In a surprise move Friday evening, the Olathe City Council elected to cancel its search for a new city manager \u2014 instead, current manager Michael Wilkes will stay on for another year.<\/p>\n
This decision was approved on a 4-3 vote. Mayor John Bacon, Robyn Essex, Marge Vogt and Kevin Gilmore voted in favor, and Matthew Schoonover, Dean Vakas and LeEtta Felter voted against.<\/p>\n
Bacon said he wasn\u2019t comfortable replacing Wilkes during a time of several major developments, and \u201cnumerous community and business leaders\u201d have raised concerns about how a leadership change could affect those plans. He specifically named Garmin campus expansions, the Halo Ridge amusement park and hockey arena site, the downtown post office and the massive Santa Fe, I-35 road project.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe consistent feedback I have received is that now is not the right time for such a transition,\u201d Bacon said. \u201cIn my view, maintaining stability in our leadership during this period is essential to ensuring [the projects\u2019] successful completion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schoonover said the decision was \u201ca tremendous mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have identified, through a national interview process \u2026 a confident and capable candidate here in the city of Olathe, that I think each one of us would trust if, God forbid, something happened to our city manager today, to take over the reins of the city without hesitation,\u201d Schoonover said. \u201cI believe the city council should have hired Susan Sherman for the role as city manager.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sherman is the current deputy city manager, and she has been with the city since 1989. She is someone who Wilkes has directly credited as a large piece of his success at the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very upset, quite frankly, that the last act of this council is to usurp that interview process,\u201d Schoonover continued. \u201cThere is no reason for this council to take the action it is taking today. Michael Wilkes’ resignation was effective quarter one 2026. This council could have not acted by doing anything, and maintained the status quo.\u201d<\/p>\n
He argued the next council should have been able to make that decision, and he said he hopes the next council revisits the decision to make sure it\u2019s in the \u201cbest interest of Olathe.\u201d Felter and Vakas echoed Schoonover\u2019s comments, also alluding to wanting to hire Sherman.<\/p>\n
Felter made note of barriers keeping women out of leadership roles.<\/p>\n
Two outgoing council members voted to keep Wilkes on \u2014 Vogt and Gilmore. Vogt lost a reelection in November after 28 years on the council, and Gilmore decided not to run. Jeff Creighton and Kevin Deneault are replacing them in January.<\/p>\n
The Olathe Reporter has requested a copy of Wilkes\u2019 new contract and a list of city manager candidate finalists \u2014 the city confirmed there were three unnamed finalists earlier this month, and since that confirmation, the council has interviewed them and held several closed meetings to discuss the city manager position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a surprise move Friday evening, the Olathe City Council elected to cancel its search for a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,172670,451,172671,172668,172673,172667,3,172669,172672,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-345441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-dean-vakas","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-kevin-gilmore","13":"tag-leetta-felter","14":"tag-marge-vogt","15":"tag-michael-wilkes","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-olathe-city-council","18":"tag-susan-sherman","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}