Boom or bust

Editor,

When you live in a small town in Wyoming, you live with boom and bust cycles, especially bust. Small towns struggle to survive. Young families move away because there are no jobs to support them and their older parents are left behind, wishing their grandchildren were close by. As time goes on, people die, one by one, and there are no new births and fewer and fewer joys to celebrate. Elderly people have to move away for quicker access to health care. Buildings stand empty and begin to deteriorate.

It’s all we can do to provide the basics, let alone amenities. When a project is announced in our area, we try very hard to get the housing for the workers in our town. When a business announces it would like to come to Wyoming, we scramble and scrape to get that business. It literally means life and death to our small towns, yet because we can’t provide niceties, the project or the business always goes elsewhere, and we become frustrated, seeing the opportunity slip away. Larger towns say we are greedy, wanting everything for ourselves. State funding agencies think the same when we ask for help with infrastructure projects. We are not greedy; we are thinking survival. Where a project or business in a larger town is gravy, it would literally mean our basic survival. Some will say, “Who cares if that small town dies?” We care. There are real people living here with real feelings, and we feel it every time one of our own dies or has to move away for a job or health care. We need help. I’m appealing to the County Commissioners to help us when a project comes. I’m appealing to the Governor of Wyoming when a business wants to relocate to Wyoming. Help our small towns. We’re real people and we need jobs as much as anyone else.

Karen Heath

Medicine Bow, WY