More than 40 people replaced the normally sparse crowd at Tuesday's Carthage City Council meeting.

The first meeting after the April election means swearing-in new council members and this swearing in session gives the council four relatively new members out of a total of 10.

Sworn in were Council Members Keith Hurlbut, Larry Ross, John Studebaker, T.J. Teed and Claude Newport.

Newport was reelected to his Ward 1 seat. Ross returns after a two-month absence, after he moved from Ward 1 to Ward 4 and resigned his Ward 1 seat. He ran unopposed for the Ward 4 seat. Scott Giett was appointed in March to replace Ross in Ward 1.

Hurlbut ran unopposed for the Ward 5 seat; Teed was elected to the Ward 2 seat and Studebaker was elected to a Ward 3 seat.

The council also honored the departing council members Cyndi Curry, Bill Johnson, Mike Harris and Tom Flanigan with plaques.

The swearing-in ceremonies didn't end there as the council witnessed the oath of office presented to new Police Chief Greg Dagnan.

Dagnan said he would spend the next few weeks getting to know the night and weekend shifts at the Carthage Police Department as he finishes this semester of teaching at the Missouri Southern Police Academy.

After he finishes the semester, Dagnan will return to a more traditional daytime schedule and Lt. Barry Duncan, who served as interim chief for the past eight months, will return to supervising the night shift.

The council presented Duncan a plaque honoring him for taking over as interim chief.
The new council also named Council Member Bill Fortune to the post of Mayor Pro Tem and approved Mayor Jim Woestman's appointment of Don LaFerla and Ron Peterson to a new four-year term on the McCune-Brooks Regional Hospital Board of Directors.

In other business, the council heard from Colin Swift, with Swift Construction, who expressed his disappointment that the council Public Works Committee recommended the city go with Blevins Asphalt, which put in the second lowest bid for the city's asphalt contract, and not his company, which offered the lowest bid.

Swift said he had tried to contact Street Superintendent Tom Shelly several times in the past week, but was unsuccessful initially.

Shelly recommended the city go with Blevins because he said he had not worked with Swift before.

Swift said his company has been building private roads and parking lots in the area for 30 years and he asked for the chance to "save the city money on its paving contract."

Later in the meeting, the council approved on first reading, the Public Works Committee's recommendation to go with Blevins Construction.

The council also gave first consideration to a voluntary annexation that would bring approximately 400 acres of land north of the city into the city limits.

This is the same land, mostly owned by Americold Industries, that the city might buy for construction of an industrial park if voters approved a half-cent economic development sales tax in November.