Laramie County Commissioner: Seventh Penny Lacks Support

Laramie County Commissioner Linda Heath says any proposal asking voters to sign off on a sales tax to build the Children's Museum of Cheyenne belongs on the sixth penny sales tax ballot, rather than being put forward under the rarely-used seventh penny tax category.

Heath says "there isn't a lot of support" on the commission for going to a seventh penny ballot proposal. The seventh penny tax, which actually would be a quarter of a penny sales tax out of every dollar, is almost never used in Wyoming.

Museum Board President Amy Surdam says it has only ever been used in the state once, in Goshen County.

The sixth-penny ballot, by comparison, is widely used to fund local projects.

One difference between the two categories is that a seventh-penny proposal would go before voters on the November General Election Ballot, while sixth penny proposals are decided in a special election, with the next such vote in Laramie County likely coming up in May of 2017.

Heath says one of the concerns with a seventh penny vote is that a lot of voters probably would not bother to vote on such an item at the bottom of a general election ballot, while voters in a sixth penny ballot would be focused only on the proposals for funding,

Heath also says the commission philosophically doesn't want to increase taxes by going beyond the traditional six-penny sales tax.

She says the proper venue for museum funding would be as a stand-along proposal on the sixth penny ballot.

Museum supporters had originally been hoping to raise money to build the facility through private fundraising efforts. But Surdam said recently the poor state of the Wyoming economy, and especially of the state's energy companies, has made that idea unrealistic.

While the county commission may not like the idea of a seventh penny tax, Surdam says a survey commissioned by the museum board shows a majority of local voters would support a tax to fund the museum either as a sixth-penny or seventh penny proposal.

The museum is planned for the downtown Cheyenne property commonly known as "the hole." The site is widely considered an eyesore in its current state, and has been vacant ever since a fire destroyed a bakery that had been located there more than a decade ago.