Atalissa’s City Council brought back familiar faces and created a new council member in a reorganizational meeting Monday evening at Atalissa City Hall.
With former mayor Bob Schmidt taking a new career step in Burlington and resigning his position after serving nearly two years as mayor, Randy Windus took over as interim mayor, promising he will be leaving the position in three months after serving the position previously as a city council member.
With the Nov. 2 election upcoming, former mayor Angie Dickey will likely step into that post as the only candidate on the ballot for the position and Windus reporting he’s “given enough” in serving the city, saying he won’t run for the president’s position.
In the meanwhile, Windus has been busy making appointments, most of which were approved by the council Monday night. He announced the appointment of Brian VanDusen as a city council member to replace Tim Dewar, who resigned from his position last month, not given reasons for leaving the position according to the interim mayor. VanDusen will serve out the remaining two-plus years of Dewar’s role on the council.
VanDusen, whose father, Lloyd, served on the council in the early 1970’s, said he’s lived in Atalissa since 1956 and works for the State of Iowa in the Iowa Medical Classification Center in Coralville. He said he was “a little reluctant at first” when he was asked by Windus to take the spot, but said he accepted the role and “will try to help out a bit.”
He jumped right in to take a seat a didn’t hesitate to ask questions about the new high-tech water meter readers the city purchased with “Rescue America” federal government stimulus funding dollars when the issue was brought to light.
The mayor also asked former police of chief Matt Bower to renew his role, the city without a chief for the past several months since the resignation of Matt Shook in June. Bower had served the city for several years before resigning his role earlier this year.
Bower said the lone officer on staff, Takoda ‘Cody’ Aplara, is planning to resign his position and hoped he could hire some officers from West Liberty or other surrounding police forces to take part-time roles in filling the city’s needs. In the meanwhile, he said he will be patrolling the city and will be checking out the department’s police equipment.
The interim mayor also hired a new city attorney, Justin Boston of Stanley, Lande and Hunter in Muscatine. He is also the attorney for West Liberty and Wilton and replaces an attorney from Wilton who left the city several months ago. Windus said he wasn’t “comfortable” not having an attorney for the city.
Finally, the city also rehired Samantha Parry, a former city clerk who left the city early this year and was replaced by Shari Hoffert, an assistant clerk with the city of West Liberty who resigned her position last month.
Parry took over duties again for the city on Sept. 22. She had served the city as part-time clerk/treasurer.secretary for several years.
Windus forced the council, of which he said he is still a voter member, to make a decision on whether to hire Parry as an interim city clerk or as the clerk/treasurer/secretary for the city. The council voted unanimously to accept Parry as the clerk.
The mayor said he hoped to give Parry a raise in pay and noted “she has a lot of work ahead of her” in getting the city books, budget and records back on track, noting she has already worked 38 hours since her arrival back in the city clerk’s chair.
Watch for more on Monday’s Atalissa City Council meeting in next week’s edition of the Index.