The City of Atlantic’s Personnel and Finance  Committee, Wednesday evening, agreed to look into establishing a one-year, trial run 28-E agreement with the City of Marne, for the contracting of City Clerk services. Atlantic City Clerk Barb Barrick told the Committee Marne Mayor Randy Baxter called her a couple of weeks ago to say they will be losing the services of their City Clerk, Lora Hansen, who was the former City Clerk in Audubon, and has more than 30-years of experience.

Atlantic’s P&F Committee talks w/Marne Mayor Randy Baxter (clockwise, 2nd from the left)

The Marne City Council gave him their blessing to explore clerk service with Atlantic. Baxter told the Committee, Wednesday, that being a City Clerk is “A pretty specialized position. It take a fair amount of training and know-how to do all the reports and [other] things that the State requires.”

Baxter said his City has no employees and runs a lean business, and looks to be completely debt-free in two-to three-years. In fact they, cut their fund balance from $50,000 to $35,000 in the current year. Their budget is $100,000. Barrick said if the 28-E agreement is recommended to the Atlantic City Council and approved, she would share the duties with full-time Deputy City Clerk Ali Tupper, allowing her to gain some overlap in experience, as well. Any change would mean an extra 5-to-7-hours to their workload per month, divided among the two ladies.

Mayor Baxter said Marne would be willing to pay Atlantic $400 per month, the rate for their current City Clerk, not including FICA and IPERS. He said he’d be happy to offer more for the services of Barrick and Tupper. Before making any commitments or recommendation to the Atlantic City Council, however, the Committee requested Barrick explore in greater detail, the subject of Barrick’s compensation and the legalities involved.

In other business, the Personnel and Finance Committee agreed to a proposal from the Atlantic Parks and Rec Board, for an increase in salary for Parks Director Bryant Rasmussen. The change would bump him from his current $42,000 per year to $47,600 for Fiscal Year 2019-20, retroactive to July 1st 2019. Rasmussen was approved as Full-time Parks Director after having recently served as Interim Director, following the resignation earlier this year of Seth Stasshelm.

Parks Board member Jolene Smith said Rasmussen has being “Doing a great job.” She said “Anyone that started a job in the first six-months you get a flood, you get RAGBRAI and playground equipment with no company to help you set it up…he’s got a lot of great ideas…he’s a naturalist…we need to set his salary with the increase we’ve proposed.” Bryant has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in the area of Earth Science.

The Parks Board proposed a three-year step-scheduled pay increase to $53,300 in FY 2021, $59,000 in FY 2022 and $64,338 in FY 2023, commensurate with the median pay of persons in similar positions, education and experience. The proposed salary will be recommend to the Atlantic City Council for approval during their next meeting.