With tens of thousands of promised grant dollars slow in coming, the Cody Conservation District nearly had to close its doors earlier this month.

A temporary shutdown of the district was only narrowly averted, thanks to a roughly $10,000 cash infusion from a Wyoming nonprofit. 

“We got bailed out at the last second,” Cody Conservation District Chairman John Tanaka said of the funding provided by the Wyoming Natural Resources Foundation.

The foundation, which supports conservation districts around the state, delivered the money on the afternoon of Friday, Sept. 4, “which was when we were going to basically run out of money,” Tanaka told the Tribune last week.

The Cody district relies on state and federal grants, which generally require the district to spend money and then get reimbursed.

However, reimbursements from a federal grant managed by the National Association Conservation Districts (NACD) wound up about nine months and $95,000 behind, Tanaka said, which created a financial crisis for the Cody district.

On Sept. 1, with just a few days worth of operating cash on hand, Tanaka and other members of the board’s supervisors approached Park County commissioners for assistance. The volunteers requested $150,000 to cover the salaries and benefits for the district’s two employees through next June.

However, commissioners rejected the request, with Commissioner Kelly Simone saying she didn’t think county funding was a sustainable solution to the district’s budget shortfall. Some commissioners also voiced reservations about providing funds to the district immediately after Cody area voters rejected a proposed property tax increase for the governmental agency.

The Cody district got further relief on Sept. 8, when the NACD provided about $34,000 of the owed money. That was “a great, great start,” District Manager Cory Williams told commissioners on Tuesday, but with the remaining $60,000 or so of reimbursements perhaps still months away, Williams said the district could soon run out of cash again.

Managing local resources 

The Cody Conservation District is one of only two districts across the state that doesn’t have a dedicated stream of tax funding; the Powell Clarks Fork Conservation District is the other (see related story).

Cody district leaders have repeatedly asked voters to approve a 1 mill property tax levy to help it manage local natural resources. Recent district projects include monitoring water quality, working to reduce the amount of sediment in the Shoshone River, restoring a riparian area along Sulphur Creek, assisting landowners and encouraging residents to have pollinator-friendly habitats.

However, Cody area voters have repeatedly denied a new property tax for the district. The most recent rejection came in the Aug. 18 primary, when 64.6% of the area’s voters said no.

In the wake of the election, one of the district’s two employees left for another job “because of the funding uncertainty,” Tanaka told commissioners; Williams, meanwhile, was set to be furloughed if not for the last-minute cash infusion.

However, the budget crunch had nothing to do with the failure of the mill levy and everything to do with a long lag in grant reimbursements.

“Even if the ballot measure had passed, we’d still be in a crisis mode,” Tanaka said, adding that the funding shortage “kind of snuck up on us.”

The commission’s reluctance

As part of their Sept. 1 pitch to commissioners, the district provided a fact sheet listing their ongoing projects, such as adding fish screens to improve the Cody Canal headgate and improving irrigation and grazing management to help soil and water conditions in Lower Sage Creek.

Commissioner Dossie Overfield said she wished the supervisors had publicized those efforts ahead of the primary and told Cody area voters more about what the conservation district does.

The rejection of the proposed mill “is saying that the taxpayers don’t want to really fund it,” Overfield said. “And I think some of that is because they don’t know what they’re funding.”

Commissioner Kelly Simone later echoed those points, saying that, “I don’t think I encountered anyone who really knew who or what it was on the ballot.”

None of the board members expressed support for the $150,000 request.

Commission Chair Scott Steward pointed out that the county government has its own expenses, mentioning the county may pull as much $700,000 from reserves to replace a South Fork bridge that was hit by flooding in July.

“I wish we had more money,” Steward said. 

Commissioner Lloyd Thiel said he felt bad for the Cody district, but also noted the proposed tax failed.

“Now I look at it like, well, you’re asking the whole county to come in and help,” Thiel said, asking, “Is that fair to the Meeteetse Conservation District, the Powell Clarks Fork Conservation [District] constituents, to pay for what your district doesn’t even want itself?”

Richard Jones, another elected Cody Conservation District supervisor, pushed back on that argument at Tuesday’s commission meeting.

“What they didn’t support was another tax,” Jones said of voters, adding that, “Every person I have talked to in and around here, from Powell to Clark, everywhere else, supports the conservation district, thinks it’s great. They think it should come out of the general fund for the county.”

He said the district is an “emergency” and asked commissioners to pull funding from the county’s reserve account, which currently holds around $15 million.

“You guys have the power, and the viability of this district’s operations is entirely on you,” Jones said.

When Overfield suggested that the Cody district should be seeking funds from the state Legislature, Jones suggested that the commission should take the lead on the issue, saying “it’s not up to us.”

Thiel countered that he thought both the commissioners and supervisors should engage with lawmakers.

“Unfortunately, I think this is going to be just the start of a possible hard road to hoe as we move into the possibility of losing some more property tax in the future,” Thiel said, alluding to a proposed initiative that would lower residential property taxes by 50%, “so I mean, I don’t know what the answer is.”

How much more runway?

Toward the tail end of their Sept. 1 discussion, commissioners brought up the potential impact of a Cody Conservation District shutdown, noting it handles mandatory soil reports for subdivisions. Thiel suggested the district’s closure could halt development and “if that doesn’t wake people up, I don’t know what would.”

However, it wound up being just a hypothetical, thanks to the roughly $44,000 from the Wyoming Natural Resources Foundation and NACD.

It’s enough to keep the district operating for roughly three more months, Tanaka said in an interview, “but then we’ll be in crisis mode again if they don’t come through with the rest of the payments.”

Williams described it a bit differently on Tuesday, telling commissioners that “as of Oct. 1, we’ll be operating unfunded … off of reserves.”

Both Tanaka and Jones expressed hope that the county will include funding for the district in the next fiscal year, which starts July 1, 2027.

The commissioners don’t provide regular funding to the Cody district, but they do supply free office space at the Park County Complex and last year, they gave the district $22,000 to help fund a shared planner position; Tanaka said it’s looking unlikely that the position will materialize, so the district may ask to repurpose the funds for general operations.

That idea was not raised at Tuesday’s meeting.