On Wednesday, the day after Tuesday’s city and school election, administrators at the City of Ashland and SoBoCo Schools were busy.

City Administrator and Police Chief Lyn Woolford spent a part of his day listing a full time job for a police officer and actually making a job offer to a candidate.

“We told the voters if they passed a Parks tax, that we would get our police staff back to full staff,” Woolford said, “and that’s what we’ve done this morning.” Woolford said he would expect to have a new officer on the force in May and that officers would continue patrolling at SoBoCo schools.

“We appreciate and thank the voters of the City of Ashland for their confidence in us and giving us a mandate to complete projects at the park and with some storm water issues,” Woolford said.

The Parks tax, which will increase the city sales tax from 7.975% to 8.475%, will provide approximately $170,000 to the city’s parks and storm water projects. However, the tax will not be enacted until early summer, according to Woolford.

“We first have to have the aldermen ratify the election and then the Missouri Department of Revenue is notified,” Woolford said.

Southern Boone Schools superintendent Chris Felmlee said meetings were held last week with contractors from IMG, who will be building the high school baseball/softball fields.

Felmlee said that plans would move forward immediately with the high school softball/baseball complex being a top priority as the plan is for the field to be ready in August for the 2018 fall softball season.

~ Read the rest of the story in today’s Journal ~

By Bruce Wallace