After getting City Council ‘back on track,’ Louderman decides not to run for re-election as Hannibal mayor

HANNIBAL, Mo. — A little more than 14 months after being elected as the mayor of Hannibal, Barry Louderman has opted not to run for re-election.

Just days before the Dec. 31 filing deadline, Louderman still wasn’t sure about tossing his hat in the ring again.

“Honestly, it was like four days before the deadline when I decided I wasn’t going to run,” he said Tuesday. “I’d been waiting to see who else was interested, and I’ve been looking at some other things too. That’s kind of what made the decision.”

Three men have filed paperwork to run for mayor in the non-partisan general election on April 8 — former 1^stWard alderman Darrell McCoy, current 4^th Ward alderman Charles Phillips and Jeremy Fogle, who will be dipping his toes into the political waters for the first time.

Louderman received 1,484 votes in Ralls and Marion County in a Nov. 7, 2023, special election, outpacing Kristy Trevathan (1,246 votes) and Steve Colyar (25 votes).

Louderman completed the term of Mayor Pro Tem Mike Dobson, who handled the city’s mayoral duties after James Hark resigned in June 2023. Hark, who was first elected as mayor in 2016, said a coming expansion at his full-time job with Heartland Towing and Recovery was forcing him to step away from his duties as the mayor.

Hannibal City Hall had been under fire for much of Hark’s last year in office over allegations of improprieties regarding the administrative leave of long-time City Clerk Angel Zerbonia. Hark tried to impeach councilman Stephan Franke over his inquiries into Zerbonia’s handling of the office, but Marion County Associate Judge John Jackson ruled on June 2 that Hark acted improperly in the action and dismissed the city’s charges against Franke. 

Hark resigned on June 6, and the Hannibal City Council voted not to retain Zerbonia later that same evening.

Louderman said he ran for mayor on the promise that he would get the City Council “back on track.”

“There were a lot of things going on at the time, and (the City Council) had kind of got off track of doing what they were supposed to do,” he said. “I felt that I accomplished that pretty quickly, getting it back in the process of helping Hannibal instead of in-fighting.”

Louderman was proud of several accomplishments during his brief tenure. The first one he mentioned was the City Council’s vote in early September to begin the process of removing the building that once housed St. Elizabeth’s Hospital from the National Register of Historic Places. Completing that process would clear the way for the building to be demolished.

“We needed to put some finality to that situation,” Louderman said. “There was no more moving forward with any type of development. Once (the building is removed from the National Register), which I hope happens before I leave, then we will put out bids for demolition. We have a couple of different sources of income to help with the demolition, which means we won’t have to take money out of the city’s budget to do that.”

Louderman also said the city has plans for the property at 109 Virginia, but he’s not yet ready to make them public.

“We just want to see how long it’s going to take before we can get it down,” he said.

Louderman also was happy to see the progress in the city’s talks with Amtrak.

“I think that by summer, we’ll have a more definite answer on Amtrak coming to Hannibal,” he said. “It could be as a final stop, kind of like what Quincy is at the moment and (Amtrak) would just extend it to Hannibal, or Amtrak is still looking to go across the state to Kansas City, St. Joseph and then down to St. Louis on this side (of the state).

“In years past, we usually get to the point where Amtrak is interested, and then there’s nothing. Now we’re pretty much at the stage where they’re looking at ridership.”

Louderman pointed to the $60 million expansion at the General Mills facility in Hannibal, which is expected to create 35 jobs. He also said the city plans to sell Lakeside Technology Park at 8703 Highway MM. 

“The money would go right into the city’s general fund and the Board of Public Works general fund,” he said. 

Louderman is the assistant store manager at County Market in Hannibal when he’s not completing his duties as Hannibal’s part-time mayor. He believes that position should become full-time.

“I’d like to see the city eventually go more toward a Quincy-type of mayor-city council type of setup,” he said. “The mayor in Quincy, of course, is a full-time job.

“We have to move forward. The thing about Hannibal is we’ve sat stagnant for 50 years. If you look at the last five Census (reports), we either gain a couple hundred or lose a couple hundred people each time. I think 30 years ago the population was just over 22,000, and now we’re back down to 18,000. Hannibal needs to make up its mind if it wants to grow and expand or if they’re happy with where it’s at.”

Louderman said he’s interested in “a couple of things” that, if they come to fruition, would have necessitated stepping down from his involvement in city government. He opted not to run for mayor rather than possibly step down if he were elected to another three-year term.

“You’re looking at $20,000 for a special election, and I just didn’t want to do that,” he said.

Louderman said he was pleased with his stint as the mayor.

“I didn’t anticipate some of the things that came up, but with the city staff that we have and the City Council that we have, it made it made it easier to deal with those things,” he said.

“My thought on politics is you get into office to help the public. There are people who get into public service so they can say, ‘I’m a mayor’ or ‘I’m a City Council person’ or ‘I’m a whatever.’  That doesn’t help the citizens that you’re supposed to be representing. I would never rule out helping the city of Hannibal on a board or something like that. I am still interested in helping Hannibal, and there are a couple of ways coming up in the next year. I don’t want to say anything at the moment because there’s a lot to it.”