[Vic Wright]
We’ve got less than two weeks to go until election day, and you have a Democratic candidate running for the Campbell County Commission. She’s in the studio right now, Brenda Kirk. Good morning, Brenda. How you doing today?

[Brenda Kirk]
Good. How are you?

[Vic Wright]
I’m great. First off, do you know when was the last time a Democrat ran for Campbell County Commission?

[Brenda Kirk]
2020.

[Vic Wright]
Okay. So it’s been six years.

[Brenda Kirk]
Mm-hmm.

[Vic Wright]
All right. Um, so tell everybody who you are first, as I always start out with.

[Brenda Kirk]
I’m Brenda Kirk. I’ve lived in Campbell County for a little over 10 years. My family’s lived here since maybe 2001, I think.

[Vic Wright]
Okay.

[Brenda Kirk]
I’m a precinct chair now. That was the primary for us. My husband and I are precinct co-chairs now. [laughs]

[Vic Wright]
Okay.

[Brenda Kirk]
I’m the state committeewoman for the Democratic Party, so I represent Campbell County to the state Democrats.

[Vic Wright]
So, what kinda Democrat are you?

[Brenda Kirk]
The Democrat kind, I guess.

[Vic Wright]
Okay. Would you consider yourself a Joe Manchin Democrat, or would you consider yourself an AOC, Ilhan Omar Democrat?

[Brenda Kirk]
I… Uh, who is Joe Manchin? [laughs] No, I know the other two. But I consider myself a Wyoming Democrat.

[Vic Wright]
All right. So, let’s just dive into the hot issues. What would you like to be able to accomplish if you become a Campbell County Commissioner?

[Brenda Kirk]
Well, honestly, I’d like for people to understand local government doesn’t have a party association with it. I mean, it’s five people in a room trying to decide something, so-

[Vic Wright]
Mm-hmm

[Brenda Kirk]
… that’s you and your neighbors, and there just needs to be more people realizing they can run for office and that they can do this job. If they’ve served on a board or if they volunteered, they know how to read finances or they know about a budget, they already know how to do this, and this shouldn’t be a job that’s super hard for anyone to do, because otherwise, we don’t have much of a self-government.

[Vic Wright]
You’ve been a business owner yourself. You have been involved in the community. I remember the days back when you worked at the Chamber of Commerce.

[Brenda Kirk]
Yep.

[Vic Wright]
Yeah. So that was the first time that I remember meeting you. Um, talk about boards and commissions. Have you served on any?

[Brenda Kirk]
Sure. I’m currently on the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, so that’s a city board. I’ve served on boards for various things, sports, charities, over the years. It’s a little bit different when you’re a governance board, even with a nonprofit, where you actively are having to, to deal with the finances day-to-day of-

[Vic Wright]
So bring that up-

[Brenda Kirk]
… running a business

[Vic Wright]
… because I know you were part of Habitat for Humanity-

[Brenda Kirk]
Mm-hmm

[Vic Wright]
… at one point. So go ahead.

[Brenda Kirk]
I wasn’t on the board at Habitat, but yeah, when you have a working board like that, they have to sort of establish your direction for multiple years, so they have to be long-term planners. So really, as a county commissioner, you have to know that you’re gonna inherit a lot of other people’s decisions, and somebody else might inherit your decisions and you might have to justify them 10 years down the line when they don’t work out or they do. That’s part of being on a board, you’re inheriting whatever the last board had set out for you to do. So I guess it really is about getting elected and figuring out what the direction of Campbell County is right now, from the board’s perspective.

[Vic Wright]
So have you been to or watched some of the past Campbell County Commission meetings over the last year or two at all?

[Brenda Kirk]
Recently, I have not seen any. I mean, I’ve sat in on plenty of meetings, and working meetings as a reporter, but, like I tell people, it’s a job that’s a lot of meetings, so it’s usually not that exciting. And when I hear stuff and [laughs] don’t know what it’s about, I just assume it’s gossip, and then it shows up in the papers. So it really is being able to sit in a room with people and work with them, and it’s not overly complicated, but it sounds like it’s been complicated lately.

[Vic Wright]
So you, as you mentioned, been here for about 10 years.

[Brenda Kirk]
Yeah.

[Vic Wright]
So I wanna ask you, and I ask all the candidates of different races, where would you like to see Campbell County be in another 10 years?

[Brenda Kirk]
Honestly, there’s a lot in this county that I think we need to… that’s already here that we need to invest in. Other people have mentioned how we get behind on maintenance and everything, and I don’t think that necessarily has to do with boom and bust. I think people just get reticent to increase their own taxes to pay for the stuff they know is gonna cost more now to maintain, and that’s just a reality, and it’s unfortunate when everything is so expensive right now to realize we have to keep up our own resources, our own assets in this county, because we deserve to have them.

[Vic Wright]
Do you, um… We’ll go over a couple issues. Where do you sit on data centers?

[Brenda Kirk]
In terms of them existing in general or building them here?

[Vic Wright]
Both.

[Brenda Kirk]
I’m really not excited right this second about building anything anywhere. I’d like to wait for at least two years to see what’s happening with our economy before we start welcoming huge industries into the county, but that doesn’t mean I don’t ever want to see another industry pop up in Campbell County. That’s exactly what we’ve been hoping for for years, something to offset coal declining in popularity. And so I don’t wanna say never talk to a data center or never talk to a nuclear tech company, but it seems like a lot of them are real interested right now, and I just wanna ask who’s willing to have a long conversation for a couple years before we start building things.

[Vic Wright]
Well, what about BWXT? Obviously, they announced earlier this year they’re going to be going into where the Pronghorn Industrial Park is, they wanna open by 2030, 2031, so that sounds like that has definitely, uh, already started the process. How do you feel about that issue?

[Brenda Kirk]
I don’t know this company, and they look like a serious company with Department of Energy contracts, and I don’t know if that means they got here first or if that means they’re more serious about establishing themselves for a long time. I think a new industry like nuclear tech, you wanna make sure they understand the investment in our community. This means changing maybe our community college so that we’re teaching entry-level nuclear technicians. And we might be the first state in the country that has a nuclear tech program at a community college level. I mean this is… There are possibilities here, but I don’t wanna work with anyone who’s not willing to see that it’s worth investing in our community long-term.

[Vic Wright]
Another popular topic is optional 1% tax. Where do you sit on the optional 1% tax?

[Brenda Kirk]
I like that we have a local tax. I’m annoyed that in order to alter this tax at all, like, if we wanted to make it a three-quarter cent tax, we have to introduce a new ballot initiative and get rid of the 1%. So there’s… It’s great that we have a conversation every four years about this tax, but if we decide it needs to be changed, that can’t be done at the ballot at this… It’s very confusing. You have to introduce a ballot initiative to get rid of one and then introduce another. So it… If there’s a way for us to have these conversations about it being optional, where it feels less like we’re getting yelled at that, you know, “We need this,” but it feels like every four years, we just kinda panic that people might vote it down, and two-thirds of this county has voted for this tax for the last 20-some years. So, I’m not really worried that it’s gonna get voted down. It’s a great local tax because we collect it and we spend it, and it’s just us in Campbell County. But discussing how much it is, whether we lower it, whether we raise it, what we do with it if the state raises their state taxes. I feel like those conversations aren’t really happening. When we talk about the 1% every four years, it’s just, “We desperately need it. Please don’t vote it down,” and most people won’t, but that’s not a conversation that’s productive sometimes when we’re talking about covering all the bills.

[Vic Wright]
All right. Well, the Chamber of Commerce, of course, had the survey that wrapped up last month. How important is that survey if you were to be elected as a commissioner to decide how the optional 1% tax funding should be spent?

[Brenda Kirk]
This is a good question no one’s asked me, and it’s important to me that the commissioners have good data, and I think that survey for the last few years, people don’t know about it, people don’t turn it in. I think something like 2% of registered voters turn it in. And so people, you know, if they don’t live in Wright, they won’t fill out the Wright portion. If they live in Wright, they won’t fill out the, you know, city portion. And so there needs to be a better way of collecting this information because some commissioners really do rely on it. And when we get here, like, three and a half years away from the last survey, which was four years ago, that data is kind of… I mean, there’s nothing on there about data centers. There’s nothing on there about nuclear.

[Vic Wright]
Mm-hmm.

[Brenda Kirk]
So it’s not as effective the further we get from the survey, so I don’t know if that means it has to be done every two years. It’s very expensive to mail everybody the survey.

[Vic Wright]
Mm-hmm.

[Brenda Kirk]
They want some security. They don’t wanna just use an online app to collect everybody’s survey results, but it goes out only to registered voters, so that confuses a lot of people too. They don’t realize they’ve dropped off the voter roll, and they are not getting the survey. So, there’s gotta be a more effective way to collect that because it is really valuable feedback for commissioners and city councilors to be able to make decisions.

[Vic Wright]
Where do you sit on Proposition 1?

[Brenda Kirk]
Prop 1 confuses me. I don’t know who it’s for. I thought maybe it was for long-time ranchers, farmers, to help them out. I mean, there’s… You know, it’s horrible right now for the AG business, so, when I heard farmers and ranchers don’t want it either, I was… I, I don’t know who it’s for. Like, who is it for? Who is it gonna benefit? Where are we gonna make up the money? So, no, because there’s not enough discussion on this one either to make sense.

[Vic Wright]
Okay. What are some things that you would like to work on if you were elected as a Campbell County Commissioner?

[Brenda Kirk]
Right now, I’m worried that we might not have enough staff at the county. I wanna make sure that we’re retaining staff. When you make budget cuts, retaining a staff member instead of cutting that position, that person is going to be able to make ends meet for you as a commissioner, where otherwise, if I’m saying, you know, “Cut this much out of your budget in the department,” and they cut employees, I can’t come in and do that role for you. I’d rather there be an employee there and we make cuts somewhere else because your staff members, your civil servants, can make that work with a reduced budget, but you can’t make that work if you don’t have the person there doing the work.

[Vic Wright]
So what would you like to see cut if cuts would have to happen?

[Brenda Kirk]
I have no idea, and that’s, that’s part of the challenge of being a commissioner. You have to be able to look at everybody’s departmental budgets, and when I look online at the county budget, you don’t really see the, the department breakdown. So it’s hard to make good judgments ahead of time when you don’t have any idea what people’s budgets actually look like.

[Vic Wright]
What kind of experience do you have with budgets, and the concerns if you were to be elected, and you wanna look at department budgets and things like that?

[Brenda Kirk]
Most of the time, from my experience sitting in commissioner meetings, it’s always the overhead, the administrative, the payroll, the benefits, their healthcare that tends to put the county over the line in the first place on, like, say, the first draft of the budget. They’re always over because they’re trying to cover that portion. So, if it’s been that way for a long time, there maybe really does need to be a discussion of how we fund certain things first, because I really do think people are more important to fund first than anything else.

[Vic Wright]
What is your view on the coal industry? Obviously, the legacy industry of Gillette and Campbell County for 50, 60 years. Where do you sit on coal?

[Brenda Kirk]
The thing about coal is, for the last 10 years I’ve lived here, leaders in Campbell County have explained patiently, I think, to the rest of the state and this county, you know, coal’s always gonna be here. It might not always be as profitable as it was 10, 15 years ago. That was the height of coal production. We might not be here, but the coal will be here. If it’s popular again, we can dig it back up for you. But it’s not gonna pay for everything like it has been, and I feel like not enough people statewide are even listening to us when we say “It’s paid for two-thirds of what you have right now. It’s time to step up.” Campbell County might be fine, but the rest of the state needed to realize we have to figure out something else to supplement coal declining in popularity.

[Vic Wright]
We talked about data centers and obviously nuclear, but are there other types of industries you’d like to see come to Gillette or Campbell County that would help offset all the weight, I guess you could say, that the coal industry holds on this county?

[Brenda Kirk]
You know, I’d rather see locally grown international companies. We have a few. I’d like to see a few more.

[Vic Wright]
L&H and things like that?

[Brenda Kirk]
Yeah.

[Vic Wright]
Okay.

[Brenda Kirk]
We’re completely capable of creating our own industry here, and that’s my biggest hope is that the next big thing is from here. I would like to prioritize trying to make that happen. I don’t know if that’s strengthening the college or what we’re doing to make sure that people understand they can start an international business in Gillette.

[Vic Wright]
Talk about your thoughts on the college. Of course, the college became its own entity a couple years ago. They’re working on being accredited. We’ve heard, for example, they are getting part of a grant. They wanna open up a construction trades program that could benefit BWXT and the housing market as well. What role is the importance of Gillette College for Campbell County and how does that affect you if you were to become a commissioner?

[Brenda Kirk]
Well, I’m glad we are our own district now and we’ll be accredited soon. It’s an amazing college and it’s one of those assets I’m talking about where we should just continue to invest in ourselves and whatever we want at that college, we should see. And I think people appreciate seeing a community that cares about itself enough to provide for itself with a really decent college. And the construction program is an amazing thing. A lot of people get into that program and they do realize they could be working for someone like Habitat, where they’re building houses for people like them all day long. So, I’m excited about what’s happening at the college. It’s an example of a lot of people doing a lot of work that’s gonna benefit us in 10 years, and maybe not being able to appreciate it right now with the election and everything going on. But there are a lot of really great things in this county that are worth fighting for.

[Vic Wright]
What do you see about the housing? You were part of Habitat for Humanity for a time period. Housing’s a concern, not just in Campbell County, but the whole state as well. What role should the commission play in maybe opening the door, cutting red tape for more housing opportunities in our area?

[Brenda Kirk]
A lot of the things we need to do with housing is a statehouse level decision where they need to give the rest of the state a plan for development. In Gillette, they’re just getting a unified development code, whereas other cities in Wyoming have had it for 10, 15 years. That helps with housing just so that you can look at the different variety of housing. There’s different financing options to keep it affordable. So it’s really a more measured approach to housing. You can’t just pick one thing and hope it solves the whole problem, so you really do have to have a decent housing plan.

In Colorado a few years ago, they realized their smaller communities had no idea where to start, and they were experiencing this like a lot of people are right now, where you realize, “Oh, I don’t know enough about housing as a city councilor to actually solve the problem.” So Colorado passed something called a menu bill that gave everybody options that were approved by the statehouse, that they could add into a personal housing plan for their city or county, or not if they didn’t want to. And in the years since that has happened — where people can actually look at what their options are and what makes sense for their locality — there have been a ton of housing bills since in the statehouse in Colorado.

In Wyoming, we don’t really have a lot of housing bills go through. So it’s a way to enable the local control where there’s good feedback coming back to the statehouse and they can tell them, you know, “This works, this doesn’t,” in terms of keeping affordable houses on the free market.

[Vic Wright]
Now, in terms of the role of the Campbell County Commission kind of being the local government body to send concerns and everything to the state level, what’s the importance of that role if you were to be a commissioner?

[Brenda Kirk]
I just learned that there’s a Wyoming County Commissioner Association because Jim Ford just won an award. So I didn’t even know that was a thing. I am assuming these are things that get discussed at those meetings. It’s a meetings job, so I assume there’s a meeting somewhere with the statehouse where we tell them the things we need in the county.

[Vic Wright]
All right. Any last topics or things you wanna cover that I didn’t ask you?

[Brenda Kirk]
Really no. Just listening to people, their different concerns, and a lot of the time it comes back to stuff that doesn’t have to do with the county, so that’s the only frustrating thing is you wanna let people vent, but I can’t help you with that as a county commissioner. The worst thing is that everything’s just so expensive, so when people say “groceries!,” and they can complain to anyone about groceries because it’s everyone that’s struggling with it right now. So, as a county commissioner, I have no idea how I would get the grocery prices down for you, but I wish I could.

[Vic Wright]
Have you gone door to door campaigning at all?

[Brenda Kirk]
Yeah. It’s been rough the last couple weeks ’cause of the rain. Nobody wants to stand on their porch in the rain.

[Vic Wright]
What have you been hearing from anyone that you’ve talked to so far? Concerns and things like that.

[Brenda Kirk]
Most people really are concerned about the data center thing. There is a meeting at the CamPlex tomorrow night with the Wyoming Outdoor Council. That’s a good third party. They’re not saying ban data centers. I’m not either. I’m not interested in banning a whole industry without talking it through first. But they want to make sure that we have a way to put guardrails up around the construction of data centers or controlling what it’s drawing on our water and power. So I’m interested to go.

[Vic Wright]
6:00 to 7:30 tomorrow.

[Brenda Kirk]
Yep.

[Vic Wright]
So it should definitely be an interesting opportunity for people to go on out and, at the very least, learn about what data centers are about, if you have no clue what data centers are about. So it’ll be a hot issue, I would think, in the legislative session in 2027 as well. How can people get ahold of you if they have any questions, wanna know more about where you sit on topics we haven’t talked about?

[Brenda Kirk]
Well, all my contact info is on my website, which is vote, the number four, and Kirk, so vote4kirk.com.

[Vic Wright]
And how do you spell Kirk?

[Brenda Kirk]
K-I-R-K.

[Vic Wright]
All right. Vote4Kirk.com. And I’m guessing you have a Facebook page as well, and all that good stuff?

[Brenda Kirk]
Yeah. Kirk for Campbell County.

[Vic Wright]
All right. Brenda Kirk, she is running for the Campbell County Commission. She’s running as a Democrat. There are three seats, four candidates. Obviously, Brenda Kirk on the Democratic side. You have the three Republicans that won the primary: Sarah Farmer Edwards, Jim Ford, and Scott Clem. So there will be four names on there. Of course, write in if you wanna write in as well. Brenda, thanks for coming in. I appreciate it.

[Brenda Kirk]
Thank you for asking me.