Eudora residents can call Tim Reazin mayor for another year.

At its first meeting of the year Jan. 9, the Eudora City Commission appointed Reazin mayor and Ruth Hughs vice-mayor for 2017. Reazin and Hughs had served in the same positions in 2016.

Reazin said he expects a busy year and one of accomplishment, which he can share with voters in his intended re-election campaign to the City Commission in November. That busy year will start at the January 23 meeting with a 7 p.m. public hearing on creating a Tax Increment Financing District at the former Nottingham Elementary School property. The City Commission will consider creation of the district after the public hearing.

Once the TIF district is in place, the city will ramp up the effort to finalize a redevelopment agreement with CBC, the Kansas City, Mo., real estate firm selected in April to develop the Nottingham property, Reazin said. The city purchased the former elementary school from the Eudora school district in 2015 for $850,000. A subsequent agreement with CBC committed the city to working exclusively with the developer. That agreement was meant to give assurances to potential tenants for the Nottingham project.

“I expect to have groundbreaking on that project in 2017,” Reazin said. “I’m hearing a lot of good things from CBC. We have to work out that first contract with an anchor store and then everything will fall in place.”

The goal of a Nottingham groundbreaking in the next 12 months adds urgency to the City Commission moving forward with an athletic complex at the Eudora school district’s south campus. The complex would replace the football and soccer fields that are part of the Nottingham site, Reazin said. With the school board’s approval of the arrangement, the mayor said his goal is to make substantial progress on the development of the complex this year that would be a key recreational facility for the city for many years.

A third big item on Reazin’s 2017 agenda is resolution of the decade-long dispute with Douglas Country Rural Water District No. 4, which centers on how the city can provide water service to areas that currently are in the rural water district’s territory. That, too, was progressing and his goal was to have an agreement this year, he said.

The Eudora Chamber of Commerce has cancelled its annual awards banquet scheduled for Saturday because of the forecasted ice storm. The event has been rescheduled for 6 p.m. Feb. 18 at the Bluejacket Vineyards and Winery.

An ice storm wouldn’t cancel the Mullet Ride schedule for Jan. 21 in Baldwin City. That annual gravel-road bicycle tour will go off rain, shine or blizzard, organizer Gerald Arantowicz vows. He does concede there will be many more riders should the day be unseasonably warm, as it was two years ago when more than 100 riders joined the tour past historic sites in the rural areas around Baldwin City. Pleasant weather would also be the wish of the town’s restaurants and coffee shops who benefit from the appetites developed from those riding the tour’s 12-, 28- and 43-mile route options.

The ride will depart at 10 a.m. from Antiques on the Prairie at Sixth and Main Street in Baldwin City. There is no fee to join the tour.