Bring Back Sidney

12/09/2025

Good Morning, Sidney and Cheyenne County,
We study budgets. This is by far the worst economy we have seen in Sidney and Cheyenne County since 2017. That is a fact, and tonight it will become insane. Tonight at the City Council meeting, they will be considering the approval of outrageous amounts of direct taxpayer money, spending, all while our economy here is going down. Let us show you. These are the city of Sidney numbers, not ours, and they are really, really bad.

Here is the chart that will be presented to the city council tonight. You can see that the spending in these departments is higher than the revenues. In other words, Sidney, we are spending more than what we can afford, by a lot! Here is how much taxpayer money we lost in the last 2 months.
General Fund ($412 033.07)
Street ($240,143.07)
Electric ($263,866.71)
Water ($32,576.09)
Landfill ($13,338.30)

So.... for October and November, the Sidney City Council has spent over $961,600 more than they have taken in. Your money. Tax dollars. Your future. This is outrageous. Almost $1 million loss in only 2 months of this new year. 2 months! Truth.

Some supporting this new insane spending proposal have been building their businesses with taxpayer funds. Some good, some bad. We will show you those numbers in future posts. All that taxpayer money, though, and it hasn't improved our taxes or increased sales tax revenues. Look at our downtown and look at the numbers. It is scary where our financial position is. Insane.

Tonight, they will consider approving a contract that will lock us into $675,000 more in spending over the next 5 years for “Economic Development”. MORE SPENDING. This will NOT benefit taxpayers here in Sidney. Yesterday, I asked a Sidney city councilman to please name one way the new $675,000 spending will help the residents of Sidney. I got NO answer. This proposal will benefit a small group of investors here, but not the taxpayers. It is time to stop giving tax dollars to a small group of investors and start taking care of residents. Lower our taxes.

Look at sales tax revenue. Last month (November), it was down another 10.7% ($22,300) from November 2024. Sales tax revenue has been going down for several years. DOWN, again. Even though we spent millions. Economic development is not working because our taxes are too high. Now we are heading into a crisis of spending. We are in trouble. $961,600 of debt in the first 2 months of this year, and they want to spend more tonight. Insane.

If the council signs this contract to approve $675,000 of new spending over the next 5 years, it will cause huge tax increases next year for every single person in this city. More taxes. That is the truth. Look at the chart. Revenues are going down, but they are going to spend more? INSANE!!! We will expand more in the comments. Everyone needs to comment and share this post. Staying quiet will benefit a small group here and destroy hundreds of residents with taxes they can not afford. People matter, Sidney. Take care of the people.

12/04/2025

Good Morning, Sidney and Cheyenne County,
In our last post, there was a comment as to what was being built on the hill next to the Fairfield. I don't know why the city hasn't said anything. Obviously, they have permits and are moving dirt around, so the city knows. Maybe a Les Schwab?

After tracking several LLCs, etc.. etc. We came up with CenterPointe-CRE, which is developing the property. They manage development for several corporations, one of which is Les Schwab, which is the most likely candidate. Here is a link. You can see the dot on Sidney.
https://www.cp-cre.com/portfolio

I may not be from Sidney, but I do know Les Schwab. They are an Oregon company. I was born and raised in Oregon, not far from the original business. I have watched them grow over the years. I moved to a small coastal town in Northern California in 1982. Built a business. The city was declining, but as a community, we were turning it around. In 1993, a Les Schwab moved in. They put most of the other auto tire and service establishments out of business in our area. One was the business next to mine. Easy for large companies with deep pockets and huge purchasing power. In 2007, the founder, Les Schwab, passed away. In 2020, the family sold to Meritage Group LP and a San Francisco investment group for what some say was around $3 billion. Last year, Meritage put the company back on the market for as much as $7 billion. Does this sound familiar to anyone here? Destruction of competition is a corporate manifesto. Les Schwab is a powerful corporation with over 500 locations in 14 western states, with upwards of 8,000 employees.

Some say Les Schwab will be after the interstate traffic. Maybe. But that goes against their history. There are already locations in North Platte, Sterling, CO, and Cheyenne, WY. Yesterday, we tracked down their latest business plan. We could be wrong, but we have read their market plan. Rural targets. Smaller markets, agriculture, etc. We feel Sidney is next and fits the plan. Large companies care about stockholders and bottom lines. Not about keeping the competition in rural areas in business. The profit is also corporate, which means all the profits will leave Sidney and go to the 120,000 sq. ft Les Schwab corporate offices in Bend, OR. Nothing stays here. That is the way it works.

It will be very important to support local businesses and help them survive. They give amazing service and have been here for us. We need to be here for them. We have to be a community.

Just one more thing....
About the busing and cutting services. We did tell everyone several months ago that it was coming. We showed you the numbers. Eric told the City Manager and Finance Director months ago in a meeting that it had to happen because the numbers were not adding up. We spend too much money here. This is just the beginning.......

12/02/2025

Good Morning, Sidney and Cheyenne County,
We all see it. The empty buildings downtown and the large number of homes for sale in Sidney. We showed you in a post on November 11th that the decline is real, and contrary to what some people say here about Sidney always recovering, it isn't true. Since 1967, Sidney has lost 36% of its population. https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=866551322819914&set=a.122532460555141

A couple of weeks ago, the Chamber held a meeting at the Elks. 4 of our group attended to hear the presentation. All great. Awesome ideas. It was stated that we need to promote the “positive things” about Sidney. We agree, but we also need to fix the negatives. Taxes, spending, and wages.

At that meeting, it was stated that they interviewed 74 residents, of whom 32.4% had lived here in Sidney for less than 5 years. That is high.....really high. So this last week, we pulled more U.S. Government census results about Sidney to see the trends. Numbers, statistics, truth, that is what we like to look at. It is shocking.

As we have shown in the past, our median family income has gone down since 2018 by $20,000 a year. That is huge. You can see by the chart we post here, which is from the U.S. Census about Sidney, 40% of the population of Sidney has lived here less than 7 years. 40%!!! More than twice the national average. People are leaving Sidney, plain and simple, and the most common reason is wages and taxes, better opportunities.

Common sense says we need to fix problems before spending more wasted money on things that are not working. Since 2018, we have spent millions on economic development, and it has not lowered taxes; just the opposite, it has raised them to pay for all this economic development. Taxes were raised AGAIN this year because of excess spending, and it is hurting our beautiful town. Time for common sense, or as we are going to start promoting.... logical spending... “Common Cents”.... Cut the spending, so we can lower taxes and make it easier on the residents here, so we stop the decline.

Adding more businesses will not help. FACT. We showed that in a post on November 4th. https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=860141906794189&set=a.122532460555141 We have no labor pool. According to the U.S. Department of Labor there are fewer than 132 people without jobs in Cheyenne County, so if you bring more businesses here right now will have the opposite effect. It will drive those currently in business out of business because they will not have employees, labor pool, and all those new businesses will be competing for the same limited dollars from overtaxed residents.

Common sense (cents) says we need to cut spending and get back to what we can afford. Start there. We have been saying this for 3 years. I hope this year, you add your voice to ours and we make positive changes to help everyone here. These are scary numbers, but we can fix this by coming together with a community plan and using common sense. Cut spending before it is too late.

U.S. Census – Sidney
https://censusreporter.org/profiles/40000US81820-sidney-ne-urban-area/

11/25/2025

Good Morning, Sidney and Cheyenne County,
This is the beginning of our holiday season. So this year, let's be thankful for what we have. Come together and help move our community forward. Bring success to everyone, equally. We will explain in detail next week, but this week, let's give thanks.

I was going to write a post this morning about the economy and what we need to do. But it is Thanksgiving week, and yesterday changed that. Yesterday, two young men delivered a sofa we had purchased from Sutton Home Gallery here in Sidney. Excellent customer service by the way! Doesn't come any better. It was a pleasure talking to these two hard-working men and listening to their points of view. One wanted to build a new business in the future. It was great to just sit and listen to the future, his ideas. We can be so much. The desire is here; we just need to do a better job and make those dreams possible. It is so important.

Next year, we will have an amazing opportunity once again to change the direction of this County and City with your votes. Many of our group are going to work very hard to earn your vote with new ideas and fiscal responsibility that will empower everyone. Equally. We must cut spending. This week, we are going to slow down, be with family, and be thankful for what we all have. Next week, we will begin to earn your vote with economic truths. Dream big, then show how we can make it happen. We need change.

11/20/2025

Good Morning, Sidney and Cheyenne County,
So some call us troublemakers. Fine, they are uninformed. Today, we would like everyone to look at one of our community investments. I show photos of it here. We wrote about these homes last year. We wrote 2 more posts about these homes earlier this year. Like this one.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=731034443038270&set=pb.100083951631774.-2207520000&type=3

This was a giant waste of taxpayer money. Where did all the money go? Why did they start out so expensive and then change? We know why. Notice today, the homes are on new listings. New realtor, new lower prices. $44,950 lower, to be exact, on each home. Almost $225,000 total. If you notice one of the houses isn't even the same one listed. 1627 John Borm Dr. Not the same house they first advertised. In the beginning, we were promised 11 homes. We got 5. Still more to look at.

In early June, we wrote the Department of Economic Development, Grant Compliance. We exchanged several emails with Audrey Sauter. Link below. Notice in this letter how she TWICE thanks us for bringing the issue to their attention. She states, “The Department appreciates your vigilance and commitment to ensuring that public resources are used appropriately.”
Here is one of the letters she wrote us about the houses.....
https://changecheyenne.com/images/PDF/RWFHSidney%202.jpg

The State of Nebraska has several times thanked us for our commitment to oversight. Some local officials here, however, have different opinions. We are troublemakers. This is not the case. As we have stated several times, we are a watchdog group. We look at budgets, figures, expenses, waste, and numbers, and make sure tax dollars are accounted for. Some appreciate it. Some don't.

5 homes. An almost $225,000 oversight. We are not done looking into this. We need to be fiscally responsible with our residents' tax dollars if we are going to turn Sidney and Cheyenne County around. We spend too much. We waste money. We need to do better. We will do better. Thank you to some current city officials who followed through with this. Together, we will make common-sense changes. Please like, share, and comment on this post. Help push it out across the panhandle. Show the public that together we can make a difference. Thank you.

11/18/2025

Good Morning, Sidney and Cheyenne County,
We promised transparency, and here are some numbers. As you can see in the last 28 days, we are still growing. Reaching a very large portion of our community now, and we thank you for all your comments and shares. It is helping more people find out what is really going on. Transparency is the goal in everything. As you can see from our latest post, where we show the decline of Cheyenne County, it has had over 12,000 views. Now, let's turn views into action.

Tonight at the Elks Lodge, there will be a community meeting held by the Marketing Hometown American Action Forum. Some in our group are planning to attend to listen to the community. This is your opportunity to speak out. As the Forum stated in the letter about this event, “Because communities don’t move forward by accident. They move because people stop waiting for someone else to solve the problem and decide to be part of the solution.“ Our Bring Back Sidney group has no affiliation with this Forum except that we have some common goals, work together, communicate, and move forward as a community. Everyone should take this opportunity to come together and be heard. Here is a link to the letter they sent out.
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcheyennecountychamber.com%2Ffrom-our-director%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAYnJpZBExb0VTc0FYMGRXeUZXb21TeHNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR69r9kpCdjQOy2y1GZ4DiHnH04-rLQerhIO0d1xZ_qxDxrRup7mzTMW6hvyrQ_aem_d4EkrSaKXc1ORVmHtxXeuw%23!board%2FFromourDirector%2Flisting%2Fthe-future-belongs-to-the-people-willing-to-participate&h=AT3SRc383LyCZTskHP2H96zfWflALBVzq9MYzuzJuDptFMumfxnhO5an2O0tJN3UvH_BKWYq_jjryrxlqg84GR1aMVnXV7NadnRjPM3X6zDn28b-fb9dD9n5vV8n--8

We believe that decisions should be based on numbers... reality, not controlled by small groups. Controlled only by the community. The tax and spend policies of our local government have damaged the long-term potential of our community. We need to change that. Before we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on more community development that has not stopped the decline of our community, we need to push reset. Stop all the spending. Lower taxes. Make this community affordable for those who live here. Make it a place people want to move to and not from. Rebuild our community that will shop in our downtown. Increase our community, which will increase our workforce. Then, and ONLY then, will spending more money on economic development work. Time to speak out. Comment, like, share posts. Attend meetings. Work together as a community for the best path forward. We can do this.

11/13/2025

Good Morning, Sidney and Cheyenne County,
At tonight's city council meeting, they will tell us sales tax revenues are down again. AGAIN! Down over 4% from last year. We have been telling you this will happen for 3 years, and it is. In the future, it is going to decline even more. Why? Because 42% of our sales tax revenue comes from gasoline sales, gas prices are set to continue to decline through 2026. Expect more revenue losses. So we had better cut our spending.

So I show 3 charts here. These are the 3 Counties, in 3 different states, that I have built businesses in since the 1970s. These graphs from our U.S. Department of Labor and Statistics show the growth or lack of growth in each county for the same time period. How well do you think we are doing? Maybe you can understand our group's frustration at the lack of progress in this county. The ridiculous spending is causing high taxes.

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. When I went there in 2002 to expand my business, it was easy. The community worked together. We had plans, dreams, and we made it happen. From 1970 until today, Lancaster County has grown by more than 240,000 people, but still never lost the Amish farm country we are known for. How did we do it? Community, plans, getting involved.

Humboldt County, California. Because of stupid California regulations, we lost industry after industry through the 1980s until today. Here in Sidney, we lost 2,000 jobs. Humboldt lost major companies and over 15,000 jobs, but still grew. How? Community working together. It was about community, not companies.

These graphs don't lie. 40 years ago, as a young man, starting a business and working as a County Sheriff, I got involved in our local zoo. I loved the zoo and the animals. One year, we wanted to expand a new black bear grotto. We raised millions to do it. I loved our black bears. Especially one I fed sourdough bread to every time I was there, which was a lot. He loved kids. After we raised the money, one evening our City Manager killed the black bears because he didn't know where to put them while they built the new grotto. He decided ON HIS OWN to kill the bears. The bears we just raised millions to build a new home for. It made national news. We fired that city manager, and from that time, I decided “bad things happen if I don't get involved”. I have never stopped getting involved.

Instead of giving tax breaks, which do work. I KNOW it does from living in other areas. Sidney raises taxes and gives grants to selected businesses. Sidney supports selected businesses, not the community, with lower taxes. Sidney fights, bullies, and makes people afraid to use their First Amendment rights. Hopefully, we all will use Morrill County's latest recall as an example that you can change things if you come together as a community. Good things happen when you get involved. Bad things happen when you don't. Cheyenne County has been going down for a long time because you do not give tax relief to the most important asset of the county, the people.

11/12/2025

A Little cloudy tonight, but worth a look. We spoke with a friend down in Ft Collins who saw them beautifully last night. Tomorrow is also supposed to be visible, and it is supposed to be clear. Who knows. I think it's worth a look. :)

Auroras may be visible from Alaska to Illinois as an incoming coronal mass ejection could spark severe geomagnetic storm conditions overnight.

11/11/2025

Good Morning, Sidney and Cheyenne County,
We have thrown millions at economic development, but as I think everyone can see, our county and city are still suffering. Why haven't all your tax dollars made a difference? Because we develop business, not a community. Let's look at some numbers provided by the U.S. Census and U.S. Department of Labor, and see why this is happening. Then, when we all clearly see, let's fix it.

Here I show a graph. The base of the graph comes directly from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is also using U.S. Census results. Since the Bureau only goes from 1970, we added the Census details from 1960 to the left side of the graph. We did this because in 1967, when the Sioux Army Depot closed, Cheyenne County took a huge loss in population. Loss of residents, neighbors, and customers for businesses. Over 4,000 residents. That is HUGE.......

Look at the graph!!!! Cheyenne County and Sidney have been declining for more than 60 years. There is no up and down. No, "Sidney always recovers". Those are the true numbers. The whole truth. More coming this week. Hang on.

Cheynne and Sidney's decline slowed, even went up a little while Cabelas grew during the 1990s through 2017, but while the growth of Cableas was HUGE, the community growth was small. Because you built a company, not a community. Cabela's was a 5 billion dollar company based here. The community was built to support it, not itself. These numbers show that. For 8 years living in downtown, I have watched millions be thrown towards selected businesses, but actual community development never happens, and we are still declining. Oh, they promise and promise, but selected businesses here get the money and the development. If you want true community development, you should be using enterprise zones, not grants. But we use grants... selectively building on business, not community, and it is not working. We need to change that.

So let's fix this. First, we need to concentrate on cutting spending. All spending. Reduce taxes. ALL taxes because that strengthens the people, the community. People here are struggling and moving to areas with better opportunities. We have wasted millions of tax dollars on economic development that has changed nothing since 2018. Nothing. COVID had a larger effect. We listened to economic development. Spent thousands on AI tracking like they wanted. None of that worked. Wasted tax dollars.

This week, we are going to show more graphs, numbers, and statistics as to why we are still declining. These will be numbers from the U.S. Government. The TRUTH. Not made up fairy dust and sunshine. It is time we all pay attention. Learn what is really happening here. Then, when we ALL clearly see, let's work together and make better choices, and build a strong community. Lots more coming. We need to fix it.... Our future depends on what we do next.

11/06/2025

Hey Sidney,
We have a fair chance of seeing the light show tonight. It is supposed to be clear, a little chilly, but what the heck. 🙂
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-viewline-tonight-and-tomorrow-night-experimental

11/06/2025

Good Morning, Sidney and Cheyenne County,
So, on Tuesday, we showed the true numbers of what happened to our community as people left and incomes dropped. Why aren't grants and new businesses helping? Simply put, we don't have the money circulating locally to support any new business. Let's look closer....

We know for a fact from census figures that the median family income in Sidney was $73,958 in 2016, before we lost jobs. Today, the median family income in Sidney is $51,704. Over $20,000 per year decline per family. Our last post shows that. Retirees came here with a lower median retirement income.

In March of this year, I wrote a post about Sidney's Vanishing Economy https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=652947070847008&set=a.122532460555141
I showed the true numbers for sales tax revenue from 2016 to 2024. When you adjust for inflation, we are well below 1 million dollars just to hold EVEN with 2018 and 2019. What does that mean? Well, if you take that loss, then multiply it by our local sales tax rate, you come up with a decline of over $50 million in sales each year. Who is going to increase our sales downtown by $50 million a year?

When you increase taxes, you slow our economy. How many of us do not work on our houses because we are afraid of our taxes going up? Many of us. How many businesses don't fix up their building because their taxes will go up, and right now, as their incomes are going down? This slows down hardware stores, equipment rentals. Construction is practically nonexistent here in Sidney for years. Taxes are too high. Fear of tax increases slows down construction improvements to our homes. Incomes are going down; we see that in sales tax revenues.

Bringing in new businesses will not help right now. Money is not flowing through our local economy. You just divide the revenue pie smaller and smaller between existing businesses. Wages can't go up because businesses are not successful. You bring in more businesses right now before we fix our workforce issues, as we showed in our last post, and you will completely destroy what is left of our downtown as you divide that revenue pie even further. Dollar General comes here, Family Dollar closes. You're just replacing businesses, but we as taxpayers are paying for that with matching grants. Wasted money. We do not need more economic development. We have spent MILLIONS since Cabela's. It hasn't worked. We need to cut spending and soon, before we reach a point we can not recover. That point is coming. Let's come together, put off the luxuries, and be a rural Nebraska town, and fix our economy. We can do this. We need to do this.