The Voice of the Community Since 1909, Serving Moorcroft and Pine Haven, Wyoming
The Voice of the Community Since 1909, Serving Moorcroft and Pine Haven, Wyoming
Moorcroft Mayor Dick Claar candidly discussed his thoughts recently on the recommendations that came with the as-yet-unadopted updated community master plan provided by DownTown Redevelopement Services and Rural Community Consultants.
Said findings and suggestions are, for the most part, outside of the town’s budget and not available through grants, which still cost money due to the need for matching funds.
For instance, the restructuring and updating of the town streets and alleys:
“I don’t know where we get the funding to take care of streets,” Claar says, explaining he recognizes the need, but, “There’s just no money to repair streets out there. All of Cheyenne Street needs repaired and you’re probably looking at $100,000 a block to do it and I don’t know where we’d get the money for that.”
Without funding to address municipal streets, alleys are even less likely to see any improvements in the near future.
“I don’t know that alleys are a big priority; we used to use them, but we don’t use them anymore. We used to use them to pick up the trash, but that isn’t the case anymore,” he says.
As for the MTC, the mayor shared his own wishes for the future of the building: “I’d just as soon leave it standing, but I don’t know if we can get money together for that so we’ll have to see what comes out of it.”
Despite the recommendations from DownTown’s Ben Levenger to not move town hall into the MTC, Claar is still hopeful the space can be remodeled, saying, “We’ve got to get the plans together so we can bid out that job.”
“I don’t know the direction it’s going to go,” the mayor admits “That’s going to take the whole council to decide that. We have three options – no matter what we do, it’s going to cost money so we have to figure where we’d get the money for the direction we want.”
The mayor said the council will probably participate in a workshop within the next couple of months to discuss the future of the building, after some final thoughts from the plan coordinators, to, “Try to figure out what our next move is.”
