Mayor defends open meetings

A traveling girls basketball team, consisting of around nine fifth graders from Moorcroft and Gillette who call themselves the Black Widows, has requested a discount from the Moorcroft Town Center (MTC) Board to use the building’s gymnasium for practice games four times a month (twice every other week) during their season. Receiving no satisfaction through the board, team spokesman Dan Schutt and several supporters asked to be heard from the floor at Monday night’s meeting of the Moorcroft Council.

Schutt explained that he and his associates have spoken to board members several time and were invited to discuss the matter before the committee, but were denied entrance by one board member. Upon hearing this, Mayor Dick Claar addressed the individual directly, saying, “Your meetings are open to the public.”

Because the team practices four times a month at the MTC, with family attending, the monthly fee for each family is approximately $280. Schutt said this was too much:

“I can’t see how this is even close to being acceptable. I understand the cost of lights, heat and everything else, but, quite frankly, that heat’s always on up there. It would just be an additional amount of money you guys would bring in.”

The mayor stated his willingness to consider “some kind of discount”. He passed the issue back to the MTC Board with the recommendation, “I’d like [you] to actually make this decision and work with them; we need the MTC board to sit down and figure out a reasonable rate for them.”

Councilman Ben Glenn agreed, “I agree with that, it is for our kids.”

However, Councilman Paul Smoot showed the other side of the argument Schutt brought before them: “The facility costs money to operate and you can’t find facilities like that with the heating and the lighting for the money you’re paying. The people involved in this community should see the value in it. That means we are going to have to pay a little bit. Now, I understand what Ben is saying [and] that’s true, but we’re also running at a deficit in that facility every single month. We’re going to have to figure out how we’re going to sustain this without losing it.”

The town agency and the team leaders plan to come to some type of agreement at the meeting of the MTC Committee Tuesday, December 1 at 5:30 p.m. according to the advice of the town’s governing body.