Just a reminder that the North Story County Little League Skills Assessment will be this Saturday, March 5, at the R-S High School South Gym. League age 9 and 10 year olds(generally 3rd and 4th graders) will be from 9 to 10:30 AM, and league age 11 and 12 year olds (generally 5th and 6th graders) will be from 11AM to 12:30PM.
Players are to bring their glove, and a bat if they have one. Parents may stay and observe if they like. It is not a tryout, it is simply a chance for coaches to observe the players, and try to draft evenly matched teams for the upcoming season.
It is not a requirement that the players attend, but it helps the coaches, and should be a fun time for the kids.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Roland Bus
Saw a bus for Roland High School going the opposite way of me on the interstate Friday. But the interstate was I-44, and I was in Oklahoma. I think Roland, Oklahoma is the biggest Roland in the US (not counting Orlando, which is Italian for Roland-see my post several below). Anyway, that was kinda cool to see.
Good luck at State!
Good job, and good luck to the Roland-Story Norsemen girls on their trip to the state hoops tournament. 10AM at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines on Tuesday. Be there or be square! Tis nice to see the support of the community on the road to state.
Paul Clark and I cannot do Norsemennetwork.com for state games, so we will just get to watch like the rest of you. I'm ready to do some whooping and hollering.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
North Story Little League signups
Just another reminder about North Story County Little League signups. The in-person are complete. We are taking mail ins at the usual rate, for the next week. After that, the price goes up, and you may be shut out if teams are full. HERE is the link with more info.
North Cottonwood
If you are driving north out of town, you can see stakes in the east ditch. The city is prepping to get that ditch cleaned out, and have the water diverted to the creek to the west. Over time, that ditch has filled in, and added to the flooding issues on that part of town. Hopefully this cleanout will help relieve that. Not exactly certain when the digging is going to start, but as noted, the stakes are in.
The Lunch Box
The everyday opening of The Lunch Box at the Community Center has ended. The owner, due to various reasons, has hung it up. Though there still is good eats once a week there. Linda Oppedal is serving buffet style meals every Sunday, from something like 11 to 1:30.
Took the fam there last weekend. It was awesome. $8 for the all you can eat, or $5 for the soup/salad bar. There was salmon, and tasty veggies, and ham, and some really good desserts.
You don't feel like cooking on Sunday anyway right? Give it a whirl sometime.
Took the fam there last weekend. It was awesome. $8 for the all you can eat, or $5 for the soup/salad bar. There was salmon, and tasty veggies, and ham, and some really good desserts.
You don't feel like cooking on Sunday anyway right? Give it a whirl sometime.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Girls hoops game moved
In case you haven't heard, the R-S/Hudson girls basketball game on Friday has been moved from Grundy Center to Eldora. Grundy girls are still playing, but elsewhere, so they won't have any locals to run their gym. So good news for R-S fans, as that cuts about 20 minutes off the drive if you are going.
And if you aren't going, you can listen to Paul Clark, and probably me, on Norsemennetwork.com. We'll also have the Gilbert game Thursday night.
And if you aren't going, you can listen to Paul Clark, and probably me, on Norsemennetwork.com. We'll also have the Gilbert game Thursday night.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Census Stats
I'm a math geek, so I like statistics. Here is some census info of note.
Roland's population went down 3% from 1324 to 1284
Story City went up 6% from 3228 to 3431.
In Story County cities closest in size to us, Gilbert was up 10% from 987 to 1082, and Slater passed us up in size from 1306 to 1489.
In the closest, similar sized town, Jewell went down 2% from 1239 to 1215.
In other towns of note, McCallsburg went up 5% from 318 to 333 and Zearing went down 10% from 617 to 554.
Without spending a lot of time hitting the net, here are some populations for Roland thru the years: 1880-1098, 1940-791, 1950-687, 1960-748, 1970-810, 1980-1005, 1990-1035, 2000-1324 2010-1284 (what the heck happened to Roland between 1880 and 1950?)
Roland's population went down 3% from 1324 to 1284
Story City went up 6% from 3228 to 3431.
In Story County cities closest in size to us, Gilbert was up 10% from 987 to 1082, and Slater passed us up in size from 1306 to 1489.
In the closest, similar sized town, Jewell went down 2% from 1239 to 1215.
In other towns of note, McCallsburg went up 5% from 318 to 333 and Zearing went down 10% from 617 to 554.
Without spending a lot of time hitting the net, here are some populations for Roland thru the years: 1880-1098, 1940-791, 1950-687, 1960-748, 1970-810, 1980-1005, 1990-1035, 2000-1324 2010-1284 (what the heck happened to Roland between 1880 and 1950?)
Census info out
The 2010 Census info has been released for Iowa towns. The Des Moines Register has a pretty cool interactive map to see town and county reports, and change percentages. You can find that HERE.
Anyway, Roland lost 3% of its population since 2000. From 1324 to 1284. Not totally unexpected, but it is what it is.
So, what does that mean for Roland? Losing population is not a good thing from the perspective is that it puts more strain on the school system, and it makes it harder for retail or service type business to be profitable, because there is a smaller pool of potential customers.
However, in reviewing the last 10 years, all is not bad. Our residential property values have held up, and we have a high occupancy rate. Its not like people are just abandoning houses in Roland.
Our community is safe. We could have a huge apartment complex built, make it all Section 8 housing, and have our population increase by a couple hundred people, but that doesn't necessarily make Roland a better place.
Roland continues to be a city where we have a high home ownership rate, which means people living here have a vested interest in making this a good community. We have a city council interested in the future, and are willing to work on improvements of the infrastructure. And we have a tract of land available and ready to go to build houses, so we can have a chance to increase our population over the next 10 years.
Several posts ago, I had a reader competition to predict Roland's 2010 population. I think I had 1305, so I was in 2nd place. The winner of the contest is the person that predicted 1280. However that reader did not put their name down, so "Anonymous" is the winner of the "Guess Roland's Population" game. And the prize awarded was for me to name a day in honor of you.
So I, Roger Fritz, Mayor of Roland, hereby declare Sunday, February 13, 2011 as Anonymous Day in Roland. Anonymous, you can stop by City Hall, and collect your ceremonial key to the city.
Anyway, Roland lost 3% of its population since 2000. From 1324 to 1284. Not totally unexpected, but it is what it is.
So, what does that mean for Roland? Losing population is not a good thing from the perspective is that it puts more strain on the school system, and it makes it harder for retail or service type business to be profitable, because there is a smaller pool of potential customers.
However, in reviewing the last 10 years, all is not bad. Our residential property values have held up, and we have a high occupancy rate. Its not like people are just abandoning houses in Roland.
Our community is safe. We could have a huge apartment complex built, make it all Section 8 housing, and have our population increase by a couple hundred people, but that doesn't necessarily make Roland a better place.
Roland continues to be a city where we have a high home ownership rate, which means people living here have a vested interest in making this a good community. We have a city council interested in the future, and are willing to work on improvements of the infrastructure. And we have a tract of land available and ready to go to build houses, so we can have a chance to increase our population over the next 10 years.
Several posts ago, I had a reader competition to predict Roland's 2010 population. I think I had 1305, so I was in 2nd place. The winner of the contest is the person that predicted 1280. However that reader did not put their name down, so "Anonymous" is the winner of the "Guess Roland's Population" game. And the prize awarded was for me to name a day in honor of you.
So I, Roger Fritz, Mayor of Roland, hereby declare Sunday, February 13, 2011 as Anonymous Day in Roland. Anonymous, you can stop by City Hall, and collect your ceremonial key to the city.
Storm Spotter Training
If you have an interest in watching the weather, there is going to be some training classes in Story County for potential storm watchers.
HERE is a link to the info.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
North Story Little League signups
My favorite volunteer activity is working with North Story County Little League. And believe it or not, it is signup time for baseball.
Roland-Story based in person signups are going to be on Sunday, February 13 and Saturday, February 19, at both the Roland Community Center and the Story City American Legion from 1:30 to 3PM on both days. You can attend the in-person signups, or you can mail-in your player’s registration. To do mail-in registration, go to the league website for more details.
The R-S based Skills Assessment will be on Saturday, March 5. 9-10:30 AM for 9-10 year olds, 11AM to 1PM for 11-12 year olds at the R-S High School South Gym. Bring your glove, and bat if you have one.
HERE is the league website.
Assessors Budget
Another task of the mayor is to be on a board to set the assessor's budget. Also included in this are representatives from each school board in the county, and the county supervisors. We have to do that next Wednesday, and I got the preliminary info in the mail.
This info included housing info for Story County, and had some numbers that I thought were kinda interesting. In my below post, I had the tax levy for city of Roland. Here is the entire levy amount--which includes takings from the city, the school district, and all those other entities I mentioned in that previous post.
Anyway for someone in the City of Roland, it is $31.33. The highest in the county appear to be in the City of Huxley-Ballard school district. They are at $40.89. So on a $100,000 house, you would pay around $540 more per year in property taxes in Huxley than Roland.
And the towns of the Colo-Nesco school district appear to have the lowest, with Zearing at $27.18.
In other interesting stats--these are all for everything in Story County, city and rural, with the exception of Ames. And the numbers are all 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.
New Home Construction 129, 75, 71, 38 (I think we had 2 in Roland in 2010)
Sale price per square ft $108, $111, $111, $111
Sale price per square ft of new homes $146, $146, $154, $151
Median Sales Ratio for all sales in the county(percent of sales price that assessment was) 96%, 95%, 98%, 96% (so this means houses have been assessed just slightly below what they are actually selling for)
Here is 2010 residential sales by price
$1 to $150,000 129
$150,001 to $225,000 67
$225,001, $324,000 25
$324,001, to $1,200,000 12
Here is 2010 sales by quarter
1st 39
2nd 102
3rd 37
4th 55
And again, these stats are for everything in Story County, with the exception of propeties inside the Ames city limits.
This info included housing info for Story County, and had some numbers that I thought were kinda interesting. In my below post, I had the tax levy for city of Roland. Here is the entire levy amount--which includes takings from the city, the school district, and all those other entities I mentioned in that previous post.
Anyway for someone in the City of Roland, it is $31.33. The highest in the county appear to be in the City of Huxley-Ballard school district. They are at $40.89. So on a $100,000 house, you would pay around $540 more per year in property taxes in Huxley than Roland.
And the towns of the Colo-Nesco school district appear to have the lowest, with Zearing at $27.18.
In other interesting stats--these are all for everything in Story County, city and rural, with the exception of Ames. And the numbers are all 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.
New Home Construction 129, 75, 71, 38 (I think we had 2 in Roland in 2010)
Sale price per square ft $108, $111, $111, $111
Sale price per square ft of new homes $146, $146, $154, $151
Median Sales Ratio for all sales in the county(percent of sales price that assessment was) 96%, 95%, 98%, 96% (so this means houses have been assessed just slightly below what they are actually selling for)
Here is 2010 residential sales by price
$1 to $150,000 129
$150,001 to $225,000 67
$225,001, $324,000 25
$324,001, to $1,200,000 12
Here is 2010 sales by quarter
1st 39
2nd 102
3rd 37
4th 55
And again, these stats are for everything in Story County, with the exception of propeties inside the Ames city limits.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Tax Rates
The Tribune had an article today about city tax levies. This is always of interest to me, because I like to see how we stack up to other communities. The article discusses the city levy only. The actual property tax you pay goes to a lot of entities.
It's not in the article, but looking at my last tax statement, for a Roland resident, 30% of your property tax bill goes to the city. The school is the biggest claimant on your property tax, getting 47% (plus they also have an income tax surcharge as well). Then Story County gets 18%. Then at 2% or less is the assessor, DMACC, Story County Hospital, the Ag Extension, and TB and Bangs.
The city council has to make those decisions on how much to tax, and provide an appropriate level of services. For example, having a pool costs us money that a city like Gilbert does not have. What "niceness" of streets do we want to have? Nicer streets cost more money. We could have our own police department, but that would cost more money.
But we also have to consider if being cheap, or not spending money hurts the town in the long run. For example, gravel roads don't cost much, but I'm sure everybody's property values would sink too, and we obviously don't want that.
Local decision making affects the council quite a bit. A US Congressman can vote for a billion dollar project, and it doesn't really affect him that much in his pocketbook. But on our city council, our spending decisions hit our pocketbook at the same level as everybody else in town.
So anyway, back to the article. I think Roland stacks up very favorably with other towns in the county. We are in the lower half of levy rates in the county. We are at $9.29. The two towns in Story County closest in size to us, Slater and Gilbert, are at $14.35 and $10.89 repsectively.
Another note to all this. Iowa's property tax method is very confusing. There is a rollback, which is now around 60%. So if you have a $100,000 house, its value is rolled back to 60% value, in this case, to $60,000. Then you are taxed on that amount. So for Roland's share, take the $9.29 times each thousand of rolled back valuation ($9.29 times 60). So for a $100,000 valued house in Roland, $557 in property tax is going to the city.
HERE is the article. I endorse reading this, it is very interesting to see where towns all stack up.
It's not in the article, but looking at my last tax statement, for a Roland resident, 30% of your property tax bill goes to the city. The school is the biggest claimant on your property tax, getting 47% (plus they also have an income tax surcharge as well). Then Story County gets 18%. Then at 2% or less is the assessor, DMACC, Story County Hospital, the Ag Extension, and TB and Bangs.
The city council has to make those decisions on how much to tax, and provide an appropriate level of services. For example, having a pool costs us money that a city like Gilbert does not have. What "niceness" of streets do we want to have? Nicer streets cost more money. We could have our own police department, but that would cost more money.
But we also have to consider if being cheap, or not spending money hurts the town in the long run. For example, gravel roads don't cost much, but I'm sure everybody's property values would sink too, and we obviously don't want that.
Local decision making affects the council quite a bit. A US Congressman can vote for a billion dollar project, and it doesn't really affect him that much in his pocketbook. But on our city council, our spending decisions hit our pocketbook at the same level as everybody else in town.
So anyway, back to the article. I think Roland stacks up very favorably with other towns in the county. We are in the lower half of levy rates in the county. We are at $9.29. The two towns in Story County closest in size to us, Slater and Gilbert, are at $14.35 and $10.89 repsectively.
Another note to all this. Iowa's property tax method is very confusing. There is a rollback, which is now around 60%. So if you have a $100,000 house, its value is rolled back to 60% value, in this case, to $60,000. Then you are taxed on that amount. So for Roland's share, take the $9.29 times each thousand of rolled back valuation ($9.29 times 60). So for a $100,000 valued house in Roland, $557 in property tax is going to the city.
HERE is the article. I endorse reading this, it is very interesting to see where towns all stack up.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Citizens Academy
Got this in the Mayor inbox. Never done it before, but it sounds interesting. Give them a call if you would like to give it a try.
The Story County Sheriff’s Office is accepting applications for our 20th Citizen’s Academy. The citizen’s academy will be held on Wednesday nights from 6:30p-9:30p beginning March 16th and concluding on May 18th. There is no cost to attend and there will be a meal provided at 6 p.m. prior to each Wednesday night session.
The Story County Sheriff’s Office Citizen’s Academy provides the participant an opportunity to explore the sheriff’s office with a different topic nightly. Our desire is to provide an overview of each division and specialty. In addition to classroom instruction, participants will receive hands-on instruction with patrol vehicles and handguns and a tour of the Story County Jail.
The Wednesday night sessions are instructed by the men and women of the Story County Sheriff’s Office and the meals provided by the Story County Jail. Through this close interaction with sheriff’s office staff, we hope to provide the citizens of Story County an accurate description of our duties and responsibilities while at the same time creating pathways of understanding, common ground, and new partnerships as we promote public safety and customer service.
Class size is limited to 18 and seats are filling up quickly. Applications can be dropped off at the Story County Sheriff’s Office (1315 South B Ave, Nevada), faxed to 515-382-7479 or sent by mail to:
Sgt. Jennifer K. Holmes
Story County Sheriff’s Office
P.O. Box 265
Nevada, Iowa 50201
There is no cost to attend but you must be 18 to attend (unless attending with a parent and have prior approval). If you, or someone you know, would like to attend, please consider joining us, it is a great way to learn more about the Story County Sheriff’s Office.
The Story County Sheriff’s Office is accepting applications for our 20th Citizen’s Academy. The citizen’s academy will be held on Wednesday nights from 6:30p-9:30p beginning March 16th and concluding on May 18th. There is no cost to attend and there will be a meal provided at 6 p.m. prior to each Wednesday night session.
The Story County Sheriff’s Office Citizen’s Academy provides the participant an opportunity to explore the sheriff’s office with a different topic nightly. Our desire is to provide an overview of each division and specialty. In addition to classroom instruction, participants will receive hands-on instruction with patrol vehicles and handguns and a tour of the Story County Jail.
The Wednesday night sessions are instructed by the men and women of the Story County Sheriff’s Office and the meals provided by the Story County Jail. Through this close interaction with sheriff’s office staff, we hope to provide the citizens of Story County an accurate description of our duties and responsibilities while at the same time creating pathways of understanding, common ground, and new partnerships as we promote public safety and customer service.
Class size is limited to 18 and seats are filling up quickly. Applications can be dropped off at the Story County Sheriff’s Office (1315 South B Ave, Nevada), faxed to 515-382-7479 or sent by mail to:
Sgt. Jennifer K. Holmes
Story County Sheriff’s Office
P.O. Box 265
Nevada, Iowa 50201
There is no cost to attend but you must be 18 to attend (unless attending with a parent and have prior approval). If you, or someone you know, would like to attend, please consider joining us, it is a great way to learn more about the Story County Sheriff’s Office.
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