Mayor Ray Pacheco announces Zulima Lopez will serve as interim Casper city manager

Casper Mayor Ray Pacheo announced that Zulima Lopez will serve as the interim Casper city manager. Lopez is the Parks, Recreation and Public Facilities Director. She has worked for the city since 1999.

“Through leadership of the Parks, Recreation and Public Facilities Department and regular work with Council, we are confident Zulima will keep Casper on track, while we conduct our search for our next city manager."

Pacheco went on to outline the three options Council may use for their search, “We are looking at whether we want to use the city’s human resources division to handle the recruiting; use a national recruiter; or identify someone we believe will be a good fit and directly recruiting that person.”

Napier was directly recruited for the job by former Mayor Kenyne Humphreys and Vice Mayor Ray Pacheco.

Casper City Manager J. Carter Napier will leave his position on August 8.

Napier has served in that role since June of 2017. “Besides fully serving as our city manager until that time, Carter has agreed to provide transition assistance to us and city staff,” explained Pacheco.

Pacheco announced Napier’s potential departure on June 26 at a news conference, citing Napier’s desire to be closer to his family in an area where he grew up. Napier’s departure was confirmed last week.

Pacheco reiterated his remarks from the news conference, “Casper is the better for Carter being here. He has been committed to a Council-led city and brought forth policies for Council consideration that have helped us become a financially secure city."

"With Carter as our city manager, Casper was named the most financially stable city in the U.S. by WalletHub in 2023. He has also vigorously supported our direction to rebuild Casper’s infrastructure and facilities, seek economic growth, and strengthen the social fabric of our community. He is a champion of governmental transparency, collaboration, citizen engagement, employee well-being, and solid public record-keeping, consistently maintaining that the City records are the people’s records. We wish him Godspeed.”