There are three kinds
of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. – Mark Twain
You could
always find lots of cars and trucks around my home. I am an admitted car nut and just love
vehicles of all kinds.
Perhaps out
here in Wyoming it is a throwback to a time when your wealth was tied to the
number of horses you had. And if wealth were connected to the number of cars
you own, my friend Joe Kenney would be a multi-millionaire. I think he has ten vehicles, two motorcycles,
and an airplane at last count.
I am down to
an old Ford Excursion, a six-year old Lincoln and a 17-year old hail-damaged
Lexus convertible. Oh yeah, we also have
a 14-year old motorhome.
So here is my
question for all of you: Wyoming has 579,315 people. How many cars and trucks are there? Do you think there are more vehicles than
people here in Wyoming?
Our local Fremont
County Commissioner Mike Jones sent me the current most updated 2018 statistics
from the United States Census Bureau, which measures all these things. It has
some surprising info about my own county and even more surprising data about
the state of Wyoming.
If you guessed
that, yes, Wyoming has more vehicles than it has people, you were right. The 579,315 people in the state own 603,717 licensed
cars and trucks.
People
(especially wives) repeat the old saw: “The only difference between men and
boys is the cost and size of all their toys.”
Toys? Yeah,
here in Wyoming, we have toys. And most of them are registered with the state
government. Besides cars and trucks, we
have 294,164 “other” vehicles.
More importantly, this total
includes trailers, lots of trailers. Including RVs, this amounts to an
astonishing total of 207,413 trailers. It also includes 26,144 motorcycles.
Snowmobiles,
boats, airplanes, and ATVs are not listed in this total but obviously would add
big numbers if they were.
Wyoming people
drive more miles per year than folks in any other state. That average is 16,800
miles for every man, woman, and child. Amazing.
No wonder my tires keep wearing out.
These miles
are traveled on our 30,430 miles of highways and roads in our state. Of this
total, 6,075 are federal. Did you know
that the longest highway in America is US 26?
Closely followed by Interstate 80, which I believe is the longest
interstate highway in the country, stretching from New York City to San
Francisco, closely following the route of famous US 30 Lincoln Highway. It was Honest Abe who first proposed this
national road along about 1863, when he was pretty much preoccupied with the
Civil War and getting the transcontinental railroad built.
In Wyoming, we
like to brag about our low taxes but the state collected $686,766,223 in sales
and use taxes. That is a pile of money.
Property taxes
collected across the state amounted to over a billion dollars with a total of
$1,344,432,107.
My columns are
limited to 750 words so I have to cherry-pick items here. It would fill a whole bunch of pages to write
about all of this detail.
In my business
career, after starting out as a reporter and ad salesmen, I developed a love
for data and numbers. This surprised
everyone. To me, numbers are not just numbers – they tell big stories. I used to love the early IBM advertisements for
computer systems where they pictured businesspersons pondering spreadsheets.
The caption read: “Not just data but reality.” Just love that concept.
School statistics could take up an
entire column. There are 48 school
districts in Wyoming with one-sixth of them in Fremont County.
There are 355 schools located from
one end of the state to the other. There are 7,248 teachers and 736 administrators.
According to these reports, there are 6,884 other staff to help keep things
going.
Total enrollment is 93,647
students. We have a graduation rate of
81.7 percent. The composite ACT score for juniors in high school was 19.5 in
2018.
Total general fund expenses for
education were $1,493,600,712 for a per-student average of $17,694. This is one
of the highest rates in the country. In
my county of Fremont (with its eight districts), the average per student cost
was an amazing $22,299.
I will wrap this up by sharing that
the U. S. Government owns 46,313 square miles out the state’s total of 97,093
square miles. The Bureau of Land Management controls 27,162 square miles of
this total.
It is a big place with big numbers.
|