06/02/2026
Good Morning Sidney and Cheyenne County,
I took this photo last night of the homes that were started last year with taxpayer dollars. Your dollars. Not much has been done on them this year. 6 months, very little change, just like our local economy here in Sidney. Why is it stagnant? Basic economics: if you run a business and raise your prices too much, people stop buying, people will look elsewhere, people will not support you. When you lose the customer base, you lose, your revenues suffer, and people leave. Simple economics. Take care of customers first.
A city and county are like a business. You have to take care of the customers/ residents. For the past couple of months, the city has not been filling employed positions when people have retired. We posted last year that this was going to happen. It is economics, Sidney. Pure and simple, we don't have the money. Layoffs will be next. This year, our city council passed a budget with $6 million in excess spending, deficit spending. We don't have that money. Layoffs will be coming for sure.
At the last council meeting, our police chief asked for more money for payroll. He needs it. His officers leave after they are trained, going to other cities with better futures and pay. We understand his frustration. Our services are now suffering because of our taxes. Our ambulance service is in trouble. SRMC, which is kindly doing for us, lost over $800K last year on the service. They can't operate at those losses. They are looking for solutions. Where is that money going to come from? More taxes, which makes the problem even worse?
This month, the city council brought up the need for $2.1 million for a new landfill. Where is that coming from? Higher rates? We have spent millions on economic development in the past few years, which has had little to no effect on our city's revenues. We know why. Our taxes are too high for people to live here. Plain and simple. Salaries too low. People, our customers, no longer see a future in Sidney. This month, we entered new contracts for economic development without any performance clauses. I have never heard of that being done. Our federal government absolutely requires performance clauses in all contracts before they are approved. This is to make sure that taxpayers receive what they paid for. It is called ROI… “return on investment”. Once again, decisions are being made to support a small group here in Sidney, while our customers, the residents, will pay the bills and not receive the protection they deserve. We will be tracking this contract very closely because there is NO accountability in the contract. None. Poor decision to approve this.
We asked people to come out to vote for change. Candidates who would fix the problems by lowering taxes. That didn't happen. Only 24% came out. Change didn't happen here because people didn't vote. Now, we wait until November to try again. We will try again; we are not giving up. The answer is to participate. Fix our problems, hold elected officials who keep spending too much accountable. We didn't do that. So now we wait 5 more months. Until then, we are going through the budgets.... again, celebrating our amazing 250th anniversary. Looking to the future with new ideas. Participate in your government if you want to make our community better. Keep pushing! Have a good day. We can change our economy, we just need to come together to do it.
