Riley County swore in its newest commissioner Monday morning.
Marvin Rodriguez officially became the new District 2 representative on the Riley County Board of County Commissioners. Rodriguez defeated former commissioner Robert Boyd in the August Republican primary by 300 votes.
Commissioner Ron Wells, who won his re-election bid against first-time Democratic challenger Levi Smith in November, was also sworn in and made chairman. Rodriguez was named vice-chair.
“Well, I’m excited,” Rodriguez told KMAN after the meeting. “This will be a new thing for me, but I’m excited about serving the public and seeing if we can make some goals I had for the county and just fulfill my term and do the best I can.”
Rodriguez was a vocal opponent of the Public Building Commission the board unanimously passed in December 2014. Wells moved to rescind the PBC weeks after Boyd lost his primary bid and the motion passed 2-1, with Boyd opposing.
The PBC would’ve allowed the county to approve building projects and issue debt without a public vote and the then-commission of Wells, Boyd and Dave Lewis argued in 2014 that the PBC would give the county more flexibility to borrow money for building projects through a private bond agency the county already uses. That commission also passed various bylaws it said would be a safeguard for abuse of the PBC.
Monday, Rodriguez suggested his campaign and its supporters can be credited for the PBC pullback and the commission hitting the brakes on a possible sale of county buildings the board floated during the summer.
“We got that stopped,” he said. “But (my constituents are) looking for more transparency and more stability in the decisions that the county would make and that the people would understand them better.”
Rodriguez said he’s interested in what the National Bio and Agro-defense Facility (NBAF) will bring the region as it crawls closer to its completion and other development in the area north of the Kansas State University campus.
And although he campaigned against the possible county building sales, he did admit office space will become an issue.
“Still looking at the space the county has, in the office space,” he said. “We know we’re going to have to something about expanding and getting better facilities, because some of the facilities are getting old, and we need to get some improvement on that.”
One of Rodriguez’s first acts as commissioner involved the approval of advisory board recommendations to the Riley County Law Board.
Commissioners approved Wilson and Rodriguez as the county representatives to the board and Craig Beardsley as its citizen-at-large rep.
