Riley County Health Department Director Brenda Nickel will be stepping down in December.
County commissioner approved the paper work during Thursday morning’s meeting.
Nickel, who has 40 acres of land with her husband near the Emporia area, will move back there and take a newly-created risk management director position with the Flint Hills Community Health Center in Emporia, which is a federally-qualified health center.
Commissioner Robert Boyd said Nickel, who took over the lead at RCHD in 2013, will be missed.
“I can’t stress how much she’s made a significant improvement in that health department and what kind of problems she came into,” Boyd said. “We had a lot of different factions up there, she got them all together on the same page and she got it organized and the systems in place.
“She’s really done a bang-up job.”
Nickel said the combination of the new position at Flint Hills Community Health Center and being 86 miles closer to home was too inviting to pass up.
“It’s incredibly bittersweet,” she said from her office later Thursday afternoon. “I’ve felt so privileged to work (in Riley County) and its been a professional dream of mine.”
Nickel said she’s confident the department is in a good place for her eventual replacement.
“We are in an amazing forward trajectory,” she said. “And this team is well-positioned to continue that work.”
Her last day will be Friday.
In other items, Riley County Parks Manager Greg Lund and representatives from the Randolph City Council informed commissioners that plans are moving forward to replace an aging restroom facility in Randolph City Park.
“We have several daycares in the community that use that restroom daily,” Randolph City Councilman Mitch Innes said. “It’s been shut down since August because of water leaks, costs to repair and everything else.”
Councilwoman Janie Dunstan said efforts to find grants for the $60,000 project have been challenging.
“We’ve looked into multiple grants and have either been turned down or don’t even qualify,” she said.
Commissioners agreed to earmark $12,000 already allocated to the project for future use until the rest of the funding for it is found.
Both Innes and Dunstan said Randolph is looking into fundraising efforts as well to fund the new restroom and have even considered online fundraising websites such as gofundme.com.
