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Mt. Pleasant searches for new City Administrator
Mayor Brimhall speaks on succession, street repair
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
MT. PLEASANT - Mayor Steve Brimhall has set a tentative date for the appointment of a new city administrator. He expects that, by April 1, a candidate will be chosen.
“90 days seems like a long time, but it's not very long,” Brimhall said. “And we're doing the daily and weekly functions we need to do. We're keeping up.”
This week, a hiring firm interviewed seven candidates for the position. This process is expected to yield local applicants from Mt. Pleasant and other towns in southeast Iowa. Mayor Brimhall called the ideal candidate a “lateral or upward move”; someone of similar experience or station.
“This week, the search firm which we hired is interviewing the council members and department heads to determine what we think we want in a new City Administrator. [...] There’s going to be 12 to 15 people responding to those two interviewers, and they'll compile the information.”
“One of the things I'm looking for is a visionary. Where do you see the city of Mt. Pleasant in five years, where do you see it in 10 years, what do you have to do to get it there?”
The previous City Administrator, Brent Schleisman, served the community for 38 years. His unexpected death last December left behind an outline of his plans for the city's future. This, Brimhall says, will be the guiding star for Mt. Pleasant during the transition period.
A city administrator controls sanitation, roads, land use, taxes, and many other aspects of the city. With Schleisman's passing, the city is on “cruise control”.
“It's the time of year when we've completed pretty much all of our physical projects for the year.” Brimhall said. “Of course, we're in the process of new projects, but they're with the Engineer.” That engineer is Jim Warner.
One of those projects, the reconditioning of Winfield Avenue from Broadway to US-218, is expected to cost over $2 million. This will consist of sewer replacement, road resurfacing, and a new bike trail. The city hopes to begin taking bids on this project from Feb to March, with much of the cost hoped to be be covered by grants. The City of Mt. Pleasant contracts grant writing services to the Southeast Iowa Regional Planning.
Call Marilyn Higgins at 319-368-8895 or email her at marilyn.higgins@southeastiowaunion.com
