North Story Little League Signup

North Story Little League Baseball signup is going on now. Players need to be signed up by February 11. For more details, go to www.eteamz.com/nscll

or if you are not a fast copy/paster, CLICK HERE

City Hall

I heard that something was afoot in City Hall, but never really got the details. Stopped in tonite, and aye carumba! There was a little bit of redecorating going on. Jodi now has her desk out front, and the conference table has been moved back to where the clerk was. Looks like a nice layout.

That could be done since city council meetings are no longer held at City Hall. Not really sure how long that layout has been the case. City Hall has pretty much looked the same in the 15 years I have lived here.

So stop in and check it out sometime. Say hi to Jodi if you haven't met her yet. She now has about 2 months in as our official City Clerk.

January 18 council meeting

Nothing real earth shaking at the council meeting. We will get busy over the next 2 months as we finalize the budget. As for Wednesday, the council approved a 3% pay raise for the library employees. That was to finalize what the Library Board had previously approved.

We did some housekeeping by approving who was approved to sign checks, removing former City Clerk Deneen Frost and former city councilman Corey Johnson, but adding in the new clerk and new councilman.

The council also approved my appointment of Jason McLatchie to the Roland Park Board, to take the place of Brandon Hansen, who resigned that spot.

That was pretty much it in regards to decisions of note. The next council meeting will be Wednesday Feb 1.

Drip, Drip. Drip

The city and a homeowner had a water leak here lately, and just wanted to share the story. Our Water Superintendent Nathan informed the city council at our last meeting that he thought we had a leak somewhere. Our city's water usage climbed noticeably, though it hadn't taken a jump in billed water used. (as an aside, we track water pumped and treated each day).

Often times, water main leaks show themselves, by wet ground, or water bubbling up. Nathan drove around town, and could not find any issues.

A few days after the council meeting, a citizen called to mention that their sump pump was running constantly, and was wondering if there was a water leak. However their water usage had not gone up. Nathan went out, turned off the water to their house, and the sump pump quit running.

As it turns out, the circa 1920s (I think) service line to their house broke. It was before the meter, so the citizen didn't get billed for the water. However, it was after the curbstop, so the citizen was responsible for fixing the water line to their house.

So the city had to pump and treat a whole bunch of water at the city's cost that didn't get billed. The estimate was that 620,000 gallons of water were lost. If that had been on the resident's side of the meter, the bill would have been around $3800.

As a comparison, the swimming pool holds about 180,000 gallons of water, and the water tower holds 240,000 gallons of water. So over 2.5 "water towers" were spilled into the ground. No wonder the sump pump was running!

New LED message sign

Still don't have the details on what it costs to rent, or how to rent. Not sure if that has been nailed down yet. But just wanted to post a pic for my out of town readers so you can see the new message board on Main Street. I know the plan is to get community messages on there, as well as the ability to buy messages, such as "Happy Birthday Mayor". (If that is the case, we have until July to figure it out.)

Twitter and Facebook

I have put together an official Facebook page for the City of Roland and a Twitter account as well. The driver for this was to find another outlet to get out breaking/emergency news for things in the city. The gas leak that caused the evacuation last year was somewhere I would have liked to use that. I used my personal account when that happened, but I am not friends with everybody in Roland obviously.

So if you have a Twitter account, you can follow @cityofroland

And for Facebook, search under "City of Roland" and then Like the page.

Otherwise the notices will be for usual city notices, like hydrant flushing, and garbage pickup day changes. I also have some aerial shots of Roland on the Facebook page as well.

So anyway, Like and Follow!

Proclamations

I get a lot of requests from groups to have proclamations done for various things. And pretty much every one of them has merit for a worthy organization or reminder. I guess my favorite that I do is Poppy Day, which is a great remembrance of our veterans.

Part of the problem tho, is that if I officially proclaim it, it goes in the paper, and we have printing costs and all that. It is not a lot of money, but I do care about getting out of hand on that. So I do not formally proclaim most of them.

I got a request the other day from an organization that I had not heard of, but I thought was kinda interesting, as somewhat of a history buff. It is Iowa1812.org. They were requesting a proclamation regarding a remembrance of the War of 1812 and its 200th anniversary. Wow time flies!

So I am not going to do an official proclamation, but if you are surfing, check out their website, which I linked above. Obviously that war was before Iowa was formed, but you may be a descendant of a veteran of that war. Also, there is an interesting link about Fort Madison, Iowa, and how it was in 1812. So anyway, the true anniversary is this June. But kudos to the folks keeping the memory alive.

Snow removal

I don't know if you have noticed it.... But our city street crew is doing a hell of a job keeping the snow off Roland's streets this year. Kudos to Harold and Nathan.

Jan 4 Council Meeting

In the books is the first council meeting of the year, our first one with new council member Chad Proctor, and our first one on a Wednesday night. In case you forgot, we moved council meetings to the 1st and 3rd Wednesday, instead of 2nd and 4th Monday.

This one took about 45 minutes. We first talked about officially approving a building code. There is some thought that lacking one, it defaults to the state building code, so that is being investigated. Also tied in, was a discussion about inspections of rental properties, and then also sump pump inspections, as I mentioned in a previous blog post. No decisions were made on any of those topics.

I appointed Jeff Harestad to be Roland's rep on the Emergency Management board, and Duane Canny to be my Mayor Pro Tem. Resigned Council Member Corey Johnson served in that role for me before. Basically the Pro Tem is a fancy way of saying Vice Mayor.

We gave each council member/mayor a committee for the coming year--for administration, water/sewer, and streets. We divvy up the jobs in those departments, if it takes a little more digging and effort.

I also announced the roll out of a city Facebook page, and Twitter account. More details to come on that.

Then we all got our picture taken, for the new 2012-2013 Council. You can see us all at the city's webpage HERE

Sump Pumps

If you have read below, you have seen my posts regarding issues with our sewer system in Roland. One of the issues is to have lower flows. Well, we could all cut down on our showers and clothes washing, but I like a good smelling Roland.

One of the big issues is running sump pumps into our sanitary sewer system. We are obligated to treat what goes into the system. But for people along the path to the treatment plant, if we can substantially cut down the flows, that cuts down the possibility of backups--that would cut down the need for a bigger pipe from the swimming pool to the treatment plant.

One route we are considering is a sump pump ordinance, much like Iowa Falls is doing. It involves inspection of all homes to make sure pumps have proper hookups. The advantage of this plan for Roland taxpayers is it is the cheapest way to cutdown on inflows and to avoid costly fixes mandated by the DNR.

HERE is the Iowa Falls website. They set this up for property owners to arrange inspections, and to answer questions. No need to reinvent the wheel, so I pass it along as a FYI for Roland residents.