The Jefferson City Council met in special session Thursday.

There was barely enough council members to have a quorum to hire back a full-time officer for the police department. Shane Jones was first hired by the Jefferson Police Department in 2016. He left the department to join the Iowa State Patrol as a trooper earlier this month. However, Jones said when he started the State Patrol training program at the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy this week he realized that it wasn’t what he wanted to do for his career in law enforcement. He said he would lose his ability to investigate crime to primarily do traffic enforcement on the highway and there wasn’t as much emphasis on kinship as there was within the police department.

Jones was hired back at a salary of $45,114 and was reinstated with his 14 months of experience at grade four. With the other recent departures of three other officers, Police Chief Mark Clouse has hired two officers with one spot left to fill. But with Jones coming back, Clouse said that’s a big relief because that’s one person he doesn’t have to send to the academy to be certified unlike the other two hires.

“Obviously that’s a huge part of it. First of all we’re just happy to have Shane back. We were very saddened when we were losing Shane because of his abilities as an officer. He is a very good officer and he is a leader in my department. And (I’m) definitely happy to have that position back.”

Clouse added that he has two conditional hires out for the one position, which he said either one can be withdrawn at any time.

The three council members that voted in favor to hire Jones back as an officer included Larry Teeples, Dave Sloan and Matt Wetrich. Councilmembers Harry Ahrenholtz and Matt Gordon were absent from the meeting.