Staff writer
During a short meeting of the Marion City Council on Monday, Mayor Todd Heitschmidt and City Clerk Woodrow Crawshaw spoke about their experience at the League of Kansas Municipalities Leadership Summit and Mayors Conference last week in Manhattan.
Crawshaw attended several sessions, learning about city budgets, Kansas Open Meetings Act, liquor laws and applications, and social media policies.
“I thought it was very beneficial,” he said.
Crawshaw recommended the city develop a social media policy, which economic developer Terry Jones said he had began.
Heitschmidt attended several sessions he said were very beneficial including “A Long and Winding Walk,” presentation by Henry Fortunato, the director of public affairs for the Kansas City Public Library.
Fortunato told the story of walking from Kansas City to Wichita including traveling through Marion County and spending the night at the Historic Elgin Hotel.
“He talked up our county, one of our businesses, and our library, which was neat to see,” Heitschmidt said.
Heitschmidt also attended a session about the Wichita Regional Export Planning Initiative where he made contact with Wichita mayor Carl Brewer.
The two discussed the population of laid-off airline workers.
“I asked him if there was a way to contact those people for similar welding and manual labor jobs in Marion County,” Heitschmidt said.
He hopes he and Brewer can work together to formulate a plan to benefit both Marion and Wichita, and to find people jobs.
Due to the next meeting being scheduled on Memorial Day, the meeting was moved to 4:30 p.m. May 27 at the city building.
In other business:
- The council tabled a traffic control sign ordinance until next meeting.
- The council approved a payment of $3,500 to Vogts-Parga for governmental assistance services.
- The council approved the final payments for the Jex Addition sewer project, $5,500 to Ranson Financial Consultants for grant administration and $8,812 to EBH Engineering.
- The council approved a $8,470 payment to Vogts-Parga and $8,470 to EBH for work on the street project.
- Oliver Good was appointed to the Recreation Board until June of 2015 to fill the seat vacated by council member Chad Adkins.