T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY From left to right, Marshall County Supervisors Jarret Heil, Carol Hibbs and Kevin Goodman converse during a brief organizational meeting held at the courthouse on Friday morning.

Just two days after their final meeting of 2025, the Marshall County Board of Supervisors reconvened for the first time in 2026 on Friday morning for the annual organizational meeting, which was mostly a series of yearly formalities and a change of leadership.

After serving as chairman of the board in 2023 and 2024, Jarret Heil was again selected to that post for 2026 by a unanimous vote after Carol Hibbs held the title in 2025. Hibbs will now serve as the vice chair.

Once he had retaken his position, Heil asked County IT Director James Nehring to play “The Star Spangled Banner” in honor of the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence in 2026 before the board moved on to its remaining business.

“It’s a great way to kick off the year. We might have to do this for every meeting or maybe just around the Fourth of July,” Heil said.

As part of the consent agenda, the board reappointed Tyler Kelley as planning and zoning director, sanitarian and weed commissioner for 2026 and approved the Times-Republican and Mid-Iowa Enterprise as official newspapers. The board and committee appointments for each of the supervisors for 2026 were approved the same as the previous year with one modification — Kevin Goodman will now be the board representative at department head meetings.

From there, the board unanimously adopted the construction evaluation resolution, moving permits, blanket road closure resolution, certificate of completion resolution, erect embargo signs and the annual non-discrimination agreement and Marshall County Discrimination disclosure.

The board liaisons to each county department with Heil, as the new chair, taking auditor/recorder and clerk of court. With no public comments, the meeting was adjourned after approximately 20 minutes.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.