Casper Council Approves MOU for Story Walk Along Platte River
On Tuesday, the Casper city council approved a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Natrona County Public library to set up a story walk along the Platte River Trail.
The walk, which according to the MOU will be completed by Nov. 15, would include 24 panels spaced 20 feet apart along the trail, each with a page from a book, which can be rotated out as the library sees fit.
Approval of the MOU was made by the city as one of 10 consent resolution items.
The city will not be paying for any of the costs associated with the construction or maintenance of the walk but does have the ability to take some sections down if properly maintained isn't done.
Megan Bratton, the head of marketing and public relations with the library, said that the idea for an art walk has been an idea for several years now and that they're not sure what the first book will be, as they don't know when the installation will be complete.
The library probably won't have an official opening until the spring due to the weather in November and while they would have liked to have it open during the summer, the approval process slowed things down.
Bratton said that the story walk will be beneficial to the community and help promote literacy for the kids and adults.
"It's just a really awesome opportunity to take literacy outdoors, outside the walls of the library, and partner with other great organizations in our community," Bratton said. "Like the Platte River Trails Trust and the city, to get something like this free, readily available for anyone that wants to use it...No matter how hard we try, we can't convince everybody in the community to come step foot in the library, so it's a way to support our mission of a more connected community, it's about literacy, youth literacy, adult literacy, all those things, but outside the walls of our library. So it takes it to where the people are."