CASPER, Wyo. — About 400 people, businesses and other organizations owed the City of Casper $108,415.30 in this past fiscal year.
The city tried to collect those debts, but collections efforts were exhausted.
On Tuesday, the Casper City Council wiped those debts during its regular meeting at The Lyric, 230 W. Yellowstone Highway.
State law allows municipalities to discharge uncollectible accounts when a city manager certifies those accounts to the council, according to a June 1 memo from the financial services staff to City Manager Carter Napier.
The memo contains a list of those meeting the certification, which requires that an account has not been paid by means of collection efforts being exhausted, by death or by bankruptcy.
The city is careful to cancel any unpaid debt as uncollectible. Those debts are referred to a private collection agency.
“But after five years of collection effort, these debts have not been collected. It has become exceedingly unlikely that additional effort expended on collection will result in any additional payments,” according to the memo.
Most of those on the list are individuals, with some owing as little as 3 cents, followed by other small amounts: 45 cents, $1.10, $1.81, $2.00 and $2.35.
Most amounts owed are from $100 to $1,000, and many range between $1 and $100.
The largest individual debts are $1,489.00, $1,599.64 and $9,775.00.
Oil City News initially reported that one of the debtors appeared to be a public figure, listed as Jan and Charles Gray, owing $137.26.
After Oil City News received a complaint about the listing of this debt from Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, an investigation discovered a city clerical error on the name. The name of that debtor is Jan Charles Gray, the secretary’s father.
This is the city’s response to Oil City News, stating this was their clerical error:
“The amount discharged originated from a weed abatement issue on the property owned by Jan Charles Gray located at 2323 E. 15th Street. The original code complaint/enforcement was done under the appropriate name, unfortunately due to human error the billing system was changed at some point and a hand entry of Jan and Charles Gray was made into the system. This has been corrected by the finance department.
In the statement attached you will see three billing amounts and only one of those has been discharged the other two have not been discharged at this time.
City of Casper
Regarding other unpaid debts, these were the businesses that owed the most.
On the top end, the defunct Casper Bobcats hockey team owed the city $12,190.65.
A number of businesses owed four figures:
- The defunct Parkway Plaza Hotel – $7,248.14.
- Shepherd of the Valley – $5,776.06.
- Shawn’s Johns LLC – $2,964.53 (administratively dissolved by the Wyoming Secretary of State in 2022).
- Casper Ramada Plaza – $1,798.50.
- Red & White Cafe & Motel – $1,454.08.
- Kmart No. 4736 – $1,005.26.
CLARIFICATION, June 20, 2024: Oil City News has corrected its reporting after learning of a city of Casper clerical error.
