Wyoming
Life coming to former GM site in Wyoming
WYOMING, Mich. — Wyoming city leaders announced a massive investment for the city. The former 75-acre GM property that has sat vacant for 15 years is getting new life.
“So Benteler Automotive has purchased these 20 acres on the southwest portion of what we call site 36, which is a 75-acre parcel,” Wyoming City Manager John Shay said.
The flat lot already has multiple pieces of heavy machinery and dirt moved.
“This has been one of our top strategic priorities for the city of Wyoming is to get this 75-acre sitem, which has sat vacant for so long, redeveloped,” Shay added.
The project on 36th Street is set to be almost 317,000 square feet. City documents show that the company is going to build batteries for the V801 Ford Transit Van.
“It’s huge. I mean, they look at Wyoming, and we try to make Wyoming friendly for business, and we provide top-notch services.”
Shay adds this is a major investment for the city.
“So this was a very exciting development for us, and we’re happy to see a $105 million investment with… I think it’s about 150 to 170 jobs,” the city manager explained.
The city approved the project last week during a city council meeting.
“We recognized we were not going to get another General Motors with 1,500 employees. That just isn’t going to happen anymore. But we didn’t want public storage units or something like that. We really wanted to have an industrial manufacturing component to that, which is really part of Wyoming’s history,” Shay said.
The city split the former GM site into three sites.
“Corewell Health is also moving into site 36, and that’s about 250 jobs. So we’ve started to see some really nice activity at site 36 for the first time,” Shay said.
There’s still one more piece in the works.
“We understand that there is a third company that is in the latter stages of negotiations to acquire that,” Shay said. “So this is a very big deal for the city.”
Shay explains that Benteler Automotive plans to break ground sometime at the year’s end, hopefully.
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Wyoming
Wyoming PD: Vehicle stolen with child inside
WYOMING, Mich. — A child is safe after Wyoming police say they were inside a vehicle that had been stolen Tuesday night.
Officers responded to the incident at around 8 p.m. in the 3300 block of South Division Avenue, according to the Wyoming Police Department (WPD).
We’re told a suspect made off in a stolen vehicle while a child was still inside. At one point, the suspect took the child out of the car and dropped them off.
WPD says the child was found by a parent. They were unhurt during the incident.
The carjacking remains under investigation.
Those with knowledge related to the incident are encouraged to connect with investigators at 616-530-7300 or Silent Observer at 616-774-2345.
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Wyoming
Barrasso leads GOP in voter support as multiple Wyoming counties report 100%-plus turnout
CASPER, Wyo. — In an election where Wyoming counties saw more than 100% voter turnout, Republican Sen. John Barrasso was lent greater support than the man who endorsed his reelection, former President Donald Trump.
That’s according to the unofficial election results available from the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office on Wednesday. Results will remain unofficial until certified by local and state canvassing boards.
Barrasso earned 198,366 votes statewide, dominating his Democratic challenger, Scott D. Morrow, who earned 63,706 votes. Support for Barrasso grew leaps and bounds over his election in 2018, when he received 136,210 votes, per the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office records.
This year, Barrasso earned more Republican votes than any other candidate in the state, including Trump, who, with his vice presidential pick, Sen. J.D. Vance, earned 192,576 votes. That by far dwarfed the number of votes for their Democratic challengers, Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz, who received 69,508 votes in Wyoming.
Trump’s support among Wyomingnites this year waned slightly from the 2020 election, when he received 193,559 votes with then-Vice President Mike Pence. Both the 2020 and 2024 elections were up substantially from the 2016 election. That year, Trump and Pence picked up 174,419 votes in Wyoming.
Rep. Harriet Hageman, another Trump-supported Republican, earned 184,626 votes to retain her seat, a commanding lead over her challengers: Democrat Kyle G. Cameron with 60,763 votes, Libertarian Richard Brubaker with 9,219 votes and Constitutionalist Jeffrey Haggit with 5,360 votes.
Support for Hageman, who unseated incumbent Rep. Liz Cheney in 2022, was considerably higher this year than her initial election in November 2022. That year, she picked up 132,206 votes.
Ballots Cast
In all this year, there were 271,043 ballots cast in the general election, according to the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office. That number may increase slightly as some provisional ballots were still being counted Wednesday.
Those counts were happening in Laramie County on Wednesday morning. County Clerk Debra Lee said there weren’t enough remaining ballots to sway any outcome. She added there don’t appear to be any recounts either.
Laramie County was among those that saw greater than 100% voter turnout. The county reported 40,452 registered voters Nov. 5, but had 43,583 ballots cast as of a 11:53 p.m. report. That’s a 107.74% turnout.
“Wyoming has same-day registration, so that’s why the math looks that way,” Lee said.
Some voters reported that they were no longer registered and the county had no voting history for them despite having participated in past elections. In April, Cap City News reported that over 15,000 Laramie County residents were removed from the voter registry in February, following an annual purge mandated by state law. To be eligible for this year’s elections, affected residents would have to re-register. Lee referenced that purge when asked about the complaint.
Natrona County saw a massive addition of voters as well, with County Clerk Tracy Good reporting a 113.26% turnout. The county had 30,197 registered voters with 34,202 ballots cast, according to an election report printed at 10:57 p.m. Tuesday.
Similarly to Laramie County, Campbell County reported a 107.7% voter turnout. There, registered voters totaled 17,109. A report printed at 12:24 a.m. Wednesday shows 18,443 ballots cast.
On Monday, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray reported that Wyoming was seeing an increase in turnout across the state compared with turnout numbers from previous election cycles. As of 3:20 p.m. Monday, absentee turnout by mail and in person was 112,824, about 44% the number of registered voters in Wyoming.
Despite the overwhelming turnout in some counties, the state did not trump the 2020 election turnout. The 2020 election saw 278,503 ballots cast statewide, up considerably from the 2016 general election’s 258,788, per Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office records.
Stew Dyer at Cap City News contributed to this report.
Related
Wyoming
Amendment A Passes To Separate Residential Property Taxes In Wyoming
The Wyoming Legislature will have a new tool at their disposal to address rising property tax rates across the state for the 2025 session.
Constitutional Amendment A was approved by 146,300 voters on Tuesday night.
The amendment will create a separate class of taxation for residential properties in Wyoming, which will theoretically give legislators more flexibility to reduce property taxes in the state.
In total, 124,743 people either voted in opposition to the amendment or didn’t vote at all on it, which also counts as a no vote.
Opponents of the amendment expressed concern that it would actually lead to lawmakers raising tax rates in the future or raising taxes on other sectors like commercial properties to make up for lost revenues.
The amendment takes no direct action on lowering taxes and it will be up to legislators to decide how they want to proceed forward on the issue.
“Now it’s in the hands of the Legislature,” said Laurie Urbigkit, the government affairs director for Wyoming Realtors and treasurer of the 4Wyoming political action committee that supported the amendment. “It will be up to them to see what they want to do with this. That’ll be the fun.”
The 4Wyoming political action committee spent $544,047 through the end of October trying to pass the amendment.
“We did everything we could to win this,” Urbigkit said. “We didn’t leave a stone unturned, we absolutely gave it our all.”
Urbigkit said although she was proud of their efforts, she has no plans to ever run a political campaign again.
Amendment A was the only amendment proposal on this year’s ballot.
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