CEDAR RAPIDS – Police Chief Greg Graham – who took over command of the Police Department here right before the June 2008 flood – is expected to return from where he came, the Ocala, Fla., Police Department, Cedar Rapids City Manager Jeff Pomeranz said Friday.

Pomeranz said the mayor of Ocala, Kent Guinn, has nominated Graham to be Ocala’s new police chief and that the Ocala City Council has placed on its Jan. 3 agenda a resolution to hire Graham.

“When I took the job here I did so with the intent to finish my career in the Midwest,” Graham said in a statement released Friday by the Cedar Rapids Police Department. ” I always thought that if the job opened in Ocala, it would be the only one that I would even consider taking. I also believed that it would be many years before an opening would occur. The Cedar Rapids Police Department employees and the citizens of Cedar Rapids have made this decision very difficult for me to make.”

Graham had served on the Ocala department for 25 years, the last six as deputy chief, before joining the Cedar Rapids department in 2008.

Ocala.com is reporting this morning that Graham will attend the Jan. 3 meeting at the Ocala council when the mayor’s nomination will be voted on.

On Friday morning, Pomeranz said he has informed the Cedar Rapids City Council that he and the council will be in the hunt for a new police chief for Cedar Rapids.

The search will be a national one, but one that surely will include current commanders in the Cedar Rapids department, Pomeranz said.

He said Graham has done an “excellent” job for the city of Cedar Rapids and he said he will be missed.

Graham, 49, has never lost what has been something of a perpetual Florida tan since arriving in Cedar Rapids, and he’s been asked more than once since arriving here if he will be returning to Florida.