Buildings along Lincolnway in downtown Cheyenne. The City Council on Monday voted to annex the WY Fresh farm, a county pocket on the city's south side.Photo: Tony Webster, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Cheyenne City Council voted on third and final reading Monday, Nov. 9, to annex and rezone the WY Fresh Farm and Farmstand property at 200 Walterscheid Blvd., after the owners asked the city to take the land in so they could sell it and leave Cheyenne, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reported. KGAB said the vote was 8-2, with Council members Mark Rinne and Ken Esquibel voting no. The Tribune Eagle spelled the owners’ name Kniseley; KGAB spelled it Knisely.
The Tribune Eagle said the family bought the 8.61-acre property in 2007, began serving the community in 2017 and opened the farmstand in 2022. The land was in a county pocket that, under a city policy begun in 2022, the council has been annexing when parcels are 75% to 100% surrounded by city land. A final vote planned for March 9 was postponed until Nov. 9 after a meeting that lasted more than four hours, the paper said, so staff could refine guidelines. In a Facebook post on Saturday, the owners said that day was their last open and, asked whether the closure was seasonal, replied that they were “officially closed for good,” the Tribune Eagle reported. They also wrote that “the farming way of life has no protections in city statutes.”
David, speaking at Monday’s meeting, told the council he wanted the property annexed and that he was angry about how the family had been treated. Tommie said “irreparable damage had been done” and that even if they were allowed to keep farming, they had been “stripped of any legal protections to farm.” KGAB reported that David also wrote on the station’s Facebook page that annexation was “the most financially advantageous way for us to resolve this issue.” Councilman Mark Moody told the Tribune Eagle he had arrived ready to introduce a substitute removing the farm from the annexation group, then voted to honor the family’s request instead. KGAB similarly said Council members Michelle Aldrich and Jeff White had been prepared to vote no until the owners said they planned to move.
After the annexation vote, the council took up related changes to the city’s Unified Development Code, the Tribune Eagle reported. Ordinances on livestock and electric fencing passed; a gravel-parking ordinance failed over concerns about dirt in Crow Creek and about accessible parking; and an ordinance on agricultural regulations was postponed for two weeks. Moody said the council would “be remembered as the council that drove WY Fresh out of Cheyenne.”
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