Cheyenne City Council begins to discuss proposed $147.6 million budget

May 8—CHEYENNE — Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins and City Treasurer Robin Lockman presented the city's proposed $147.6 million annual budget for fiscal year 2025 to the Cheyenne City Council during a work session Wednesday.

The budget overview meeting was the first of multiple sessions to inform the governing body of the proposed budget so they may suggest any changes before the final budget is approved on June 10. These funds will be used for the financial year that begins July 1.

Collins began the budget overview meeting by thanking department heads for their conservative requests for the council's consideration and Lockman for her team's work in preparing the 269-page document.

The proposed general fund revenues for 2025 are $71,647,647, up $5,432,277 from the 2024 budget, an 8.2% increase. Collins said part of this increase is due to city annexations like the one in April that allowed for expansion of the North Range Business Park and construction of another Microsoft data center.

He said that while this increase is encouraging, several primary revenue sources are starting to decline, including severance taxes, federal mineral royalties and gas taxes. The city also projects sales taxes will be flat compared to the current fiscal year.

Lockman said, "The financial position of the city of Cheyenne is strong and stable, but we also need to be mindful of the possible slowing of the economy. However, Cheyenne does have some exciting economic development happenings in the works, as well."

She said the most difficult part of developing a budget for a municipal government is trying to manage higher costs of doing business, while simultaneously estimating how much revenue the city will receive up to 18 months into the future. These challenges are compounded when a recession has been looming for the past two years.

"Thankfully, because we have an appropriate level of reserves now, I am hopeful we will be able to weather this upcoming storm without drastic measures that we were forced to undertake back in 2020," Lockman said.

That year, the city drastically cut the budget, not knowing how the COVID-19 pandemic would affect revenues. Since then, the city has experienced more than $6 million in sales tax growth in four years.

When the city treasurer's office began working on the budget in December, the projected revenues barely covered the increases in expenses that carried over from the city's actions in the current fiscal year. These actions included a 3% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for city employees; an increase in the cost of the city's property liability, health and dental insurances; bringing all employees up to salary range minimums; and adding six new positions.

As a result, Collins said there was no money for budget requests from the city's departments, especially for new positions.

"So, Robin (Lockman) and I made some phone calls to businesses that we knew might be expanding in the fiscal year to find some new revenue," Collins said. "This included the new Horse Palace scheduled to open in the next few weeks in the Swan Ranch, the Derby Club expansion in DT'S Liquor Mart on Ridge Road ... and a couple of other smaller opportunities."

As a result, the proposed budget allows for some new hires, including two positions in the compliance department to assist in daily cleanup after the homeless population and two additional police officers. Collins said he hopes the expansion of the police force will be an annual request, "as we've seen the need for specialty teams to combat trends in crimes."

However, there are a few things that he said he would have liked to include in the general fund request, but the funds weren't there.

The first is an arborist for the arboretum. Collins said this will need to be a consideration soon, as he hopes the Legislature will designate the High Plains Arboretum as a historic place in the 2025 legislative session.

In the 2024 legislative session, the Legislature added funding in the state parks budget to address the arboretum, but lawmakers failed to pass a bill designating it as a historic place. It failed by one vote.

Now, the city is working with Wyoming State Parks to create a memorandum of understanding to show the Legislature how a partnership would be crafted to manage the arboretum. Collins said he thinks the most likely financial participation in the plan would be for the city to provide an arborist for the historic trees.

Council members Tom Segrave and Bryan Cook inquired about the timeline of the arborist position. Collins said that a memorandum of understanding will likely come before the governing body in the next 30 to 60 days, the Legislature will need to approve the designation of the arboretum as a historic site, and then the city will consider hiring an arborist sometime between April and July of 2025. As of now, the arborist position is not in the proposed budget.

Another item not currently in the proposed budget is another COLA for city employees.

"As we have for the last few years, Robin and I will propose a COLA to take effect in January, if the revenues are there to support the increase," Collins said. The COLA in fiscal year 2024 cost the city $1,097,000.

Council member Richard Johnson inquired about the city's debt and potential new bond-funded projects that would increase the debt. As of July 1, Cheyenne has a balance of $3,685,000 in revenue bonds that were used to pay for the construction of the city's two parking structures.

Collins said there are no current prospective bond projects, but he would like to consider the possibility using a revenue bond or a general obligation bond to support parking on the eastern side of downtown, near the Depot.

Noah Zahn is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's local government/business reporter. He can be reached at 307-633-3128 or nzahn@wyomingnews.com. Follow him on X @NoahZahnn.