New Ward Map Presented at Casper Council Meeting

At the Casper City Council meeting on Tuesday, Denyse Wyskup, a regional geographic information systems administrator for the county, talked about the updates they were proposing to wards one and three, based on the 2020 U.S. census data.

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Wyskup said that one of the reason for the change was due to the imbalance in population between the two, with Ward 3 having 14% more than Ward 1, while the state recommends there only be a 5% difference.

The new map proposed by Wyskup would reduce the population difference down to 3.6% by switching over some of the area south of the cemetery.

Wyskup said that they also tried to use easily identifiable geographic locations to mark where ward boundaries are, as she feels the current borders can be difficult for people to understand.

While they had hoped to use South Popular and Beverly as one of those easily identifiable locations to mark ward boundaries, but Wyskup said that they ran into issues in keeping the populations between the two wards balanced due to how densely populated the area below Highland Cemetery is.

Council member Steve Cathey asked Wyskup about how they are able to keep the balance with Ward 1 and 3 while also keeping Ward 2 in line with the other wards.

Wyskup said that despite changing the border lines, they were still able keep the populations between all three wards in balance with one another, with the balance with Ward 2 and the other two wards at less than 2%.

On Oct. 22 there will be a commissioner's meeting to discuss the ward boundaries and the currently proposed changes to Ward 1 and 3.