushed through. And also, it's not going to be done for some time. And you're pushing through a lot of other ordinances that rely on this document being updated. I think that you guys are operating in very dicey territory there. That's all I have, thanks.

Mr. Miller, did you hear that we had 11 applicants, we went out to a national search, interviewed what, eight of them, and then went back and interviewed a further four of them over the last couple of months? That doesn't sound like the city's been rushing.

Did that take over the timeline for what you guys were supposed to update it with? How delayed is this? I guess is my question.

Two to three years?

And so it's, I guess it's, well, I guess my whole point was is that it's a controlling document that all kinds of other ordinances rely on, and so you guys are kind of just not following the rules, as you like to say. Thank you.

Anybody else? All right, Mr. White, I believe this one's yours, sir.