An owner of an urban farm outside Cheyenne city limits told the city's Public Services Committee on Tuesday that she fears she could be criminally charged and go to jail if the City Council takes a final step to annex her farm into the city limits.
WY fresh farms could soon be folded into Cheyenne city limits through forced annexation, if the City Council agrees to pass an ordinance on its final reading.
Should the council pass the ordinance at its meeting next week, Wy fresh farms will be subject to city zoning requirements. Failure to comply could lead to misdemeanor criminal charges, up to six months in jail and up to a $750 fine.
The annexation has been a contested issue at recent council meetings, with WY fresh farm owners and dozens of local residents pleading with the council to postpone the annexation.
A proposed amendment to split the annexation into two dates, moving forward with all but two parcels next week and pushing annexation of the parcels on which WY fresh farms sits to March of 2027, failed to pass at Tuesday’s Public Services Committee meeting.
Urban Farm Definition
WY fresh farm owners David and Tommie Kniseley and their supporters have questioned how their business would fit within the city’s definition of an urban farm.
Charles Bloom, director of the Planning and Development Department, told the Public Services Committee on Tuesday that the urban farm classification fits into the city’s existing land uses. The uses, he said, are very broad.
For example, the city does not define “church” beyond a “general assembly," and a card shop is classified as “general retail.”
Because “urban farm” falls under the city’s classification of “existing land uses,” Bloom said that, “the intent is to give the Kniseleys the guarantee that their land use is allowed.
“We’ve done a lot to ensure that the path forward is going to be easy for the Kniseleys,” he said.
The Planning and Development Department collaborated with the mayor’s office to come up with a specific definition of an urban farm. That definition is not yet codified in city code, he said, but it will be “as soon as possible.”
Bloom said that if the annexation proceeds, WY fresh farms will be absorbed into city limits under the use it applied for in 2021, as a home occupation that cannot exceed 25 customers per day.
“What we are looking to bring into the city today is that exact use that they applied for in 2021,” he told the committee. “We’ve paved the path for them to grow.
“There will be no land conveyance," he added. "We will not be acquiring any property. They will be able to continue to farm and sell their retail sales in their food stand as it is today.”
Kniseleys React
David Kniseley told the committee he’s been reading through 996 pages of city code to figure out what he can and cannot do on his farm as part of the city. Since the ordinance has come under consideration, Wy fresh farms has hired an attorney.
“I’m a little surprised that the process has been characterized by Mr. Bloom as easy,” he said. “It hasn’t been easy.”
Kniseley pointed to his Amish ancestors, whom he said have been doing what they’re doing in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, for 400 years “without asking for permission to live their lives and grow their food and sell their crops."
“We’re homesteading,” he said. “People want the freedom of homesteading.”
Kniseley said his family is now considering selling their property and “going to a place where we’re welcome.”
Chelsea McCort, who works for the Kniseleys, pressed the committee to slow down the process, as she has at prior City Council meetings.
“This is not an emergency level of, ‘We need to annex or the world’s going to end,’” she said. “We aren’t demanding that. We’re just asking that our questions get answered.”
The Kniseleys submitted 143 questions, organized into various categories, to the Public Services Committee regarding the annexation.
Tommie Kniseley was particularly concerned that fences on the property would not be completed to city code before the proposed annexation would take hold.
“You guys are leaving my livelihood vulnerable,” she told the committee.
Amendment Proposed
After Public Services Committee and City Council members Mark Rinne and Pete Laybourne made a motion to move forward with the third reading of the ordinance, committee member and Councilwoman Michelle Aldrich proposed an amendment to split the dates of annexation so that the parcels occupied by Wy fresh farms would not be annexed until March 9, 2027.
Laybourne questioned whether applying conditions to ordinances according to different parcels within the same ordinance would show partiality.
“It does establish a policy precedent,” said City Zttorney John Brodie. He recommended that if the delayed effective date be applied to two parcels, it be applied to all.
“I would like to see this farm succeed, if possible,” Laybourne said.
He did not support the amendment, saying that pushing off annexation would be “just kicking the can down the road for a year."
“If we have to go to court about it, I guess we do,” he said.
Of the four committee members, Aldrich was the only one who voted in favor of the amendment.
The public services committee returned to the original resolution, agreeing 3-1 — with Aldrich voting “absolutely no” — to bring it to the council for a third and final reading at its regular meeting Monday at 6 p.m.
Kate Meadows can be reached at kate@cowboystatedaily.com.
