City administrator candidates narrowed down
The Columbus City Council is back to the permit drawing board with the apartment building slated for the land east of Hornsby Street NE and I-35 after dissolving the agreement with the previous developer.
In June 2022, the council approved the construction of a 150-unit apartment complex by Apollo Development & Co. Construction. This project hasn’t moved forward and the council approved another buyer and developer to step in and create a 159-unit apartment complex instead.
The initial changes that the new developer suggested would change the already approved apartment designs enough that the developer would need to get new permits from the planning commission and council. Council member Janet Hegland was initially concerned adding units would require more parking to be made available for tenants, since Columbus’ parking standards require two spots per unit.
“That analysis needs to be done, and [it’s] one of the reasons we said you need to go back through the process so we can see everything you’re proposing,” city attorney Bill Griffith said.
The city will allow the new developer around 120 days to hammer out plans with the Planning Commission and City Council. The 120-day timeline is put in place to ensure this piece of real estate doesn’t continue sitting vacant while a developer mulls over the project.
In an effort to prevent a similar situation Columbus experienced with HyVee, who was approved to build in 2018 without plans materializing yet, the city has taken precautions to prevent that situation again.
“It’s the ‘fool me once’ concept. We have changed our approach to purchase agreements. … If they don’t start in a given amount of time, we’re going to exercise a right to repurchase to get our property back so it doesn’t sit undevelopable,” Griffith said.
He added: “We definitely wanted HyVee, and we asked for a right to repurchase and they said no. Now we’re just telling developers that’s the price of playing in this market.”
In canceling the agreement with Apollo Development at the council meeting on Wednesday, March 27, the council opted not to open the property up to any and all developers.
“We’re not going to get a flood of options coming if we did open it up,” council member Sue Wagamon said, supporting the new developer’s interest.
Staffing
After the council opted out of paying a search firm in the hiring process of the new city administrator, the personnel committee chose six semifinalists for the role from a pool of almost 40 applicants.
“We actually received a very healthy response to this posting,” Hegland said.
After numerous discussions about whether doing the hiring process in-house would be a good idea, the number of applications received by the personnel committee pacified the stress.
“I think it was the right decision for us to do this on our own and not — I don’t think we would have gotten any better results with the search firm,” Hegland said.
The interviews with the six semifinalists will happen in mid-April, after which the council will review each semifinalist and narrow down the pool of candidates further.
“We have a very good pool to select from,” Hegland added.
The council will discuss their decisions on who should advance during a special meeting at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 30.
On top of narrowing down the city administrator candidates, the City Council approved the hiring of the new accounting assistant position.
“We got a person who was like a dream candidate, she came to us having worked for other cities in an accounting position, she also worked as a city clerk and a treasurer,” Hegland explained.
This new role is tailored to assist with day-to-day accounting tasks, allowing Director of Finance and Deputy Treasurer Cheryl Jenkins to focus solely on higher level accounting tasks.
The money to fund the new position was originally allocated to hire a planning associate, but the hiring of that role was put on hold and the city will continue using city planner Dean Johnson’s expertise.
“We were going to use those funds, so it’s budget neutral,” Hegland said.
Most Popular
Comments / 0