By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

The top managers for the city of Hays, City Manager Toby Dougherty, and Ellis County, County Administrator Phillip Smith-Hanes, meet regularly. The elected governing bodies, not so much, and City Commissioner Henry Schwaller is unhappy about that.

“How often do we work with the county? Not enough and never,” according to Hays City Commissioner Henry Schwaller, although he concedes “there are things we do work and share on.”

Schwaller recently talked on the KAYS Eagle Radio Morning Show about the ongoing need for more and better cooperation between the county’s governing bodies.

“When I visited before the election with both county commission incumbent candidates, they were so excited about cooperating with the city,” Schwaller said. “They (Barb Wasinger and Dean Haselhorst) both said ‘We’ve got to meet with the city. We’ve got to share resources and equipment.’ And now we’re reaching out to them and they’re busy. Sometimes we get so involved in the day-to-day operations of the city and the county that we forget that we actually do have to coordinate.

“There is at least some communication happening now that wasn’t happening in the past” with regular meetings between Dougherty and Smith-Hanes, and Schwaller is glad of that.

“A year ago, I asked that we have a joint meeting and include the school board, if they could get together. Never happened. We’re all busy, but none of us is doing something so monumental we can’t take one extra night out of every four months and meet.

“The city commission is ready to go. It’s an open invitation,” Schwaller reiterated.

County Commissioner Barb Wasinger told Hays Post Monday evening she has talked with Schwaller and discussion of scheduling a city/county joint meeting is on the Dec. 19 county commission meeting agenda.