Cheyenne, Laramie County officials hold wide-ranging discussion at Chamber luncheon

Jan. 5—CHEYENNE — Elected officials from the city of Cheyenne and Laramie County served as guest speakers during Friday's Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce luncheon, discussing issues ranging from crime to affordable housing and Front Range passenger rail to foreign ownership of land.

The panel was made up of Mayor Patrick Collins, Cheyenne City Council member Dr. Mark Rinne and Laramie County Commissioner Gunnar Malm. The discussion was led by Tanya Keller, chair of the executive board for the Chamber.

Keller opened the discussion with a general question about the officials' outlook for the new year. All three expressed concern with the housing market but remained optimistic for 2024.

Development and affordable housing

"As these interest rates come down," Collins said, "I think the pent-up demand for housing and for people to make strategic investments in businesses are going to blow up."

Rinne said it is slow moving, but described the situation as a rolling snowball that is starting to gain momentum.

This evolved into a conversation about the strategies the city and county are using to decrease the cost of housing developments, while also maintaining the quality of the buildings.

Rinne cited the multiple amendments to the Unified Development Code that the City Council has been rolling out in recent months. These include reduced parking space requirements, reducing the minimum size for apartments and removal of minimum lot size so they can be denser and cheaper to purchase.

The council is continuing to roll out these changes by looking at things like changing the materials required in facades of multi-family developments. These changes are intended to make it cheaper for developers to invest in housing, increasing the supply and lowering rent prices across town.

This was a hot issue for Collins in 2023, as he said he held 27 meetings about housing and affordability in the previous calendar year.

"We need to identify what 'affordability' is," Collins said.

He noted two kinds: having units subsidized by low-income housing tax credits and having affordable units for those who do not qualify for low-income housing.

A total of $3.1 million in state funds are available every year for investment in the subsidized units, and Collins said he'd like to see continued investment in that.

"In Cheyenne, a surprising number of people are paying up to 50% or more of their income in rent," Collins said, noting that it should generally be closer to 30%. "We can't build a workforce in order to grow our economy, because there's no place for people to live."

Another issue he identified is the redevelopment of older properties that turns them into nicer, more expensive housing units, which takes away affordable housing options.

"We're losing properties on one end, and we're not building enough on the other end," Collins said.

Building applications and approval

Keller transitioned the conversation to what each organization is doing to encourage a more business-friendly community through addressing the building application and approval processes. Collins said he is currently looking for actionable items to make this process faster and easier.

Malm said the county is revamping its land-use regulations to both simplify and make the process flow better, as well introducing more areas where they can do an administrative approval so not all projects have to go through the whole process.

These county regulation changes are currently out for public comment.

Adversarial purchase of property

An issue that was highlighted last fall in a New York Times investigation was a Chinese-owned bitcoin mine between the F.E. Warren Air Force Base and a Microsoft data center. The elected officials discussed how to navigate these situations safely and legally.

"It's very nuanced," Malm said. "The sticky thing is when you get to the Legislature, and you start talking about this and formulating a bill, you have 93 members of one Legislature all introducing their opinion and their feelings, some of which are probably not founded in any sort of reality, to be quite honest."

Rinne communicated how complicated of an issue this is, saying it is important to have background checks on those purchasing land. But he said he was unsure who would be the one to administer those.

Keller said it is important to have legislation on this issue to take the burden of judgment away from the community. She cited a North Dakota law signed in 2023, which prohibits a foreign business with a principal executive office located in a country that is a foreign adversary, or if a business is more than 50% operated by a foreign adversary.

Front Range passenger rail

When asked about a passenger rail line along the Front Range, connecting Cheyenne to Pueblo via Denver, Malm said the two biggest items are feasibility and funding. As the possibility of this passenger train gains traction in Colorado, he wants to ensure that Cheyenne is on board with the project as soon as possible.

"We need to really make sure upfront that we're there at the table as they have these discussions in northern Colorado, and make sure that we're part of that conversation. So, if we can do economies of scale and capitalize on when they're doing these projects and getting it all the way to Fort Collins and then beyond, that we're just there and ready."

In December, Collins ordered the Cheyenne Metropolitan Planning Organization to create the Cheyenne Passenger Rail Commission, tasked with leading the efforts to reintroduce passenger rail to the capital city. Malm is a member of this commission.

Crime rates

Rinne said the city has been focusing on addressing retail crimes, specifically, hiring two new police officers to focus on this. The city also recently appointed a crimes analyst, a position focused on collecting data to try to better target efforts.

Malm said he is pleased with the progress he is seeing in the Laramie County Sheriff's Office.

"A lot of this is driven by mental health and substance use disorder," he said.

The county has allocated funds for the sheriff's office to run a unit specifically focused on addressing mental health issues.

"For those with mental health issues in our community that come in on a petty crime, we have nowhere to really put them that addresses anything, it actually exacerbates the issue," Malm said. "Their sentence is a 30-day sentence, they go and are released back into the community with no help, and they just reoffend."

Base annexation

One attendee asked about the feasibility and legality of the proposed city annexation of F.E. Warren Air Force Base. Rinne said it is possible and in the works.

The city intends to do this both for financial and expansion reasons, as Rinne said city expansion is blocked to the north and east by ranchettes and by the base to the west.

Malm did not comment on the proposed annexation.

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.