The Government of Student Body’s liaison with the Ames City Council is expected to formally resign his position Wednesday.

Nathan Johnston, who has served as the GSB ex-officio member on the City Council for approximately nine months, said time restrictions and personal reasons led him to his decision to resign. Johnston said the demands of the job were simply too great.

He said that, while he was mostly happy with the job and the people he had dealt with, he did not have the mindset to deal with the job any longer.

“My heart is just not in it anymore,” he said. “And I need to be somewhere where it is.”

Johnston met with GSB President Mike Banasiak, GSB Vice President Ben Albright, and GSB adviser and Dean of Students Pete Englin Friday when he formally announced he would no longer be able to serve on the City Council. He will make his resignation official during GSB’s meeting Wednesday.

“The job is a lot of responsibility, and I have a lot of things going on with school, a lot of things in my personal life, and I’m involved in a lot of other programs,” Johnston said. “I made a list of what in my life was working and what wasn’t. It was hard to find, personally, a whole lot of pros to keeping the office.”

Johnston is also involved in off-campus government, the Multicultural Task Force, is the GSB representative in the Story County Analysis of Social Services Evaluation Team program and vice president of the ISU Pre-Law Club.

GSB President Mike Banasiak said Johnston’s departure was not unexpected.

“I had a feeling it was coming to that point,” he said. “Nate chose to resign because his heart was no longer in it. If that’s the case, I completely agree with his decision. I would not want to see someone in that position that did not want to be there.”

William Rock, GSB vice speaker of the senate, said Johnston’s resignation may prove favorable to a new resolution currently being considered which would ask the Ames City Council to assign one of its members to work with GSB.

The effects of Johnston’s departure could be interesting, Rock said. “In a way, we’re better off now,” Rock said. “We’ll be able to determine the working relationships between the two positions from the ground up.”

He expressed mixed feelings regarding Johnston’s time as liaison to the city council.

“I think that we made some good first steps,” Rock said. “But I would like to have seen more done with it. Some of the things that were done I wasn’t very happy about. I was concerned about the fact that Nathan Johnston ran for council while sitting for the GSB.”

Johnston said Banasiak should be cautious when selecting his replacement and be wary of pressures the job would put on the applicant.

“I think it should be a requirement that whoever gets the job shouldn’t be involved with other aspects of the university,” he said. “I hope they do look long and hard at the applicant, because it takes a lot out of you, a lot of time out of your personal life.”