The Riley County Law Board plans to hold a special meeting next week to discuss a plan to move forward on hiring the next director of the Riley County Police Department.
Riley County Commissioner and Law Board member John Ford tells KMAN that’s partially due to a lack of planning.
“We haven’t really had time as a board, some of that’s actually my fault for scheduling things that happened in November, to actually sit down and have a special law board meeting to lay out the foundation to get to that point,” he said.
A two hour tentative meeting is planned for Dec. 16 at 5:30 p.m. in Manhattan City Hall. Ford says that meeting time has not been formally set and may still change. Ford says so far, applications haven’t been able to be accepted for the vacancy.
“We don’t know where those applications are going to go, whether it’s to us or to a separate board to analyze that,” he said.
Because of the unique position, Ford says they estimate about 12 to 20 candidates will apply both externally and internally.
Current director Dennis Butler will retire Feb. 1 and Ford says it’s likely the position will be filled on an interim basis until a permanent candidate is selected. Butler announced his retirement in late October.