New sign

In case you haven't noticed, RADC has got the new message board sign installed just north of Casey's, and easily seen from the corner of Main and Maple. I believe they are still working on programming it. The sign will be used for community messages, and I also believe you will be able to buy messages for the sale of things, or happy birthdays, or whatever. Not sure on the details of that yet, but will post here when I find out. I'll also try to get a photo of it on here as well. Another improvement for Roland. Yay!

Nov 28 Council meeting

Missed this meeting. But something was done to help prevent me missing meetings. Starting in January, council meetings will move to the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays, based on an ordinance that was passed.

I also heard that a discussion was held about having a town meeting for citizen input regarding our sewer system. The council wants input on whether to spend money relining our existing sewer lines, or to spend money putting in a newer, larger main pipe from the pool to the sewer plant. They each have their advantages. More to come on that.

I don't know that anything earth shaking came out of the meeting. December will only have one council meeting per usual. It will be on Monday, December 12.

Gas service is restored

Natural Gas service has been restored to all of Roland. As of 1130AM, 15 homes still do not have gas service, as Alliant has been unable to contact the homeowner. Unlike electric, where they can just turn the power back on, for gas, they had to shutoff at the meters to each house. Then, when contact with the homeowner is made, Alliant will turn on the meter, and then assist in lighting pilot lights. Depending on the device, if the pilot light is not lit, gas would just flow, and obviously cause a really big flame if somebody were to spark something in a house. So that is why each homeowner needs a personal contact.

I had to work last night for my real job. I got back into Roland about 2:30 AM and stopped down at City Hall. A team lead was there keep track of the efforts, and there were 12 Alliant employees helping to restore service to homes. It was a nice thing it was not that cold last night, about 40 degrees at 3AM, so people shouldn't have gotten too cold without their gas service.

All in all, this went pretty well. We had help from the Story City fire department, with the lead by the Roland Fire Department, in securing the area, and notifying residents about the event.

Story County Emergency Management had both employees in town, helping co-ordinate efforts, and make sure the "evacuation shelters" were open.

Just got off the phone with Keith Morgan, Emergency Management Director for Story County. He wanted to emphasize it would really help if we could get ahold of the 15 homeowners. I don't want to list who they are here on a public forum. But if you know someone who is out of town for the holiday, and might not have their gas turned back on yet, please let me know, or have them call Alliant at 800-822-4348. The nice thing is the temperature is not going to drop below freezing until Saturday night, there is still time to find people and get their heat turned back on.

Gas line cut and evacuation

Just the facts....
Ok, here is what I know about the events of Tuesday evening.
A contractor was putting in a new phone cable, and while boring, hit a gas line about 4PM. (key point, this was not Alliant or the City of Roland's fault!) Initially they didn't think it was a big deal. But that proved to be wrong. Alliant was called, and there were no shutoffs in the immediate vicinity, so they needed to shut the gas off of approximately 95 homes.

It was also discovered that natural gas was getting into the sewer system. That obviously could cause an explosion problem, especially into homes that are not plumbed properly, and if the gas could collect inside a house. So the decision was made to shut off electricity to homes in the affected area.

Because of the explosion risk, Alliant and Story County Emergency Management worked together to decide the evacuation area. The community center was opened as a place for those who needed to evacuate to hang out.

The power grid shutdown also affected the east side of Main Street, so the evac location was moved to the American Legion, across the street. The Library was also opened as a bit of a more friendly place for people with kids, than the American Legion.

By 930PM, the gas had been turned off, and Alliant was confident the gas had dissipated enough, that there was no explosion risk, so power was turned back on, and people could return to their homes if they wanted. However, the gas was going to remain off until the line was fixed.

Alliant went to all the homes where gas was turned off, and actually turned the gas off at the meters. When gas service is restored, Alliant will visit all homes and offer to light pilot lights. They will do this as soon as it is fixed, even if it is in the middle of the night. They will be hanging tags on the doors of homes that have been visited.

City Hall is being used as an operations center by Alliant, where they are keeping track of what homes have gas off, and will be checking off the homes that have service restored-and pilot lights lit, when that time comes.

That's pretty much what I have for now. Thanks for your cooperation, for those that had to evacuate. With a couple of exceptions, the reports that I have been given indicate people have been very cooperative, so that was nice to hear. Obviously all the interested agencies want to err on the safe side with the potential "explosive" situation. More details here when I get them.

Chili Cookoff Crew

I was thinking about the core crew that really helped to put together the Chili Cookoff fundraiser. Lots of people helped and had input. But I wanted to especially thank the core crew. Most of us were sitting around at the Legion last night, tipping back some barley pops, and all got to talking where we grew up.

What struck me, is every one of us grew up in small town Iowa. A couple were from Roland, but the rest of us all found Roland one way or another. And though the crew might not be helping the town they grew up in, they are still helping a small town in Iowa think to the future.

Here are the key people that drove this event, and their small town Iowa hometown
Colleen Louw-Roland
Jerry Balmer-Roland
Mindi Balmer-Keota
Josh Greenfield-Burnside
DeAnn Pitman-Eagle Grove
Tony Greene-Pomeroy
Kathy Hovick-North Polk (didn't catch a town, but she went to North Polk)
Roger Fritz-Sanborn

So the event was a lot of hard work. There is still plenty of work to do, to get the park done. But it was fun hanging out at the Legion, watching football, tipping some back, swapping stories, and thinking about what is next to get the park done.

Britson Park & Athletic Complex Chili Cookoff Fundraiser

What a great time, and a great turnout for the Chili Cookoff. When you are part of a team working to put something like this together, you never really know what you will get. Will anybody enter chili? Will we get a crowd to show up?

The answer was yes and yes. We had 19 entries of chili. We don't have an exact count on attendance, because we got extra donations on the price of admission, but we are guessing north of 150 people.

Since we knew we were getting plenty of chili, I moved from cooker of chili to judge. That was fun. The judges were The Roland Rocket himself, Gary Thompson; Roland-Story Middle School Principal John Sheahan; Iowa State Head Softball Coach Stacy Gemeinhardt-Cesler; and me as Mayor. A picture of the judges is on this post.

I had never met Gary Thompson before. I've seen him at ISU events, and was excited to meet the guy that put Roland on the map. What a great guy. Got to talk to him for about 15 minutes, and talk about Roland then and now.

We made around $3000 on the silent auction. Thanks to all the businesses that supported our event. All together, we got around $5000, so that is a nice kickoff to getting the park built.

As for the winners:
Specialty: (which is a soup that is not chili). We had 2 entries and the winner was Adam Pitman with Cheeseburger Soup.
Mild had 13 entries, and the winner was Kelly Popp with PoppaK's Chili. He told me it was a last minute entry as a whim.
Hot had 4 entries, and the winner piled on with the cool name: Roland Rocket Fuel by Audra and Larry Ford
The winner of The People's Choice (People could vote for their favorite chili by dropping money in a container by the chili--with the money going to the park) and Adam Pitman took home his 2nd trophy of the night, with the win there as well.

The crowd hung around, the games in the gyms kept the kids busy, we even had one of the Britson daughters come all the way from Chicago for the event. A fun night all around.

As a reminder, if you want to help with the park, you can purchase a brick for the park, and get your name on it. 4x8 bricks for a $100 donation, and 8x8 bricks for a $200 donation. You can go to www.britsonpark.org for more info.

Nov 14 Council Meeting

Lot of stuff on the docket tonite.
Wasn't an agenda item, but heard about a car getting keyed the other night. If you know any details, or anyone else who may have been keyed, please contact the Sheriff's Dept.

We talked a little bit about moving City Hall into the old Library building. We are going to move forward on those efforts. We have a potential layout, the building passed the structural, and the electric is good, minus some minor cleanup issues. It is not 100% done deal, but like I said, we are moving forward on that. I think it will be nice to get City Hall on Main Street. Also to have a more professional office space.

I was in City Hall Sunday afternoon to sign some things. When nobody has been in there in over a day, with the water plant there, and nobody opening doors and such, it reeks badly. I realize the existing location has served us for 75 years, but I think a change would be good.

In other activities, we talked with Brandon Hansen, President of the Park Board, about a replacement for Ed Nerem for park maintenance. The city council was pondering if a city employee might be a better route, and have that person also do snow removal, and other odd jobs for the city. For now, we thought continuing on the same path would be best, with a summer park employee, and contracting snow removal.

We passed ordinances regarding water shutoffs for failure to pay the bill, and also for a stop sign on Progressive Avenue.

We also ended efforts on getting the hazardous mitigation grant. With the expected cost of the project, along with an inability to get enough receipts from citizens showing flood damage, we were told that getting the grant was highly unlikely. So the council had a discussion about what to do next. Anything we do is going to be on us for now. So we could go forth with the new trunk line. The estimate from the engineer on that is $600,000 to $1,100,000 depending on the route we took. Or we may try to line our sewer lines elsewhere in the city. So it will be on the docket for future council meetings, but for now, no definite plans are in the works.

Based on the election, and the desires of the council and myself, we are going to move council meetings from the 2nd and 4th Monday to the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month. That will start the first of the year, or at least that is our plan. We will keep the meetings at the community center, and they will stay at 6PM. Mondays are starting to become problematic for us, so we are going to give Wednesdays a whirl.

Lastly, we appointed our new city clerk to replace Deneen Frost. And that person is Jodi Meredith. Jodi served as our temporary clerk while Deneen was out of the office. Jodi brings experience in being a city clerk. Besides her efforts in Roland for the past few months, she was also the city clerk of Kelley. She will also continue in that role, as that is a part-time position.

We got some very good and directly qualified resumes in. I wasn't sure what we would get, but we were fortunate in having several good potential choices.

We need chili!

Just a reminder about the Chili Cookoff on the 19th as a fundraiser for the new Britson Park and Athletic Complex. We want to make sure we have enough Chili, so we want entries. Give it a whirl!

If not, come eat, and check out the silent auction. We have lots of stuff.

Saturday the 19th from 5 to 8PM at the Roland Middle School. Games for the kids too.

HERE is the link to more info on the park, and the Chili entry form.

I'm Back!

My reign of terror in Roland is back for another 2 years. Wasn't really that interested in being mayor again, but since nobody else was either, I'll give it another go, and do it to the best of my ability in the time I have available. It also helps that Larry Ford is coming back with me too. Larry does a good job on the council.

I will take that the lack of interested candidates is because the citizens are reasonably happy with what is going on. I may be clueless, but I'm gonna go with that.

So I will hit some details later in this blog about my plans and goals for the next 2 years, but for now, I guess we will carry on.

Part of the deal about me returning is that the council meetings need to move to Wednesday nights from Monday. That topic is on the agenda for the council meeting this coming Monday.

Also HERE is the link to the election results and all the write in candidates in Roland. Kinda fun reading.

Good Article in the Rag

HERE is an article in the DSM Register about the lack of candidates in Elkhart. It pretty much applies to Roland too. I thought it was a good discussion of the situation in finding candidates, and what they do, in small town Iowa.

Ok, if you want me, I'll do it

If you have been a reader of my blog, you know that I chose not to run for re-election. And you also know that no one filed for the spot, so it will be filled by write-in.

I have been asking around if there is any interest in the position, and no one has stepped up to do so, as far as I know.

Council member Larry Ford holds the same thought as me for his position. He did not file, and we have an open spot to be filled by write-in.

Lacking any knowledge of other candidates, we have both decided if we are both elected via write-in, we will both accept our respective positions, if the council meetings are moved to Wednesday nights. I appreciate Larry's efforts on the council, and I would say we see eye to eye on most subjects. And not that I have any issue with any of the current councilmembers, I would say I have worked more closely with Larry than any other council member in my time as mayor.

So if you or someone you know is interested in running for Mayor, or the 3rd council spot, let us know. But lacking that, if you want to see me back as Mayor, AND Larry Ford back on city council, vote for us both as write-ins. We are a tag team, neither of us will go without the other.

And if you think we suck, well, that's ok too. We both like Roland, and will just put our efforts into other things in the community. But if elected, I will continue to give my best effort, in my available personal time, to do the best I can for Roland.

So there ya go, the election is next Tuesday from 7AM to 8PM.