Editorial:

Don’t come in and expect to make changes

Posted 6/8/23

We like it here, and I think most of us are ready to welcome newcomers. Personally, I’ve seen a couple of new residents come into my neighborhood in rural Park County in the last few years, and …

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Editorial:

Don’t come in and expect to make changes

Posted

We like it here, and I think most of us are ready to welcome newcomers. Personally, I’ve seen a couple of new residents come into my neighborhood in rural Park County in the last few years, and I can’t think of an interaction that hasn’t been positive. Heck, my new next door neighbors, from California, have embraced Wyoming with a fervor that surpasses many who have been here many more years.

However, in the last year or so covering Park County Commissioners, I’ve seen this worrying trend of new residents moving into established subdivisions and then objecting to current conditions. I’m not saying that they don’t have valid concerns. But, when you move into an area, you are essentially accepting the subdivision as is. If the current situation isn’t agreeable to you, why the heck did you move there?

Without going too deep into specifics and naming names, (you can do your research and probably figure it out) I’m thinking in particular of a handful of issues that have popped up.

In a couple of neighborhoods in the county, property owners who have moved there within the last couple of years have questioned existing conditions, or sought to question whether more established owners had really been taking as good of care of a road as they said they had. 

Now, I’m not weighing in on the appropriateness of the requests or critiquing the county’s decisions. In truth, some of the issues that have come up have drawn support from established homeowners alongside newcomers. What does bug me is the neighborliness, or lack thereof, of some of these newcomers who seem to be too quick to go to the government, or lawyers, as opposed to sorting it out amongst themselves.

If the gravel road is sprouting potholes when the weather is bad, welcome to living off nonpaved roads in Wyoming. We bought an F250 for a few reasons, but the most important of them was simply to get up our gravel driveway in the winter and drive down the gravel neighborhood road to the highway. We didn’t ask anyone else to adjust, we simply adjusted, and paid our yearly HOA fee to keep up on the maintenance of the road. Private roads are everyone who uses them’s responsibility.

“This is the neighborly thing to do and this is the way it’s done in Wyoming,” County Engineer Bryan Edwards said during one recent commission item involving a private road that pit neighbors against each other. 

Buying sight unseen is no excuse. It just means you didn’t bother to do your due diligence. Or, if you bought for the future and didn’t live in it until recently, you may not have been paying attention to happenings in the meantime. That’s all right, just don’t expect your objections to what everyone else had already agreed on to be welcomed by the neighborhood.

Be a part of the community. If you come here, know we prize private property rights above most things. If you hear shooting and you’re out in the county, it’s probably someone sighting in a rifle or just plinking, if not out hunting. Out here, as long as it’s legal, it’s not something to report to the authorities if its causing an issue — just talk.

For instance, we moved to our current property from Cody in 2019 where shooting off full-fledged fireworks in town isn’t allowed. Out of town, no problem. So, when the neighbors shot off fireworks most nights around July 4, at first there was a bit of frustration— we’re early to bed, early to rise — we soon began to appreciate having a show right out back. We certainly didn’t call the sheriff’s office or go into our HOA bylaws to see if they were doing something wrong.

And, when I recently discovered that the vacant land across the creek from our house was actually a separate lot between two houses and was set to be sold, I didn’t like the idea of another house sprouting up so close. But, the property owner is doing what they want, legally, with their land. Who am I to object to that?

So, if you’ve moved to Park County within the last couple of years, welcome. Enjoy where you live; it’s a little slice of heaven. And enjoy your neighbors, even if they may do things a little differently than from where you came from. 

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