Jan 31 council meeting

Had the first go around on our 2011/2012 budget tonite. We muddled thru, as our city clerk Deneen is still out of service. But she was helpful in getting us some starting numbers. So we were able to talk about them, and make an initial looksee.

The good news is, all departments and boards submitted close, or very close budgets to last year. The city council will have the final say on what every department gets, but it is nice to see when everybody presents realistic budgets.

We are still a little fuzzy with the park board, and we need to work with them on their plans for Britson Park. They didn't have anybody at the meeting tonite, so we will get that worked out with them.

Both the Library and the Pool Boards have similar total dollar amounts, and requests. Both were around $84000 this year, and $87000 next year (not exact, but those are pretty close ballpark)

Streets is going to be the same, though we want to get nailed down future plans, and how to set that aside. Part of that will depend if we get the grant for sewer upgrades, and if so, we may be digging up some streets. But that would be a special project, and not really covered in what we are budgeting now.

Water and Wastewater, pun intended, what goes in, comes out. We try to set the rates/revenues to fund operations. That is looking to be about the same as last year. Though we are making an effort to televise all our sewer lines, so we can document the problems, and know where to concentrate our repair efforts.

Our Fire and Roland Response Teams submitted budgets within a couple hundred dollars of last year. Our Police (contract with County Sheriff) rate is going up, as that fee has been raised. Total bill may go up or down depending on the census. We pay a per capita to the sheriff for our police protection.

Also, on that line, we get money from our share of the gas tax, based on population. So if our population goes up, we will get more road use (gas tax) money from the state, but we will pay more to the county for police protection. If our population goes down, we get less road use money, but we pay less for police protection too.

Then there are the various expenses, like Adminstration expenses, like the fall 2011 election, mosquito spraying, and the Roland Museum, along with other smaller things like that. We will also need to plan what, if any, raises will be awarded to the city employees.

So this meeting was just the first look at it. There will be public hearings, and of course citizens are invited to speak at a council meeting on the topic. However my advice would be to get involved sooner than later, if you have a concern. It helps the council to get feedback earlier in the process.

Stay tuned to this spot for more details on the budget.

Flood assistance

If you still have some unmet needs due to the flooding of last year, another opportunity for assistance has been announced. This is one of the things that ends up in the mayor's inbox, and just wanted to pass it along. Click HERE for more details.

Meeting On Monday Jan 31, 6PM

The postponed meeting from Jan 24 will be this Monday Jan 31, at 6PM at the community center. Biggest topics will be review of the budget proposals from the various department heads and boards.

Thinking of the community center, don't forget, if you have some function, and need some space, it is available for rent.

Meeting on Jan 24 postponed

Our city council meeting on Jan 24 is tentatively being rescheduled to Monday, Jan 31. Our City Clerk, Deneen Frost is having some health issues, and she didn't have time to get our agenda ready, and all that. Apparently there wasn't anything too pressing on the docket, other than our first run through on the budget.

So, since January is a 5 Monday month, I made the executive decision to move it to the 31st. So if you were planning on attending this Monday, we won't be there. Don't stand outside the Community Center and freeze to death, waiting for somebody to unlock the doors.

Other Mayor Duties

Wednesday night I went to the quarterly meeting of the Story County Emergency Managment Agency. As Mayor of Roland, I am our representative to that board, as are all other mayors in the county. Most mayors were there last night, from small Kelley all the way to big Ames.

We had to approve the EMA budget. Its funding comes via the county, and county taxes, along with some revenue from grants. I learned if it was billed separately on your property taxes, like many other agencies (you can see them on your property tax statement), it would be 4 cents per $1000 of assessed valuation. With the rollback, and all that, if you have a $100,000 house, about $2.40 of your property taxes goes to this agency.

So what does it do? There are 2 employee positions, but only 1 currently, as the director resigned at the end of 2010, so that position is currently open. They do planning for natural and man-made disasters--be it a hazardous chemical spill, or a flood or tornado, and then help coordinate relief if one of those items strike somewhere in the county.

I found out that the interim director, who is Melissa Spencer of Roland by the way, will be touring the old Pella plant/new Land O' Lakes facility soon. Land O' Lakes will be keeping a large stockpile of chemicals, as they use it as a new distribution facility. So what types of things are in there will be inventoried, and that info given to responding fire departments and such.

They also do what if scenarios for towns in Story County, and the likelihood of various disasters. I've seen the doc, and we are one of the "safest" cities in Story County, as we don't have a railroad, or major highway, or major river. Though of course we know Bear Creek can be problematic. Our biggest risks were all natural; flood, blizzard, and wind/tornado. Earthquakes, terrorists, and airplane crashes were determined to be minute odds of happening. Yay! Also I saw no concern over zombie attacks, which is really good.

Dilapidated properties

One of the concerns of our city council, and probably any council in Iowa is what to do with dilapidated properties. Going through the legal process costs thousands of dollars. For the house on South Cottonwood they we were able to acquire and tear down, took well over a year, and probably cost city taxpayers over $10,000. Here is an article of what a city in Massachusetts is going to do about it. Basically give the properties a scarlett letter, by putting a big sign in front of the property listing the owner's name and phone number.

Here is the article.

In case you were not aware, you can go to Story County's website, and look up the owner and valuation of any property in the county.
HERE is the link to go look at that.

Blast from the Past

I had a co-worker who is big on going to auctions stumble across something from Roland's past. In a box of goodies he bought, he found a program to Roland's Centennial. He gave it to me, and I thought I would scan it, and post it here. Gary Thompson, Bob Feller, and Floppy! Wow, that was big time!
You can click on the pictures to make them bigger if you want to read them.

Jan 10 council meeting

One of the shortest regular meetings we have had with me presiding. Just a couple quick reports were the main thing. We will make up for it soon. We are about to enter budget preparation, so that will take a bit more time, as we work on the 11/12 budget, in future council meetings.

Speed sign

As you may have noticed, the speed sign on the west entrance to Roland is a little flaky. We believe it is an issue with the batteries. Not sure if the batteries have gone bad, or if it is just due to short days being unable to get enough sunlight to get them charged. So it is under investigation, and hope to get it working soon.

Let's call ourselves Orlando

Surfing the net and stumbled upon something fun. Orlando is the Italian equivalent of Roland. Not that there is anything wrong with Roland, but I must admit, Orlando is a bit more popular than Roland, when thinking of a destination, or for fun.

Here's the skinny on Roland, from one of my favorite books, From Ackley to Zwingle-A Collection of the Origins of Iowa Place Names. Here is how Roland got its name, "In memory of the legendary character in ancient Norwegian history." Not in the book , but I also remember reading somewhere it was chosen, because it was easy to pronounce in both English and Norwegian, which is what everybody spoke around here when it was first settled.

Though I think the character "Roland" also is claimed by the French. He must have done a lot of running around in Europe back in the day.

And here is the definition of Roland, "The name Orlando/Roland goes back to Germanic origin and means, One who is famous throughout the land.

So not to denigrate our fine Norwegian forefathers, but I'm hereby calling the week of January 9, 2011 as "Call Roland By The Name Orlando Week"

Fellow Roland Blogger

Just wanted to give some pub to a new blog published right here in Roland. Former librarian Todd Reed has a blog on the world of movies. I'm not a real big movie guy. But if you want to know the skinny, I'm sure Todd will set you straight.

It's called Dad Loves Movies

HERE is the link.

Back to Good ol' Roland Water

Our water supply is back to being on Roland's wells and water tower, instead of rural water. We got our original pump rebuilt, replaced, and reinstalled. That pump was about 15 years old, and it was reported that that was the expected life span of that pump.

Our backup that failed, that caused us our need to cut to rural water, was a pump from 1969. Running as a main for several weeks was apparently too much for the old girl, so that is why it decided to give out on New Year's Eve.

So we don't have a backup right now, but hopefully the rebuilt one will serve us just fine.

Notice anything about the water?

We had a problem with the water plant over the past weekend, and in a sense before that. Our pump that pumps water from the water plant to the water tower died a month or so ago. So we sent that in for repair. We were using our backup, and it died on Friday the 31st. The funny thing was, the repaired pump was scheduled to be replaced on Monday, Jan 3.

Anyway, our water tower was full, and had about 2 days of water in it. So we just let it run down the rest of Friday, and into Saturday, New Years Day.

But here's the good part. A past city council made the wise decision to have a hook up into Central Iowa Rural Water out of Newton for emergency use. (water plant failures, extra water needed for fires, etc). So water superintendent Nathan went out on New Year's Day, turned the valve on, and since then, we have been getting water from Central Iowa Rural Water.

So, have you noticed?

The pressure seems the same to me. I think the water tastes a little different. Not sure I would have noticed without knowing this, but I could tell. Nothing bad, just different.

They ran into some problems yesterday installing the repaired/original pump. They had to get the water drained out of the holding tank at the water plant. Hopefully they will get it going today.

This will be no different on your bill. Central Iowa Rural Water will just send the city a bulk bill, and we will bill you for your usage, just like normal. It does have some extra cost to us, because using their water will be more expensive, than what it costs us to treat ours, and the electric for our pumps and so on. Plus we have another pump repair bill. It will run in the thousands of dollars, the things aren't cheap.

My son asked me what water tower we were now using. Guess I'm not exactly sure, but I assume it is the one in McCallsburg.

So anyway, just thought I'd pass that along. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone noticed the change in the water source. (and in a sense we also alter our source, even when things are going fine. We alternate which well we use for our water supply. Not sure how often they toggle, maybe every other day)

Hazard mitigation grant

Hooray, 2011 is upon us. I brought in the new year from the east side of Roland. So I didn't get a chance to hear Rob McMullen's and his bagpipes playing Auld Lang Syne.



REMEMBER THIS?


Anyway, within a week or three you should be getting a letter in the mail from the city requesting assistance in gathering damage info from flooding and or water backup into basements. The city is applying for a grant to mitigate future floods and backups, and any information we can gather on that topic will help us with getting that grant.

Depending how much money we get, and where and what the noted issues were, will help us decide on what to fix and where. It could end up as small as cutting down the inflow to our sewers by relining a couple streets worth of sewer lines, or it could be for a really big project like creating a secondary trunk line for our sewer, which would help get the sewage to our plant more quickly, reducing the chance for backups.

So more info is coming. But just wanted to give an early headsup on this. Your help in providing info could get our city up to $500,000. This is a big deal, so I hope, if you had a problem (and this goes back to any problem since 1995), that you could help out your fellow citizens, and help us prevent future problems.