Eudora residents will soon have a new bank.
City Commissioners unanimously approved an offer of $800,000 from Mid America Bank for a location in the Nottingham development.
Jeff Hill, executive vice president of the bank, was at the meeting to discuss the purchase and answer any questions from commissioners. The bank will employ between four to six workers, Hill said.
The new bank will be essential because of the new Panasonic project, Hill said.
“Even before the announcement, there were shortages in housing, housing was tight,” Hill said. “Being what I consider a specialist in real estate lending, we can be a great asset for the community.”
Commissioner Roberta Lehmann asked Hill what the expected timeline was, and Hill said breaking ground at the beginning of 2023 would be the best scenario. He said international shipping delays make any construction project unsure at the moment.
In other news, Sean Gordon of Gordon CPA presented the city’s 2021 financial audit.
In Gordon’s letter to commissioners, he noted a “material overstatement of revenues” for demand meters in 2021.
Following the meeting, Budget Manager Renee Davis said no residents were affected by overcharges, only demand customers, which includes larger businesses that use a lot of electricity.
“In 2015 we went to automatic meter reading, instead of checking each one,” Davis said. “For some reason when they do an update, it changes all the settings we had, and the demand reads were stuck so we have no idea what their readings were supposed to be.”
This has since been resolved, and in order to refund customers of the roughly $222,000 that was overbilled, the city looked at the demand from 2019 to figure out the difference.
The audit also found three former employees who were still listed as authorized signers, but this has been updated, according to Davis.
The audit also found three projects/capital purchases in which the city did not obtain bids. The auditor recommends any purchases greater than $20,000 go through the bidding process.
The projects that did not obtain bids were a new police car, a chip seal project and a project led by Torgeson Trenching, an excavating contractor based in Topeka.
In other news, Kenny Massey was appointed to the library board by commissioners, following the resignation of board member Amy Durkin.
Commissioners also voted to move their next meeting to Oct. 12. City offices will be closed Oct. 10, when it was previously scheduled, for Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Reach reporter Abby Shepherd at [email protected]
