New Marion mayor cuts most contract employees in cost-savings measure

Mark Fauser, $24,000, for professional consultation and special projects. Andrea Fear, three separate contracts totaling $34,000, two for consultant work, including work on the city’s website, and one for artwork at the Garden at Matter Park. RJ Fear, $39,000, for IT work and managing the city’s website. Ingraham & Associates, $20,000, for consultation and to market the city to Japanese and Chinese clients. Mike Graft, $42,000, for being head of the Engineering Department. ProLink, $55,000, for consultant services and assisting general objectives related to development and redevelopment. Main Street Marion, $65,000, for downtown development. kyZle.com, $3,600, for development and maintain the city’s two mobile applications. Larry Batchelor, $14,166, for mentoring Marion High School students and to make sure students stay on the graduation path. All but four contracts - Main Street Marion, kyZle.com, Mike Graft and Larry Batchelor – are no longer, saving the city $172,000 annually. 

“It’s not a lot, but every bit counts,” Alumbaugh said, adding that his choice to not renew contracts was not anything personal against the former employees. 

Alumbaugh said the contracts the city has with Batchelor, Main Street Marion and kyZle.com, could also not be renewed in the future when their respective contracts expire.

Main Street Marion’s contract expires June of this year, kyZle.com’s contract expires in May of 2018 and Batchelor’s contract expires in mid-February of this year. 

Chief of Staff Mike Flynn said the city and Main Street Marion have already talked about the contract and the city’s future with the organization. 

“We told them the city is in a lot of financial trouble,” Flynn said. “We’re still wanting to work with them for downtown development, but it probably won’t be at the same financial level as it is now.” 

Flynn said the city also has plans to talk to Batchelor today about his contract with the city. Though the administration wants to save money, Flynn said no final decision has been made on whether or not to renew Batchelor’s contract. 

Alumbaugh said he wants to try to keep all services in-house, but how that will work has yet to be seen. 

“They know we’re in financial stress,” Alumbaugh said. “For some, we may revisit and ask them back.”

The end of the city’s contract with RJ Fear temporarily killed the city’s website. For most of January the website failed to load, prompting an “unable to load screen” when one tried to access the site.

As of Wednesday, however, the website was back up, but still not up to date with information regarding the various city boards, city council or the mayor. According to the city’s website, Wayne Seybold is still the mayor of Marion.

Updating and improving the city’s website will require the city to obtain the rights to the domain name www.marionindiana.us, which the city currently doesn’t own, according to Alumbaugh. Instead, it belongs to Fear, though the city is planning to meet with Fear some time next week. Flynn said he doesn’t expect there to be any problems obtaining the domain name. 

If the city acquires the rights to the domain name, who will manage it or update it is still unknown. 

“Hopefully, we can do it internally,” Alumbaugh said.