Lebanon ‘really close’ to hiring new city administrator, mayor says

The City of Lebanon is “really close” to hiring a new city administrator, Mayor Jared Carr said Thursday. Taking questions after his State of the City message at Thursday’s Rotary Club luncheon, Carr said the city hopes to make an announcement soon. “Hopefully within the next couple of weeks we’ll have that finalized,” he said. “We have a really good candidate that will be a fantastic fit for Lebanon. I can’t say a whole lot about it because it’s still closed door, but we’re excited about it and I think the community will be happy.” The City Council agenda for Monday night includes a closed session on personnel contract negotiations. Former City Administrator Mike Schumacher resigned in December to take a job as city manager of St. Joseph after seven years in Lebanon. Ben DeClue is currently serving as the interim city administrator. Also at the luncheon, Carr was asked about the need for hotel rooms in the area for tourism when some hotel rooms have been converted to apartments. Carr said the city talks to hotel developers all the time. “Most of them have a formula, visitors you have in your community, people that live in your community, how much the average income of your community is, all of those things play into their decisions. One of the other factors is available hotel rooms that you have,” he said. Converting hotel rooms to apartments should make the city look better in the statistics used by hotel developers, he said. Carr was asked about potential manufacturers coming into the city. “The manufacturing world is slower right now,” he said. “They plan to keep growing inside the community from what I hear from them and be able to continue that growth. On the retail side of things, it’s the same, we’ve lost some but we’ve gained some as well, I would probably say for a net gain in the last few years.” Carr said the use tax, which is on the April 8 election ballot in Lebanon, would be a benefit for Lebanon’s retail businesses. For more on this story, see Saturday's LCR.