Editor's note:
This story was jointly reported and authored by The Sheridan Press, The Pinedale Roundup and WyoFile. Reporting was coordinated and compiled by WyoFile, with editing from all participating publications.
While raising her children, Sarah Mikesell Growney spent so much time at her recreation center that her daughter thought she worked there.
“Those were my homes raising children,” Growney said, referring to recreation programs in Cody. “I know it’s the same way for other people that have young children.”
In Pinedale, Karla Bird and her husband head to the aquatic center “almost every day we are in town during the wet, cold and icy months, which are like eight months of the year.” It’s a place to “find new friends” because the facility offers “so many opportunities for engagement.”
It’s also a safe place to exercise. “We seniors need this safe, controlled environment,” Bird said. “Without it, we either would not get exercise or perhaps fall on the ice outside.”
But such opportunities for affordable access to recreation, community connection and quality of life could be undermined by a draft bill now working its way through the Wyoming Legislature, Growney said.
House Bill 127, “Voter approval for recreation mill levy,” would require voter approval every four years to impose a mill levy for a recreation district. Currently, school districts can collect one recreation mill. For each mill assessed, homeowners pay about $9.50 per $100,000 of their home’s value, equating to about $38 per year on a $400,000 home.
Going back to voters every four years would create uncertainty and make it more difficult to retain staff, keep up on maintenance or advertise for upcoming programming, recreation advocates say.
“You just can’t plan or operate that way,” said Growney, who has served on recreation district boards in Cody and Sheridan. “So, that’s the problem with this bill. The system is not broken. We’ve been operating like this since the ‘70s.”
One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, told the House Revenue Committee during a Feb. 17 hearing that he saw the need for the legislation after the Crook County School Board voted 6-3 last year to impose a rec mill despite hearing from taxpayers who disagreed. Once approved, the mill is ongoing and doesn’t sunset, he said.
“I would love to be able to have the voters in these situations have the ability to be able to opine on this decision and see if that’s something that they support as taxpayers,” Neiman told the committee.
Crook County residents also spoke in favor of the bill as a way to correct “taxation without representation.” But Mark Christensen, a Campbell County School Board member, objected to the bill’s sweeping impact, the Gillette News Record reported.
“The correct fix for this is, the voters of Crook County make a change in their school board,” Christensen said.
Keeping recreation afloat
More than 73% of the Pinedale Aquatic Center’s total operating funds came from the Sublette County School District No. 1 recreation mill, accounting for $1.55 million of a $2.12 million budget in 2024-25. Without that funding, the center would face immediate service reductions, or even closure, Pinedale Aquatic Center Director Amber Anderson said.
“As structured right now, we don’t receive any other major funding,” Anderson said. “That funding is everything for us.”
Although Anderson believes her community values the aquatic center and would vote for the mill levy, she echoed Growney’s concerns about operating amid constant uncertainty.
“Having to put that to vote every four years creates an incredibly unstable funding model,” Anderson said. “How can you commit dollars to maintaining infrastructure if you don’t even know if the funding for sustained operations is going to be there in the near future?”
The Pinedale Aquatic Center also hosts events like the Big Dill Pickleball Tournament, 3on3 Basketball Tournament, Frosty 5K Family Fun Run, Midnight on the Mesa and Great Pine Creek Duck Derby, which are estimated to generate $850,000 in local spending in Sublette County each year.
“Pinedale is a gem,” Anderson said. “You bring people into the community for a tournament and they’re coming back with their family next week or next summer because they want to explore more.”
Last year, when Sublette County School District No. 1 switched to a four-day school week, the center began offering No School Fridays, a program for students in kindergarten through fifth grade.
“We believe our job is to serve the community and that was definitely a need that we saw,” Anderson said.
The center also offers summer camps, swimming lessons for people of all ages, art camps and youth sports programs. In the summer, the Bird family brings their visiting grandchildren to the center, which recorded 101,323 nonmember visits in 2024.
‘All we have in the winter’
Historically, the rec mill has produced roughly 85-88% of the Pinedale center’s annual revenue, with the remaining 12-15% provided through memberships, use fees and program registrations. Since 2018, the rec mill has generated about 60-75% of the total revenue. The rec center continues to focus on revenue diversification through its membership and use fees, grants and community partnerships. Friends of PAC is a nonprofit that provides additional funding.
“As it is, we have a $300,000 funding gap every year, so that’s the whole reason our Friends of PAC exists is to support the ongoing recreation services the PAC already has in place,” said Stacie Moses, volunteer chair for the group’s board.
Facilities like PAC are accountable to taxpayers, Anderson said. “We work really hard to be transparent and open with our operations. If people have questions about PAC or our budgets or staff wages, that is all public information and it’s all readily available.”
“We try to offer something for the whole community and all of that is honestly at risk as of now.”
Big Piney Recreation Director Eddy Delgado
South of Pinedale, the Big Piney Recreation Center and its programs are “all we have in the winter,” said Recreation Director Eddy Delgado, adding it’s not just a building with some weight benches and workout equipment.
“We offer basketball, football, volleyball, track and wrestling for kids in K through fifth grade who can’t compete in school sports yet,” Delgado said. “We also host a lot of the high school and middle school sports practices and games. That would all go away.”
The Big Piney and Marbleton communities rely on the facility for camps, activities and tournaments, like pickleball, co-ed volleyball, donkey basketball, mother-son and father-daughter dances, the Halloween carnival, Bingo, the Christmas Bazaar and Easter celebration. There’s also a game room with ping pong and foosball tables.
“We try to offer something for the whole community and all of that is honestly at risk as of now. We don’t know what is going to happen [with HB 127],” Delgado said Tuesday.
If the bill becomes law and Sublette County voters fail to reauthorize the recreation mill levy, services at the Big Piney Rec Center would be drastically cut.
“We won’t be able to offer that gym space that we have, we won’t be able to offer those programs,” Delgado said.
Estimating that at least 75% of the usage at the rec center in Big Piney is related to school activities, Delgado worried about where local youth might end up. “I rather see them here in the building, doing something that will help them in the future and keeping busy with sports.”
At what cost
The Sheridan Recreation District Board shares those concerns. Sheridan County School District No. 2’s recreation mill accounts for nearly 45% of its operating budget, the district said in a Sunday news release. Already, the recreation district suffered a 9% drop in its operating budget amid declining property tax revenue after the Legislature passed a raft of property tax relief measures in 2025.
In response, Sheridan Recreation District Executive Director Alex Mock said last fall the district could become more reliant on its nonprofit arm to offset the 9% dip. The nonprofit allows the district to pursue grant funding from a variety of other organizations or government entities in Sheridan County.
“It also allows us to continue to build our relationships … because we do offer programs for Sheridan County, not just for residents that live within Sheridan city limits,” Mock said. “We have Big Horn teams, we have Dayton [and] Ranchester teams.”
But Mock also said that the district might have to increase fees, cut equipment expenses, hire fewer people or limit park maintenance.
Growney said, though, that the bill becoming law could pose greater consequences, such as the closure of programs.
Sheridan Recreation District operates the city’s outdoor pool and youth camps in the summer, year-round youth sports and year-round adult sports, as well as a 5K run series, annual Winter Shootout youth basketball tournament, the Turkey Hoop Shoot and an annual Easter egg hunt.
Risking programming could be detrimental for Wyoming families, many of whom in Sheridan and across the state rely on summer camps to help ease the burden without school and child care. Parents, Growney said, need to be confident their children can participate in enriching programs during the summer months away from the classroom.
The recreation district questioned the need for HB 127 and the cost.
“The Sheridan Recreation District has been operating since 1974, with continued public support and no record of any public call for defunding the recreation board or its services, meaning a ballot measure is costly and unnecessary,” the district said in its news release. “Recurring ballot measures will impose administrative demands on county clerk offices,
including ballot preparation, public notices, and election operations, costs borne by county budgets.”
House Bill 127 was referred to the Senate Revenue Committee on Monday. From the floor Tuesday, committee Chair Sen. Troy McKeown, R-Gillette, said the committee would meet once this week and HB 127 was not on the agenda.
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