Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome everyone to the Monday, September 14th Pine Bluffs Town Council meeting. Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The first item on the agenda is the agenda approval.

I move to approve the agenda. I'll second it.

Hearing a motion and a second to approve the agenda, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Hearing none, motion carries.

The next item on the agenda is the consent agenda.

I move to approve the consent agenda.

Hearing a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. All those in favor? Opposed? Hearing none, motion carries. On the new business and action items. First item is resolution 2026-09, a resolution amending the Town of Pine Bluffs fiscal year 2026-2027 budget to capture revenues and expenditures related to a grant from the Federal Aviation Administration and a grant from the Wyoming Department of Transportation Aeronautics Division from the rehabilitation of runway 826 at Pine Bluffs Municipal Airport.

Mayor and Council, this is simply a resolution to increase our budget to reflect the grant funds that were awarded in this fiscal year, thereby changing our original budget.

I'll move to adopt resolution 2026-09. I'll second.

Hearing a motion and a second to adopt resolution 2026-09. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Hearing none, resolution is adopted. Next item is resolution 2026-10, a resolution amending the Town of Pine Bluffs fiscal year 2026-2027 budget to capture revenues and expenditures related to a grant from the Federal Aviation Administration and a grant from the Wyoming Department of Transportation Aeronautics Division for the last 20% of the weather reporting equipment, otherwise known as AWOS, replacement project at the Pine Bluffs Municipal Airport.

Mayor and Council, this is a similar situation. We received the remaining funds to complete the AWOS project at the airport and this is to update our budget to include these increases in revenue and expenses. I'll move to adopt resolution 2026-10.

Hearing a motion and a second to adopt resolution 2026-10. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, motion carries.

Big day for the airport.

Next item on the agenda is the presentation of the Boys and Girls Club of Southeast Wyoming. Yes, please go to the podium and announce your name.

How's everybody doing? Thank you for having me, Mayor and Council. My name is Justin Pendleton. I'm the chief executive officer for the Boys and Girls Club in Cheyenne and Southeast Wyoming. First and foremost, I just want to thank you all for allowing us to be in your community and serve your kiddos. It's a big honor to be here and to be part of this great community. We've learned a lot over the years. We're going on almost three years now of serving your community. And, you know, we learned that Pine Bluffs is not Cheyenne, Wyoming. And so, you know, it was a great eye-opening experience for all of us and understanding kind of how a smaller community operates and, you know, what your values are. With the club, you know, we, well, for me, I came into this role having my predecessor already started the conversations with the prior superintendent of coming out to both Burns and Pine Bluffs. And working with Mr. Parentoni, we were able to make that happen. And we're just thankful for that. Over the years, we've seen our ADA, average daily attendance, go up and down a lot, quite a bit. And really trying to understand what is going on in Pine Bluffs at certain times to make that roller coaster happen. We would love to serve as many kids as possible. Our goal was to serve... every kid at least 52 times a year. That's our optimal club experience. And so that's at least two times a week. Right now, what we're seeing is kids come and go one month to the next, maybe taking three or four months off and then coming back to the club. And so really trying to understand what that looks like and how we do better in serving your community and serving more of your kiddos. Overall goals will be to serve at the junior high school and high school levels as well and be able to provide those kids with academic success, character and citizenship, and healthy lifestyles and really try to get them immersed in the programs we offer. The club has thousands of programs that we can offer the kids throughout the years. We try to do that in eight-week rotations so that way the kids do not get stale and get bored with the programming that we're doing. But we're trying to bring new and inventive programs as well, robotics, different things like that. We just purchased some new computers that the kids are using for some coding in App Labs. But our goal is to really expose the kids to things before they see it in school so that they're not scared of it. For me growing up, I would go to high school and I would see some of the things. I'm like, wow, I'm scared of it. I don't know what to do. But we have a lot of kids now at the kindergarten through sixth grade age that are exposed to a lot of things that the high schoolers are doing. that they're okay with and they really thrive in. And so, you know, our goal is really to grow and serve more kids in this community. You know, one of the areas that we really enjoy is having our own space at the town hall. You know, it gives us the autonomy to really serve more kids and on times that the schools are closed. You know, we want to be a support to the schools, but then on those off days and those holidays, we want to be able to serve the kids too and give them a place to be to really continue that learning and that growing. One area that we have not been successful in is providing a summer program, a full summer program. At all of our other sites, we serve for Burns and Cheyenne, we do a 10-week summer program where we serve kids from 7.30 in the morning to 6 o'clock at night. They are provided breakfast, lunch, two snacks. They're giving fun and engaging programs. We have a summer brain gain program. Statistics show that kids lose a certain amount of what they've gained over the year over the summer months. And our goal is to ensure that the kids maintain and then still grow over the summer months with that academic success programming. And so, you know, one of the units that we did this summer with our summer brain game was a CSI crime scene investigation. And so we were able to have the kids, you know, do measurements and to plot out different scenarios and, you know, earn a lot of skills that they normally would not have gotten. And so it's kind of neat to see that those fun and engaging programs um you know our partnerships you know we've had partnerships over the several years with our sheriff's department here we've had some of those folks come in we've done a lot of community engagement and we want to do a lot of community engagement activities with the families as well you know we would love to be able to hold some of our fundraising events out here our back of kid breakfast is a huge fundraiser we do where we invite people to just it's an ask and we invite people to come in and enjoy breakfast with us we would love to extend that out here and do some of those type of things here. You know, we like to do family nights and provide, you know, specific meals for our families just to engage and get everybody to come together. But, you know, one area, again, we are struggling in is getting that consistent participation. And so, you know, I would love to hear some feedback or have any questions asked about what the club is doing and what we're trying to do. Our goal would be to have a standalone facility within your community one day that serves kids nonstop, 24-7, and really, you know, engages them in a lot of fun and engaging things. You know, I know Miss Heather over here is our unit director and she's doing amazing things and trying to grow our population day by day. You know, and word of mouth is kind of how, you know, a lot of the families are hearing about us. And so, you know, I'm always here for any questions. I would love to get over here more often and engage in some of the events that you have and have the club as a sponsor for you. Um, one thing that, you know, we, all of our satellite sites, you know, they come at a cost. I know when we first initially came out here, we had the Alex program where the Alex program was free. Um, you know, and we, you know, talked to the mayor, Mr. Parentoni, um, the stability of that sustainability, you know, that was up in the air. And so the club wanted to take on that ownership of, of kind of taking on your kids. We did, um, conform to kind of what was going on with Alex program, and we are providing service to five-year-olds. Um, in our other sites, we do not serve five-year-olds. Um, that is something that we had to go to DFS with and, and deal with, but also our national partners to ensure that we can serve your kiddos. And so, you know, we want to be flexible to what your needs are here in your community. And I would love to hear more from all of you down the road of kind of what your needs are, what you're seeing, what you're hearing, because we're only as good as our weakest link, and we want to be strong for your community and all communities. You know, trying to really engage the community to support itself. You know, right now, you know, a lot of our donations come from the city of Cheyenne to support and serve out here. And we would love to have Burns and Pine Bluffs both sustain themselves. On average, we're looking at about $150,000 a year to run a site for the year. That's with our closure weeks, with the holidays, and also our summer programs. That's to support the staff, the programming, and the materials that we have. When we first started, we started in the schools and, you know, we didn't have a fee to be in the schools, but we did not have the autonomy to serve on those no school days as well. And so being able to serve out the town hall gave us the options to serve our kids in a deeper capacity when schools are out. And so we do have a cost with the town hall, which it's fine with me. But we also are serving meals and different things to the kids as well every single day, providing them with opportunities to go on field trips, those type of things. And our biggest overhead is our staffing, really trying to find great people that want to serve our kids and help them grow to be successful individuals. Yeah, so that's kind of our club in a nutshell. And I wanted to see if you guys had any questions of me, any clarification.

I've heard a lot of great things about the Boys and Girls Club. I guess the question that I would have is, what can we do to best facilitate promoting the program and helping you along? What can we do to aid you in building the club here?

Yes, sir. Well, you know, I would first off like to invite everybody to come to the club and spend at least one night there, just a couple hours, just to engage, just kind of tell your own story. Because I think a lot of the times people ask me, you know, Justin, you know, tell me a story that I can share with my colleagues, people in the community, and That's great. I can give you all kinds of stories and things that I see on a daily basis. Just now, when we walked into the facility, the kids jumped up, you know, because they saw Miss Melissa, our chief operations officer. And, I mean, it's those kind of stories you should be able to tell your colleagues. So I would invite you to come in and kind of see for yourself what we're doing and engage in some of the programming. Furthermore, I would love to have opportunities to meet with some of your community members, some of the people that, you know, have the capacity to support the club on a deeper level, some of those people that want to – give and, and, and, you know, their time, their treasure or their talents. Um, we know we have a career pathway program and we would love to have some of our, your community professionals come in and talk about your careers and what you're doing. Um, some of the restaurants, some of the bankers, you know, those types of things. Um, but also, you know, really trying to put some of the people in front of the club that would like to support the club, um, on a monetary level to ensure that we can keep our, our rates at $50 a month at a nominal fee. and not have to raise those and be able to still give the same level of service to our kids that we have. I would love to sit down with some of those philanthropists and really talk to them about what we're doing and how they could be part of what we're doing to serve our kids in a deeper way. We would love this. We want to sustain this. We want to continue to have this from years to come. And, you know, I'm really trying to work on trying to find a way to endow all of our organizations and all of our sites that way that we, you know, down the 10 years, 20 years down the road, we won't have to worry about fundraising. The kids will have this forever here in your community.

You mentioned serving five-year-olds. How old are your kids at the oldest other end of the spectrum?

So we serve up to 18 years old at some of our other sites. Currently here in Pine, we serve K through 6, those five-year-olds that are in K. And then I believe Burns has stepped into junior high school. Our Cheyenne sites, we have a site at Meadowlark Elementary School that we serve K through 6. But we also have a high school site that serves 9th through 12th graders at the community college. And that's a lovely part about it is that LCCC is out here as well. And so when we were in the town hall, it made sense for us to be there with them. and, you know, continue that partnership.

And you said you're doing that at a rate of $150 per month per kid?

No, $50 a month. $50 a month? Yes, sir, $50 a month. Yes, yes.

When and where do you meet?

So we meet at the town hall in room... Oh, sorry, the historic high school. I'm sorry, I apologize. The historic high school, and we meet there. We have our kids from 3.30 to 6 o'clock at night. We do that Monday through Thursday, and then Friday we have a full day Friday from 7.30, 8? From 8 to 5.

8 to 5. Just my anecdotal two cents. My three kids go to the Friday Boys and Girls Club. This is their first year, but they've loved it so far. I do think it's a very important service to our community, especially since the School district only has a four-day school week. It kind of puts parents in a bind, especially with little kids. So personal level, but also as a community level, I think we should do what we can to try to get you guys permanent staying just to help out our families, provide our kids with more and different opportunities that they don't get in school. So I'm all for trying to do what you guys need to help. But I'm also one directly impacted by that.

Yes, ma'am. Well, thank you.

Thank you.

You know, and that's something else, you know, helping out the community. We don't just help the kids and the families that are within the members of the club. We help the community a lot. Right now, we're wrapping up for our Christmas drive. And, you know, the recipients, some recipients of your community were recipients of that last year. But we have some, we call them Christmas angels, some of our community folks that come together and shop for all of our kids. And we did that with Carpenter, Alvin, Burns, Pine. Cheyenne, you know, and so we really try to do a lot more of that community outreach to help and support and assist. Any community events that you have, I mean, we have a team of people that would love to come up here and just assist and help run, run a booth, you know, run a game, do whatever. I mean, it's all of us together. And, you know, I always tell my staff, you know, we're Laramie County. It Pine Bluffs, Cheyenne, we're all Laramie County, and we all do this together, and that's kind of what our message needs to be, is that we're doing this together.

Thank you. How can we help get the word out to some of the businesses in town and some of the community that's willing to pitch in and help on that. Do you guys do fundraisers? How can we raise your visibility?

Yeah, we have a lot of fundraisers that we do in the Cheyenne area, but we would love to do something out here. We would love to have some kind of programming for the community out here as well. And so, you know, I don't know kind of what specific events you have, but we would love to kind of have a table or a booth. Some of your football and basketball games, we'd love to be there as well. I can send over some literature for you all to have that maybe you can give out to people and some information. But also, I mean, I'm willing to clear my calendar to come up here and go with each and every one of you to meet with some of the people that you feel like might have a want to be part of this club. And so I think there's various ways that we can do that. OK. Yes, sir.

Because I knew nothing of the Boys and Girls Club until I attended the Kiwanis meeting the other day. And they mentioned you guys and spoke very highly of you. But up to then, I knew nothing of it, and I've had a business here in town for 20-some years. So I think it would be advantageous for us to get the word out to some of the local businesses and see if they're willing to help support the club.

I appreciate that. And I can reach out to each and every one of you individually. I can just send you my contact information and maybe set up a time to sit down with each and every one of you and just talk and get to know you a little bit better as well and kind of what your wants and needs are. Like I said, I mean, we really want to adapt to what you have here. We don't want you to change anything that you have to fit our mold. We want to fit your mold. And I enjoy some of the eating establishments up here, so I don't have a problem coming up here and meeting some people for lunch. So, yeah.

The lady that did the Kiwanis Club went around town that day to different businesses and introduced herself and handed out and got a significant amount of sponsorships. So that might be something that you look at doing, coming up one day and just going around visiting with people.

Yes, ma'am.

Yes, ma'am. I wonder if it wouldn't help to connect with Heather and interact on some of the town... um, recreation activities that are going on and have, so that just to have some visibility and to put yourself out there in front of the, in front of people, because like I said, I was completely ignorant. I had no idea.

To defend Heather. I think she does a great job. Um, I know that every year, my favorite thing to help out is the kids movie night and Heather and, and her staff have been helping with that for quite a few years as well. So, um, You know that she's already laying really good groundwork to do that and truck or treat and all of the things that hit our young families. I think that she does a very good job of being visible there.

I guess what I was thinking of is on activities like when we have the kite festival, if we could have a Boys and Girls Club connection to the... festival and Christmas at home and some of the other things that you may not be aware of that are typical town activities that we're doing and all that does is make that even better yet because the more participation we have in those activities the better they are overall and so I think that could be a good connection.

Just for my two cents again My kids only started at the Boys and Girls Club this year, but I had known about it for years prior. I just didn't need it as a service. So I think people know about you really well. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think it's mostly just sponsorships to be more long-term, correct?

I would say that, but I also, you know, we have the capacity to serve a lot more kids, and we would love to serve a lot more kids. As you can see on the papers I gave you, you know, there's one for our organization as a whole, but there's also one for just Pine Bluff specific, and it's showing 45 kids that we saw in 2025. We have the capacity to serve around 100 kids plus at all age levels. And so, you know, for me, you know, I've tasked Heather with recruitment and really getting people to really want to buy into that. And, you know, it's, there's a stigma behind the Boys and Girls Club where everybody thinks it's for the low-income or the troubled kids. That's not true. You know, all of our kids can get something out of the Boys and Girls Club and we really want to press that. We really want to give all the kids opportunity to experience what we have to offer and whether that's one day or whether that's every day of the school year or the year. But I would love to see our enrollment increase tremendously just because we do have the capacity. Being at the historic high school, there's some space in there that is not being occupied that we can potentially use to provide additional programming.

So when you're, you probably have times of the year when you run short of resources. How do you, what do you do in those cases or how do you make those needs known?

Yeah, you know, we have a great partnership with a lot of the school districts, those type of things. And so for me, you know, stepping into this role, it was more of, it seemed like the club was kind of immersed in itself. They didn't reach out and let people in. For me, you know, as a nonprofit, we have to utilize all of the resources that we have. and that whether that's partnerships with the schools, with our local banks, those type of things to run the specific program that we need. Several of our banks run a financial literacy program that provide the material for that, which would save us on the cost. We work with the hunger initiative that would provide us with cows and beef and things for the kids. you know, we find different inventive ways to bring the resources to the kids in the way that we can beyond just money. I would say that, you know, we have three major events each year. We have a chili challenge, we have a back to school or back a kid breakfast, and then we have our Dancing with the Stars, which is coming up next month. And those are our fundraisers that, you know, really take care of the club about a fourth of our budget. We also get grants, federal grants as well as local grants that take care of us. And then our membership fees are a small portion of what that looks like. But we do piece together things through donors and sponsors that not only just give funds, but, you know, provide us with a service at a lower cost.

Yes, sir. Well, I hope you're successful in your endeavor and that we can grow the club here in Pine Bluffs. I wish you the best of success on it.

Yes, and I appreciate your time and thank you again. If you have any further questions, I will reach out to each and every one of you individually with an email just so you have my contact information. But yes, to everybody that you know, I mean, the biggest thing you can do for us is just talk about the club and, you know, your personal experiences. And I would again challenge each and every one of you to come and spend about an hour or half an hour, whatever time you have, to engage with our great kiddos that we have here in your community because they're just, they're fun. This is like my favorite place to come because the kids are, They're fun. They keep you on your toes and they're just lovable. So thank you so much for having us tonight.

Thank you. Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is visitor comments. Any visitor comments? Next item on the agenda then is department reports.

The airport advisory committee met on the 3rd of September and very few updates there. Just an update on the operations at the airport. It's continuing to go up. I think it's 521 operations for the month. That's takeoffs, landings, that kind of thing. 2,815 for the year. Sold 2,382 gallons of fuel. The taxiways have been resurfaced or overlaid and repainted. So those are done. The runways, as Kim alluded to, were on the agenda for next year. Probably the one notable thing is that we did decide to postpone the fly-in that was scheduled for the 19th of the month until next May. It wasn't coming together, the details. The people that had committed to be part of that just couldn't make that date work because of other commitments. So that will be postponed until next spring. That's pretty much what I got. Mayor, I just had a comment. Have you seen the YDOT rankings of airports and the business that they're doing? I have not. I've got to get that for you because Pine Bluffs is way higher than it should be. It's incredible. That is in large part due to the business that Mark Misho has going there. Yeah. Our fuels costs, which are low, do not hurt things at all.

Yeah.

but there is a lot of operations there due to the fabrication and mechanic services that operate out of there. Yeah, it's staggering. Yeah.

I would say as soon as Mark gets moved into the new facility too, and he can do more strictly airport operations out of the airport, I think we'll continue to see it climb. I think you're going to see that that, Because right now it's being used as a manufacturing facility instead of a proper FBO. And I think it's going to get moved more toward being used as a proper FBO. And we're going to see quite a bit steeper.

Yeah, he has some big plans coming. But stay tuned, because it'll be pretty exciting stuff.

Well, that's impressive. I don't have anything. Have you got anything?

The only real update I have from WAM is that Ashley and the team as well as Jeremiah from the County Commissioners Association have been working to plead our case for countywide consensus to return. And we'll see how that goes. I think they will take some sort of committee bill after a little bit of turmoil in some committee meetings. Some committee will take that up as a... committee bill and we'll just kind of see what happens but it seems like that's gaining some traction and Kim understands that process a lot better than I do having been through it in the past but essentially it would be a block grant system that is given to each county and then the counties much like our sixth penny deliberation would come together and figure out how those splits are made.

Anything, Amy? So this month is the annual board meeting for the Senior Center. We have two of the board members that are up for re-election, D. McGilbert and Janice Arms. We're going to cook for everybody who wants to come into the Senior Center that day. Then we'll hold our annual meeting with elections.

What day is that?

That is September 30th. And lunch will be served from 11 to 12.30. Otherwise, everything's flowing as smoothly as it can there.

Sounds good. Do you have anything, Alex?

Nothing critical. We've got some projects in the works and they'll be coming down the pike for you.

Okay.

The only thing I have is to remind everybody about the quarterly meeting Wednesday. Upstairs, 6 o'clock.

That's about it. I'm just finishing up on one of our audits that are going on right now. I do also have to have an internal audit complete by the end of the month, so it would be great if I could have a council member that I could send some spreadsheets to that they could pull some selections out for that internal audit. I think... Council Member Litza and Kestner have both assisted with that in the past, so if either one of you are available to do that again, that would be great. And I'll get those spreadsheets sent out this week, and it's a pretty quick process. I think we kind of have it down pat now. We've also started discussions with several DIFFERENT ENGINEERING FIRMS TO GET THE BALL ROLLING ON OUR DIFFERENT SIXTH PENNY PROJECTS, YOU KNOW, JUST TO START KIND OF UNDERSTANDING WHICH FIRMS CAN SERVE US THE BEST DEPENDING ON THE PROJECT. AND ALSO STARTED WORKING WITH THE TOWN OF ALBAN SO THAT WE CAN COME TOGETHER ON SOME DECISIONS ON A GRANT THAT WE ARE receiving that hasn't been finalized yet so I really don't want to go through too much detail on that right now but we do have a rural health care grant coming our way thanks to Pat Curry. So again we're going to be working with Albin and it looks like our first meeting with them will take place during our workshop before the next council meeting on the 28th. So that would be pretty important workshop for everybody to attend.

Agreed. Announcements and meetings?

Well, our next council workshop, like Kim just said, Monday, September 28th at 4.30. We're meeting with the Albin Council, is that right? Yes. and Mayor, and then the regular meeting will be directly after at 6 o'clock.

I'll move to adjourn.

Hearing a motion and a second to adjourn. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Hearing none, motion carries.