CASPER, Wyo. — The Casper City Council dug into its proposed fiscal year 2026 budget on Tuesday, reviewing expected revenues, expenses and more.
City operations will come from its balanced general fund of $56,181,907. The total budget projects $189,286,224 in revenue to $183,702,557 in expenses, putting the city in the black by roughly $5.6 million.
City Manager Carter Napier told councilors the city has two types of revenue: recurring and one-time. When drafting the budget, Napier said care was taken to ensure that recurring revenues are only used to balance recurring expenses.
“The rule that we try to follow is, we don’t plot one-time revenues against ongoing, current expenses,” Napier said.
Capital outlay saw the biggest decline among the city’s expenses, falling from roughly $144 million to $27,593,250 for a decrease of 81%. Sizable decreases were also seen in transfers out, dropping from approximately $35.2 million to $13,334,673 — down 62%.
The city’s general fund revenue comes from local taxes, licensing and permitting, intergovernmental fees, revenue from goods and services, fines and forfeitures and miscellaneous other means.
Overall, the general fund dropped about 1% from fiscal year 2025, which Napier primarily chalked up to two factors. The first, he said, is a decrease in capital projects.
“We don’t do capital work until we actually have the cash on hand to fund the particular project, whatever it might be,” he told Oil City News.
The other impact comes from the property tax relief passed by the Wyoming legislature earlier this year. Napier said the loss in property tax collections is currently manageable, though he added that property tax relief will be considered in November by Wyoming voters and could have far more devastating impacts.
“The real challenge would be if we get hit by another property tax cut coming up, pursuant to what the voters decide in November,” he said. “If we get hit by that second cut, there would be services that are discontinued.”
The proposed budget can be viewed below:
