Blanding council gets Wellness Center, new police officer reports

By David Boyle
News Director
Members of the Blanding City Council received reports and approved an employee leave policy at their latest meeting.
During a brief August 8 meeting, the Council heard from Police Chief JJ Bradford that the city has a tentative offer to a non-certified applicant for an open position.
The position is a partnership between Blanding schools and the city to bring a school resource officer into schools. A current police officer will become the school resource officer while the city waits for the new officer to finish training. Bradford reports the next open police academy date is November.
“That’ll put us probably Spring before we’re back to full staff because putting a guy in the school will short the staff by one until Spring,” said Bradford. “So we’ll have basically one officer per shift for the next several months.”
Blanding City Council also received a report from Recreation Director David Palmer. Palmer reports that the Fire Suppression system is installed at the city Wellness Center.
Palmer also reported that the grant process for the Centennial Park ballfield shade structure is moving forward.
The council appointed Mayor Logan Monson to act as city representative on the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) board. Monson will represent the city after city engineer Terry Ekker resigned to take a new job.
Members of the council also approved an updated employee leave policy and held a closed session to discuss a variety of topics, including personnel, as the city looks to fill the open city manager and city engineer positions.