A vacancy in Iola’s code enforcement office will be filled, although City Council members still want a discussion about staffing levels within the city.
Council members heard an impassioned plea Monday from Code Enforcement Officer Gregg Hutton about the importance of filling a position vacated earlier this month by the departure of Deanna Helms.
Council members suggested at their Jan. 13 meeting the city hold off on filling the position to determine whether it could be dissolved as a budget-saver.
Eliminating the position would put undue stress on the entire office, Hutton opined.
“If we don’t have this position, our town is going to get trashier,” he said. “It’s going to look worse.”
That’s because a healthy portion of the job duties include doing follow-up checks on the 1,200 or so permits and nuisance notices the city deals with annually, Hutton said.
If residents are seeking construction permits, those get the highest priority, he explained.
“There’s not enough hours in the day for me to do it alone,” he said. “The place that would suffer the most would be the nuisance violations.”
While Council members agreed with Hutton’s assessment, and cleared the way for a replacement to be hired, they also said further vacancies should undergo a similar amount of scrutiny.
“We’ve talked about how we can save money,” Councilwoman Nancy Ford said. “Can save through attrition? Now there’s a vacancy. Let’s talk about that vacancy. Is this really a necessary position? Can it be absorbed in other places? We are doing our due diligence as a council. Need to bring it to the table to have this discussion in open session.”
City Administrator Sid Fleming said he already has those discussions with department heads, human resources representatives and hiring managers.
“I’d like to interject.,” Fleming said. “A council’s responsibility should be setting policy and service levels. We’ve talked about cutting, but we’ve never talked about what level that means.”
Mayor Jon Wells suggested the discussion be fleshed out further in a strategic planning session.
Fleming is targeting such a session for early March.
ANOTHER PUMP ‘N Pete’s franchise is coming to Iola.
Pete’s of Erie, which owns a chain of convenience stores across southeast Kansas, including ones in Humboldt, Moran and Gas and two others in Iola, officially will acquire Jump Start Travel Center, 1700 East St., Feb. 18.
