Park Rapids mayor resigns, vacancy declared

PARK RAPIDS, Minn. — Ryan Leckner has resigned as Mayor of Park Rapids and the city council has officially declared a vacancy.

City Administrator Angel Weasner said councilmembers will hold a workshop on Sept. 24 to determine how to proceed. They can fill the vacancy by appointment or hold a special election, which Leckner said seems unlikely given that the November general election is just around the corner.

Until then, Leckner said “we’re thinking that we’ll just be able to get by with just one less council member.”

He added that Councilmember Liz Stone would likely serve as acting mayor until voters hit the polls.

Former Park Rapids Mayor Pat Mikesh is running uncontested for Leckner’s now-vacant seat.

In 2018, Mikesh resigned and withdrew his candidacy for a fourth, two-year term just a month before the election and Leckner successfully ran as a write-in candidate.

“I was kind of forced out [with] my company pushing me into a different town for a while,” Mikesh said.

His employer, Minnesota Energy Resources, has him back in Park Rapids which makes him eligible to run for mayor again.

Leckner is also resigning due to moving outside city limits. He is ending his third term as mayor early because his family built a home in Henrietta Township. Construction and the sale of his existing home in Park Rapids all happened faster than expected, he said.

“My term was up in November anyways,” he said, “so I was kind of planning on just not running.”

Mikesh said he got Leckner to join the council in 2015 and replace him as mayor because they shared the same vision. They brought in more affordable housing and restructured the police department to create more sergeant positions so the chief wasn’t on-call 24/7. They also welcomed a new police chief, Jeffrey Appel, who still leads the department.

“I want to kind of keep things going the way they were going when I left it, everything was looking up,” Mikesh said. “I‘m looking forward to it because I did enjoy it, working with the public, working with all the employees. There’s a few different employees, new administrator, so it’d be kind of a learning curve to see how she does things.”

Also on the November ballot are two city council seats held by Stone and Bob Wills, who is not running for re-election. Stone is seeking another four-year term. Jeremy Engholm is running to fill the other open seat.