Slots on Park Board have now been filled
Mark Mahoney
Randolph Times
RANDOLPH — The Randolph Park Board has had its seats filled.
The Randolph City Council appointed five people to the park board during its regular meeting on March 1.
Council members entered an executive session at the end of the meeting to discuss people who were interested in being appointed to the park board.
The first five people who expressed interest in being appointed were John Dickes, Donna Mae Schutt, Roxy Hanel, Nicole Olson and Joe Wortman. Chelsea Kuchta and Ashley Schmidt were also interested.
After exiting the six-minute executive session, council members appointed Dickes, Kuchta, Olson, Schmidt and Wortman to finish filling all of the seats on the seven-person park board.
Even though they were not appointed to the park board, Hanel and Schutt could still serve the city if they are voted on to the council later this year.
They – along with Daniel Korth and Aaron Nielsen – have filed to fill the seats that will be vacated by incumbent council members Brandon Backhaus and Dennis Bazata, who have chosen not to run for re-election.
In addition to filling the park board seats, the council approved the appointments of Curtis Calder to the five-member Randolph Cemetery Board and Tom Wiese to the seven-person Randolph Planning Commission.
At its Feb. 2 meeting, council members adopted an ordinance that amended the city code to allow Randolph’s cemetery, library and park boards to be filled by people who live within the 68771 ZIP code.
The council’s adoption of that ordinance has greatly expanded the pool of candidates – which used to be limited to within the city limits – to choose from for appointments to the various city boards, which often have empty seats.
Speaking of empty seats, the city still needs to fill four openings on the cemetery board and planned to publicize those vacancies on its Facebook page and in the Randolph Times.
In other news, Randolph City Administrator/Clerk Ben Benton noted that the first phase of the Middle Logan Creek flood risk management project has been completed and was turned over to the city on Friday.
He also told council members that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded the second phase of work on the floodplain project to Iron Mike Construction, which is based in Colorado.
The plan is for a preconstruction meeting on the floodplain project’s second phase to be held by the end of March.
The council’s next regular meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. on April 6 at the city offices building. It also will be available on Zoom.
