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.