Floyd County begins search for new county engineer

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Floyd County will be looking for a new county engineer after the Board of Supervisors accepted the resignation of current Engineer Jacob Page at the board’s regular meeting Monday morning, Dec. 9.

The supervisors praised Page for the job he has done since starting in the position March 1, 2022, thanked him and then began discussing the process of finding his replacement.

“I am writing to formally resign from my position as Floyd County Engineer effective Jan. 10th, 2025,” Page wrote in his letter to the supervisors dated Dec. 3. “I am thankful and appreciative of the opportunity to serve Floyd County,” he wrote.

Page declined to specify to the Press what he would be doing next, other than to say a “good opportunity” had come up.

He told the board that he was mostly finished with the budget work for the county’s Secondary Roads Department for the fiscal year that will begin July 1, 2025. Finalizing the county’s annual budget will be one of the biggest tasks occupying the supervisors for the first couple months of the new calendar year.

Part of the discussion on Page’s replacement included whether the position should once again be shared with another county.

The previous county engineer, Dusten Rolando, who resigned in November 2021, had held a shared position as county engineer for Floyd and Chickasaw counties for more than 10 years.

When Rolando resigned, Chickasaw County quickly promoted that county’s assistant county engineer to its county engineer position, as he was also a licensed professional engineer, but he said he was not interested in a shared position with Floyd County.

Supervisor Chair Mark Kuhn said at Monday’s meeting that at a regional boards of supervisors workshop he had talked with Cerro Gordo County Supervisor Chris Watts about the possibility of a shared engineer position, and Supervisor Dennis Keifer said he had received a call Monday morning from a Cerro Gordo supervisor about the possibility of sharing.

When the Floyd County meeting was over Monday morning, Kuhn went to Mason City to the Cerro Gordo Supervisors meeting, as the sharing topic was on that group’s agenda.

Kuhn told the Press Monday afternoon that he had arrived after the meeting was over, but he did have a chance to talk with Supervisor Watts and with Brandon Billings, the Cerro Gordo County engineer, as well as Tom Meyer, Cerro Gordo’s chief administrative officer and director of human resources.

Kuhn said it was a very preliminary discussion, but he had brought with him a copy of the contract that Rolando had with Floyd and Chickasaw counties. At that time, Floyd County was the employer of record, paying Rolando’s salary and benefits, then Chickasaw County reimbursed Floyd County for half of those costs.

“Brandon is interested,” Kuhn said, “but he wants to see if it is in the best interest of Cerro Gordo and Floyd County.”

At the Floyd County meeting Monday morning, Supervisor Boyd Campbell asked Page about a shared position. “Is that feasible?” he asked.

Page said it would be doable, but he thinks it would be best to have a single-county engineer who didn’t need to spend half of the time in the other county. He said he could see situations where issues or department questions came up in one county and the engineer was in the other county.

In 2021 and 2022 it took more than three months to find and hire Page. During that time the county hired an engineer from a Mason City engineering firm to help out, and the Iowa Department of Transportation also has services available to help counties when they are between county engineers.

State law requires Iowa counties to have a licensed professional engineer, and many of the county road and bridge projects are done with consultation or cooperation of the Iowa DOT, which provides a significant amount of county road funding.

Kuhn’s term ends at the end of this month, and he acknowledged that he might not be around when any final decisions on the question of Page’s replacement are being made, but he said he wanted to get the process started.

Also at the Floyd County meeting Monday morning, the board:

• Approved advertising for sale a 2017 Ford Explorer with 129,687 miles and a 2018 Ford Explorer with 155,114 miles, both police interceptor models and both used as squad cars by the county Sheriff’s Office.

• Agreed to a change order on the contract with Motorola Solutions to purchase eight portable radios and four chargers to be used by AMR ambulance crews as part of the county’s new countywide communications system. The equipment will remain the county’s property, and AMR will sign a users agreement to be responsible for radio maintenance and/or loss.

Total price is $20,924, less a $7,000 credit with the company that the county had from previous change orders.

• Began discussing but made no decisions on the county employee vacation schedule for 2025. This year county employees received 11 paid holidays – New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, Friday after Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve (close at noon) and Christmas.

Additional holidays that could be considered for 2025 are Juneteenth, day before Thanksgiving, and Friday after Christmas.

• Talked about holding an open house at the courthouse, possibly next week, in honor of Floyd County’s 150th anniversary.