Serving the Platte Valley since 1888
Serving the Platte Valley since 1888
Sorted by date Results 51 - 75 of 101
CHEYENNE — A Wyoming Board of Pharmacy meeting in September adjourned prematurely when the governing body could not continue as more than 100 members of the public packed the meeting room and shared passionate speeches and testimonials in support of City Drug Pharmacy and Mercantile in downtown Cheyenne. The board was holding discussions on whether the business would be allowed to stay open, but board President Brenda Upton made it clear at the start of the meeting that no public comment would be taken. Many of the a...
JACKSON — With the Town of Alpine signaling that it will consider a lease on city-owned property for the construction of a charter school, two powerful allies, Sen. Dan Dockstader, R-Afton, and Alpine Airpark resident and developer Steven Funk, have championed the Utah-based American Preparatory Academy for consideration of the only available western Wyoming charter school slot. While there has been broad, longstanding support in Alpine for a new public school, even a charter, not all residents support the application from A...
CHEYENNE — As the University of Wyoming considers allowing conceal carry on campus, students, faculty and other community stakeholders took the opportunity to express their concerns during Thursday’s Board of Trustees meeting. Current campus regulations prevent dangerous weapons from being carried in university facilities. According to the university, exemptions can be granted on a case-by-case basis by the UW Police Department. The university sought input on potential changes to campus firearm policies following Gov. Mar...
CHEYENNE — Teachers at Ten Sleep School are allowed to conceal carry firearms in the classroom, but some school officials and students are worried about letting just anyone walk into the building with a gun, according to school representatives. Washakie County School District 2 has one K-12 school and is a concealed carry district, said Superintendent Annie Griffin. It takes law enforcement 18 minutes to reach the school, Griffin told lawmakers Thursday afternoon, which is why the district allowed its staff to carry c...
CHEYENNE — Detainment time for adjudicated undocumented inmates was increased from two hours to 48 hours by Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak. The change will bring detainment times in line with a nationally accepted standard and has been a long-term goal of Kozak’s since he was elected sheriff. Federal law states that state and local law enforcement authorities may only hold persons on immigration detainers for 48 hours after the completion of their jail time. “I know that some criminal aliens were released into our commu...
LARAMIE — More than two-thirds of University of Wyoming students recently surveyed by the Wyoming Business Council said that a future in Wyoming is a “maybe” or a “no.” Additionally, more than 60% of people who are born in Wyoming leave by the time they’re in their 30s. Most do not return. Rather than lament statistics, the Wyoming Business Council came together with University of Wyoming students Tuesday night for a comprehensive event and panel discussion to encourage discussion between leaders and students in the hope of b...
Gas prices edge slightly higher in Wyoming in the past week CHEYENNE (WNE) — Average gasoline prices in Wyoming have risen 0.9 cents per gallon in the last week, averaging $3.29 per gallon Monday, according to GasBuddy.com’s survey of 494 stations in Wyoming. Prices in Wyoming are 4.1 cents per gallon lower than a month ago, and stand 62.6 cents per gallon lower than a year ago. According to GasBuddy price reports, the lowest price in the state Sunday was $2.79, while the highest was $4.29, a difference of $1.50 per gal...
BUFFALO — The number of mental-health related calls and the severity of the calls that come into Johnson County's dispatch center have increased over the past few years, but mental health services haven't increased to match, Johnson County Sheriff Rod Odenbach said. Unmet mental health needs can sometimes lead to law enforcement involvement when they reach a crisis point. Once law enforcement is involved, Odenbach said, those agencies sometimes don't have enough resources to provide the services people may need. Allen T...
One moose and more than 50 cattle have died of anthrax in the past month in south-central Wyoming, officials confirmed Wednesday. Anthrax occurs naturally in soil but has not been documented in Wyoming in livestock since the 1970s and in wildlife since 1956. No humans have been infected, according to the Wyoming Department of Health. Wildlife and veterinary health officials ask that anyone in Carbon County who encounters a dead animal such as elk, moose, deer, antelope or catt...
CHEYENNE — State lawmakers discussed the possibility of adding doula services through Medicaid and ideas proposed by the governor’s task force as ways to address maternity health care deserts in Wyoming on the first day of their two-day meeting in Cheyenne. Members of the Legislature’s Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Committee spent Thursday afternoon continuing their discussion on maternity health care deserts, which is listed as the committee’s No. 1 topic for the interim. It was noted in the committee’s last meet...
GREYBULL — A single parent of one preschooler and one school-aged child in Big Horn County must earn more than $60,000 annually to cover basic necessities and meet the monthly cost of living, according to a report released last month by the Wyoming Women’s Foundation. The Wyoming Self-Sufficiency report, a 114-page document compiled by researchers to assess economic security and how to best achieve prosperity, highlights the financial difficulties facing the average Wyoming family. The report examines the minimum income req...
SHERIDAN — When Antony Fink took a job as Sheridan High School's machining teacher this summer, he was pleasantly surprised to learn he could live in district-owned rentals while his family transitioned from Powell. “It has made things a lot easier, as it would have been very difficult for my family to (move with me),” Fink said. Fink currently lives in one of Sheridan County School District #2's renovated units on the old Normative Services, Inc., property. Although the district-provided housing was not a deciding facto...
POWELL — As news of translocations of two grizzly bears broke, few realized the amount of hard work — on the phone, on paper and in the wilderness — it takes to make such a feat happen. It is touted as a step to increase genetic diversity in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s population of its most charismatic creature. But if you think all they had to do was load a couple bears in a truck and drive six to eight hours to release them in and near Yellowstone National Park, y...
By Mike Koshmrl, Katie Klingsporn and Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile.com A year after a conservation-heavy draft management plan for 3.6 million acres of public land in southwest Wyoming ignited intense opposition, the Bureau of Land Management has issued a finalized plan seeking more of a balance between landscape protection and development. The final environmental impact statement outlining BLM’s proposed Resource Management Plan for the Rock Springs Field Office was released T...
CHEYENNE — It’s been 15 years since the Wyoming Legislature last revised its funding formula for school maintenance and repairs, and one state official said an adjustment is long overdue. But after a primary election set the stage for the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, a far-right group of hardline Republicans, to take control of the lower chamber in November, at least one lawmaker questions how well a bill that appropriates $43 million in major maintenance funds will do in the next legislative session. The Legislature’s Selec...
CASPER — Less than 25% of eighth graders are proficient in civics, and PBS is trying to combat that. In partnership with GBH, which is the primary PBS station out of Boston, PBS LearningMedia has put together a collection of civics resources, lesson plans and activities for primary and secondary education teachers. “The new collection will draw on media to engage students, spark their interest in civics, and promote the active learning of skills by connecting the basic principles from the nation’s founding documents to issue...
SHERIDAN — For many Wyomingites, buying a home is one of the biggest decisions of their lives, but the real estate world can be one with a steep learning curve. A first-time homeowner may wonder the difference between a real estate agent and a Realtor, or the difference between a buyer's agent and a seller's agent. Another may wonder what guarantee they have that a listing will accurately reflect the home they visit. And although rare, cases like the Gillette Realtor a...
CASPER — An up-and-coming renewable energy venture on Tuesday filed an application for the construction of a large-scale solar generation and storage project that could add an additional 500 megawatts to the state’s energy portfolio. The Dutchman Renewable Power Project would see the construction of utility-scale photovoltaic solar panels, battery banks, a new substation and three miles of overhead transmission lines to bring its electric generation near Glenrock to the wider Wyoming grid. The application comes at a gan...
JACKSON — Local elections aren’t just about deciding who sits on the Town Council or heads to Cheyenne to write laws in the Wyoming Legislature. Voters decide on the makeup of their county political parties. Precinct committee people are selected every two years to make up the county central committee, according to Wyoming law, for the Democratic and Republican parties. One precinct committeeman and committee woman is elected for every 250 votes or major fraction cast for the party candidate’s representative in Congr...
CASPER — Weighing less than 1 pound, with short ears, little legs and an endearingly “scampering gait,” the pygmy rabbit is the smallest rabbit species in America. Worryingly, though, its population is also small — and getting smaller — and is now in desperate need of protection, according to a chorus of conservation scientists. In the hope of protecting the species, a contingent of conservation groups issued a notice to sue the United States Fish and Wildlife Service f...
POWELL — After migrating to the North Fork of the Shoshone River and more than a dozen major tributaries to spawn in the spring and early-summer months, many of the highly migratory rainbow and Yellowstone cutthroat trout return to Buffalo Bill Reservoir. This wild population of trout, which have survived without stocking efforts from Wyoming Game and Fish Department fisheries biologists, is the pride of the Cody Region. But while the population isn’t being supplemented, it...
Federal wildlife managers won’t make any jurisdictional decisions about Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bears until early 2025 — two full years after the agency was supposed to proceed with or deny Wyoming’s petition to cease Endangered Species Act protections for the region’s grizzlies. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Regional Director Matt Hogan announced the delay in a legal filing last week, citing a mess of lawsuits and grizzly-related decisions that “directly impact one another.” “To ensure consistency b...
GREYBULL - Amid red flag warnings, dry weather and record high temperatures, Wyoming has found itself blanketed in smoke from both local and regional wildfires raging across the western United States and Canada. Since mid-July, Wyomingites have woken to blood red suns and hazy conditions. Two of the four major fires in Montana were brought under control last week, offering a brief reprieve and some blue skies, but the smoke has since returned, carried on eastern winds out of Oregon and California, and southern currents from...
A Campbell County single parent with one preschooler and one school-age child needs to earn more than $60,000 annually to cover basic monthly costs living in Wyoming, according to a new report on affordability in the state. At the minimum wage standard of $7.25 per hour, he or she would have to work a superhuman 159 hours a week to make that happen. “But there are only 168 hours in a full week,” said Micah Richardson, associate policy director of Wyoming Women’s Found...
CHEYENNE — Was U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., justified in chasing down former U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle at the Republican National Convention, days after former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated? Was Wyoming Congresswoman Harriet Hageman’s description of Vice President Kamala Harris as a “DEI hire” a full-blown racist comment? Nearly a dozen Wyoming Republican and Democratic political candidates and party leaders weighed in on the recent actions and comments by two of the Cowboy State’s...