Brad Yoder, who has served as Iola’s recreation coordinator for nearly five years, was hired by the council to replace outgoing Luke Bycroft as recreation director.
Bycroft resigned earlier this month.
Jake Lawrence, former fitness program coordinator, for the city was named as the city’s new assistant recreation director. Yoder’s old position. Kristi Sutherland’s new title is assistant recreation coordinator.
In other personnel actions, the council approved the hiring of Robert Droessler Jr. to the city’s sanitation deparment. Councilmen also approved six-month or annual evaluations and subsequent pay raises for seven other employees. The raises range between 1.6 and 3.3 percent.
COUNCIL MEMBER Beverly Franklin has asked City Administrator Carl Slaugh to bring information regarding annexation of housing subdivisions outside Iola’s city limits.
Annexation is an option the city could consider in order to grow, a local banker told councilmen last week.
Franklin noted most of those housing subdivisions rely on city resources in one form or another.
THE CITY may be ready to move forward and acquire land for a proposed dog park by the end of the week.
City attorney Chuck Apt is drafting a quit claim deed the city will present to Earlene Still, widow of long-time firefighter and former fire chief Wayne Still, who owns two parcels of land along South Chestnut Street, between Vine and Rock streets.
The land has long been abandoned, formerly holding a trailer house destroyed in the 2007 flood. The city hopes to convert the property into a dog park, but cannot reach Still in order to take possession.
Council members have given permission for Iolan Ray Shannon — a dog park advocate — to personally deliver papers to Still’s last known mailing address in Monmouth Springs, in northern Arkansas.
The papers would grant the city immediate ownership of the land.
Apt said he has been accumulating information to write the deed. Apt admitted a deed could be typed up in a matter of minutes, but other information is needed, “so he doesn’t have to make a second trip to Arkansas.”
Apt said he hoped to have the language of the deed in place by the end of the week.
SLAUGH SAID the city has been working in league with Chanute, Centralia and other communities in eastern Kansas in acquiring a wholesale electricity contract.
