Walton City Council has created a committee to decide the responsibilities of and eventually appoint a city administrator.
At a special meeting Monday evening, Mayor Terri Courtney and the six-person council discussed assignments to several city committees. While all members were assigned to serve on each of the committees, two were appointed to act as chairs of each.
The assignments for committee chairs are: Barbara Farrow and Sherri Gaskill for the finance committee; Matt Brown and Amy Long for the parks committee; Dan Martin and Rose Beach for the city administrator committee; Beach and Farrow for the sidewalks and roads committee; Gaskill and Long for the cleanup and beautification committee; Martin and Gaskill for the water and sewer committee; and Long and Beach for the Gaines House committee.
According to Courtney, the chairs of the city administrator committee will decide the duties of a potential future city administrator for Walton.
“The city administrator will report directly to the mayor, and the city administrator would be over all the staff, and hopefully they will be able to write ordinances and resolutions … and also grant writing,” Courtney said.
Although the committee to find a city administrator has been created, Walton doesn’t yet have structures in place to hire one. To hire a city administrator, the council will first have to approve an ordinance to create the position and then amend the city budget’s general fund to include a salary for the administrator.
At the Monday meeting, the council approved 5-1 the second reading of the city budget for fiscal year 2025 without any funds set aside for the city administrator. Martin voted in opposition to the measure after attempting to push an amendment to include additional funds to hire a city administrator.
Council approved the first reading of the budget at its previous meeting on June 11, and according to Courtney, funds were not included for the administrator in the interest of saving money.
“Over the last two years, we’ve went $1 million into our reserves, so we’ve overspent as a city,” she said last week. “As we reevaluate our finances and where we are, where we need to be … things had to be taken into consideration as far as savings … just fighting through the high weeds right now, I’m not sure that was a top [priority] of mine.”
Despite not setting aside the money to hire an administrator immediately, both the mayor and council have discussed amending the budget in the future to eventually hire one.
“I think it’s something that we need to research into, find out exactly what it is that they do, determine what we want their qualifications to be, and then if [the budget] needs to be amended, we can do that,” said Farrow.
In addition to making committee assignments, Courtney also appointed three Walton residents to city boards.
Eric Tungate, a supervising manager at the Lunken Airport in Cincinnati, was appointed to the board of adjustments. He will serve a three-year term that expires June 30, 2027.
Cheryl Ralph was also appointed to the board of adjustments, filling the vacancy of Farrow, who was appointed to the city council at the June 11 meeting. She will serve the remainder of Farrow’s term, expiring Aug. 14, 2026. Cheryl works at Roosevelt Paper and lives in Walton with her husband, Dave Ralph.
Dave Ralph, who works in leadership at Lowe’s, was also appointed to a city board: the code enforcement board. He will serve a one-year term, expiring June 30, 2025.
Walton is still looking for a resident to fill the role of an alternate for the code enforcement board.