Indianola names Doug Bylin interim city manager as council and staff pursue cuts to close $1.8 million gap

The City of Indianola has named Doug Bylin interim city manager as it works through a budget shortfall that Mayor Steve Richardson estimated at about $1,800,000, Richardson said on the Indie Unplugged podcast.

Richardson said the city recently concluded a joint special meeting with the Indianola Municipal Utilities Board and that one of the first agenda items at the council meeting was naming Doug Bylin interim city manager. He praised Wade, who had been serving as interim city manager, for returning to his previous position at Colfax and called Wade's decision "unselfish." Richardson said Bylin has worked with department staff during budget reviews and that council member Melissa Sones, City Treasurer Doug Scholl and City Clerk Jackie Rafferty had been participating in the review process.

Officials are working to reduce that shortfall before the end of fiscal year 2025, which Richardson said ends June 30. He said he asked department heads to identify cuts that could be made during the remaining quarter of the fiscal year; "there's about 3 months left," he said. Richardson described progress in identifying savings and expressed optimism that the city would present a balanced budget by the June 30 deadline and for the July 2026 budget year, while acknowledging further pressures ahead.

Richardson raised state-level changes he said would affect city revenue, referring to "House file 07/18" as legislation the city "is gonna have to deal with." He illustrated the local effect with an example: for a $300,000 house he estimated the city portion of property tax would change by about $39 per year under the referenced law; Richardson said that, across the city's roughly 5,000'6,000 residential properties, the aggregate impact becomes significant. He also said the rollback factor changed and provided an illustrative per-household impact, describing the cumulative effect as requiring departmental sacrifices or service cuts.

Richardson said the council will discuss the property tax levy and budget more at a public hearing later in March; he urged residents to use the City of Indianola website to read his March 7 mayor's memo for more details. He said department heads have been "very unselfish" and praised staff for attending an employee awards banquet and for their cooperation during budget reviews.

The podcast did not record a formal council vote or an adopted budget; Richardson described the process underway and predicted final renewal and budget numbers would be known as departments complete line-item reviews.