Continuing the Crook County News Since 1884
Continuing the Crook County News Since 1884
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 525
As the Wyoming Legislature readies for 20 days of discussion and debate ahead of the 2024 Legislative Budget Session, we prepare for this work as servants to the people of our communities. Over the past eight months, legislative committees have held 62 standing committee meetings around the state. At these meetings, committees gathered public input and industry perspectives to draft common sense conservative solutions to the problems we face together. As the presiding officers of our respective...
Dear Editor, Since Ernie Reinhold named me personally in his false narrative of this ballot initiative, allow me to retort. There are three important parts in communication: facts, opinions, and opinions on facts. What is missing from your letter is the facts. First. The United States of America is not a democracy. It is a republic, which by definition is a representative form of government that is ruled according to a charter, or constitution. A democracy is a government that is ruled...
Thirty years after its inception, the Congressional Western Caucus is working harder than ever for rural America. During the past three decades, we have grown from our humble beginnings to a bicameral caucus of more than 100 members of the House and 20 Senators; yet our mission of serving the interests of farmers, ranchers, landowners and rural communities alike to ensure their legislative priorities are heard in our nation’s capital remains unchanged. Unfortunately, the fight to preserve our western ideals has not been easy as this a...
To the editor: As a liberal, tax-and-spend Democrat (yes, even today, there are a few old relics from the distant past), I was surprised on reading The Times, “BCR defends property tax ballot initiative,” that I agree with one of the beliefs attributed to former Republican primary candidate for Governor, Brent Bien. The writer quotes Bien as saying, “It’s [the ballot initiative process] a deliberative process, and it’s intentionally tedious.” Tedious, yes, and thank God so! If the process were not tedious, every ballot would be the size of a s...
Dear Editor, In regard to your front page article, Mr. Hughes needs to be more thorough before making such extreme comments about the property tax petition being circulated. He, according to the paper, alleges that the petition “demands that property taxes be cut by 50%”. That is absolutely untrue. If those quotations are accurate, Mr. Hughes is doing a disservice to the citizens of Sundance. The fact is that the petition clearly states that it would establish “…A homeowners exemption for primary residences….”. It goes on to state very clearl...
Loading an unwilling bull into a trailer can be daunting, even if it is for its own good. Bulls tend to be testy and their size presents a special challenge. My dad’s approach involved roping the bull, dragging it to the trailer, attaching a block and tackle and then – after a good deal of cussing and a lathered-up saddle horse or two – we might wrench it into the trailer. We never hurt a bull, but we had some impromptu rodeos in the process. It didn’t always work, especially if the bull was distracted by somebody’s yappy dog or a party of...
Dear Editor, In response to the letter about Kid Prints, Inc., My child attends Kind Prints in Sundance, Wyoming and we are very happy with the care received there, my child, however, has been deeply saddened by the abrupt end of the field trips to the hospital to play Legos. As a parent, there is no better joy than knowing your child is happy and healthy. On the two days that the field trips took place, my child came home with a happiness I had not seen before. Kid Prints did not notify me as a parent that the field trips would stop, so now I...
Dear Editor, During this time of thanks and giving, I have been reflecting on the blessings of our small community. I wanted to bring to light a beautiful partnership that recent took place here in Sundance. The children from Kid Prints, Inc. went on two walking field trips that brought them to Crook County Medical Services District long term care unit. These experiences resulted in a safe place for the small children to practice their curiosity and brought invaluable, youthful joy to the elderly residents. The first visit was short and sweet....
After all these years, you’d think there were few things left for me to discover about how differently our two nations utilize the same language. Trust me to find something new on Thanksgiving, when everyone was watching. You might have noticed that last week was the big holiday. I know I did – I never pass up an opportunity for company potatoes. In our family, this family gathering has been claimed by my sister-in-law. She is an excellent cook and terrifyingly organized, which means she pre...
Dear Editor: I have been following the septic issue in the paper and I would like to add my two cents. If my interpretation of the current law is correct, a county landowner needs a square block of 160 acres or more to be able to apply effluent on their own property. Anything less will not meet the distance setback from a property line. During my 40 years living in Crook County, both in town and a rural setting, I have noticed most of our county growth has been rural. Owning a piece of the rock was a dream of mine growing up in Cody, but it...
Dear Editor, I am writing this letter in response to the letter to the editor that James Geis wrote in the October 26th edition of the Sundance Times. I guess I am a little confused. The rules from DEQ for land application for septic systems waste were adopted by Crook County in 2018, so for almost six years, how has the waste that has been pumped been disposed of if it was not legally land applied on the landowner’s property, and if it was not hauled to a legal disposal site? If the rules for land application for septic system waste have b...
We don’t need to worry about warm weather any more, so my thoughts have turned to the kind of comforting meal that cheers up a gray day – and what better option than soup? While creams of chicken and tomato, noodle-based soups and the various potato-based delights we all love are shared between our nations, this made me wonder if my homeland has chosen any of our offerings as a national soup, which I could then offer up to you as something new to try. The answer turned out to be “sort of”....
To the Editor: We’re glad to see more Wyoming lawmakers support improving mental healthcare access. This includes one of our own legislators, Senate President Ogden Driskill of Crook County. We know what happens when people can’t access mental health treatment, because of our son’s experience. We want to prevent others from going through our experience. At Gov. Mark Gordon’s mental health summit in Casper, Driskill encouraged residents to “lean on” lawmakers and tell them what changes are needed to solve the mental health crisis. “From the l...
You don’t usually see the mouse in your house, just the mess it leaves behind – which is why I really wasn’t expecting one to run across my kitchen floor and sit in the doorway. We’ve had issues with vermin before, so this wasn’t good news – during the last battle, it took a process of elimination over several months to figure out where the blasted things were coming from. But those mice weren’t this brazen. This mouse was staring at me across the living room. I was so surprised that, “A mouse is looking at me,” was the best I could manage, w...
Dear Editor, The article “Homeowners Speak in Favor of a New Property Tax System” in last week’s Times points out once again how government always wants to spend more of our money. Always. First, the word “stakeholders” is purposefully evasive in the article. Who are stakeholders? Aren’t the homeowners stakeholders in their community? Why not use the word “government” in lieu of “stakeholders” since that’s what is being referred to in this article? I’m sure that all departments of all levels of government, whether it be state, county, city, sc...
Dear Editor, I have been providing a septic tank pumping service, dba Geis Honeywagon, for the rural residents of Crook County for nearly 28 years. In September it was brought to my attention that due to the DEQ regulations adopted by our County Commissioners and the Land Use Planning Office back in 2018, it is no longer lawful to land apply sewage to property without following the strict permitting process laid out by the Department of Environmental Quality. Since the majority of residents in the county do not have enough acreage to legally...
Americans have more media options than ever. We are inundated with stories, memes, videos and promotions 24 hours a day. Most of us are on social media, which is built to provide an endless feed of content to keep us glued to our screens. And unfortunately, misinformation is prevalent and much of that content isn't fact-checked, verified or professionally produced. The result is that we're not always shown what we need to know, or the information that is most likely to impact our lives. That's...
As the month of September begins, people in Wyoming are focused on their kids going back to school and the start of football season. What many might not realize is that September is also Passport Awareness Month, a time to check your documentation, especially if traveling overseas during the holiday season. One of the top requests my staff receives from constituents is help getting or renewing a passport. This process has become aggressively long and drawn out and has caused more than one hiccup in people’s travel plans. Currently, the U.S. D...
There’s something to be said for perseverance, but there’s also virtue in knowing when to stop beating the dead horse. The Loch Ness Monster, for example. She’s arguably the most famous cryptobeast on the planet and we’ve been searching for her for 1300 years, yet we’ve never managed to introduce ourselves. We had an excuse back when the best you could do was a quick sketch of what you just saw, and even when it took half an hour to snap a photo, but can we really keep the charade going des...
With September as National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, it’s a good time to take stock of the efforts made toward addressing the issue statewide and locally, including the progress made. Wyoming’s standing among the nation at large when it comes to suicide rates has long reached a point of notoriety. The state is routinely at or near the highest rate in the country and often at a figure approaching twice the national average. The simplicity of naming statistics and dreading the implications has become well-trodden territory. But the...
Guided by the Wyoming value of “save when you can,” the Legislature over several decades set up endowments and smart savings to help support the state and its people into the future. The system of reserves they created receives income generated off a portion of our mineral taxes and one-time surpluses. This savings structure not only protects our kindergarten through twelfth-grade (K-12) schools and ensures that our state agencies continue to provide critical services to Wyoming citizens; it also allows the taxes paid by the people of Wyomi...
A mystery recently solved sets up a peculiar connection between your part of the world and mine. To be specific, between a school just down the road from where I grew up and a town in Colorado. The former is Sherborne School in Dorset, an all-boys private boarding establishment that has been in constant operation for 1300 years. In all that time, as you might imagine, it has boasted some illustrious alumni; in more recent days, it has educated students including Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis,...
Dear Editor, Good afternoon Sundance! I don’t know about you but I, for one, find the headlines the last few month in our Sundance Times a little concerning when it comes to our mayor and city council. Such negativity! When I open up my weekly Sundance Times, I wonder which entity they will beat up in the next headline. I’d like to see some headlines from the mayor and city council that contain “Mayor Brooks and the Sundance City Council thank the citizens of Sundance, old and new, for all the hard work they do to make our city beaut...
The State’s WyoStar investment programs have recently come under attack, and I would like to share a few facts. These programs allow local governments to make institutional-quality investments with fees lower than what large institutional investors typically pay. The State’s manager charges 0.06 percent and independent bond managers charge 0.5-1.0 percent on average. The State is able to minimize fees by combining many smaller accounts (local government entities) together into a larger fund. These two WyoStar programs have very different pro...
There’s an establishment in England that the locals will tell you is the only place serving beer from which you will exit feeling more sober than when you walked in. Or, at least, there was. For decades, the Crooked House has been famous for its structural anomalies. But last week, it became the focus of a classic whodunnit. The Crooked House was first built in 1765 as a perfectly normal red-brick farmhouse, but converted into a pub in 1830. It was called the Glynne Arms, until its name was c...
