City Council - Regular Meeting

We are so glad that you all are here to join us. We are going to start the night off with public comment on non-agenda items. If there's anyone here who has comment on non-agenda items, please feel free to come to the podium and we can give you your three minutes of time to share your thoughts. Going once, twice, three times, gone. Okay, and there was no one online?

All right, so again, thanks so much for everyone coming out tonight to learn a little bit about the ballot initiative. This is, again, a joint work session, and we are going to kick things off, get this started with, I believe, Director Wade, are you starting us off tonight? Just kidding. Not kidding. Assistant City Manager Wade, welcome.

Wonderful. Thank you very much. And would you like to say anything, or do you want to just get going?

I want to welcome everybody. Thank you. We need always need as much input from as many people as possible. So thank you very much for attending.

All right, so county come on up. Welcome. Thank you.

I was wondering if you could explain the difference between the fair market value and the assessed value, because I usually kind of get mixed up with it. And I'm hoping that I'm not the only person or you know, so if you could, so that 6000 comes off of the assessed value, which is already less than the fair market. Could you explain? Thank you.

is that good good counselor doherty follow up so that's six thousand off that's coming off of it's already reduced it's nine point five percent of the original and then it's six thousand off of that let's go through you vice chair yes that is correct for the veterans exemption it is six thousand dollars off of the

Yes, thank you. I have a question on the county building reserve, because that was voted in through the could it actually be used because voters have said that is how they wanted that is what they voted on. So is that is that 1.

Kelsora Doherty. I just would like you to clarify the wind, the wind revenue, that's for the construction of the turbines. It's not ongoing, right? That's why it's a one time.

Thank you. And Assistant Vice Manager, on the previous slide, just in looking at the, there was the growth of the lag in purchasing power in the 3%, and that is stopping there at 2026. And when we're thinking about how we use these dollars and the $470,000 last year, over time, What do you anticipate? You said right now we are handling that, we've prepped for that, but what do you anticipate over time with a continued cut like this?

Thank you. That inflation does that include like health insurance? I know those costs go up a lot.

Thank you, Assistant Vice Manager. Assistant city manager. I don't know why I called you vice manager. Apparently everyone's a vice tonight. So there we go. Questions from council or county commission. All right. Oh, yes. Comments too, please. Councilor Rowling.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Assistant City Manager. I'm still getting used to that, Jen. And also to Assessor Matthews and Treasurer Fletcher. First of all, I think I just want to commend all three of you for being able to distill very difficult and dense information into something that's palatable. That is not a skill that everyone has. And I think we really rely on our city employees and our county counterparts to make sure that that. is realistic and i've just been thinking a little bit about this number of five hundred thousand dollars and reminded that you know just at the beginning

Thank you. And following up with that as well, those reserves we have plans for, right? So we know something is going to cost, you know, $50 million. We are saving those dollars so we can plan for that project that we are doing. So many of those are earmarked for things that we have coming forth.

Yeah. Thank you. For real this time, Wyoming Taxpayers Association. Welcome, Hank Hoverland. While we're waiting for that to come up, just a big thank you for coming over and joining us in Laramie to share all your wealth of knowledge. Thanks so much.

Great. Thank you. Any questions? Councilor Doherty?

Can you remind me where vehicle taxes go? Do they go to the general fund of the county or does that go for roads?

Other questions? Thank you. We appreciate you coming over. Just in thinking about the presentation, Mr. Hopesland talked about the special districts. And I know we have some folks in here who are funded through those mills. And I hope we hear from them tonight because, again, while the city and the county may be kind of well positioned to kind of get through this in the next few years, I think our special districts are often working on a much much smaller budget and those hits they are already being they're already working in a very tight budgetary landscape and so if any of those folks are he

anywho any other oh counselor bowling please thank you vice mayor that just um your your notice about uh special districts just reminded me that we're talking about 68 of taxes in albany county going to k-12 education 35 million dollars 2026. and um that it would also be helpful for us to you know at some point be in conversation with the trustees or um with some administrators at the district level because i mean i'm i'm assuming that there's a number of people in this room with children in k-12 public schools here in alamany county and you know that is that's a serious ramification that we'r

I just want to bring up just to be clear that the state is constitutionally mandated to pay for education. So that will get paid for, but again, we're just shifting pots of money, right? So if it's cut somewhere, we can say, oh, don't worry about education because the state is mandated to pay for that. It's in the constitution, but they have to take it from somewhere. And those revenues are, I mean, everything's getting... You just got to look at all of it. As it was noted before, it's kind of complicated and not always super straightforward. So I appreciate you bringing that up. Other thought

Other comments, questions from Commission or Council? City Manager.

Thank you. all right now we will open up to public comment and sign we'll go those folks who are signed up first and then anyone can come on up and participate we encourage it so first up is mr gruber come on up jerry welcome good evening everyone i appreciate the time to visit with you a little bit pardon my voice i've had a larynx problem here lately

Okay, sorry, I'm going to interrupt you one more time because I gave you an extra minute. All right. And I don't want to cut into other folks' time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Gruber. Next up, anyone? Oh, sorry. We've got Representative Testic. Thank you.

more so sorry to interrupt you representative um and your time is also up i apologize uh thank you and if you have additional information please email that to us thank you thank you just so folks in the room know i probably should have set this up front three you get a whopping three minutes and it goes by quite quickly while you're up there so just a heads up all right so we are through the folks who signed up um so if there's anyone in the room who would like to come forward and speak on this issue please we invite you Welcome, Mr. Wyatt.

All right, anyone else? Come on up. Welcome, Ms. Crocker. We have three minutes. If you can state your name, that would be great. Sorry, the other thing I keep forgetting to tell people. Thanks, Nancy.

Thank you. Welcome. You can share your name. We'd sure appreciate it.

Thank you for that additional information, Commissioner. And one additional note to that, those mills have all been voted on by people in the community. So these are special districts, things like that. The community has said they wanted, they think that those are important and that is why they are in place. Are anyone else in the audience? Come on forward. Welcome. Please say your name.

Thank you. Right, anyone else in the audience? And I am if the group is okay with it. We had Lindsay here with Weed and Pest who had to leave early and left her notes with Katie Wynn. And so if you all are okay with me re-inviting Katie Wynn up to represent Weed and Pest, I would sure appreciate it. Great. Come on back. Thank you, Ms. Wynn. Can you remind us of Lindsay's last name as well as you? Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much for sharing. Anyone else in the audience who would like to come forward? Anyone online, city clerk? Okay, last chance. Audience. Anybody dying to speak?

All right, so that concludes, well, actually public comment, I mean, council and commission comment, if we wanna finish up with any comment before we close up here. All right, just again, a huge thank you to everyone who came out and shared this information. I encourage each of you to continue to talk to folks about this and talk to those special districts, talk to the fairgrounds, talk to anyone who you know might be impacted. Thank you all for coming out. We have a little bit of business to do on the council side. So we'll just take a quick, maybe three minute break and come back for council

I've been on leave, bereavement leave for two weeks. And I want to thank everybody for the tremendous outpouring of support and love and concern and the great meals. And it's just been amazing. So thank you all very much.

And you would do the very same for us. So thank you. I attended an LCBA meeting, Laramie Chamber Business Association meeting for Mayor Cumbee and kind of came on a tail end of it because I was at another meeting prior to that. But a lot of good conversation around just businesses coming in, thinking about different properties. So that was really informative. The Main Street met and they talked about, went over the kind of the information from the Brewfest. They are talking about just the activities moving forward for the fall. There will be some things that are happening on that side. And the

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just a few updates. On Tuesday the 1st, we had Police Advisory Board Um, it was a, um, a long meeting that was mostly about, uh. Procedures resolutions and amendments to, uh, rules of procedure. Um, but all of that is really good. Um, also, um, uh, in our next. work session next month, we will be voting on and approving a special op ed about the fifth penny, its importance and how that affects public safety. So please be on the lookout for that. And then later that evening on the 1st, no, I'm sorry this the next day was intended to be our 1st Laramie youth council regula

And because I said I was going to do this and almost forgot, you all should have gotten an email about signing up to do the fun stuff with fire. If you haven't responded yet, let them know if you want to participate in all the burn. Do you want to share all the stuff? Yes, because City Manager Fieser was almost a firefighter. I don't know if all of you know this or not. Okay. Yes, please. Yeah. You got to promote this. Yeah. Oh, you can do right here. You're good. Either way.

Thank you, Chief Commander Bridgman. And so just look for that email from him if you haven't responded and you're interested. Okay, perfect. Sorry. Now onward to Councilor Shumway.

I know you're supposed to trim your beard, but would I trim my mustache if I were to volunteer?

I wanna thank Councilor Boling for all the work that he did on getting the Laramie Youth Council ready to go. I know the first meeting is now in October. Looking forward to meeting with them when they meet. That's all I have.

It works. Okay, thank you. Councilor Newman and I sat in on interviews for the parking task force and we were originally thinking two people, but I spoke with city manager cause we'd like four and he said, do it. So we have four community citizens that we'd like to appoint to that. And then I also had help from councilor bowling this last week for, uh, uh an individual be put on the ura and so we interviewed two and there's one that we're really really excited about so and then the other one we think could be good but elsewhere maybe so but they were very interesting and fun to talk about too

Thank you, Council. Okay, on to agenda review. Does anyone see anything that they would like removed or moved to the regular agenda from the Consent Agenda besides?

Not a move, but I just want the Public Works Director to let us know what kind of pickup we're getting because it's always a touch of truck and opportunity.

Perfect. Maybe he can add the detail. I bet it's in the report. You might be able to see it then. Yes, Councilor Lockhart.

I'm along the same lines, except from what I remember most of the times, anytime there's been an award that we've put that on the regular agenda as a yes, no, because I'd like to know, maybe it'll be in the report. Who did we get the truck from? Who was the bids? Things of that nature, since... So it's just nice to know that. So I don't know if we need to put that in the regular agenda or not. Thoughts, but that's just one of my concerns.

I'm interested in that too. Well, yeah, because typically that should be over the amount that would be on the consent agenda normally, right?

I'd like to pull it because I heard a rumor that it's hybrid.

Okay. Excited. So pulling that one. City Clerk, did you get that? Okay, great. um right then any questions otherwise on the agenda okay oh yes assistant city manager not assistant vice anything i i i actually wanted to giggle but i couldn't because we were presenting

All right. Anything else? Okay. Thanks, everyone. We are adjourned.