Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

Spring has finally sprung in Wyoming, as much as Wyoming ever gets a spring. Local columnist John Davis wrote Tuesday about some of the signs of spring he witnesses. I’ll add mine along with some other random thoughts.

Spring brings with it all the birds returning. It’s been pretty quiet this winter at our house but this week especially there has been lots of chatter between small song birds, pheasants and the loud sandhill cranes. It’s the wonderful sounds of Wyoming spring.

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Spring also brings with it spring burning in the area. Already there have been two out-of-control controlled burns. County regulations can be found on the Washakie County website. In an article in this Wednesday’s issue, County Fire Warden and Worland Fire Chief Chris Kocher cautioned people that just because the ground is still wet and muddy it doesn’t take much time with the sun shining for cheatgrass to dry and become strong fuel for fire.

If you burn, be cautious, make sure you are aware of weather patterns, that you have fire suppression tools at the ready and abide by the county’s regulations.

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Moving on from spring topics, we go to taxes. There have been a little over 100 people who have completed the sales tax survey to prioritize the 10 entities seeking revenue from the general purpose one-cent sales tax. I don’t know what the response was like four years ago but considering how important the tax is to these entities, the response seems quite low. Fortunately, there is still time to fill out the survey online, or copies are available here at the Daily News, the Worland and Ten Sleep city halls and senior centers. Washakie County Commission Chairman Terry Wolf reminds people that if the survey is incomplete or filled out improperly it will not be counted. Residents must rank the entities 1-10 and only use a ranking once. In other words you cannot rank your top three or five and then put all the others at 10. It skews the averages and thus won’t be counted.

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Now let’s run over to national news and the privacy of Facebook. According to the Associated Press, Breaking five days of silence, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized for a “major breach of trust,” admitted mistakes and outlined steps to protect user data in light of a privacy scandal involving a Trump-connected data-mining firm.

“I am really sorry that happened,” Zuckerberg said of the scandal involving data mining firm Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has a “responsibility” to protect its users’ data, he said in a Wednesday interview on CNN. If it fails, he said, “we don’t deserve to have the opportunity to serve people.”

Well kudos to him for apologizing but really, in my opinion, nothing is private on the internet, especially on social media, and you are fooling yourself if you think otherwise. This is why I’m cautious what I post, even when I post only to friends. I never post about being away from my home until I return.

And seriously haven’t you noticed some of the “suggested” ads on Facebook look a lot like things you may have searched for on the internet, no matter which search engine you used. Pay attention. Zuckerberg may be apologizing for collecting data that a company that was collecting for President Trump gained access to, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that Facebook or any other social media won’t be collecting information for other paid advertisers and companies. There’s a reason Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and others are free.

The only way for your data to be truly private is to stay off of the World Wide Web.

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And, finally, we arrive at food trucks and other itinerant or transient vendors. I agree with City Attorney Kent Richins that the current city code is too cumbersome, which is why it isn’t being enforced. I disagree with Council member Dennis Koch that a fee needs to be equal to the brick and mortar businesses.

Should there be a reasonable city fee for vendors? Yes. Emphasis on reasonable. Why? Because I believe all businesses should help support the community in which they are doing business. And, it’s important for the city to know who is doing business in the community.

But there is a reason they are doing business in a food truck, including a much lower overhead cost. Those entrepreneurs should not be punished just because they choose to do business differently than the “norm,” i.e., in a vehicle (whether food truck, produce truck or other).