The Mayor’s Minute from Mayor Patrick Collins – March 27, 2026

Published on March 27, 2026

Judy and I love traveling, especially when the destination includes visiting family. We spent last weekend in Chicago visiting my sister’s family and the new star, my great niece. I have fallen in love with Chicago-style hotdogs. Flying from Cheyenne is a dream compared to driving I-25, finding parking, and getting through DIA security. Flying these days is an adventure, but getting to spend time with family makes travel frustrations worth it. The baby is beautiful!

I am getting an education every week on the technology being used to power our economy. The latest is industrial scale battery storage technology. It takes electricity purchased when it is the least expensive and stores it to be used later when demand is higher. We met with a company currently doing business in Cheyenne that is actively looking to install a 150-megawatt battery facility here. The capital investments being made in Cheyenne are beyond anything I would have envisioned when I was elected mayor in 2020. It is fun to meet companies and learn about how they are investing in emerging technologies and bringing great jobs to our community.

I fell in love with Germany when Judy and I visited a couple of years ago. This week, the German Honorary Consul for Wyoming and Colorado, Chadwick Williams, came by to talk about how Germany can facilitate economic and cultural exchanges between us. One thing I am really excited about is the potential to host a Munich-style Oktoberfest in Cheyenne. Chadwick is an interesting guy, and I love that he includes Cheyenne in his plans.

We are in the budget process and it is a full three months of meetings and number crunching. We are working right now on projecting revenues. It is a challenge to project revenues that won’t happen for up to 15 months from now. Getting our revenues right is so important. If we overestimate revenues, we may have to make cuts during the fiscal year. If we underestimate revenues, we are not investing all available resources to provide services to our residents. From my perspective, having Robin as our treasurer and her team is what makes getting through the budget process possible.

Over the past few years, our Governing Body has worked hard to deregulate our housing rules and regulations. I am happy to report that the private sector has taken note. At our City Council meeting Monday night, we reviewed a zone change that will allow a local developer to build over 300 housing units. This developer is taking advantage of the new opportunity to build affordable homes on smaller lots – changes the Governing Body made possible. I am proud of the work our Planning Department and City Council have done on housing and their efforts to make housing more attainable for our residents.

We met with the fire union to continue negotiating a new labor contract right after the City Council meeting concluded. While our negotiations regarding wages have been difficult, we have worked hard to not lose the positive momentum we have made over the past few years. The good news is we agreed on a new contract that keeps our firefighters well compensated, helps with recruitment, and gives our firefighters a benefit that will help them pay for medical care in their retirement. I am happy to have this effort behind us, and I know our Governing Body is proud of the work our professional firefighters do to protect our community.

We have been working to break ground on an affordable housing project this summer. We received a grant from Related Digital, an award from the Wyoming Business Council, and the last step is final approval by the State Land and Investment Board. SLIB is made up of the five statewide elected officials. I met with the Auditor, Treasurer, Secretary of State, and Superintendent of Public Instruction to share the importance of housing and how housing is one of the biggest binding constraints on our local economy. I know how busy they are and appreciate them for making time to meet.

The recent windstorm has caused a lot of damage and the City is no exception. The Depot and Youth Activity Center roofs sustained significant damage. I am worried that if we don’t get the buildings secured, spring rain will cause significantly more damage. We have just completed a multi-million-dollar renovation of the Depot. We met this week to talk about strategies to prevent secondary damage from happening and we have a great team working on it.

I want to thank our City employees for the amazing effort in cleaning up after the windstorm. We lost hundreds of trees on City property and in the right-of-way. Our team has cleaned up our golf courses, parks, and other properties and our public safety teams responded to hundreds of calls. With all of that, our City team hosted the state gymnastic championships, opening weekend of high school softball, and shows at the Civic Center. Proud of an amazing team effort!

Historic Horse Racing facilities have been out of the news here for a bit. We have three additional city locations that were approved by the county commissioners and state gaming commission but have yet to be constructed. I met with the team from Cowboy Racing to get an update on the track construction and timeline. The plan is to complete the track this summer, if the weather cooperates, and begin racing later this fall. I have never been to a horse race and am looking forward to going to my first one.

I am a University of Nebraska sports fan. It’s hard to believe, but the men’s basketball team was the only Power Four conference team in the country that has never won a game in the March Madness basketball tournament. That is, until this year. I watched the Sweet 16 game against Iowa while writing this week’s minute. Great news – the Huskers won the first two tournament games in their history. Bad news – Iowa sent them home with a soul crushing loss. I can’t believe I can now call Nebraska a basketball school!