North Liberty City Council receives five applications for vacant seat

The North Liberty City Council has received five applications for its vacant city council seat.

Newly-appointed Mayor Gerry Kuhl gave up his council seat when he was sworn in June 24. During a July 8 meeting, council members decided to appoint someone to fill the seat rather than hold a special election.

'I am excited about the quality of applications. The people have such depth of experience and are excited about the possibility of running for the council,” council member Coleen Chipman said.

The five candidates are: Jay M. Franklin, Sara C. Langenberg, David Moore, Amy Neilsen and Annie Obrecht.

Applications were due by 4 p.m. Tuesday and can be viewed at http://northlibertyiowa.org/government/city-council/

The council will hold a special session at 6:30 p.m. July 29 to speak with the candidates and appoint one to the seat.

'I am not running again so if any of these applicants aren't selected for the council, I definitely want to encourage them to run in November 2015,” Chipman said.

The new council member's term will last until November. Mayor Kuhl's position also will be up for election in November, because a local-option sales tax question has been added to the ballot.

The council on Tuesday discussed suggested items to which apply the revenue from the tax, should it pass. All council members supported the tax money going toward the capital improvement plan, specifically the ongoing construction of Highway 965.

'Everybody in town knows our roads need to have improvements. They may disagree with the park, they may disagree with the water and sewer, but I think that's a very dedicated issue and it makes it so much easier to defend because the need is so great,” Chipman said.

Council member Terry Donahue agreed and said that the city's infrastructure projects are the greatest need.

The council does not support Iowa City's suggestion of allocating 10 percent of sales tax funds to affordable housing, or Johnson County's request of 10 percent for the new justice center. However, all council members suggested requesting more information from the county before making a decision on the justice center.

'I think we deserve a justification from the county as to why they need the 10 percent from the communities, especially if the sales tax referendum goes through. They could net out close to $4 million a year,” Donahue said. 'Let them justify why, so we can say we gave them a fair shake. And then when we come back and do deliberation, we make our final call from that point.”

The council has until Aug. 27 to finish the city's ballot language for the local-option sales tax.