The size and makeup of the Iola City Council is once again under the microscope.
On Monday, Councilwoman Kim Peterson said she’d like to see Iola take a closer at doing away with the city’s four voting wards, and instead look at an all at-large governing body.
“I’d like to see it put up for discussion,” Peterson said at Monday’s Council meeting.
Iola is split into four voting wards, each holding roughly 25% of the city’s population.
The impetus for Peterson’s comments comes from the June 1 filing deadline, which resulted in only one contested race among the five city seats up for grabs in the November election.
Councilman Nich Lohman will face Myra Gleason in Iola’s Third Ward, in the southwest quadrant of the city. Two other wards will have uncontested races, while those in Ward 1 in the northwest part of town will have nobody on their ballots to pick from, thus necessitating a write-in candidate.
Mayor Steve French also is unopposed in his re-election bid.
It marked the second consecutive meeting in which Peterson spoke about the Council’s makeup. She asked at the June 9 meeting whether the Council should consider down-sizing to five members.
Iolan Gary McIntosh, who served at one time on the Iola City Commission when it was still a three-member body, spoke briefly to Council members about the matter, telling them he thinks the city should also consider dropping the Council to a five-member governing body.
The size of the Council has been long talked about since Iolans voted overwhelmingly to do away with the old three-member city commission in 2009.
After going to the polls twice, the city ended up with the existing eight-member Council, with two representatives from each of the four voting wards, plus a mayor.
Any new changes would require an ordinance subject to petition approval, giving registered voters time afterward to challenge the move.
