The Perry City Council approved the hire of intern Sven Peterson as administrative assistant at their meeting this week.

As we’ve reported, the new position was created to hopefully help ease the transition period when City Administrator Butch Niebuhr retires with the hope that Peterson can take over the position at that time.

Niebuhr says Peterson has had a chance to get to know the workings of the city over the past two years as an intern and this will allow him to get more involved.

“Sven is from Perry.  He graduated high school from Perry and he’s familiar with Perry, so he has a lot of interest in Perry and keeping it going.  And I think he’ll bring a lot of fresh ideas.  He’s well connected with the university, a lot of kids he graduated with, they go into the same profession so he’s going to have a lot of his connections still thriving within the state and probably out of state” says Niebuhr.

Niebuhr also believes Sven will be able to help come up with ideas to increase revenue for the city.

“I’m kind of anxious to get his perspective and see, especially now with the budget constraints that we have.  Because one thing that we can offset, if we can keep the services up we have to be able to pay for them so we’re looking for revenue.  That’s one thing that I think he can bring to the table, which would be a good deal.”

Peterson will also be helping out the park and recreation department, filling in gaps at the McCreary Community Building while they look to fill a vacancy starting next month.  Niebuhr says it will be a good opportunity for him to learn more about how that department works and possibly help think of ways to improve it as well.