The Mayor’s Minute from Mayor Patrick Collins – June 5, 2026

Published on June 05, 2026

I was heartbroken last week to see a 72-unit apartment building that was under construction go up in flames. The building was 2 ½ months ahead of schedule due to our warm winter. They had just finished the framing and the outside was covered in plywood. This week, I met with the ATF National Response Team that was in town to help our fire department learn what caused the fire. The 25-member team comes from all around the country and is made up of experts from many disciplines in fire investigation. It is a great opportunity for our fire marshal and his team to learn from national experts to improve our homegrown expertise. A final report on the fire is expected in 60 to 90 days.

This fire sets back our efforts to build housing in Cheyenne. I spoke with the team building the apartments while I toured the fire site. They were understandably stunned and disappointed, but they were also focused on getting the site cleaned up and restarting the construction process. They have made promises to help solve our housing challenge and I feel blessed to have them and so many others working every day to build housing that supports our families and economy.

City Council held a work session to learn about the “Safe Streets for All” plan. The Metropolitan Planning Organization hired FHU to study how we can improve our intersections and roadways to increase safety for vehicles and non-motorized users of our rights of way. We learned that 60% of severe crashes happen in 14% of our roadways, and 2% of our intersections are where 30% of our serious vehicle crashes occur. I love having this report and the improvements it suggests. As we are looking to improve these critical areas, we have a plan in place to make our community safer. Combining the Safe Streets for All plan with our recently completed Safe Routes to School plan, we have a blueprint for making our city’s roadways safer.

Cheyenne hosts the Wyoming State Firefighter Academy. I attended the ceremony for Graduation Class 2026-1. Thirteen firefighters graduated from five departments, including one firefighter from Scottsbluff, Neb. Scottsbluff Chief Shingle retired from Cheyenne Fire Rescue before taking the position. Cheyenne had four graduates: Carter Van Der Hoeven, Timothy Bostrom, Hayden Schmitt, and Evan Walter. I could tell from watching the video that was played before the ceremony that graduating from the fire academy is not easy. Having fire departments from all around the state collaborate on training our firefighters and creating this academy makes a huge difference in graduating the best quality firefighters to serve our communities.

During the last legislative session, Senate File 45 passed and will go into effect July 1. I have been frustrated with the process that has been used to site the seven Historic Horse Racing facilities currently operating in Cheyenne and the three that have been licensed but not yet built out. They were approved by the State Gaming Commission and Board of County Commissioners without input from City Council – the government closest to the people in Cheyenne. This bill changes that, and it gives City Council the responsibility and authority to approve any new HHR location and requires us to review the existing facilities every three years. All the current HHR facilities must go through an approval by City Council by the end of 2027. I believe in local control and this bill gives local control to every local government in the state.

I participated in the Public Services Committee meeting for two items this week. The first was to introduce the gift from Related Digital of $3.5 million that they pledged to support our affordable housing efforts. I had shared with their CEO, Jeff Blau, that we were trying to get a 184-apartment building built and how it was $3.5 million short of happening. During the groundbreaking ceremony for Related, he pledged the money necessary to finish the funding for the housing project. The committee voted to accept the gift. Related Digital is my hero for understanding our housing needs and making an unbelievable gift that will help make it a reality. We should see the contractor break ground in the next couple of months.

The second item after accepting the Related Digital funds was to use that money to actually purchase the land where the affordable housing project will be built. The 8.37-acre site is located at the corner of Converse Avenue and Carlson Street. There are still some due diligence steps that need to be completed, but we should have a closing very soon. The plan is that the housing developer will lease the land from the City and we will use their lease payments to fund additional housing projects in the future. 184 families’ lives will be transformed by this project.

We are one meeting and one vote away from completing our 2027 fiscal year budget. During Council’s Committee of the Whole meeting Tuesday night, the budget recommendation was passed with a couple of additions. Council had already added a Community Service Officer for the police department. By increasing the number of CSOs, our police officers have more time to do law enforcement duties. At Tuesday’s meeting, Council added a new attorney position. We have too many abandoned houses and commercial buildings in town. To tackle these issues requires a lot of time, especially in the legal department. City Council has made addressing this issue a goal and this new attorney position will support getting abandoned buildings cleaned up and back as a productive part of our community.

Council also added two additional one-time projects to be funded from general fund reserves. We lost power during the big windstorm we endured a couple of months ago. One lesson we learned is when the power is out across the city, we can’t fuel our fire engines, police cars, and ambulances. You can’t provide a proper public safety response when your critical vehicles are out of gas. Thus, City Council plans to fund an emergency generator at our fleet maintenance shop that will power the fuel pumps and allow our mechanics to fix vehicles and get them back into emergency response. The estimated cost is $250,000.

Cheyenne has a pavement management program that prioritizes maintaining our roads. However, parking lots are not included in the pavement management program, and we have several parking lots that need proper maintenance – especially in our city parks. Council voted to invest $750,000 of general fund reserves to repair some of the parking lots in Lions Park and in Cahill Park. While we know this is just the start of addressing the problem, we plan to include parking lot maintenance in the next 5th Penny sales tax, which will provide a consistent funding source to do parking lot maintenance in the future.

I am spending the last part of the week in Laramie at the Wyoming Association of Municipalities’ summer conference. It is a highlight during the year to get together with the mayors and city council members from around the state to discuss the state of our communities and attend educational programs. They are truly a great group of people.

See you at the first Fridays on the Plaza tonight, June 5! Summer is officially here with the start of our summer music series.