By Andy Foltz
NKyTribune Reporter
After a stormy first quarter to the year, the city of Cold Spring seems to have found smoother sailing in the past 30 days.
Mark Stoeber was appointed interim mayor during an emergency meeting April 8, following the resignation of Mayor Nancy Bay, who was elected in November.
Stoeber was a three-term mayor that did not seek re-election in November.
Upon his appointment, Stoeber told the NKyTribune his first priority was to ensure the nearly 6,000 residents of the city it was safe and efficient. To that end, he spent his second day back in office meeting with various city staff and city council members for an hour at a time to help inform his decisions on how best to proceed.
“I hope it is not a health issue,” he said, referring to Bay’s sudden resignation. “Not one of the people I’ve talked to knew what was going on.”
Bay had fired city attorney Brandon Voelker and city administrator Steve Taylor shortly after taking office, and then fired police Chief Ed Burk in February. City council brought Voelker back in the April 8 meeting, prior to appointing Stoeber. Taylor’s return was approved by city council during the April 27 meeting as an “at will” position, similar to a city attorney’s contract, to give flexibility to the next elected mayor. The mayor’s position right now is interim, and in the next general election in November the city of Cold Spring will elect its second mayor in as many years.
“I didn’t realize it was interim, which doesn’t matter but it does affect my viewpoint,” said Stoeber.
His next priority is the hiring of a police chief. The position is being looked at for internal hire first, and a hiring panel has been named to conduct interviews. The panel is composed of Mayor Stoeber, senior council member Lou Gerding, Judge Gregory Popovich, Central Campbell Fire Chief Daniel Schultz, Lakeside Park/Crestview Hills Police Chief Christopher Schutte, Barleycorn’s owner Joe Heil, and Cold Spring residents William Von Stohe and David “Angelo” Penque.
Currently, Lt. Wayne Hall is acting as interim chief.
At the May 11 caucus, Cold Spring city council heard from Chris Johnson of the Kentucky League of Cities, as well as their own attorney Voelker, about how to possibly prevent such a massive dismantling of city government from taking place in the future. The conclusion was: You can’t.
“One benefit of the mayor-council form of government is it is a strong mayor,” said Johnson, who is a member of the KLC legal team. “We are an at-will state, and these positions are at will. They can be fired for any reason, aside from discriminatory ones. The only way to check the power of the mayor is to go to a commission form of government.”
Another concern for Cold Spring was the chain of command with the city, due to the confusion surrounding the issue when Bay resigned. Another problem the city potentially faced is that it has a dual-signer check system, and two of the three positions who may sign checks from the city were the mayor and police chief.
Johnson did say with the check situation that emergency situations have precedence, so they could still be issued, “but frankly that’s a situation you never want to get into.”
“This situation was just the perfect storm,” he said.
If a mayor in this form of government knows they will be unavailable for city business, they can appoint a non-elected official to tend to those duties. Stoeber said he is looking into issuing an executive order that spells out the specific chain of command to prevent the city from being without clear direction should a similar situation arise in the future. An executive order would act in the same way as a city ordinance does, in that it will remain valid until repealed or superseded by another executive order.
Stoeber also pointed out to council that they have recourse through the budget, as that the budget is set by council and approved by vote.
“At the end of the day, the mayor has control over city operations, council has control over the budget, and ultimately the electorate has control of both through the vote,” he said.
“The reality is, our Founding Fathers put a lot of faith in the electorate and the power of the electorate,” he said. “They assumed that both branches of government would take their jobs seriously, and not defer to one or the other.”
After hiring a police chief, the next step for Cold Spring, just like all municipalities, is passing their annual budget, required by June 30 under Kentucky state law. Then, it will be close to the filing deadline for the next mayoral election.
“I don’t want to (run in November), but I will pay serious attention to who is running,” Stoeber said. “The people who served on council with me, we thought we had made the city bulletproof. IN my wildest dreams I never imagined it would be dismantled so quickly.”
“I can’t sit as a resident and watch that happen again,” he said, adding that he would only run if he felt he needed to do so to give Cold Spring residents a choice come November.
Last year, Stoeber announced he was not seeking re-election well in advance of the August filing deadline, hoping to talk some others into running for the office. He said he was met with 10 “no’s.”
“Two people said I’m too smart to run, and two or three said I’m not that damn dumb,” he said. “It’s sad that the respect for public service is gone. If you run for office, it’s automatically assumed to be self-serving.”
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You might be interested in this earlier NKyTribune story:
Former mayor becomes interim mayor, city attorney re-appointed