City Of Cheyenne: The Mayor's Minute From Mayor Patrick Collins

Cheyenne WY

11 April, 2022

2:14 PM

Description

Press release from the City of Cheyenne: April 8, 2022 CHEYENNE – I think this is the busiest week I have had since being elected mayor. I counted 43 meetings this week. This is the week we meet with our treasurer and every city department to go over their budget requests. I love the opportunity to meet with them and learn their priorities and needs for the next fiscal year. This week the base is hosting the Global Strike Senior Leader Conference. The leadership of the 8th Air Force and 20th Air Force are all here. I am a Global Strike Civic Leader, and this means I get a chance to attend the meetings and learn all that is happening in our nuclear Air Force. Last Saturday saw a couple of amazing opportunities. It is prom season, and it costs a lot to attend. Jean Richardson started to collect prom dresses to give out to ladies who needed them 15 years ago. It has become a mission to make prom dresses available to every girl in our city that needs one. ANB Bank donated a show room so Jean could get the dresses out of her basement. It felt like a boutique when I walked in. A half dozen ladies were there to help the girls find the perfect dress from the almost 400 in inventory. It was great to see the excitement on the faces of the girls getting ready for the big dance. Later that day I joined Alf and Ms. Sallee at Lowes where they were selling raffle tickets to benefit local veterans. Lowes had donated a riding lawn mower and BBQ grill and Budweiser donated some fun sports equipment. These two folks spend so much time working to help veterans, I can't say enough about their efforts. All the money goes to their veterans' projects. Big disappointment in not winning the riding lawn mower! Our Community Recreation and Events (CRE) department consists of our parks, forestry, recreation, facilities, aquatics, golf, botanic gardens, and cemetery. Teresa Moore and Jason Sanchez are the folks who help direct this huge department. During the recent Covid pandemic, their department took some hits to the budget. With the school district stopping grade school sports programs, their sports participation has skyrocketed. The challenge is to find the resources to help them keep up with the demand of the public to get outdoors and enjoy our programs and facilities. Inflation is not helping. This press release was produced by the City of Cheyenne. The views expressed here are the author's own.