Mayor Orr: I Ignore The Haters And Just Keep Working On Cheyenne

Cheyenne Mayor Marian Orr says despite a barrage of criticism lately, she is ignoring critics and focusing on making Cheyenne a better place to live.

In an interview with Glenn Woods on KGAB's ''Wake Up" Wyoming" program on Wednesday, the mayor said ''over half" of a $100,000 award from the Bloomberg Philanthropies would be returned.

She said she had the understanding that once the city did not win the  $1 million dollar award that was awarded to four cities as the next phase of the Bloomberg "Mayor's Challenge' program, the spending of remaining money was discretionary. So she says she spent some of it traveling to promote Cheyenne and for various other expenses. Orr says she thought that she was saving the taxpayers money.

But she said upon learning that the remaining money was not in fact to be spent at her discretion, she agreed to return roughly $33,000 that has not been spent and another $23,000 that was wrongly spent for various purposes. The mayor says the repayment of the $23,000 will come from the mayor's discretionary budget, and that "nobody is on the hook for that." The mayor also said she has no plans to step down, although she declined to say whether she plans to run for re-election in 2020.

She also claimed that recent criticism of some of the spending of the Bloomberg money by City Council President Rocky case was personally motivated.

Case issued a statement denying that: