The city’s biggest priority in the future should be ensuring its roads and utilities remain in good shape, Iola City Council members agreed Monday.
Billed as a three-hour brainstorming session, the council visited at length with City Administrator Carl Slaugh on a number of topics regarding city business.
Several council members, including Joel Wicoff, Scott Stewart, Don Becker, said ensuring the city’s infrastructure — and maintaining the facilities it owns — deserve the highest priority.
Council member Kendall Callahan agreed, adding that while considering those items, the city also must look within and be able to better explain the value of the services its provides. By putting a dollar figure on certain services, citizens will be better informed of their true costs.
Slaugh moderated the discussion, which began with a review of a survey completed by the council members and Iola’s department heads, listing their highest priorities.
The maintenance and infrastructure items — such as repairing or replacing the city’s water and sewer lines, replacing a substation near Gates Corporation — took the top several rungs on the priorities ladder.
Other priority items included ensuring city staff receives competitive health and employee benefits and considering other sources to purchase wholesale electricity than through the Kansas Power Pool.
COUNCIL MEMBERS discussed several items, many in generalities, but some more specific, including:
— Deciding whether the New Community Building is the best location for council meetings, and whether City Hall and its offices, the Iola Fire Department and other facilities are large and modern enough.
— Improving the city’s working relationship with Allen County to determine if both entities can work together to save costs.
— Determining whether employee turnover is based on wage comparison with the private sector or other factors.
— Ensuring city staff remains as productive and work as efficiently as possible, and that city equipment is maintained.
— Deciding whether some services should be contracted out or handled in-house.
— Checking into whether the Recreation Department can offer more programs for the older population.
— Considering whether police officers are best served working 12-hour shifts or if other work schedules are preferred, and whether implementing a reserve officer program could provide suitable backup in times officers are busier than normal.
— Inquiring about whether employees could do things such as take breaks at their respective job sites rather than load up in vehicles and return to their respective bases, or whether the public perception would be adversely affected by seeing an employee lounging at a job site.
