In recent legislative sessions, Wyoming lawmakers passed bills to cut property taxes, including a 25% cut to single-family homeowners and the expansion of a property tax refund program.
There could be even bigger cuts down the road. In 2026, Wyoming voters will head to the polls to decide whether to slash 50% of residential property taxes for those who’ve lived in the state for at least a year.
The revenue funds special districts, towns and counties, not the state.
Already this year, local governments have felt the impact. Wyoming Public Radio’s Chris Clements spoke with Ranchester Mayor Peter Clark about how his town of 1,176 is faring.
Editor’s Note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Chris Clements: Paint a picture of Ranchester for our listeners who may not have been there before. What stands out to you about the community and the people?
Peter Clark: It's a bedroom community for the city of Sheridan. We're about 15 miles northwest of [it], about nine miles south of the Montana border. We've grown about 11% since 2020. We're on an average growth rate of about 4% a year. It's a lot of new people, a lot of new housing. We're at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains on the Tongue River.
CC: Ranchester's budget has been going up in recent years as costs mount and more people move to the town. I read a report that says it has one of the highest growth rates in Wyoming. What's prompting that growth? And do you think that it will continue?
PC: It looks like it's going to continue. What's prompting it? The big surge for us was probably COVID. We had a lot of people take flight from other parts of the country and land here. That's driven a lot of the growth, but also the city of Sheridan is very expensive, so we've become a cheaper alternative.
CC: During the last legislative session, lawmakers approved an across the board property tax cut. Single-family homeowners will now see a 25% cut applied to the first $1 million of their homes’ fair market value. What's the effect of these property tax cuts on Ranchester’s general fund, and how much revenue do you expect to lose?
PC: Actually, that's a hard one to answer, because even though our property taxes have gone down, our population has increased. So we have a broader base of property taxes. I think the estimates were, I think I got it from the assessor's office some time ago, it was about $13,000. For us, it's about 11% of our general fund, or 18% of our government revenues that we get. So it's hard to predict, because we keep getting more houses. That's offsetting the loss of the property tax.
I guess my concern is that if they [lawmakers] have this general attitude of cutting taxes, all taxes, like I say, property taxes, we can withstand it. Counties have a little bit more of a problem with that, because they don't make up some of the losses by, say, substituting fees for services that we can do.
CC: But your best guess is around $13,000 [less] to the general fund.
PC: Yeah, something like that.
CC: It sounds like you're not, at this point, anticipating cutting any services in the town.
PC: I don't know. People, especially the people that moved here from larger cities, expect certain goods and services that we've never been able to provide. But the enterprise funds, water, sewer and garbage, basically are self-sustained by user fees, so they're not part of the general fund. Those things can be offset by other taxes. I don't anticipate cutting anything, but just because we still have to maintain the parks as we increase in size. You can cut back. There's certain things that are not required, like plowing snow, filling potholes, spraying for mosquitoes. But I can guarantee you, that's the first thing they come in and scream at you about.
Basically, for me, there's only three things a government does: It's infrastructure, quality of life and economic development. All those things rise and float together, and that's what we have to maintain. Because if we don't have any of those other things, we'd be dying off like some of these other towns or some of the other places in the West or Midwest or wherever, where the towns are drying up. So I don't anticipate it at this point.
CC: Supposing, for instance, that this ballot initiative passes and property tax [revenue] is cut further, the 50% reduction to property tax across the board. At that point, that could get pretty serious even for someone in your position, right?
PC: The 50% one, it's probably the worst idea as far as I'm concerned. That would be devastating. And you can't just consider the towns. You have to realize that that will affect the fire districts. Most small municipalities are not part of the fire district, but they support the fire district, which protects them.
For example, the Tongue River Fire District for us. We don't pay any mill levies into them. I think fire districts get, or at least our local one gets three mills off of property tax, which is almost always agricultural, so they don't have much money to begin with. You start cutting that part of it, they're going to be hurting as far as maintaining their equipment and stuff.
[In terms of] property taxes, we save for the future, and if we have no means of getting any savings, then we have to go out and borrow. Right now, we haven't had to borrow money for our projects. We've been able to fund them through the funds we set aside.
CC: Could you lay out for me the potential downsides in having to borrow for projects like that?
PC: Do you like paying interest on things?
CC: No.
PC: Do you like to make interest on things?
CC: Yes.
PC: So it's the difference between drawing interest on investments or savings as opposed to paying out interest on things that we couldn't buy. 0% [interest] is great if you can get it, but you're paying out taxpayers’ money when you can actually save money and not have to pay.
CC: A follow up on that: even though the 25% cut is not a substantial hit to you at this point, are you saying that one outcome from it could be that you're not able to put as much away in savings for the town?
PC: That's a possibility, but like I say, it's 11% of our general fund and 18% of our government revenues. So it contributes to that over [time], because municipal governments and the state of Wyoming [are] so heavily dependent on taxes we do not generate locally that are given to us by the state. They go down to the state and they come back after they're cut. So 64% of my general fund is taxes that are coming that we have no control over.
So what we would do is, we [would] just put less and less into savings at any one given time or less into investments or the type of investments we're allowed to use.
CC: What can the state Legislature do better to support towns like Ranchester now that the tax cuts are in effect?
PC: I think they need to do a comprehensive tax bill. They need to look at the goods and services that are not taxed and spread the wealth, spread the pain around. At a forum for the chamber here, I did ask [Senate President] Bo Biteman (R-Ranchester), I said, ‘Are you going to get rid of some of these tax exemptions that are out there?’
Basically, his response was, ‘Well, no. That would make people unhappy.’ Then he turns around and says he's going to add another tax exemption. Every time they'd say, ‘We're gonna cut tax exemptions,’ they go down and add two. They always talk about, for every law passed, we should eliminate two, but that's just not [happening] for the tax exemption.
There's money out there. It just needs to be looked at in a different way. It needs to be comprehensive, across the board, all taxes.
This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.
