City Government - Regular Meeting

uh when the public announcement sitting do you make a public announcement sherry be happy to read the announcement that was published do we need to

It's up to the council. Councils in the past have had us read it. It's not required, though. Well, let's go ahead and read it. Okay. Notice is hereby given that a special meeting and work session of the Laramie City Council will be held Tuesday, May 26, 2026 at 6 o'clock p.m. located at the Municipal Operations Center, 4373 North 3rd Street, Laramie, Wyoming, 82070 for the following purpose. Special meeting, public comments on non-agenda related items. number two budget amendments for fiscal year twenty seven number three adjourn special meeting the work session is fee for service agreements number two city council updates and council comments and agenda review thanks ma'am thank you city clerk next is there any comment on non-agenda items yes sir

Yes, we're going to give you on my.

And you're DJ. Thank you. Good evening.

Remember that the State Council, my name is DJ Maggie. I'm a resident of Laramie and I'm a barber at City 220.

I'm here to bring attention to the operating hours in the Recreation Center.

The Larry Rec Center is intended and purposeful to serve the entire community. It's only serving a fraction of the patrons and not the community as a whole. I would prefer the purpose to purchase membership at the Rec Center and meeting others I've spoken with in the state. In preparation for this meeting, I asked several points about their work on it. The current closing time of 8 p.m. places working Americans very time-extrained, forcing them to conform their schedules around the same, including a financial violence. Healthcare workers, retail employees, restaurant staff, and others with irregular hours may not benefit from early openings, but they can benefit from late-time access to work. Many recreation centers see peak attendance between 5 and 9 p.m. Sighted, reportable, and frustrating. Most people get off work at 5 or 6 and cannot make it to the gym until 7 or later. By this time, the aquatic centers close. By this time, no use of a bath pool, regular pool, steam room, or the sauna. Staying open later supports demand, especially when courts, gyms, pools, and fitness areas are busy, contrary to what is happening. Being at 7220, we have won Best Barbershop for two consecutive years. That award is decided by community voting, and we do not promote or ask clients to vote for us. The community chose us on its own. I know firsthand when the community prefers to get haircuts, and that time is usually at 7 a.m. Those are my first moments to be billed because people can I thought for it earlier or on another time that works for them. Laramie is a very young town, having 15 to 17 public schools, two private, and two colleges. Summer is approaching and many young people soon need to have more free time. What are they supposed to do after PEDS? Let's find a team now. Instead of the few open options at night that we currently have, they could be swimming, playing basketball, or living. Extending operating hours is also a fiscally reformable way to maximize the city's existing investment. Most operating costs already exist regardless of closing time. So staying open later increases access during PEDS evening demand. This can lead to higher participation. stronger membership retention, and increased revenue from programs, events, and facility use. While it may reduce short-term staffing costs, they can also reduce overall usage and long-term financial. I feel as if to speak about a problem with no solution is foolish. I propose keeping the rec center open until 10, the aquatics closing at 9. Instead of hiring more employees, the city could adjust the cleaning shift from 1 to 3 o'clock and wipe those hours towards later evening operations, and this would allow more layaway residents to relax and do life-saturating work. I urge the city council to act properly and invest in. Thank you.

Thank you. And thank you for your comments. And then we can kind of. Investigate what does that mean?

So we can kind of. Oh, I apologize.

So I apologize, but I didn't know that.

and feel free to email us to keep more of the dialogue uh yeah that's on your website and i hope your comments were well put together and thank you is there any other public comment Great. Seeing none, I'll move on to Councilor McCourty's proposed amendment to the recommended budget. I move to add $6,000 in appropriated fiscal year 2027 through the Quality Broadcast Program in Excel and this whole operation.

I'll second that. Mayor, do we need to vote?

Oh, I think we do. It wasn't removed. City Clerk, before we vote, please call. Bolling. Here.

Creed.

Here.

Lockhart.

Here.

Newman. Here. O'Doherty. Here. Shumway. Absent. Vigil. Here. Richardson. Here. Cumbee. Here here that's eight present in one absent your honor.

Thank you. Yes, it counts. You can go ahead and read the motion. I moved at six thousand dollars in appropriations. This is your twenty, twenty seven. And call the broadcast for public meetings. Hell, I mean, it's still so. I have a motion from the authority and a second from. Do you reckon we do have anything to say?

I know, Mayor, I do not just the council that it come from a global cash reserves.

Are there any questions or comments? Council.

So that's where we visited a little bit. And there are some improvements and stuff, but I don't think we're fully taking advantage of it. There was a little bit of back and forth regarding that. So where we said, every improvement has to be better and easier to view and listen to. So we didn't talk so much about the system. like the how about the work, it was part of the outcome. And specifically the ability for our folks to manage the process to be able to do so.

So the city clerk can maybe add on there.

thank you mayor our broadcast folks um did suggest some camera equipment that can be run from the same switchboard that they have in the control room back at city hall um but we'd have to work on that with it a little bit see what the exact cost of it is you know um and kind of work you know see if that's the most um the best solution for this space

And I talked to you and then close from 24, 7, we run our broadcast and. Set up. And so, so Chris thought that there would be well within. What he knows how to do is just whether we have. Are you. Coming up and.

The TriCaster Mayor and Council were in your current budget for $50,000 to replace the piece of equipment that's dated in the broadcast room.

Thank you, Mayor. I do just want to ask that

the IT Director wrote that $6,000 would be enough to do whatever needed to be done to improve the quality of that broadcast. So we very much need to bring light on that figure. And then if we get into it and it becomes a bigger thing, we'll come back to you. Recommend this amount more money, but it's going to be a rather small investment for what I think will be a big improvement in quality.

Thank you, Director. Any further questions or comments? Thank you.

Is there any public comment on this agenda item?

Seeing none. Seeing none. Please call the roll.

Bolling.

Aye.

Freed.

Yes.

Lockhart.

Yes.

Newman.

Yes.

O'Doherty. Yes. Shumway. Absent. Vigil.

Yes.

Richardson. Yes. Cumbie. Yes.

That's eight yeses, zero noes, and one absent, Your Honor. Yes.

Council, would you like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting?

Okay, so I move that we move to adjourn this special meeting.

Councilor Doherty was suggesting just confirming the vote. Mayor?

That motion is passed. I'm going to be doing this work session. I have a motion from the authority and second from the committee. All in favor? Opposed? We are adjourned from this special meeting and we are going to begin the work session. For the session, I have a discussion for council. Last week, there were four people out and it was a little tight. I'm not giving a hard time to anybody. but what we didn't have, we've gotten a little bit on giving written notes to Nancy, myself included. And so if we can tighten it up a little bit, that really helps the process.

and if you know prior to an hour or two before the meeting you could do it earlier rather than later uh i think it would be helpful and then nancy puts all of those messages for older so that there's any questions

something she needs to review.

So just a reminder to everybody, including myself, to send Nancy an email. And when you know you're going to be absent, if you could go ahead and send that as far in advance, it would help us better.

Thank you very much. And without, is there any comments or anything like that?

Okay.

Um, city manager. You would like to begin our work session on the service agreements. 1st session is the theme research when where the main street alliance.

Council, I think it's important to know that these are just extensions of what's been going on. Wouldn't say we're so social for many, many years. There's not a lot of change.

Oh, so these things are accessible to ask you questions. Turn it over to. Good evening. Nice to see you.

It was nice to see you as well, and I can't take this format.

I feel like it's a lot easier to be your face to see if you have any questions. And I would love this to be, you know, as conversational as you would like.

The slideshow that I prepared is a shortened version, and I just take out projects that I write, but if there's something that I don't address, please let me know. But first and foremost, we wanted to start a very deep thank you from myself.

I want to recommend that our incoming board chair, Jenny Patrick, the audience. Thank you, Jenny, for your time. We are an organization that's run with deep passion and commitment by our volunteers, and we have an incredible

For people who are willing to work up their sleeves and work for the community, but that could be possible without your support. So the city of Laramie has walked alongside us as a nonprofit for the last 20 years and it could not be a working relationship. I just wanted to give thanks to those who sometimes don't want the attention of a lifeline, but we'll say broadly the city manager's office has been incredible for us anytime they are troubleshooting or thinking about brand new ideas.

Everyone in the office is so responsive to our queries. The team that we have in the planning department and the community development department are also just incredible collaborators and staff.

So it's sharing office space with them this spring as we were gathering on the board planning plan. That was really great to go in the office every day and be like,

What's the point of order to say about that? Can we do this differently and have them all to ourselves? You know, it was wonderful. All the want to thank the police department are wonderful.

We're thinking about public safety downtown and making sure that downtown is a place that everyone feels comfortable investing in.

So thank you all. And I know I've forgotten. But again, I love this job, I love this work.

It's 16 years, and there would be no success downtown without this partner, so thank you so much.

So for those who may not be aware, so we are a nonprofit 501 , our services are free to every business and property owner in the district, roughly 28 blocks and 300 locally owned businesses.

We utilize the Main Street America And we focus on these 4 things to make sure that we have a holistic strategy.

To revitalize and support our downtown.

Everything beautiful is how down how looks and feels everything from the lighting and going back to safety, the condition of our sidewalks, which we don't need a little love. to the banners and the public art and the preservation of our historic storefronts. So we want downtown to be a place where when people are coming down to look at the beautiful lights, the tub guys has helped us install on third street. They're just like, man, I feel comfortable here. I wanna spend time. I wanna wander. And I want to build community in this place that feels and looks really good. Then our marketing and promotion is so much more than events. Anybody who knows me knows I am horrible at remembering to order porta-potties and not an event planner. But thankfully I have volunteers and staff members who are really good at that part of it. But we like to create opportunities to come downtown and make memories. So whether that's through a campaign to get to know our business owners, or through the farmer's market, where you come and get your produce and catch up with friends you haven't seen in a while. We want to lay that groundwork for community to come and feel a sense of ownership in the district. And then our org committee is sort of like our human resources. Since we are a small but mighty group, our org team thinks about how we can partner with other entities in the community for fundraising and fundraising to cover our expenses and help us make those investments, not just solo by ourselves, but with engagement from the broader community. And then the Downtown Development Authority on paper, they play the role of our Economic Vitality Committee, thinking about the support for our small businesses, somebody who's coming downtown, wanting to open up shop, that there's a support system for them. I'm also not great at technology, besides working for anybody. Thank you. Did that go? Yeah. So I wanted to show, I wanted to highlight some examples of design projects that we have done downtown. This is accumulation of staff, not just from last year, but from relaunching the program in 2023, our facade grant program. We've awarded 27 grants worth 56,000, and this is in support of exterior improvements. So our philosophy is we're reinvesting funds that benefit not only the business owner, the property owner, but there are things the public gets to enjoy and are public facing. This program requires a match. And so it's resulted in 300,000 private dollars invested downtown. So set in another way for every dollar Main Street puts into this program, another $5 is invested through private meetings. in downtown improvement. So that can be everything from awnings to an entire building renovation, you know, taking care of the brickwork, making improvements to the roof or the foundation, whatever it is. Sometimes those are barriers to investment and we like to walk alongside property owners in this process. Yes. Okay. And this is one that we've done in collaboration with Tub Buys. Thank you again, Brian, who is in the audience here. This is a collaboration between the Laramie Beautification Committee, the city, tough guys. Visit Laramie, the Laramie Board of Realtors, property owners, and Main Street. We raised over $80,000 for phase one, which we focused on Third Street. So we know that because of construction, the businesses on Third Street are struggling a little bit, that they've had less traffic, less engagement from consumers. So we wanted to do something to highlight them and say thank you They are still part of the downtown district. And so we were able to do two blocks, both sides, throughout the district. And here in a few weeks, you'll see tough guys working on the Connor Hotel, finishing up that part of the project. And once that's done, we're going to do some drug footage and really show off the capability of this project. And one of the things that I think is really exciting is that there's an opportunity to sync it with the University of Wyoming football schedule and home games. And if we score a touchdown, the Knights will do some fancy moves and all this fancy tech stuff that Brian knows way more about than I do. But over the graduation weekend for UW and then for the Wyoming High School, the colors were changed for brown and gold and then red and white. And then right now you see for Memorial Weekend and sort of leading up to the Fourth of July, they're red, white, and blue. We're going to have fun as we continue to invest in that project and make sure that people know that as they're driving through on 3rd Street that they've entered somewhere special and unique. They should park and walk and spend some time.

Thank you. Yes, thank you. I just wanted to note that holding these partners together required someone was dedicated to this. A lot of the folks who were involved in this definitely, they all played a huge role, but Main Street played that role of making sure all of these entities came together to ensure this happened. And so I just want to really highlight that because it was going to each of these businesses and seeing as they would get involved. And then the beautification board, some of us would go and talk to those two if we had connections, but really, Main street when the charge on this and holding all these people together. So I just want to acknowledge that.

Thank you for that. I appreciate it. I do enjoy her chats every once in a month. So, moving on to examples from our marketing and promotions. Again, we're really well-known for our events, but we do so much more than that. So this last year, visiting with businesses, there were a lot of folks that were not feeling completely, that they hadn't completely come out of COVID, and that construction was becoming a barrier to customers accessing them, and that our Shop Local campaign just wasn't doing enough to support them. And so there's a lot of backstory on this. We met with the University of Wyoming and people who think about the psychology of consumer spending. and to think about the language that we use to invite people to come downtown. We worked with the city and the chamber and visit Laramie and we decided to refresh our shop local narrative and move more to an experience downtown narrative so that it was less about a financial transaction and more again about that memory making or uniqueness or discovering something that you could only do in downtown Laramie. For those of you who are sitting here today who participated in this project, thank you so much that you helped us challenge our community to support local, to experience local during the holiday season. That campaign was so fun to see the amount of civic engagement around that and people cheerleading you and your favorite business and coming downtown and to also experience downtown. And so we track that data in terms of the campaign reach, both in print and social media. But one of the things I'm most excited about in meeting with the incoming university-rounding president is that she wants to get involved in this challenge this holiday season. And so maybe we'll have a little friendly UW city experience local challenge that happens from this. The other projects that we've been working on is to better tell the story of our individual entrepreneurs. So why is it that they opened a business downtown? What was their dream? What is their passion? What is it that they like best about serving their customers? And maybe a random fact about them. And so our volunteers have been working with The University of Wyoming, again, an English professor, photography professor, they launched this program called People First and helped us gather stories to be able to highlight the stories of our individual entrepreneurs. We're continuing this campaign with a new set of volunteers who are going out and interviewing our business owners so that you're going to see more focus on, these are your neighbors, right? These are people that your kids play soccer with. or that you see at the grocery store, or that you serve on a volunteer board with. And we know from the psychology of community building that you're much more likely to spend money in a local human business when you know the owner, and it feels personal. And then the International Flavor Fest, which again, thank you for the proclamation and your participation in this. Again, 100% volunteer driven. Ali Grossman and Deb Ross have been incredible in bringing this to life. Another collaboration with the University of Wyoming through their Global Engagement Office and International Student Association. We have 40 countries represented, 22 participating restaurants. Most of them run out of food throughout the week. We see an increase in foot traffic and new customers. On average, we see that each customer spends $150 during the festival. And so estimated over the five days, that's $165,000 that's invested downtown just during this week there.

This has turned into such a fun event. And I'm wondering, are you partnering with the tourism board to get this out more regionally to bring people in?

Thank you, Mayor, for that. We do partner with Visit Laramie on marketing, but I think, yes, we do have a much more thoughtful conversation about what does the strategy look like to bring more people into the community? Because most of the customers we see are Albany County, Laramie County. And so that conversation of How do we grow the event? But being mindful that our businesses are already running out of their specials. So how do we help the businesses grow if we're inviting more people from outside the community to participate? But yeah, I think that's a really thoughtful consideration. And I should say too that Visit Laramie has purchased Placer AI. So a lot of our data around foot traffic and where people are coming from is thanks to that partnership that they are running reports for us on our events.

I just have a comment on this one. About two moments, I guess. The first one is, it's really hard to pick what restaurant to go to first. It really is, because it's like, will that food be there tomorrow? But I really appreciate this, and I know other people who I've talked to really appreciate this, because I know that I don't like to try new food, but this makes me go try new food, and I've learned that I've liked a lot of food that I thought I hated back then. And then you go out and you just start talking to people and it's amazing. So if there's some way that we could get more food, that would be great. But, you know, right?

I was, Ryan O'Neill was going around the state talking to people about art and culture as economic centers. And that's what kind of got me thinking and what was that you were there two years ago. And I began to see this as a well-developed cultural event where culture as economic sector.

Thank you all and I also have a hard time

like planning out my route that week. We started the International Favor Festival specifically in April because quarter one can be quite challenging to businesses as consumers are recovering from their credit card statement after the holidays. So to drive traffic during a time of year that was typically slow, but really the beauty of this event has been inviting our international students and international community members to have ownership Of what happens downtown to feel that they have a seat at the table and then they have a place. So it really is just just as much about economic development in terms of infusion and new customers and spending the community building and creating that sense of belonging. So, the other thing that we have been trying, and I'll admit upfront always room for improvement on this 1. is doing more promotions during home games. We know that there becomes one of Wyoming's biggest communities during home football games, and that we have a lot of alumni coming into town through Casper or Sheridan. Again, working with visitors and where the target audience is coming from, how do we advertise to them where they're at before they get on the road, but then when they get to town, regardless of when telly starts, trying to get them to come downtown And again, spend some money. And so there were six home games last year, including the Josh Allen Jersey Retirement Celebration. And so we asked businesses to offer a promotion. We said something as simple as 10% off for somebody coming in wearing brown and gold. Try to make it easy. So we had 20 businesses participate, offered that 10% off. We saw an increase in digital campaign engagement, an increase in book traffic, really more importantly, the potential for greater collaboration with the University of Wyoming. When we think about the economic impact that home games have, how can we leverage that to benefit our small, low-grade businesses in the district? Well, really community-wide, not just downtown. And then farmer's market. I put this one under one of our economic development services because we treat it as a pipeline for young entrepreneurs. So you can have an idea, say about cupcakes and you're making cupcakes out of your home and you come and you have a booth at the farmer's market and you test your product with the community and you sell out every week and realize that there's a demand for your product. So then when you're ready to grow, Main Street can walk alongside you in a lease negotiation, finding a place to rent downtown, thinking about your marketing strategy. Then you continue to grow. Now you're buying a building downtown and now Sugar Mouths you know, okay, just franchising. Let's go from a booth at the farmer's market to a business that's now franchising is incredible. And that's the pathway and the entrepreneurial ecosystem we want to create in the farmer's market. So again, one of those holistic dualities of community building, it's raining, yay. Whoever did the rain, yes, thank you. but community building, but also that support for entrepreneurs so that people can come, whether their hobby or whether they're really thinking about a growth strategy and launch from the farmers market. So some data on this, and this is, thank you to Anna, who's our partner coordinator. She's done a really good job of helping us measure the ROI of the farmers market. So last year we had 183 vendors. This was a year-over-year increase in vendor applications. Our applications for this cycle was closed, and we saw another increase. Our waiting list is getting quite large. Quick math. So we know that, on average, each vendor is bringing in, on average, 1,600 in sales per market. So with an average of 90 vendors per market in 15 markets, that's $2 million in sales that the farmer's market is generating. How is money that's circulating multiple times throughout our community? Can you say those numbers one more time? So we surveyed all our vendors and we know on average based on size how much they're making each market. So this is in profit before vendor fees and our vendor fee is $35 in comparison per spot. Okay, so each vendor is making $1,600 in sales

per market with an average of 90 vendors has 15 markets, roughly $2 million. Yeah, it's so exciting.

We have the largest farmers market in the state. And we continue to think about how we can make improvements. That's one thing about Main Street, right? We're constantly thinking about, is this working? Is it fulfilling the strategy that we want to see for a vibrant downtown? Where is the pivot? How will we continue to improve? So last year we launched the Good Neighbor Program and Friends of the Market, and this was meant to address food insecurity. So many of you might remember at the time there was questions on whether or not the SNAP program would continue, the stress on our food banks and pantries. And so Main Street wanted to be able to move into this space and offer not a solution, but at least some partnership. in this role. And so through the Good Neighbor program, folks could come and if they were growing a little extra, like our first lady has encouraged us to do, or they were buying a little extra, they would leave food in baskets at the market tent. And people could either come by and grab what they wanted, no questions asked. And at the end of the market, whatever we had left, we took to the soup kitchen. So over 15 markets, we donated 434 pounds of fried food to the soup kitchen. And then through the Friends of the Market program, which was a way for us to raise money for SNAP, our plan is still, if SNAP goes away, we will continue to run as if the program exists. So for every, say, $20 that a participant spends on SNAP, they get another $20. So we're giving them $40 to spend at the farmer's market. So the Friends of the Market helps us do that. We raise money for individuals who sponsor that program. And the access that we have through the staff match, we were able to donate to intervene. So four thousand three hundred forty one dollars. We were able to get last year. Um, and again, this is matching our staff transactions a hundred percent. So whatever somebody decides to come and use on their staff car, we match it. Um, as a note, farmers market vendor fees make up thirteen point five percent of our operational income. So we've also been able to, um, keep the fees. well enough to continue to allow growth and for those vendors to make a good amount of money, but incorporated in our overall operational strategy to offset our costs.

Ooh, and now we get to talk about construction.

And I'm glad this is my thing. So during Third Street construction, YBOT invested 5.9 million Just in downtown on 3rd street on this project, this is like 30 years in the making. I mean, we've got. Plans on the shelf that go back decades. Um, so thank you to wide off for the partnership and seeing helping us see this through. During construction staff, a 200 in person visits with impacted businesses. We let them know updates from wide on. Resources that they had where to go to get more information and sometimes just listen to them. That's. Because therapy is also in our description, we created a marketing campaign with templates for businesses to use to communicate to their customers, i.e. how to access them during construction. We provided a marketing grant that matched businesses with professional, social media and graphic design services. And that was something that they wanted to create new content to engage with their customers. We purchased $3,600 in gift certificates directly from impacted businesses and used those for promotional giveaways throughout the year, throughout last year. We delivered 51 care bags, including these really cute stress balls in the shape of traffic cones. We sent out 25 newsletters to our businesses with project updates. We hosted project information on our website and staff attended weekly meetings with YDOT to stay informed and share that information back to businesses. Our public-facing communication included e-newsletters, paid advertising on social media, and at the movie theater, which resulted in a reach of 93,000 views. So we know that this construction project wasn't without its stress and frustration. We learned a lot throughout the process. I think number one is always communicate, communicate, communicate. And so that's what we struggled to do, but there's always more that we could do. And so as we move forward with improvements downtown, we'll take lessons we learned from this project and apply to next time there's an improvement project that closes the street.

I just wanted to comment that during this process, I received significant feedback from downtown merchants about the communication and then it just made the whole process a lot more workable, that they knew what to expect, they knew what was coming, they felt supported. I really got positive feedback in a challenging situation. Okay. Counselor McGill.

Um, I wonder if you can pass on some of that knowledge to the, to the businesses on brand between 17th and. State, because they're going to be impacted, so it's going to be. 1 way, so they're going to be working on around 17.

So those businesses could be affected.

And then brand will be one way, fix one side of the street, and then it'll be one way. Not one way, I'm sorry. One side will be two ways, and then they'll move to the other side to fix it. But anyway, any wisdom? It's not like there's a mainstream version for brand, but it might be nice to pass on some of that wisdom that you have.

Thanks.

Is mayors are you happy to help with sort of lessons learned and what worked and what didn't, and whether that's with the city's communication team or the chamber, you know, whoever the contractor is happy to sit down and share lessons learned.

That's the beauty of community, because we don't do any of this alone.

On to my favorite part is business support, also known as economic gardening. This is at the heart of what Main Street does. We support entrepreneurs when they are ready to jump, when they're ready for that brick and mortar location. We help them drive consumer traffic to facilitate the growth of their business. And we walk alongside them in transitions. So whether they're ready to sell, retire, relocate, or they're just struggling with QuickBooks and they need a helping hand. Staff provide this one-on-one business coaching and support. Everything from lease negotiations, marketing best practices and trends, help applying for grants or loans, navigating permits or licensing, facilitating peer-to-peer networking and collaborations, and resource identification. So we are a concierge. So when somebody comes and says, I'm struggling with X, Y, or Z, it's our job not to be able to be the best at that and solve the problem, but to identify where they can go for that support. So whether that's the Small Business Development Center, the Wyoming Women's Business Center, Manufacturing Works, Business Council, UW, the city called Triple C. It's our job to understand and know what resources exist and to play matchmaker when the entrepreneur needs that resource. So in 2005, we helped four businesses expand. So this includes growing into new locations downtown and where a business is being sold to a new owner. And assisted 22 new businesses in openings.

This resulted in a net gain of 16 businesses and 40 net new jobs. And into the organization component here, our operational income.

You'll see that the city of Laramie makes up 22.4% of our income. Thank you again for that support. Brewfest and the farmers market are by far our biggest revenue generators at 51.9% of our income. This is followed by donations and grants at 21%. Our goal is to always continue to diversify our revenue sources. And then our expenses, no surprise that staff provided services make up 61.4% of our expenses. This pie chart does not include our restricted funds. So things like our edge apart endowment, that gift can only be used for physical improvement projects. So it's not part of our operational account. We even keep it in a separate bank. So the extra part endowment helps us with the facade grant program, signage, writing, public art, any physical beautification projects.

That's why you don't see that in this makeup. So ROI.

As an accredited Main Street community, which there are 838 in the United States. And I should know that in the last 20 years, there have been 93 Great American Main Street Awards. It's like the Oscar of Main Streets. And Laramie is one of those at the national level. Part of this accreditation is that we have to track our data monthly. So we compile how much money has been sent downtown every month. whether that's private or public improvements, our volunteer hours, our business outreach, new jobs, anything you think of that we would need to measure, we track monthly. We send that over to the Wyoming Main Street Program, which is housed under the Business Council. They verify that and then send that on to Main Street America. And Main Street America, we go through an accreditation process annually. So these are the stats for 2005. Really exciting to look at for every $1 sent by main street. Another 36 was invested downtown. How many of us wish our savings accounts to that? Yeah, again, this is in large part to the improvements made by wide on 3rd street renovations of city hall. The light poles that weren't solved by the city on their street and private property investments in the district all told 8.2Million. In public and private funds were sent in the district in 2005. And this includes another 50,000 of donating labor from our community members and volunteers. So with that said, I thank you for your investments. I think we have a pretty good ROI. And with that, I'll take any questions that you might have.

Questions or comments?

Thank you, Mayor. Director Sherwood, thank you so much for the presentation and all the work you do. And I love the numbers. It really helps us tell stories. And those numbers are the most fun story to tell. It's the people you probably interact with and the business owners and the cool, awesome things like the brew fest that you guys get to help sponsor. But for me, the numbers and communicating that to the public is so helpful. uh it's a really great one for how detailed oriented you guys are and collecting this info and um in this presentation my only other comment is you know we're going to start tackling some downtown parking uh potentially the city manager brought out a few weeks back and so um you know i'm sure there will be a lot of interested folks that you interact with daily and so i could see some collaboration happening there too thank you uh counselor

uh will you keep on something that i i've heard over and over and over again um that the money that we give you as the city you guys use that to go against the city did you debunk that phone uh counseling went through you mayor um thank you um

For those who are listening online with members of the public, you'll see that all of the fever service partners have a essentially a conflict of interest form that we are very clearly drawing a sign of the line and the delineation that the investment from the city is common to use to influence. policy, to advocate, to support an elected official or an office. You can see from our data, and I'm happy to go into even more depth, that 100% of the funds that are invested by the city may go to support local young businesses. Never once does Main Street ask them for political affiliation. We are there regardless. So the business needs us, we are there, no questions asked.

Hopefully that was helpful. Thank you, Cherie.

And how's the meal? Thank you, Mayor. This is awesome. I thought I knew most of this information, but I mean, maybe two things that kind of stuck out. I didn't realize that we are the largest farmers market in the state. That is wild. That is so cool. That's a point of pride for me, for sure. And then just to piggyback off, I don't know if it was Brandon, Councilor Newman, or someone else said earlier about the International Flavor Festival. I think like eventually it would be really cool to expand to be a more regional event. I know it's like there's a lot of logistics and it's all volunteer run. I really commend Allie and Deb for taking that on. I've been able to be a judge for that the past like three or four years. So that's definitely one of my favorite weeks out of the year. But yeah, just kudos. I really appreciate those things.

Thank you.

Thank you there. Um, the kind of the farmer's market, maybe think about the fees, you know, how we'll learn these fees compared to other areas of the state in terms of vendor fees. Thank you.

3 mayor. Um, we are lower that for calls in Colorado. Slightly higher than other communities in Wyoming, but within the average, and again, that balance of making it. Affordable or to not creating a barrier to participation. But also making sure we cover our costs with that. I guess the other thing I forgot to mention is that last year we started operating nonprofits. So we offer. To nonprofits, every market, a free spot, and then we rotate through community nonprofits and partners. So you still apply, but there's no.

Yeah, I just simply that they're low. The fees are feel low and they're very important also.

Thank you. Thank you. Sure. Your presentation very educational. I just had a friend back in town. He's been gone probably 10 years and we have to sit down and he was talking about. how vibrant the downtown is and like hardly any open source basis and so something to be very proud of i did have a question on you know we have 16 net new businesses do you know how many storefronts are open still available to rent or buy your review mayor thank you that's a great question so we do keep track of

We have a building inventory, we have a business inventory, have a sense of what's open and what's occupied. Our vacancy rate historically has been very low, like less than 10% vacancy. And we do have on our website a list of anything that is either for rent or for sale so that we can help when somebody's ready to come in. Our challenge right now is the buildings that are open or underutilized are massive. So what does that mean? They're bigger than what a startup entrepreneur needs. So even last week with the board, we were talking about could we create a program to help property owners that have buildings that are empty divide those spaces up maybe to 1,000, 1,500 square feet to help that generate multiple tenants, multiple revenue coming in. And so I think there's a perception if you drive through really quickly and you see both the old boot barn is still open and empty, right? That's a huge space. And it's a combination of factors, whether it's, you know, willing buyer or seller, the economy, price per square foot, but it's really that it's more space than what a typical mainstream business needs right now. Right.

Thank you. for their questions or comments. Thank you. And then I'll briefly ask, are there any public comments on this agenda item?

Okay.

Mayor, if I could add, Council, you'll see the VEIPR service in June 2nd, Council meeting for this deeper service agreement. Likewise, I would say that we appreciate their mainstream clients and their involvement with the city. The relationship is mutual and they are most admiration for what they accomplished.

Thank you. Thank you guys very much. Thank you very much. Our

where the Larry Chamber Business Alliance leads with us tonight for some reason, but I've been reaching out to get ahold of them, but I say let's move on to the next session, would be the Larry Regional Interpol.

So fee for service contract with the Larry Regional Interpol. Thank you. Welcome.

For those of you who don't know me, for those of you who don't know me, I'm Tammy Wick. I'm the finance manager at the airport. Director Terrell is actually in Washington, D.C., getting one of her daughters settled in for an internship for the summer. So she was unable to meet me, but I asked her to come in and just talk to you a little bit about the increased funding request that the airport has for this fiscal year. In this biennium, the airport is asking for $250,000 instead of this $250,000 that we asked for last year. Basically, there's three factors that impacted our request for additional funding. The first one is just our staffing requirements with the new early morning 5.30 a.m. flight in Milan that comes in at 10 o'clock. And then the second factor is some increase at the air requirements as far as being in Park 139 airport. We have some technology requirements and stuff through that. And then the third one is just a change in some of the revenue that we know are coming for this next fiscal year. So I wanted to start talking about the operation hours a little bit. We did extend the commercial hours. Thank you. So we did extend the commercial hours at the community's request for that early 5.30 a.m. site. which are happening to expand, and we're super, our loads are up, flights are full. As a matter of fact, tonight they're bringing a CRJ 550. They usually bring in a CRJ 200, but because they've had to keep some people off to wait some balance, they're bringing in a larger plane. It still has 50 seats, but they're hoping that they'll be able to accommodate all the passengers that are flying out of Miami. But with that, we have those expanded hours. So historically, the airport's been open 13 hours a day, With the new flight schedule, we are now open 17 and a half hours a day. And during winter operations, it's usually a minimum of 18 and a half or more, depending if we have snow event that is impacting us from the first flight as well as to the return flight at 10 o'clock. So that's a pretty large expansion of hours. It's over 1654 hours of additional staff that we need to cover those hours. So that's really the biggest impact that we're going to have on the next fiscal year. Along with that, we also have some increased federal compliance requirements. We have some new technology requirements from the FAA. They oversee all of our safety, all of our airport inspections, they oversee TSA, our TSA requirements, as well as our facility maintenance and our security, also our emergency preparedness. So the FAA has a lot of requirements for what we have to maintain and what we have to provide as far as their Part 139 requirements go. So with that, some of the additional things that we found in the last year that have increased We have new technology requirements. Our applications for Part 139, we actually have Part 139 and a half, but that's how the guys report conditions for it. The runway is the apron, so aviators can get online and see what the conditions are before they fly into the air, which keeps us safe and keeps all of our pilots that are flying in safe as well. And so with that, We have that requirement. We also have a couple of additional requirements. We have our ARC requirement, which is our firefighting and resting. So we sit ARC for every commercial flight. We start 15 minutes before the flight arrives and we sit it for 15 minutes after the flight takes off. Not only do we do it for our commercial flights, but we also do it for all of our charters. So all of the UW charters that come in and go out for football, as well as basketball, volleyball, we have to sit ARC for those as well. So we have to make sure that we always have certified ARF staff available to sit those flights. So we do have some training requirements for that. The guys are all right now going through their live burns up in Casper. And Wyoming's lucky because we do have an ARF training facility. And so there's a lot of states that don't. So most of our guys can just pop up to Casper and get live burns. So that's really helpful. Another one of the new things is we just had a TSA cyber inspection. So they came out to make sure that all the TSAs, basically their technology is safe and we're keeping it safe and we're not allowing people into their IT room where they keep their IT information. And along with that, last year, Worms did suggest and strongly required that we add cybersecurity to our insurance. So that was an additional expense that we've now had to add, but most of the public agencies have also added the cybersecurity requirement as well. So that's another expense that we've had. And then along with that is a revenue change. I don't know how many of you are aware, UPS closed their 2nd Street facility and they moved over to Cheyenne. That's about $54,000 in cash data reported because we no longer have these C-line flights coming in every night with packages for UPS. So they used to fly in six times a week. The only night they didn't come in was on Sunday. So that's 54,000 facilities that we were collecting from them that we are no longer able to collect. So that was a big impact that we knew was coming as soon as we found out they were, as a matter of fact, they're already gone. They're lost. I think maybe 13th of March was the last time they delivered packages to us. So we've already seen some of that impact in the last month or so on fiscal leases. And then in addition to that, we look at the CPI. We look at the CPI every month. Over the last 12 months, the CPI is at 3.81%. So with that, all of our operating costs are going up. Our utilities are going up. the expanded flight times, now we have to have the lights on at the terminal from three in the morning until about 10 to 30 at night. Also the heat, we had to change all of our set points for when the heat comes on and when the heat goes off, and when the air comes on and when the air goes off. So it has definitely impacted most of our utilities out there as well, being open longer. So those three things are basically the main, and this is for us asking for additional funding, The airport, our whole goal is to be self-sustaining. So we are still looking at all the ways that we can increase our income. Operationally, we're kind of maxed out on where we can look for income. We can raise our fees by the CPI, which we will do come July 1, by the CPI. But really, there's no more operational areas where we can seek further income. So Director Terrell has switched her direction to the business part. So we have a lot of land at the airport, and most of it is already out in city water and sewer due to previous projects of the city. So we are working with a couple of investors right now to bring in some manufacturing out to our business park, which that would make a big cap on the airport as far as financially. No money that's generated within operations can go off the airport, but money from our business park can come into the airport. So A lot of the airports within the state use their business parks to help fund the airport, which is a really great plan. And we currently do have one business, we have Bear Living in our park community. They're a great PCV. We have worked them really well and they seem to enjoy being out there. optimal parking out there, you're not having trouble finding your way out there. So, so Bridget Cheryl is working on that. That's the main thing that she's been focusing on for the last couple of weeks. As a matter of fact, there's somebody coming in the first week of June from out of state to talk about building a large facility out there. So as we keep working on that part of it, we hope to become self-sustaining so that we can someday not ask for a single penny from the city. But until that happens, we're going to have to come in and request some money. Why not just did an economic impact study for the Air Force in the state in 2025? And we do have the preliminary numbers for that. I think their publications are going to be coming out in the next couple of months. But the Laramie Regional Airport had a $38.5 million economic activity revenue for the city of Laramie and the county. With that, there was also $1.5 million in tax revenue that's generated. So our return on investment is $152 for every dollar that the city puts out to the airport. So we have a pretty good return on investment. Plus, we're pretty proud of our airport. It's really nice. Our return is really nice. We get a lot of people who come in and they say, oh, we didn't have any idea your airport was this nice. And our FBO is really nice, too. So we can meet a lot of general invaders that come in. And they come back because they love our FBO. They can get a snack and they like to take a picture by the home of the Wyoming Cowboys sign out front. And our staff is really friendly too. So we do get a lot of people who come back for the staff just so that they can hang out and they'll take a break or they'll stop in for gas and have a rest in there. So we do have all of that going on. But we already have some questions.

Thank you, Tammy. Questions or comments?

I think what you were saying is that these firefighters are trained emergency staff are standing by every time there's a plane that's done land or take off.

For commercial flights and for all of our charter flights. If there are a certain type of flight, we are required to sit our best, part of our 139 requirements for the FAA. That's really cool. And we have three minutes to get to the meal if something happens. And we test it on how many are inspections.

That's cool. Nice to meet you.

Thank you so much for this information. I really appreciate the breakdown of these increased costs. Some of these things I would not have even begun to think about, like utilities that need to go up and UPS. So that insight is really helpful in considering this.

So thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Ms. Wigg, for the thorough explanation.

I had an opportunity about a year ago to sit down with Director Terrell She is going to explain where the airport was versus where it is now. And then, of course, now adding another flight every day, which makes everybody happy. I think you guys have done an amazing job out there, so something to be very proud of. So I think your request is just a small ask compared to what you guys are doing out there.

Thank you, Constable Berger. It's mostly due to Amy's hard work. I think she came into a mess, and that's really tripping for us all.

I'll just say, I think it's the entire team. Amy is an amazing leader, but you all just work together so closely, and I've been on the airport board now for almost two years, and it is an amazing team, and you continue to build collaboration and consolidation, and I feel privileged to be a part of it. Thank you, Mayor. We appreciate your time as well. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for the presentation. You know, I always like supporting the airport and I use it personally in the job. And the fact that you're willing to listen to the public and have that early flight has been, it's sold out. I can't even get honest and I'm not on top of it. A few times I've needed you for work, but your staff's incredible out there. So I just wanted to say, uh really appreciate this presentation and again the numbers and the story that it tells and the needs and the long-term goals of being sustainable understanding that there's some realities that you need from us from the county and the fact that we're both funding into this to um to help you guys is i think a great thing in a community asset so um really appreciate it and thanks to you and your staff for for always being here thank you very much

I think what the mayor said, the way that you guys bounce ideas off each other out there is amazing. The mayor had them out there two years ago maybe to address some concerns that we heard and then they weren't really there. But then I got a tour after the fact and Amy drove me all over the place. I think if you've never been out there, you guys should go. It's bigger than I thought it was. But she was like, she was like showing different projects. She was like, oh, that came from a groundskeeper. This came from, you know, so the way that you guys work out there, I think this is a small ask.

And since I got on the airport board, I started flying out of, uh,

literally, and it is so convenient, and we calculated what we spend on gas, parking for a two-week trip, and possibly having to stay overnight so we could be there, you know, the next day, is actually cheaper to find out of the Laramie Airport and it is a beautiful airport and I love the chairs are comfortable and there's a fireplace and popcorn and coffee and tea. It's just really cozy and comfortable and I love it.

I'll go to public comment on this agenda item. see that can you thank you so much thank you very much.

That's that with you and with this one you'll see it next tuesday at city council and then we're not going to show that we're standing for it but we're going to be reaching out to our community.

And our.

Next, fee for service and sponsorship agreement for the annual Winter Lights Festival.

Come on there. sponsors are in the process of . Thank you. Good evening.

Good evening. Thank you for having me. I'm Brian Welber, the general manager of Tough Guys Landscaping and Lighting.

I have a presentation and I have a lot that I'll probably say if it answers any questions.

But I am kind of over PowerPoints in my life, and so I have a very important person who put together a little video explaining the Winter Lights Festival, and so I'll just let you watch that, and we'll go from there.

There is sound, but... Why am I helping Mary? Things.

No, it's not. I'm sure there's a setting something that I'm missing.

Oh, that's a good thing. See what this does? Nothing.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh. Oh. Oh.

Thank you.

We count every year.

This is the biggest year. I think that Top Guys does an amazing job of putting out new displays to entertain the families and the way they entertain with bringing the Grinch and Samson. It's pretty amazing. And for sure being a sponsor, though. Okay, cool.

It's for the clinic for mental health and wellness.

Okay, right on.

It would be awesome. Definitely, yeah. seeing how many people have come and just all the lights and festivities. It's awesome.

What's your favorite thing about the Winter Lights Fest? My favorite thing about the Winter Lights Fest is how much it grows every year and all the new designs.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Yes, thank you. First of all, I'd just like to say thanks to the council for considering this and kind of what Trey had said. I know Todd is one of yours from the city manager's office. Nancy, Nancy, they all take good care of me. Nancy O'Connor, how many times she'll, when going through the permit process, she's wonderful. Todd was from day one, been a huge support. So thank you to the city manager's office. And then a big thanks to the City of Laramie Police Department. They were a huge help last year. We had our first year of vandalism after three years, which we figured was coming. But they were a huge help. When we installed more cameras out there, our cameras would go off at 10 o'clock at night, 12 o'clock at night, and there would be a city of Laramie police officer walking through the park. And so kudos to them. There was actually one night my brother will laugh at this. It was right around Christmas Eve. We were trying to catch the culprits and all that. So we decided to pull over and just sit there. And, you know, it was pathetic. We, you know, window, we had the lights off, truck off, and windows are fogging up. And all of a sudden, here comes a bright light, and we're like, oh, that's a police officer. So I decided to leave it in their hands. But, and then, yeah, huge shout out to my staff. in the support of the community. And then of course, this all wouldn't be possible without all those sponsors that you see with the signs. So yeah, I mean, the Winter Lights Festival, You guys have probably been there, and this year grew by quite a bit. And we're trying to grow at a slow rate, trying not to grow. I was given advice from a good friend, Mr. Feaser, saying how he was very, from the very beginning, and I credit that, because he was, this thing could get out again and get too big, and then it falls apart. And his advice in the very beginning was, take it slow and let it grow. Don't go too fast, because we want this to be 100 years. And that's been great. Yeah, and so, you know, our first year house started in 2022. I'm a guy with Christmas lights, and I'm really excited. I'm from Gillette originally, and we had a festival where you drive through lights. My wife is from Southwest Wyoming, and they have a festival where you walk through lights. And I approached Todd at the city, and I said, hey, can we take over a park for this Christmas? And And I'm like, sure, okay. And so we had a plan in August and we went to all these businesses that very first year. I had a PowerPoint and I was like, hey, here's my ideas. What do you got? Here's how much sponsorship. Trust me, it's gonna be cool. And I had almost 30 businesses take a chance on us, which was cool. A lot of trust. And I call those businesses my OG businesses. They're still with us today. Matt was a human being was awesome. So, like, what's cool about it is the support of the community, right? Like, I've had a lot of people come from, we hear people that come from eastern Nebraska, from, like, you know, from South Dakota. And the one thing they said is cool about what it speaks volumes to the Laramie community, that we all stick together, and that because of all the sponsors, they made this event happen. One of my sponsors, the Montgomery Striker funeral home, I was like, I don't get it. Like, why are you sponsoring this? It's not like you're out living for business. And she was awesome. She said, because my family loves it, I want to be a part of it. So, Yeah, I don't want to be emotional. That's just my kids making fun of me all the time. So what have we done? Now we're up to over 80 plus displays, 80 plus sponsors. We have sponsors. I have a sponsor that is adding next year that he wants to remain anonymous and does not want to be known as the sponsor, but he's sponsoring that big globe that we bought. We took a rest on that globe and he's gonna sponsor that globe and it's actually gonna be a globe for... I think he wants to call it the charity ball and it's gonna have a QR code to donate to local charities and things like that. You know, we have other things we're adding this year, some exciting things. We've added that Who Built Cocoa Hut, when you see that money that was raised, A lot of that came from that Whoville Cocoa Hub that we have. We only allow nonprofits to be in that Not Whoville Cocoa Hub. So the money raised comes from two different sources. The one is from, we earmark a part of every sponsorship and we earmark that. And then in the summertime, we give that back to the nonprofits that did work in the Hubel Cocoa. And the other amount is from people who were in the Hubel Cocoa donated their time. We donate all the hot chocolate, the cups, and everything, and the proceeds go to those nonprofits. Of course, if a nonprofit signs up on a busy night, it's awesome. We've had some sign up on nights not so busy, and we try to make a donation back to them to try to make it worth their time. So that $13,000, which was $10,000 in the prior year, is up from last year. Next year, we're adding, the Hubo Cocoa is only open on Fridays and Saturdays, and we are actually adding to Thursday nights now. It does cost us a lot more logistics on our part, but we have had a demand for it, and plus we've had a wait list of nonprofits asking to be in that Hubo Cocoa. And that was actually in With Community Partners Grant, we actually bought that from a silicone vendor down in Utah. And you want to see a truck going across I-8 with that thing on there, you know what books you can get. So that thing's been awesome. We've partnered with University of Wyoming to offer UW Night, which has turned into a huge night. Thousands of people come out. We have Coach Wicks read stories from the campfire. Give away free gear things like that ready right after when the public schools, you know, the grand opening has become quite the festivity. It grows every year and I swear is warm up until the grand opening and so. Like this last year, we changed our grand opening from Friday nights to Saturday nights. A couple things. Logistics-wise, getting everybody back. Saturday nights coincides with a small thing as a Saturday. We do that grand opening. And Friday, if we would have stayed on Friday night, it would have been a beautiful night to open. And then the next night, it drops. So it's Larry and Wyoming. But if somebody asks me, well, what happens if the temperature drops and it snows? It's like, we're opening that park. It is what it is. So good. We have first responders night where we give free hot chocolate and treats for all first responders and veterans. And then we partnered with the Epson Center, and we do a senior night where we actually bring in seniors and we give them rides on golf carts around the park. That's so cool. So that was actually pretty cool. It was kind of fun. There was a group of old ladies that dressed up, and they were all dressed up, and one lady asked me, like, did you like my outfit? And I was like, oh, I love it. But my staff volunteered that night, and they helped them in and out of the carts, and it's a fun night. What's cool about it is we've started to see some other businesses, not businesses, some towns around Wyoming that have started to copycat a little bit, which feels good when people are starting to do that. And so that speaks volumes to what we're doing in Laramie. We've been on, you know, PR is PR, whether it's good or bad. The Calvary State Daily picked up that vandalism. And of course they picked that up and they want to run with that. And they called to interview me and tell me, tell me all about the bad stuff. And I was like, There's a lot of good that comes from it. But regardless, it went all out to the state of Wyoming. So now everybody knows about the Winter Lights Festival and Winter Bean. We partnered with Cowboy Joe Club. They sent out to all their Cowboy Joe Club members. You don't want to credit Union. You don't have athletics. We do a lot of different outreach activities. We also were recognized. I don't know if anyone knew. I just found this out from a friend that texted me a picture. It's a game where it's called a bucket list. It's for different states. And if you travel through different states, it gives you cities and what to do in that city. And it's a scratch-off card. And the bucket list item for Laramie is a 10-winner lifestyle, which is pretty cool. And then the QR code goes to that, which goes to visit Laramie. Beyond what we're doing locally, it is getting national recognition. We were recognized as the number one display in Wyoming from Parade Magazine, which we take very much pride in. Yeah, so... It's grown this year. We're adding more sponsorships. We're adding a couple more displays. We're adding more kid-friendly events that we're going to be doing. Yeah, so it's growing. Force Carriage has turned into a huge, huge thing. Yeah, and it's crazy how many people pop up and have a lot of ideas. Some things, we talked about the surveillance. We are adding enhanced surveillance. I'm actually working with... 10 guests, and we're actually looking at doing a kind of like a little mess network there. So we have our life on network and improve security. And yeah, I mean, kind of it. I mean, it'll open again this year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We move it to Saturdays as the grand opening. It'll continue through the end of January. I did have some people ask, some people are like, why do you keep the lights up? Why are they still out in January? I was like, Personally, as the parent, I am looking for so many ways to get my kids out of the house. December's crazy. It's basically, I feel like I hardly have time to go. But in January, it's like, it is only January 3rd. Like, come on. We leave them on. We've worked on trying to get more activities happening in January to try to make it more family-friendly, community-friendly. Yeah, so we keep it on through the end of January, and just some of, like, when I talk about the fees that go into it, like, we try to keep our fees very low for our sponsorship levels, especially when I get hit up as a business, and people know you get hit up by a lot of sponsorships when different activities through the town, and every time I look at it, I realize how low our sponsorship level is for the amount of exposure people get, and It is kind of funny because you're not supposed to have a sign in the park, but for two months out of the year, people get a sign by their tree and if you sit there during the day and see how many people walk that park at Washington Park, there's a lot of exposure. So we keep our fees low, but We have every night I have staff that shows up at the park at about 430, does the walkthrough, checks all the lights, checks the music, makes sure everything's on. There's a lot of things that go on behind the scenes. My staff in the office is already working on next year. We're already planning for everything. We're calling for new sponsorships, calling people, making sure everyone's renewing. Um, we're looking at new displays will travel throughout the country to try to find more unique displays to make it more friendly. Um, yeah, so there's a lot of behind the scenes that come. So, I mean, I appreciate the support of the singularity and any little bit help some insurance costs, of course, have gone through the roof and especially for event insurance. And so we try to make it as safe as possible and try to make it a fun display for family. Everybody of all ages. Um, the hardest part has been for us, but the reason we partnered with the Epson Center is getting out to our senior community, trying to, a lot of people didn't know that it happened, and so we tried to go off social media a little bit and try to get in different Epson Center and things like that to make sure that everybody is aware and everybody gets to take it in. On Christmas Eve night, I don't know if anyone was there, on Christmas Eve, it was insane how busy it was. Of course, it was, the weather helped. I mean, I wish we had a little snow because it makes that park look more beautiful and But the amount of people that were there on Christmas Eve, making it a family tradition was pretty cool. So, yeah, I think that's all I had. Oh, and I just want to give a shout-out to Pretty Cool. We were excited. We were large business in the area for the Larry Chair Isles Conference, and I owe it to my staff for making that happen.

Very good. Thank you, Brian. Comments or questions? Councilor Lockhart?

Oh, thank you, Mary. Brian, I had to smile my entire time looking at that. You and I are flying ass, right? That's a Christmas, my favorite holiday. I remember when Brian approached me in 2022 about his idea, and I was all up for it for that thing, and that we have the opportunity on grand opening night to, we don't nail hot chocolate that night. and that first year we ran out before it kicked off because there was a lot of people so Me and John Campbell, he was with Pitch 106. We just started going. The next thing you know, we're out and finally start to talk. So we've upped our amount of hot talk. And we really like the cocoa, the hoop bill. It's a little tight in there, but it keeps us warmer with the fan. But I think it's such a great community event. And we go several times throughout the season. And last year when you expanded to be open through, January it just opens up more you know just for a horse ride you know maybe because it's so busy right at Christmas and right before Christmas to be able to hey we didn't catch it then because they too busy let's go this Friday night or whatever so thank you for your vision your staff's hard work because I know that's not easy and I hope it can change for years.

The family, thank you, Mayor, the family tradition aspect of it, both of my girls moved back to Kansas, and the one thing they do is they will come back for this every year, right? Because it's something we did before they moved away, and then now that they're gone, they're going home for Christmas. That just means we're going on the Christmas lights. And it also means I don't have to put them up in my house, because I can just put them up in the park. It doesn't work as a stock. But I appreciate it. I do have a comment or a question if that's okay. Yes, yes. You're a for-profit. Do you make any money off this event?

we have not really ran a profit off this event as of yet. There's a lot of everything that we do, it goes like that big globe we bought, for instance, that's a $15,000 piece of equipment. And that large tree that we have that changes color is $30,000. So every time we take, we reinvest money back in that. And that's why it's super important for us to take care of it, because yeah, we do own that stuff. You could say we own that stuff. But that stuff goes in our comics out at our shop, and it never leaves there until November again. So yeah, I guess you can say, I mean, in the books, but every time we are putting money back into it to try to make it better. One of the things we're adding this year is we're trying to add a little train for the kids and things like that. And that's not cheap and it's custom made. It's custom. So, so yeah, I would say to be honest, you know, honestly, yeah, there, there might be a little bit because the first year we buy the lights and then after that, it's just kind of maintaining, you know, and we upgrade the lights. But every year we've added a large piece of whatever it is. I mean, that tree, the Uville Cocoa Hut, the lights around the park when we had those color-changing lights, those lights are about $400 a light. I mean, they're not cheap. And we have to have 12 or 15 of them on that playground. And so, yeah, so I would say we do, but it all goes right back into it. And if you talk to my accounting manager, my she's always like, what are you buying now? And so she wants to be on a budget, but when it's light, it's really hard for you to speak to a budget. So yeah, hopefully I answered that question.

Thanks, Mary. So similarly, as soon as you turned on that video, I was just like grinning, just thinking about it. It's so much fun. So can you share a little bit about the costs are going up? How much cost increase are you seeing every year And it's basically like you are breaking even or maybe losing a little money. How much do the sponsorships cost? Can you provide us a little bit more information?

Yes, that's a great question. Our sponsorship levels went up just a little bit. The highest sponsorship level, so we have our, we start with our bronze, our silver, and our gold. Those are the treaties. And so it's based on The bronze is the smaller trees up to the gold, which are the larger trees. The bronze start at $750 to sponsor that, and that includes us maintaining the lights, the sign. We print all the signs. We have all the signs made. And then the next one is $1,050. And then the last one, the large trees are $1,550. The large trees have about 45 to 50 strands of lights in them. And so when you, and then, so the lights themselves, okay, you have that the first year, but then we have, if you've ever been there when we're installing the lights, we have three lifts at the park when we're putting up lights. And one of the, well, some of that is I was able to barter on one of those lights and some gave somebody a sponsorship and all that, but. So, we have the cost of lifts go up, maintaining the lifts that I have. We've had to increase that on our fleets. And then a big part of it is labor for the Winter Lights Festival. I mean, when there's vandalism, I mean, that vandalism, yeah, there's the cost of lights that was done to that color-changing tunnel. which we decided to take down. And the only reason we took that down was because that had our name on it. It wasn't a sponsor's name. If it was a sponsor's name, we would have fixed it and had it back up. But those lights on the tunnel are about $190 a strand on there. And on top of that, I had staff out there. After all that vandalism happened, I sat out there a whole day. I had about four or five people out there on that Monday after it happened. And so there's a lot of unknown costs that we come up with, that having that person there nightly to check on the staff, to check on them, the Who Votes Cocoa Hut, that's a coordination where there's a lot of coordination that happens in the office, and we have to get them the containers, we have to get them, so the, I guess maybe I don't have the exact, I'd have to go with mine, but every time we add something, it adds more to it. When we added that color-changing tree, There's so much programming that goes into that that we have to do. I mean, we have to map the lights and then we're sitting on a computer trying to make that work. So yeah, I mean, so the installation, the first year when we installed all those lights, it took us, we got it done in three and a half days. Now we're there for June, November 1st is when we hit the ground. And if you're there the night before, the day before grand opening, we're still rushing to try to get everything done. And so the amount of labor that I put into it, the amount of hours, I can get you the exact hours. Our guys keep track of their hours when we're installing. And then taking down the lines, cleaning up the park. We, you know, we try to, you know, we try to be good stewards of the park. The trash cans are full on weekends with city because the city only, you know, we don't want them on the weekends. My guys change out the trash and take that. We have, We work for the parks department to have a trash bag. So there's a lot of increased costs. I do appreciate the city taking on the electricity bill. I haven't seen an electricity bill yet. And so, but, but we try to use, we try to get stewards that as well. And everything we use is LED lights and we try to run it just for a certain amount of time. Our surveillance is going up. How much are we increased on our cameras last year, but. We're going to upgrade our cameras even more this year. If you saw how many times my phone... And this is a kudos. I'll say this, and again, he doesn't want me to say this, but... Todd, when that vandalism happened, I was in Utah with my family on Christmas, and I get a call from the good city of Laramie Police Department that there was some vandalism in Utah. And I was so... I mean, I'm very big about... As a company, we are very big about our time away from work. And so I was just like, this festival should be going too much. I am just overwhelmed. I just can't... Like, I don't want this to interrupt my family life. I have three young kids. And... I swear that it was the perfect timing. Todd sent me a text and I try not to get emotional on this one, but I'm an emotional guy.

He sent a picture of his mom. Sorry, Todd.

He said, hey, don't get down too much because his mom had visited for the week and they asked her what her favorite thing about her visit was. She said it was her night at the Winter Lights Festival. And so he said, he's like, there's a lot of good that's coming from this, so don't let it deter you. And it was perfectly timed. Sorry. But it was after his dad had passed away earlier that year, so his mom was still. So anyway, so there's that. There's a lot of emotional that you can't put a price tag on, but sorry. But you hear stories of that all the time, and I hear stories like that, and it's like, okay, back to it, here we go. Monday morning, it was like, let's get surveillance, get this stuff. That's what I did, and it was, you know, it's one of those just in the moment, but then it's like, man, there's a lot of good that comes from this that we're not going to let the bad deter us. And so, like, they can try, but they're not going to take us to them, so... So I don't have, if you'd like, I can give you, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of sponsorships. And I forgot to say our last sponsorship is a diamond sponsorship. And that's the ones like the large trees, the largest displays that have a lot of exposure. And those go anywhere between $3,000 and $5,000 depending on the size of the display. But we've had some sponsors ask us if they could be exclusive as far as like the only business in that area. And I won't allow that because that's not who we are as Laramie. Like I want everybody the opportunity. And that's why we try to keep our sponsorships low. Of course, those low sponsorships fill up fast. And the high ones are harder to go, but, you know, we try to, you know, we have plans to grow a little bit, but. Are we told all of our sponsors that signed up, we locked them in for 3 years at that sponsorship level and we don't want to raise rates on it because we want to keep this going for years to come.

Because they're free. Thank you. Thank you. Brian. Um. for all this, and one, it's really awesome in the city council organization to hear so many times. So that's pretty cool. But, you know, also I think the winters can be hard and dark and cold. And I think it's especially hard for some people with unique family situations and mental health things going on. And this is a bright light that spans generations, religions, whatever. This is a community thing. And so I think that's what I've heard in my time on council is just, I don't even know how you can quantify the benefits and people that are reached in a place that is really helpful at a time that's, you know, short daylight and holidays. So I really like what you guys have done and your approach and how you interact with the community and it's an awesome thing. So thanks.

Thank you. With that, there was, if you look at the darkest time of year, it's crazy. It's basically the whole time that we realize festivals. And I have a lot of parents that say, I take my kids out, we just go play in the playground because we can go out at 4 o'clock. And so, yeah. And that was the other thing I forgot to mention is we host, last year we were able to host three elementaries. We host them during the day. That's another added cost. We provide Santa hats, candy canes. And they all come. And then we have our guy that works for us that dresses up as Grinch. They all need a picture with Grinch. And so my staff, I pay them all while they're there. My staff, when I say volunteer for their time, they don't volunteer. We pay them while they're there. Anytime you're at the Winter Lights Festival, it's all paid time. And so, yeah, so that elementary day, we hosted over 700 kids. And of course, things that come during the day, but we still turn on the music and have some fun things going on and try to get fun for them.

I really appreciate that you have extended the time and that it is during that darkest time of the year. And also, it's concurrently with a number of religious festivals, holidays, not just Christmas, but it extends into many different holidays. So it becomes very inclusive. And I'm really inspired by the way this has grown. And I was just trying to remember the first year, you came in for the community partners funding. And was it the first year? It was the second year. So the second year, it was council who gathered and said, why are we doing this? Let's switch this to feeder service. We've got to do this because this is a service to the city. It helps to build community. And then to see that we've done three years and now we're moving into year four, it's just a remarkable thing. And I appreciate your sharing your dream and your vision with our community and just making it, like, what was that thing, the scratch card? How he had the things to do and what?

It's a game on Amazon. It's Bucket Bust State. And if you, yeah, you scratch off and I tried to send it to me the other day and it says Air Life Festival. Yeah.

Any other comments or questions? Thank you so much. Is there any public comment on this agenda item?

Public?

uh brian said a few things so do you make me feel bad uh bird pk is saying todd hates it todd hates it and what brian referring to is that you know all of us the city stop we don't do this to be thanked or to be told that they appreciate what we do. We're here in the service of the community. And that's really, he's so gracious. And he was like, hey, Todd, can we recognize what you've done? Can we do whatever? I'm like, it's not about what we did, right? It's the company that they stood up and did was so much greater than what we accepted, whether it was through the special program permit or getting them into the community partners program. It was never funny. That's what I hope Brian's referring to, because Todd doesn't want to make the right advice, but I just don't like any recognition. That's exactly what I'm referring to. And then Brian did tell the story about my mom, and I was going to share it after Brian got that, too. I appreciate you doing that. But for some reason, since my dad passed in September, my mom said that was the best day And it ended with us being at the Winter Nights Festival. I had a picture pulled up. I was actually going to pass it around if they didn't want to see it. But when I sent it to Brian, he called me up and said, I can't tell you how time that connection was. Just like he said, started it back up to figure out what we're going to do on the next days. And so it's really important. I think, as you guys all said, the impact to our community is greater than the investment. and what it shows through that month of December and January is a bright spot. And I agree with all the stuff, whether it's mental health, relief, you know, that bright light in the darkest time of the year, all those pieces it all comes to, but it comes from Brian's vision and Brian's hard work, and I really appreciate that, Brian.

Awesome. And I would say that Brian portrayed well the sense of community, of partnership, of working together, and all toward a single vision that you presented to us. So thank you very much, and thank you for your support in this, and thank you, Council. I mean, year two, hey, we need to switch this and just make it a forever thing.

So... Mayor, Council, you'll see this agreement on Tuesday? Yes. Thank you. And so no further comment.

All right. Thank you very much.

And then we'll go back to fee-for-service contract with the Laramie Chamber Business Alliance. Don't make us cry.

We need to. Thanks for the audible. I wrote this down as the 28th which was a miscommunication on my part. We've been dealing with a bit of a family emergency the last 24 hours so

We're getting through it, though, and it's dog stuff, Matt. Oh, it's good. So it's all good. I was holding my daughter's dog, so it's being done remotely, and it's been a hot mess. But thanks for the accommodation. When I looked, I was like, whoops. So anyhow, my apologies. Thanks for the audible. Glad to be here and to go over this kind of annual report. I look forward to this being more of a dialogue. I think you can look at kind of the stats and just by way of background, when I started this job in 2018, the organization had $110,000 a year fee for service. Prior to property tax, prior to all the other things we look at, the council had made a concerted effort to say, let's figure out how organizations become more self-sustainable. So we engaged our board, board said, let's see how we can move this down to a $10,000 level, which is our top tier kind of membership, because we think it's important for the city to be engaged financially and the benefits that come with it, you know, the tables and things like that. But we got to that. We plan to do it over five years. We got to it in the fourth year and moved it down to that $10,000 level. And that's what our request is for the next buy-in and will be, you know, in the foreseeable future is that $10,000 level and that partnership that we have, which I really think, is the important bank. Exciting things that we've done over the last year. We don't even need to scroll through this. We meet with any business that is coming to town, is in town, wants to be in town, is trying to grow in town. Has a problem in town because I've said about something in town. Um, we really have an open door policy to serve the business community, which includes our nonprofit partners. Um, you know, businesses near and far businesses that just do business in Laramie, but maybe don't associate with being a Laramie business sometimes. When we try to have an open door policy, our team of four, we run very lean compared to other chambers and EVOs, even in Wyoming, but nationally are competent professionals of the highest regard. If you have a question about a project that we did in the past, you can ask Joe or Josh and they'll be able to rattle off the details in a quicker fashion. than you could ever have. If you have an idea to make our community better, you know, you can call really anybody in our office, but Kate has the most fire for how do we get something going and get it going fast. It's a fantastic team on the staff side, and then we have an amazing board of 11 community members that stretch from, you know, the nonprofit world to the hospital to TriHydra, large and small employers alike. that give up a considerable amount of their time to fulfill the missions of the organization. And really the fee-per-seat service agreement that we have with the city, which I would say is probably the best bang for the buck. You'll find an economic development anywhere. And with that, you also get kind of the Chamber support. So we're very excited about that. I like to provide value, things and I like to do it through relationships and I think our whole team does and our board does. So with that, you know, we can run through the stats, you know, we can go through kind of how the budget is managed. We can run through different projects. This year has been super exciting for us. We put 45 because that's the ones we document but on a daily basis, you know, we probably meet with at least one or two businesses so that would make If you said it was a 200-day work year, it's probably more like 400, but 45 were ones that we engaged in some sort of formal, like, asked for another organization or looked at different grant opportunities. We could look at, you know, the housing work that's coming from the grant partnership, not only with the city, but the, you know, 85, 90 committed people in our community who spent three years meeting and going, okay we know there's we know the problem but how do we start you know putting some meat on the bones of the fish at all um and getting some things done with that our organization started the albany county housing land trust we were able to hire brett schneckle as the first executive director and then just last week uh through partnership we're able to secure our first property to move forward which is super exciting um and verifying all at the same time You know, great things are about to happen. And we really appreciate that partnership and kind of the visionary, let's step out and try something different. You know, as I talk to my colleagues around the state and around the country, these partnerships aren't the first lead. You know, people don't say, how do we try something different? There tends to be adversarial relationships between business and government at all levels right now. And we just don't have that here. And I think, you know, when I was listening to tough guys talk, it's hard not to get emotional about our community. And if we all get on board trying to solve problems, we can get good things done. And, you know, sometimes there's going to be pain. I think the last thing I would leave you with, and I do this every year, is some challenges that maybe we can talk about We're incredibly constrained, housing we've known, commercial space, you know, almost every buildable lot in town that's commercial, some lot is gone, which is a great problem to have, but elasticity in these markets is important for growth. We had one company that was a startup company that started in the biomedical space. We facilitated one last year. We leased space because they didn't really have the credit balance sheet to do it, so we stepped in and leased the space for them and another company to be able to upscale and move out of the Impact 307 space so they can continue to grow and scale. We've got another one on the heels of that, finding space for kind of a small medical facility It was a highly specialized space, so that was kind of an outlier, but commercial space, we're running out of space. And then I think a challenge that I just wanna put in front of you that we need to start having dialogue on is this data center and opposition to data center. And we don't have any that are like beaten down the door. We have ones that call all the time. But I think we have a very unique community, a very unique ecosystem in this area. And everybody else is approaching it from a let's not do anything. And I think we could approach it from here are our rules, here are our standards, and here's our wish list. We're talking about a different scale of problem solvers, a different scale of money when you talk about things that these data companies are willing to do for communities. But I would really encourage you to get engaged in that dialogue and dig for the facts because some of the stuff that's out there is not true, some of it is. I sort through it on a daily basis. I'm trying to get more engaged with the statewide data center coalition to try to figure out where the rubber meets the road and where the truths and where the not truths are. And I think that's important for all of us to do. Our board's authorized us to set up a tour for all members of council, city staff, county staff, county commission to go over and actually tour what's going on in Cheyenne and hear from them what the challenges are and be able to ask, what do you wish you would have been able to do better? I think that's a question that's out there that In the melee, we're not asking the right questions in that, and I think we can dictate everything from what kind of power, where the power comes from, what constraints, where limits are. I think there's ways to shape this in a much more effective way And so I would encourage you to go on that journey with us as an organization and a community and as a governing body to really kind of dig into those and say, what would we like to see? What would we not like to see? What's our heart knows? I know members of the council, you know, we have a goal to be a carbon zero. That's important. We have goals to be energy efficient. Water is definitely a concern. Water storage. There's all these things that I think we need to investigate and kind of have a wish list of what we would like to see. If one of these companies comes and says we want to be here, I think it's appropriate and timely for the city to say this will be our wishes. And these are our hard notes. So with that, those are kind of the challenges, those are the opportunities. I'd stand for any questions and always look forward to this night.

Thank you.

Comments and or questions?

I appreciate your challenge for us to look at data centers and to look at the facts and the misinformation and to look at the potential and to look at the rules that we would want to play by. It doesn't have to be 4,000 acres. It can, you know, So as you were talking, I thought about what we all just went through with the 32 acres on the west side. And there was a group just looking at that. Nope, I don't want it. I want open space. I'm not going to listen. And it was filled with misinformation and kind of a constricted vision. And So I think this might be the same. And so there's an initial, no, not in my backyard, no data centers, but if we had some, what would we want? What would be our restrictions? And we're in a position to do that and to look at it realistically and examine them. Yes, Councilor Lockhart.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Enzi. I had the opportunity to tour one of the data centers over there in Cheyenne about six years ago with a friend. He and I, he at the time was a recruiter and I joined him for a year before we did the beam and we recruited mid-level managers for data centers around the country. So I kind of got acquainted on the different areas that we're data centers and the amount of jobs that may even create, depending on the size. And there's a lot of misconceptions, but if we want to grow our economy here and create different opportunities for jobs, I appreciate your approach where maybe we should start thinking about, this is our wants, and i also want to commend you for the housing i'm glad we got to study in school and it's a good next step that process with you mr peter that's one of his our signature trees there's one of his big uh holes you know start seeing these dominoes fall housing so thank you

It's all right if I jump in a little bit. First, I want to thank Brad for all the support he's provided us over the years that he's been here, but here more recently, I think he undersold the LCBA taking on the upper management. We already counted housing land trusts as they stand up as open on the lift and the business production that they bring in. And Brad's also taken the initiative to write the request for proposals, as you may or may not know, Basic Beginnings is closing up by the Rec Center. We have city entities that are interested in that, but we also have businesses and organizations that are interested in that business and why I chose to use BRAD is to take us politically out of the decision making process and make this hopefully more of a business style process, business management process for us. I can appreciate that. I've got the RFP. It came into my inbox as of last week. I'm going to review that hopefully quickly this week, and then hopefully we'll get it out. But I appreciate all the support that Laramie Chamber of Business Alliance provides us as we continue to look at economic development. Brad also sits in a lot of our developer meetings when we're trying to find solutions to get this done. It's a real benefit.

Thank you. Councilor Freed. Thank you Mayor and thanks Mr. Enzi for all your work that you do here and you know one comment I guess to your data center point I think you know, it brings up a large topic that people see in the selection cycle, is, yeah, will data centers be in Albuquerque County, will they be in the city of Laramie? And I think your approach of challenging us to kind of look at that, because it's coming. At least these conversations are coming. They probably already have been with folks, not to me. But, yeah, I think that's, to the mayor's point, what we saw, you know, when 32 acres that may or may not be developed, potentially, I think the lesson that I've taken away is, Yeah, let's... start having those conversations like you pointed out and get out there early and often and meet with the citizens of our communities and have an idea of what we want to ask for because I think that's fantastic, but can they provide off-grid power that if this boom of data centers ends at some point, 10 years, 15 years, do we need to keep that infrastructure like they're no longer using it and add to our availability? I think there's ways that communities, I'm sure you're clued into this way more than I am, that are finding ways to If they're coming, how do we negotiate? It's not just a one-size-fits-all type thing. So that's my comment. And my question is, you know, what does $10,000 two years really, how does that help you? And I appreciate that it went from $100,000 to $10,000. You know, you're finding ways to generate other income and use your dollars. But, you know, is that enough to say that, how does that $10,000 help

LCBA grow and is that what you need?

Mayor, Chancellor, you know, I think in the world of economic development, and this is a little bit of a philosophical answer to a very straight-up question, is do you get it, like, the world is, you know, who has the most money and how do you deploy it efficiently? So, Yeah, but I think it's using the effective tools and partnerships that we have with the city and figuring out, you know, all the dollars don't have to hang with one place. And I think that's what gets lost sometimes in economic development. It becomes... you know, if you look at kind of the state dialogue, it becomes this, you know, we want to be the one entity that all the money flows through instead of going, what's the most smartest and most efficient way for us to have dollars available? One that comes up a lot around the state is, you know, every community that we've talked to as we've kind of worked through regional meetings with WAM and WIDA, Every single community, you say, what's your biggest challenge? It's water and housing. Not one community. It doesn't matter if that's Torrington, which issues five housing permits a year, or Cheyenne, which is in the 200 to 300 range. or Laramie, which has historically been at 62 housing permits, it's housing noir. So what's the smartest way to deploy capital to get it to the place it needs to be deployed quickest? And so by giving us $10,000, it has the membership, the partnership, and it's there and it's noted. But that allows a larger dollar volume to stay in the actual converse of the city to be deployed as problems change. Because it's not always gonna be a business problem. It might be an infrastructure problem. And by, you know, kind of hearing the council and ripping those dollars down to, you know, what I think is an appropriate manageable level, it allows us to keep dollars, you know, in a way that, you know, in a means that's more easily deployable. That allows our organization to be nimble with what we do have. Could you always use more money? Yeah, I would be shot in the whole economic development community nationally and probably internationally if I said, no, we would never want more money. But are there other dollars and pockets of dollars there that we can partner with and deploy effectively, i.e. the slave school project, i.e. different infrastructure extensions, leaving a larger dollar volume at the city so that we can be more nimble when a developer comes in and says, hey, I'd like to do this, but maybe I need to have 500 feet of sidewalk or, you know, an extra 200 feet of street. Like, wouldn't we rather have those dollars in a functional place where they can work that's not me saying, okay. Yeah, I guess that would be my more philosophical answer to a simple, yeah, we'd always love more money, but I don't believe that it's necessarily the most appropriate form or function in the relationship.

I really appreciate the model that rather than us doling out money and just being a contributor, we are a member. And we are a member with all the other top tier members, and it gives us a seat at the table. And we're seen not as doling out, but rather as being in partnership and having our top tier dues. And I think the other thing I just want to comment on is when I first got on council, You know, I'm a nurse, psych nurse, so I'm interested in social justice and well-being and all that kind of stuff. And when I got elected here, one of the first things that Brian Harrington said to me, now you're going to have to work on economic development. And it's been Ty Fieser, Brad Enzi, Fred Schmeichel, and Eric Teague. that have been my mentors and have helped me learn about planning and economic development. And it's been a privilege to be the liaison to the Laramie Chamber Business Alliance. And I'm so enthused by it. I got caught up in the enthusiasm of the membership tribe and I am now a member of that chamber, a proud member. And so I appreciate, thank you for all you've taught me. Thank you for the time you spend with me. Sometimes I feel like I'm in graduate school, you know, because I'm learning so much. And it's been remarkable, kind of, and expansive.

I like it, it's good partnership. Thank you. This is fun stuff. Yeah, it is. When you look at economies and economic development and really the business health and vitality of your community, we're lucky, right? A lot of towns, they say, oh, we don't have a workforce. We don't have a high unemployment rate, but show me where else you're going to have 1,350 graduates come out of one of the most I want to say one of the most respected trade school in the country. And, you know, roughly 3,000 graduates come out with, you know, advanced degrees through the university. And then we have kids, one of the ones I always like to brag on that's kind of a dark horse hidden secret, but because of my son I know about it, is that I just found out from one of the kids last night. So we have this ProStart program, right? The pro start, you can essentially get most of your associate's degree in the culinary arts in our high school here in town. This year we took, I think, four or five teams to nationals, and the culinary arts team placed 14th in the nation. And there's like 100. It's not like 14 out of 15. But we have these programs that are preparing kids for the workforce effectively, you know, in the high school. Callie Monslow runs that program. It's amazing. She has like four or five kids that are Michelin star chefs now around the country. I mean, it's really, really incredible for a thing that we have. There's just another workforce thing. So all these other towns are like, we've got all these vacant jobs and we have no bodies and we have no idea of what to do with it. And we're sure we have challenges with power, right? Housing, our infrastructure needs are never gonna hurt. But we have one of the key things is we can point to here's where we can get bodies that are educated and ready to enter the workforce in a meaningful way. So it's an amazing thing about our community that when other people call me, they're like, you know, what would you do? I'm like, well, I don't know. You know, maybe get a great big university and a great school. But you have to solve that. That's one of the challenges that we have solved. So the other ones get to be more fun. Like housing is really how do we have people in here in our community? How do we give them a longer lifeline? I always thought Kate probably was going to kill me someday. I always worry about that. I've talked to the council about it several times, but Laramie Hangover. Now I got my first job in town. Now I'm 25 or 26. I'm living at one of the college housing places, you know, and it doesn't fit with where I'm at in my professional curve and it doesn't fit with where I thought I would be. And then you wake up and you go, yeah, I'm moving to Denver because they're paying me $15,000 a year. Now your net is you're going to lose money. But your instant is I have a place to live now. But we have to figure out, those are the challenges we get to solve for, where other communities are like, we don't even know where we're going to lie. So that's fun, and it's always a fun set of problems to solve and talk about, you know, create hypotheses and go, what if? And one thing that's fun is we have a lot of people now who, as a community, are willing to sit down and dream of it and say, what could we be? and what don't we want to be, which is an okay thing to say too. And so, you know, if we put that energy more to the what we want to be, always found that to be a more effective path.

I think you bring up a good point that we have YOTEP, the trade school, we have the university, then we also have the community college that has just started a manufacturing program And so we have the potential for workforce development and to partner with high-end manufacturing to come in and to incubate and draw upon our workforce resources and build right here.

Counselor Newman? Stay out of this conversation, but now I can.

But there's some good points. Show me another community that has the community college, the university, the trade school. And all three of them work together, right? And then add the Isaac one to this. So if you could find a way to keep some of those guys here, let's do that. Because I think that would bring development in. But, you know, go to Lyotard Tech. Every credit in Lyotard Tech now gets received. And so you can fast track the bachelor's degree there. You have two years now. And then the same with LCCC. You take high school credits and transfer them there, right? And then the partnership with... manufacturing that LCCC does. Biotek now builds trailers, car trailers and stuff for a company, I think it's in Nebraska somewhere, right? Those are the partnerships that make this community what it is, and I think you guys know about that as well.

Any further questions?

I'll just add one more. feel bored with this LCCC. They're also integral and, you know, you've got Impact 307 and the entrepreneurial ecosystem, but LCCC has really stood up, not only in our region, you know, in this community college district, but being the leader for kind of the touch points around the state and how we develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem. And it's everything from makerspaces to how to set up your things that work with SBDC. And they've really stepped into this amazing kind of connector role. And Lindsey, she runs the program and she's fantastic. With community colleges, you have this opportunity to be more nimble. But the accreditation at the university and at the trade schools is much more rigid. It takes three or four years to get a new program on at the trade school side. I don't even want to guess at the university side. I know who to ask, but Brian gets in trouble for that. I want to get home. And, you know, there's big timelines. But the community colleges can say you need a certificate program to make sure somebody's workplace is safe for your particular workplace. They can build that program in less than 18 months. Like have it to where it's a certificate program. And if you just need the training, they can develop the training program. Robert Brees works in this space. They can develop a training for your company almost instantaneously. So yeah, that's another one. I feel bad that I missed, and I hope Joe doesn't get me later, but we're the team anywhere in triple C. But that's an important part of our statewide ecosystem. Every community is really working on what are our core industries, And then to Counselor Newman's comment about we wish we could get more WyoTech students to stay, last week, it's always fascinating, the week before last, always fascinating to talk to the kids after a week because it's the most hotly highly competitive, 100 employers from around the country come in to recruit these kids. Some of them bring jets to fly these kids back out and interview at the place they'll go work. And so when we talk about getting these kids to jobs, this is cutthroat competitive. One company has, if you work for the company and you're a family member, they will pay for your education here. They're willing to come in and help with some of the dorms on this. I mean, this is highly competitive. That's the kind of graduates that you get. And it's not just WyoTech. One thing that I hear about UW graduates when they go out in the workforce and they're in California or Colorado is like they think different. They have a different mindset. And I think that's one of the cool things that happens in Laramie is you become a problem solver and you really try to get it done. But it's highly competitive. And that's going to be a pivot point here in the coming years for our community is how we create those jobs So they want to stay. And we have some of those opportunities, but how to create the opportunity for more to stay and stick. Somebody in about my second year said, you know, why don't you have Why don't you have this solved, you know, to employ all the people? And I started looking at, you know, we've had some really, really good years, banner years in economic development and the companies we've recruited, the companies we've helped grow in Wyoming. Banner really for the entire western U.S. and regions. Awesome. But, you know, if we said it was 300,000, Just to do the ongoing year-by-year basis of graduates from UW alone, we need to increase that tenfold. Then you have to bring it up another fourfold. So we'd have to go up 14-fold just for the graduates that we generate locally. So that's kind of that moonshot jump. When we talk about numbers, we can talk about how do you create, you know, 10 spots? How do you create 15 spots? How do we create those opportunities? How do you have people work with our entrepreneurs here to get inspired and launch things, be it franchising or otherwise? And that's really, if we step into 14-fold, we don't go in 14-fold, so.

Thank you. Any further comments or questions? Thank you very much. Is there any public comment on this agenda item?

I'll return to the city manager.

This agreement you'll see on Tuesday. So it'll be one of the four that you'll see this on Tuesday. We appreciate everything Brad has for us and that mutual relationship is gonna be a little bit, so we're excited. Good luck with your job. Thank you. Thanks, Brad.

Yeah, good luck with your job. Thank you, Chris.

This is also a dyslexia.

So that is our work session. And now we'll do City Council updates. Councillor Newman. on my board do not, so anybody needs to let me know.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

I got back from College Station, Texas

On Friday, it was, like, way too hot. That humidity right here was, like, out to here in a week. But the fun part itself was great. I'm really grateful that I was able to participate in that with both of you all again. There were some really great sessions around housing and just kind of, like, that town-town relationship with regard to that. And so I was able to connect with a lot of different rural institutions, a lot of city employees from different towns, a lot of folks from the South. So that was cool. And then we had our presentation Thursday afternoon. It went really, really well. We had good attendance at our session. It was great. People were impressed. They were just learning more about Laramie and the community that we have here. They were all, they were floored that we would have one public university in the state. And they were really impressed kind of with, you know, just the representation that we had at that conference for our town yam chapter. You know, sometimes like in other cities, especially bigger communities, you won't have the mayor at your town yam meetings, right? Things like that. So it was, it was really cool. It was a really positive experience. And yeah, Thank you.

Uh, no, I'm pleased by the next week. Okay.

Uh, I have been gone, so people have been covering for me, so I don't have any other than I should say, but do you have one in mind? and means to give them some meetings over this past week there and working on the national industry sent out someone to help them with some additional energy so that's going to go and say that the game and it should be official as we are reporting. Thank you.

Thank you very I have the how we can ensure that we're meeting with you on Monday and it's budget time so it was a very special okay.

I guess the tree.

Thank you, Mayor. On Wednesday, May 13th, Park Street is where everybody met, and we met in the Longe Park. I got a tour of some of the new infrastructure updates that are happening. So director Bork and his team have been working really hard on that. Really cool. And we had a presentation from students from the Worth Initiative that did, that helped compile data for some of the studies that the city is looking at for who uses the recreation facility, different parks, and trying to gather data from the university perspective as opposed to regular members of the public as part of their capstone before they graduate. So that was really cool. Then on the 14th, the Ranch Advisory Commission met for a quarterly meeting. We talked about our goals and revisiting some of the objectives in this three-year pause from a grazing lease. So really just revisiting some of the top priorities, asking a lot of really good questions to the city staff who are managing this ranch so well, and got a lot of really positive feedback from Fish and Wildlife, the Conservation District, and other really active members of the community that are involved in that space, and to hopefully You know, take what we've learned and make another either addition to the goals or come up with some goals in the next year to move through this pause in the grazing. The City Commission was canceled on the 14th because of the City Council work session, and I missed the Railroad Depot Board meeting because of our work session on the 14th with the budget. Then the last thing, last Thursday, or last Tuesday, I missed the City Council meeting to attend the Mountain West Trails Conference in Rock Springs for my regular job. Why it's relevant, sorry I didn't get to see you all, is that there's new studies coming out, I think they're on the right office, about the economic fatality of trails. You know, there's tons of trails in our community and so that data research is constantly getting more and more available and accessible, and there is just so much mental health and dollar signs associated with open space trust. So something to keep our figure on, and George Borg and the city staff are already on that stuff, but it's up there. Thanks.

Thank you.

Councilor O'Doherty.

I went to the YDOT meeting about Grand Avenue that they had at the Rec Center and it conflicted with the playwright tonight. Anyway, so good information about the work they're gonna be doing on Grand and it's Knife River again. And of course they have Ms. Jackson and Brian Shields, the construction engineer was there to answer questions. And we heard from several members of the traffic commission to get, why not to slow down the roads because they've received more accidents there by Walmart. And so Ryan said he would look into the numbers. I'm pretty sure they factored that in when they design roads. But anyway, so we had some input there. And then I was wondering, I wonder if he could be, because he's on one grand, a part that's gonna be affected, maybe they could be a clearinghouse for some of that information that when Director Sherwood was telling us about related to downtown, like things that could be done for the Grand Avenue.

It's just that. I actually wrote down the same thing on CVA, Grand Avenue, construction. Oh, great. And then the,

The Environmental Advisory Committee, some members are going to hear from Sierra Club on Thursday, the 4th. A bad proposal, like maybe we should weigh in with Rocky Mountain Power because around in the West, they're using alternative energy, but they're getting rid of it in Wyoming for Wyoming power sources. And maybe as a big consumer of power, I think if I did our... our online checkbook probably that I saw over 900,000 with our power bill so far this fiscal year. If you sum up all of the right amount of power. And so we're a consumer and maybe we should have a letter saying, you know, we have these carbon neutrality goals and you know, we can, we have a franchise if you want to do here. So anyway, so they want us to consider something like that. So the environmental advisory commission is going to be discussing that on Thursday.

That's it for me. Thanks. I attended the DDA, front and vice mayor. There was not a quorum, but we sat around and had great conversation, waited for about 20, 25 minutes. And that was fun. And then on the 19th, I was invited to attend the Laramie Main Street focus group on economic development. And it was just so fun because I'd been working on this economic development thing for almost two years to be invited to be in the room with so many people that I'd been learning and working with. French Schmeckle and I met with the people at the Regency Residential facility, and they are proceeding with their project toward the expansion of assisted living, which would be that mid-level care, not a nursing home, but assisted living, independent. So they had a good conversation with Trey Sherwood, who gave them some leads on grants that would be appropriate for them to apply for. It's definitely something that we need in this community. We do not have any mid-level assisted living care. And so they have asked if we will give them a letter of support for this grant. And you'll see that on Tuesday. So Friday it will be posted, and you can review it. After that meeting, LCDA had business after hours at Hospice, where I'm on the board, and that was good. And then I rushed out from there to see the Playwrights Showcase, which was absolutely amazing. Will, congratulations. Thank you, Anne. Yeah?

Wish we could have made it.

It was just so interesting to see how fifth graders look at the world and how much they observe and they work that in to kind of an ironic perspective in their little plays. It was great. And just the timing, everything was just super right on this year. I loved it. I can't wait to go next year. Thank you. Then Brent Schmeichel and I and also Brett was there. Lunch at the Soup Kitchen. So I'm trying to go there once a week and just kind of hang out. Then I get invited to speak on community engagement tomorrow at Leadership Laramie. And then we have the comprehensive plans steering committee tomorrow evening. And then on the 28th, the civil service commission will be engaged in deliberation from the two days of hearings that we had a couple of weeks ago. Since then, busy couple of appointments. With the way I'm confident. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Nancy's really been working on the, a lot on the grand conference. And that is, I can't believe this, next week.

Next week. Wednesday. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So would you like to update us?

Let's see, what have I been updating? We are excited to have it coming next week. The welcome reception will be hosted by Laramie at the Laramie Railroad depot. We thought that would be a great location as it's downtown. Also kind of encouraging folks to venture off after the welcome reception. There's just light of the nerves. So they can go out and experience the rest of downtown after they're done. they will have hot chocolate and s'mores at the fire pit following the reception, you know, to encourage that foot traffic and stuff a little bit. So we're excited to kind of show what we have downtown. Then we will also have the hosting of a breakfast at the Wildcatter Suite. We haven't done that in the past. So that'll be something that we're kind of excited to also kind of showcase your website, having been up there before. They can kind of look out and see the whole community as they enjoy breakfast together before attending sessions that day. So for those that registered, hopefully you know who you are. Then we've got you, if you haven't registered and you still want to attend, let me know. And we can still get you registered, even if it's just for the dinner. The plan posted dinner on Thursday night, which is at the KVC Center. So if you want to attend, just one of the social events, you're welcome to let me know and we can see if we can still get you registered. We also have a FIRE page. um promoting pilot hill kind of showcase that area as well because that's kind of needing to our community as well um so that will be at 6 30 on thursday morning do you have a document that has the schedule of amends I do not have their full agenda in one single document, but I can get you the link. It's available on their website under the events page.

And then maybe if we can send the link out to council. Yeah. You can take a look and see where you can attend. I think it'd be, if you're able to attend any part or all events, it would be great for us to connect and have a presence there.

Yes, thank you. Nancy, do you recall is that IP open to the community? Can they sign up the morning of?

Yes, it is.

then they can sign on that money. All of the land participants have been encouraged to ever be able to sign ahead of time. We can't guarantee shirts if you sign on that day.

We've had to print a limited number of shirts. So we do need more future access. Yeah.

And I'm just curious, who's planning to attend summer on? Oh, good.

And if you want to sit at the registration table, just let me know.

I'm trying to coordinate that.

Very good. So. That's a big event. I don't know. I did attend the. And set up a Rocky mountain power cable and. Part of the reason for them inviting me was for me to talk to the president of Rocky Mountain Power about what we're doing, what we need, and what type of ideas we have. And we had about a 30-40 minute intense conversation and they are ready to meet with us to really learn more about some of these things that we heard about tonight. So we'll see.

Next week is going to be busy. All right. So with that, if we can move to looking at our agenda for next week. Oh, I know they're on the back of it. Here we go. So is there anything on the consent agenda that you would like removed? The vice mayor and I talked about buying F to promote the Regency retirement residence, but we later thought

If they get the grant, maybe we would have them come speak for five minutes and talk about where they're going with that.

Mayor, your question, if I may? Yes. So for 9E, that's not a presentation or a report. We don't have a report. That's just saying that report is completed. Right.

So it will not be a presentation. It's just the completed report that we've already certified them.

in the work session. Okay. And then any questions on the regular agenda?

Mayor, I could, uh, one nominee is in part another, NRDC has agreed to develop a mechanism to hire a firm to employ the monetary wealth. So, the monetary wealth program.

So, you'll see that in the future also.

Thank you. any comments, suggestions?

All right. We are adjourned.