The Sheridan City Council convened on November 17, 2025, for a regular meeting that included presentations from The Food Group and the Sheridan Economic Development Authority (CEDA), a proclamation for Zonta Says No to Violence Against Women, a staff update from the Weed and Pest division, public comments, and action on two public hearings. The council approved a consent agenda, a subdivision plat, and a rezoning ordinance.
With the food group, we are a community feeding children. As you can see, this is our mission, and we're seeking to alleviate childhood hunger in Sheridan County by providing nourishment to children. So I'm gonna spend some time telling you about that. Next slide. Oh, there is a thousand. Perfect, thank you. With that, our vision is we work hard to be an informed and supportive community where every child has access to nourishment. So with that, we were started by volunteers and community members, and so we know that we can't do the work that we do if we don't inform and educate others about the work we're doing here in Sheridan County. So in 2010, unofficially, the food group began, and in 2015, we became an official 501c3. And throughout that time, we worked really hard to provide food to youth of all ages, from preschools all the way through high schools. We rely really heavily on our partners to make this happen. So we are the ones that collect and gather the food and then we give it to our partners to then distribute it. So we couldn't do it without administrators, teachers, staff, parent liaisons. They're the ones that really have those relationships with children to get the food to those in need. Something the food group is really proud of is we do not receive any state or federal funding. We're completely community supported. That's how we started, and that's how we'd like to stay. We know that we don't ever want to put barriers in front of children, and sometimes state and federal programs can do that, and so we're really grateful we can. We work really closely with local purveyors to buy our food. We buy almost everything from Ridley's and Albertsons. We have a new partnership with the state food bank, but really almost all of that comes to our local grocery stores. And then we use over a hundred volunteers monthly to get the work done. Some of those we see twice a week, others we see once a month, but they really um are the wheels on the bus that make everything happen. So we know that kids often rely on the meals throughout the school week to kind of get through, but on weekends there's not always a guarantee that they will have food within their homes. And so that's what the work of the food group began with, and I'll go into that a little bit more. But we really try to focus on providing nourishment to kids on the weekends. Just a few quick facts, and this is from last year's school year. But about 45% of kids in Sheridan County receive free and reduced meals while at school. And then we know that if kids go home and are hungry on the weekend, they aren't always as ready to learn on Mondays, and so we work hard to give them a little bit extra so they're ready to come to school and be the best that they can. Um, and then again, our programs are completely anonymous. There's we work with the schools to sign them up, and there's no cost to the families. So our weekend food bag was kind of our pilot program, but we serve kids in multiple different ways. So I'll go a little bit more into each of these programs, but um, these are the different ways. So we kind of have uh these seven different ways that we support kids throughout the community. So our flagship program, the weekend food bags, is we work to provide a high protein milk sugar meal to kids. So this is kind of an example of something we would pack. Um, this week we're sending out 508 bags to every school in the county. And it looks a little bit different at every school, but they're all pretty much the same. We have volunteers that come in, put these in bags donated by Ridley's, and then we send them to the school to be distributed. Um it's always a breakfast item, a main entree, a canned vegetable, a snack, and then in the school year they get fresh fruit, in the summer they get canned fruit. Um, our teen pantries, this is something that is evolved as the food group has been around, is we know that there's a little bit higher stigma for kids that need access to food when they're older, and so we've created pantries for our students to be able to go in and collect food that they know they need a little bit more discreetly, and then we also provide snacks to every kid at the junior high and high school level. It's every school does that a little bit differently. Some of them roll carts out, others put it in teachers' classrooms, but that's just a way that we know we are able to help provide for those older age kids, and then we also provide hygiene products. Um, our little free pantries, there are 19 of them in the um in the county, they're the decommissioned newspaper uh bins, and with that we will fit 44 items within that box, and they were strategically placed to give kids access to food on weekends and in the summertime. We do know that there's a little bit of over bleed and then feed community members as well. It's something that my boy is really aware of, but we know that it's a benefit to the community. So this has been a really big impact in these last months. We've given away about four times as many boxes of food than normal, but we were really happy to be able to provide that in a community. Our monthly uh fresh food home delivery came out of COVID, and we knew that there was limited access to food during those months. So we always deliver a frozen protein and fresh local lettuce.