This is awesome!

Just got sent a link about the Historical Society paying to get all of the issues of The Roland Record digitized. That was Roland's newspaper until it closed up in 1975. I didn't move to Roland until 1997, but I love history, and it is so interesting to read what was going on in Roland in years past.

In the last issue in 1975, I saw an ad for Casey's. I didn't know Casey's was in Roland for that long. Then in the 60s, it appears Roland had competing grocery stores. I liked looking at the low food prices in the ads. I'm sure the Roland old timers could fill me in, but still, it was very interesting.

Haven't had time yet, but I am going to look at the news stories when Roland High closed up, and had the merger with Story City High. So anyway, check it out.

http://rolandhistory.newspaperarchive.com/

A busy Saturday July 24th

All sorts of stuff going on, on the afternoon and evening of July 24th. First up, the library is having an Open House. It is from 3 to 5:30. My understanding is that there will be some snacks, and it will serve as a kind of celebration for the new library location. If you haven't been in there yet, that would be a great time to go stomp around, and check out the new facility.

Then around the supper hour, the Roland Area Development Corp will be hosting an all you can eat sweet corn feed at the Roland Community Center. There will also be bologna, brats, hot dogs, and watermelon. It is a fundraiser for roof repairs on the community center. As with the library, if you haven't been in there yet, this would be a great opportunity.

Price is a low low $6 for adults, 5-10 year olds $4, and 4 and under eat free.

If anybody has more details on these events, feel free to add a comment. I was just kinda going by the flyers I saw at City Hall.

City Council Meeting on July 12

Relatively uneventful meeting tonite. A bunch of my appointees to various boards and commissions were approved by the council. It's really nice to have people in the community interested to volunteer their time on these boards. I still have one opening to fill on the Planning and Zoning Commission. Let me know if you are interested.

We also discussed our city engineer, and who we may hire in the future. We are going to continue with MER Engineering on the 3 projects they currently have going. Though we may lean towards Bolton and Menk for any future projects.

Skeeters

Just a comment about the city's mosquito spraying plan. We talked about it a little bit in the council meeting tonite. For the near term, mosquito spraying will be done approximately weekly. It needs to be done when it is really still, so it will be generally after 9PM, or just after sunrise.

If you have any concerns about the spray, there is information at city hall, about what is being sprayed. You can generally hear the sprayer coming, as it is pretty noisy.

Hopefully we can get the skeeter population knocked down some. With all the rain this year, those things are nuts. Keep the OFF handy!

And above, in case you don't get the reference....that is the band "The Mosquitoes" from when they got stranded on Gilligan's Island.

City Council Meeting

Notes and highlights from the council meeting tonite....The council approved the street plan for the Arthur and Bryan extensions. That means we have approved the street plans to go to bid. We will be opening the bids on July 20 I believe. At that point, the council can approve or disapprove the bids. The bid will have a completion date of December 31. With the slow economy, that should help pricing, but with the wet weather, contractors are a bit behind, and that should hurt pricing. If it comes in too high, we can always rebid next year, as we are in no particular hurry with this project.

We also had a discussion around applying for the Safe Streets to School grant. A lot involved with this, but things we are pondering are improved sidewalks from the Samson Street area to the school, and then potentially a bridge over Bear Creek, to keep kids from having to walk along Maple for extended times. A lot of work to do with that, but we will be investigating funding for such a project.

The council did final approval for the water and wastewater rate increase. See a previous blog post for how much that may cost you. That should go in effect in July.

We also discussed, and then tabled a change in who we might use for city engineer. We got some proposals from various engineering firms. So we are going to ponder that.

We also reviewed bids for demolition of the abandoned house on S. Cottonwood. The property still does not belong to the city. It takes a long time for the transfer of that property. So basically we just need to wait. Hang in there....

And a reminder that fireworks are on July 3.

Council Meeting moving to 7PM

Monday's council meeting will move to 7PM, as we weren't going to be able to get a quorum at 6PM. So if you were planning on attending, there ya go....

Boards and Commissions

June 30 is when terms on our city's boards and commissions expire. Not all, of course, as terms are staggered so a whole board does not need to be replaced. So as mayor, I need to make appointments, with city council approval.

If you have an interest in serving on a board or commission, please let me know at rogerfritz@gmail.com, or contact City Hall.

I have not checked with all the folks whose terms are up. So some may be interested in returning. But here is where we may have openings:
Board of Adjustments (these folks consider variances to zoning regulations)
Planning and Zoning (this commission makes recommendations to the city council regarding zoning law changes)
Library (this board is responsible for overseeing the operation of the Library)
Parks (this board is responsible for overseeing the operation of the city's parks)
Pool Board (and I bet you can guess what they do)

Terms are from 3 to 5 years, depending on the board. BoA and P&Z generally meet very infrequently. Lately maybe only once a year. The other 3 are a lot busier, meet more frequently and really get their hands on things that affect a lot of people in town.

So if you are interested in any of these, contact me or City Hall.