Remarks by Micah Richardson
49 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 2
“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?”
“All right, so county come on up. Welcome. Thank you.”
“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.”
“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, 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. 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?”
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
“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…”
“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.”
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
“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.”
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
“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…”
“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…”