Bolivar city administrator takes top Chillicothe post

Bolivar’s city administrator for more than five years is taking over the same role in the northern Missouri city of Chillicothe. 

Chillicothe City Council voted unanimously Monday to hire Darin Chappell as the successor for Ike Holland, who resigned earlier this year to become city administrator of Willmar, Minnesota, according to city documents.

Hired in April 2012, Chappell has led a financial turnaround in Bolivar. Last month, he told Springfield Business Journal the city was $877,000 in the red for unrestricted general reserves when he arrived and now has $1.4 million in the black.

“The city’s doing really really well, and I’ve done just about everything that I set out to accomplish on behalf of the city,” Chappell told SBJ. “We just decided that if we were going to look out and see what the horizon held for us, that now was a good time. So that being the case, I sent out a few resumes to a very select few cities.

“Chillicothe was the one that I was grateful to be asked to be their city administrator.”

Chappell is expected to start this month in Chillicothe, where he’ll oversee a $13.8 million annual operating budget and 70 full-time employees. His contract stipulates an initial one-year term with a base salary of $95,000.

In Chillicothe, sales taxes are expected to generate $1.24 million through March next year, above the 2016-17 budget of $1.15 million, according to the city’s website.

Reporter Matthew Henderson contributed to this article.