Ann Volrath and Jodi Reynolds will officially retire. To fill their shoes, Amy Zawada and Gail Kotajarvi-Gerard will step up. Last night the city council appointed Zawada and Kotajarvi-Gerard to new roles.
Zawada will take over Vollrath’s duties as the Houghton City Clerk. In the role, she will run elections, and complete other clerical work. Councilor Irizarry asked if the administrative team anticipated filling Zawada’s former position as Community and Business Development Director.
And until we figure out where the gaps are and understand and everybody’s comfortable in their new roles. Because part of it also is we’ve met a lot and done a lot of soul searching here internally. Spent a lot of time in the conference room, the whole team. And bringing someone new into the family, so to speak right, now might not necessarily be fair to a new person coming in when we’re trying to make sure that we’ve got everybody and they’ve got their duties in hand before we bring someone in. – Eric Waara, City Manager, City of Houghton
Kotajarvi-Gerard will take over Reynolds’ roles as the City Treasurer, and Transit Director. She will share capital plan fund administrator duties with City Manager Eric Waara. In line with changes at the administrative table, Zawada, Kotajarvi-Gerard, Caitlin Koski, and Jeff Jepsen will receive pay raises to take on additional work.
For Amy transitioning to clerk, $36 per hour. Gail Kotajarvi-Gerard to the treasurer and director of transit at $38 an hour. Caitlin Koski, who you see at the front desk, we’re planning that she’s going to be the deputy clerk. Unless Amy changes her mind, plus she’s got some additional duties, we would like to raise her salary by $1 per hour. And as well, Jeff Jepsen, who has taken on a lot of the things that have just been floating around, and is going to do this from here on out, adding $1 an hour to his salary. – Eric Waara, City Manager, City of Houghton
City Manager Waara expects when the team feels more comfortable with how duties have shifted with Zawada and Kotajarvi’s elevations Houghton will look at how to fill the Community and Business Development role.
Other actions by the city council approved four charter amendments voters will likely see appear on November ballots. Houghton started a charter commission several months ago to review the city’s charter.
Ann sent you all a short but complete memo on the following four resolutions, the first one being 1973. Now again, these were the product of the Charter Commission meeting coming up with proposed amendments to the city charter, which were then essentially turned over to the city attorney to legalize them, so to speak. Then they had to go to the attorney general’s office for review of what the ballot language would be. Now the AG’s office returned some edits that they’d like to see to the language. I don’t think it made a difference in the change itself, but just the language of the change to be compliant with proper ballot language. – Eric Waara, City Manager, City of Houghton
Councilor Waddell expressed he felt the language submitted to the state met its criteria. Adding in particular, within the conflicts of interest section of the charter, edited language from the state did not include a direct process for abstaining from votes. Other councilors felt the language guided abstained votes similar to the previous language. City Clerk Ann Vollrath clarified what the state wished to see within the ballot language.
Yes, they just wanted the language on the ballot to be a little less legalese and a little more common man reading it. – Ann Vollrath, City Clerk, City of Houghton
Councilors approved edited language reviewed by the state regarding conflicts of interest, how to fill vacancies within 60 days, remain in compliance with state election laws, and remove gender references in favor of neutral, and inclusive language.
Last week the city completed work on the budget and will not schedule a third work session. The council expects to vote on the proposed budget in June. For the city to complete paving projects this summer the council approved moving a little more than 1.4 million dollars from relevant funds into the Public improvement fund in preparation for work starting as soon as possible. The city will include funds left over from the previous fiscal year toward those projects.
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