P&Z opening

Just got notice today that someone that is on the Roland Planning and Zoning Commission is going to be moving from Roland. So we will have an opening there. If that interests you, let me know, or please contact City Hall.

Phillip Keicher Cancer Benefit

Just wanted to pass along some info concerning the Benefit being held for Phillip Keicher of Roland.

On January 21, Phil Keicher was admitted to the University of Iowa Hospital after weeks of dealing with headaches, back aches, dizziness, loss of balance, and confusion. After completing several neurological tests, the doctors ordered an MRI, and found fluid on the brain, along with a golf ball size tumor. That very evening a tube was surgically placed to allow the fluid to drain off the brain, and an additional surgery was scheduled for Thursday to remove the tumor. This surgery was a success!

However, in addition to the brain tumor, doctors found one other small tumor behind the collar bone on the left side. Tests also showed 3-4 lymph nodes directly below the collar bone & behind the sternum that are enlarged. Doctors have diagnosed Phil as having Lung Cancer. Because Phil has no health insurance, the family is going to have to make regular trips from Roland to Iowa City for his treatment. Prior to getting sick, Phil was an over the road truck driver for R & J Trucking in Ankeny, Iowa, and his wife, April, a stay at home mom. Their 14 year old daughter, Morghan, is an 8th Grader at Roland-Story Middle School. Phil’s medical condition has also created a financial crisis for the family.

Friends will be holding a spaghetti dinner benefit with a silent auction on Saturday, March 2, 2013 at the Story City American Legion located at 301 Washington Street, from 5pm to 7pm, with a dance to follow from 7pm to midnight. Please come and help make this benefit a success, as the family is encountering heavy travel expenses and mounting household bills. A free will donation is requested for this event. We will also be accepting canned food donations for the family. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Another 6 months, another 5K run

Having a good time, keeping in shape, eating breakfast, racing, walking, and supporting Britson Park continues in Roland. The Spring Training 5K Run/Walk is on the docket for Saturday, April 6. It is going to be a different course than the previous ones, as it is actually going to run out to Britson Park. To do so, we are going to drop Maple to one lane between Logan and Norsemen, and have the runners run down Maple.

Entrants will also get a breakfast, or if you don't enter, you can come down and get a breakfast yourself. Whether you run or walk, it is a good time, you get a T-Shirt, you get to eat, and you get to help our new park.

HERE is the link to the entry form.

Regular Council Meeting Feb 20

Had a good regular meeting on the 20th. Had me and 5 council members for the first time in awhile, so that was nice.

I got the authorization to sign a doc to potentially participate in a Administrative Review and/or Capital Improvement Plan that may be partially funded by Story County. It has some merits, but I'm no sure I am going to sign it yet. We actually are handling a bunch of that in house. It is only a couple hundred bucks, so it is not that big of deal. So I shall see if more info is forthcoming before I sign that.

Our biggest time spent in the meeting was regarding the budget. And thanks to some tough decisions, and penny pinching, the council and I were able to come up with a budget where we could keep the mil rate (property tax charge) the same as last year for general operations.

One caveat to this, we are going to have a 2 cents per thousand increase because our bond payment schedule required us to increase the payment on the Bryan/Arthur street project. So on a $100,000 house that will be about a dollar and ten cents higher payment to fund the increased debt payment this year.

So Roland is going to go from $10.07 per thousand to $10.09 per thousand.--and again the increase is strictly for the debt payment--funding our general operations will stay exactly the same as last year. AND THAT IS FREAKIN' AWESOME!

With what those jackwagons in Washington do, our city staff, our boards, and our council/mayor have made the tough decisions that allow us to hold the line on spending.

With that said, we are not starving the city either. We still were able to fund a good portion of our proposed new city hall, provide for some more construction in Britson Park, maintain services at our library, get some fixes done at the pool, and pool park, as well as street and water/sewer planned maintenance. And when we can keep taxes down, that is more money you get to keep, and make Roland a more attractive place to live, which helps maintain home values.

So I'm really excited about what we were able to pull off, and again, the credit goes to a lot of people within Roland.

Planning session on Feb 20

After our regular council meeting, we had a planning session to come up with a way to go forth with our priorities that we had come up with. We did it over pizza, and made it a bit more casual that a usual council meeting, despite covering some good stuff. We didn't make any grand decisions on how to go forth in Roland. This was more-make a plan of how to carry out the grand plan.

We had a good discussion, with various ideas. Instead of reviewing each one, the official minutes cover it pretty well, so I don't see a point in retyping it all.

Some of the key points though are that we decided we weren't going to go forth with any city wide sidewalk plan until the city was covered in a couple spots-namely the lot of the old water tower (just west of the post office). Another is to get the sidewalk complete in Britson Park. Also our department heads will be working with their council committee members to come up with 5 year plans. Those won't be locked in as for sures, but gives us something to work to.

The other biggie that came from the meeting is the decision to get a 2nd opinion on our wastewater plan, and the addition of the planned new trunk line. I am moderately supportive of the idea of a 2nd opinion, mostly because our previous work had some difficulties on the communication side. However, I think the whole thing has gotten to a point that no matter the outcome of the new engineering study, I can't imagine anyone changing their mind.

HERE is the link to the minutes of the meeting.

Stats from the Assessor

I got the 2012 report from the Story County Assessor. It is a long and twisted explanation of oversight of the Assessors office, but in short, all Mayors in the county have some say in it. We have a meeting once or twice a year to approve the assessor's budget, and various policies and projects.

One reminder regarding the assessor, is that no assessor sets your taxes. The assessor is tasked with assigning a value to your property. That's it. The property taxes you pay are based on what all the various governmental entities set for a rate to fund what they do.

In Roland, the school district is taking about 1/2 of your property tax dollars, the city about 30%, and the remainder goes to DMACC, Story County Hospital, and a few other agencies. As an aside, the school district also puts a surcharge on your income tax as well.

But anyway, on to the stats. In the report, the assessor included some numbers for Story County. They are not broken out by Roland only, but I thought there was some interesting stuff in there. The numbers I'm going to quote are everything in Story County not counting within the City of Ames.

I'm not sure how to format in this blog, so I will just run them together. So this will be for the years 2010, 2011, 2012.

Number of new homes: 38, 41, 72

Average Sales Price $165,034 $162,965 $176,223

Total Sales by Year: 233, 245, 287

Sales by Price Range 1 to $150,000 129, 143, 143 $151,00 to $225,000 67, 58, 76 $226,000 to $324,000 25, 32, 48 $325,000 to $1,200,000 12, 12, 20

So in my unprofessional opinion, it does appear sales and prices went in the right direction (if you are a homeowner) in 2012.

Roland Cemetery Website

I just found out that the Roland Cemetery has a website. Kind of a nice thing to have if you are searching for a loved one (or maybe somebody you didn't love!). There is an interactive map, where you can type in a name, and it will show you where the grave is. Also a section on buying a lot and prices and such, if that seems like a place you want your bones to spend eternity.

Kudos to whoever put that together. If you are into genealogy, I'm sure this is a pretty nice resource.

HERE is the link.

By the way, I had to do some looking on who was buried there. 77 Larsons buried in the cemetery. 120 Johnsons. 87 Olsons. Something like 44 guys named Ole and 15 women named Lena.

Feb 6 Council Meeting

A couple days past the meeting, and finally getting around to some notes about the meeting. Anyway, at the 6PM hour, we did not have a quorum, as we, at the time, only had 4 council members due to a resignation, and only had 2 CMs there at 6. But Doug Sargent was able to get from wrestling practice, and walk in a 6:01, so we had the 3 people needed for a quorum.

We immediately increased our council member count, to the full complement of 5, with 4 in attendance as Brian Hill was appointed to replace Jeri Neely on the council. He agreed to step in immediately, so we got him sworn in, and he served out the rest of the council meeting.

We then had a presentation from Brett Comegys, who is working on capital improvement programs around the county, and will be talking to the Board of Supervisors about funding some of this for the smaller cities in the county. No particular action was taken, and we received some handouts to look over.

We got a check-in from a rep from Alliant Energy. As the gas and electric provider in Roland, they stop by our meetings every now and then to see how it is going. As far as I know, all is well, so that was simply a friendly chat.

We had a couple other "business" items to take care of. CM Balmer was appointed as my alternate to the Story County 911 board, and the council authorized me to sign our annual contract for police protection with the Story County Sheriff's Office.

We also had a presentation from Steve Olson, President of the Roland Library Board. He talked about the possibility of increasing some program presentations at the library, as well as changing how the library is staffed. That was going to take a bit more money. No decision was made, but I'm guessing the council will defer on that, as we still need to come up with some more cuts, or increased tax rate to fund the planned items for this coming year.

We talked about our goal setting session that we had held the Wednesday prior. I think the consensus was that the main goals that came out of the meeting were worthy for further review. We set a planning session meeting to come up with a plan to carry out those goals to follow our next regularly scheduled council meeting. Via an unofficial survey of the council/mayor, here are the goals ranked in priority: 1. Getting something squared away with the sewer trunk line; 2. Putting together a 5 year underground structure plan; 3. Working on a new City Hall; 4. Working on a streets 5 year plan; 5. Updating the city website; 6. Coming up with a drought condition plan; 7. Working on a sidewalk plan; 8. Working on an update to the employee handbook and reviewing compensation/benefits.

Some of these are more simple than others. And we would like to work on all of them. The order is just kinda how we prioritized them.

Lastly on the night, we talked about the budget. After crunching the latest numbers, we found out that we are about $30,000 short in our proposed budget if we are to keep our mil rate the same. So the council has been tasked with deciding what areas of proposed spending need to be pared back and/or increasing the mil rate. My 2 cents, though I don't have a vote, is a combination of each. I see some places were we can cut from the proposed-namely lesser employee raises, some less on the pool capital improvement, and some less on sidewalks. But we have scrimped and tried to pull in half of a city hall construction in this budget. If all goes as planned, it will be a nice improvement to our Main Street, and a one year bump in the mil rate of 50 cents meets my muster. That would be a property tax bump of about $30 for one year for a $100,000 house.

But that's just my proposal, I'm the mayor, I don't get to vote, that will be up to the city council. I guess we'll find out on the 20th, as we have to get the budget knocked out then to meet the state requirements.

Hazard Mitigation Survey

The City of Roland needs your help in filling out a survey.

The Federal government requires all states and local governments to have a hazard mitigation plan approved by FEMA that are consistent with the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 (DMA 2000). This is required to maintain eligibility for certain types of federal Hazard Mitigation Assistance Grants.

You may also fill out the survey on hard copy. Forms are located at City Hall or the Library. If you go that route, please return it to the City Hall, 202 E Ash St. Thanks you for your assistance with the survey.

Click here to take the survey.

Weather Spotter Training

A copy and paste for you....

The National Weather Service will be conducting Basic and Advanced Spotter classes in March and April. Story County will have a Basic Spotter course on March 27th at Gates Hall in Nevada with the Nevada Fire Department Hosting. Ames Amateur Radio will be hosting an Advanced Spotter course on March 7th at the 4-H Building on the Iowa State Campus. If you are not able to attend one of the Story County courses Boone and Marshall Counties are offering courses in March & April. Please see the enclosed flier for specific time and location information for all Spotter classes. Classes are open to the public and the public is encouraged to attend. Please share this information across your communities.

The National Weather Service will also be offering online courses throughout the year. You can follow this link for further information on how the attend online courses. http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dmx/?n=spotterinfo

If you have any questions please contact our office. Melissa K Spencer Deputy Coordinator Story County Emergency Management 900 6th St. Nevada, IA 50201 515.382.7316 www.storycountyiowa.gov/ema www.facebook.com/storycountyema

Jan 30 Planning Session

We had a planning session on Wednesday. Sort of a council meeting, but sorta not. It was, because we were all there, talked about city biz, and we kept minutes and all. Not like a typical meeting, as no decisions were to be made, and there was no public forum.

We just wanted to talk about where we've been, and where we would like to go. We last had one of these meetings 2 years ago. Here is what the mayor, council, and city staff indicated were the highlights and accomplishments of the last 2 years. (Some of these were listed from more than one person) In no particular order... Starting Britson park, Street Extension of Arthur and Bryan, Painting Water Tower, Updated Hardware and Software in City Hall, Handheld Meter Reading Upgrade, Running the Housing Grant, Swimming Pool Improvements, Cottonwood Property Demo and Sale, Sale of Property on Walnut/Cottonwood, Videotaped City's Sewer Pipes, Flood Mitigation Steps in Various Neighborhoods, Hired New City Clerk, Did Sump Pump Inspections, Got Through a RAGBRAI, Replaced Part Time Summer Helper after Retirement, New Basketball Court in Pool Park, Water Operator Upgraded to Grade II Certification, Replaced/Replacing two resigned Council Members, Created City Email List, Increased Use of Community Center, Replaced Media in Sand Filters at Water Plant.

I really like that list. That is a nice list of accomplishments that take in a lot of different paid and unpaid workers and volunteers.

We came up with a list of things we would like to see happen, or possibly consider--all of various difficulty to complete. More to come on that, as the council will formally come up with a list of things to focus on. Something I expect to be on the list is written 5 year plans on underground infrastructure upgrades and maintenance, and the same thing for streets.