Chili Cookoff Fundraiser

Roland's Britson Park Committee will be hosting a Chili Cookoff fundraiser to support construction of a new concession stand/storage building at the new Britson Park. Winners will be awarded in the Spicy and Mild Chili categories, along with a Soup division. Celebrity judges will be all Roland-Story building Principals, Steve Schlatter, John Sheahan, and Kate Hartzler. It will be held at the Roland American Legion on Saturday, January 11, starting at 6PM. If you do not want to enter, you can also just come to eat! Details on how to enter at www.britsonpark.org As an aside, you can go next door to the bar and purchase an adult beverage to drink with your chili if you would like to do that. Otherwise there will be water and some other drink (like orange drink) available with your food if you simply want to do that.

December 11 Council Meeting

Had about a 40 minute meeting. Everyone there except CM Hill.

We opened the meeting with a public hearing. Kind of non-standard. But the public hearing is listed for a specific hour, so we have to do it then. So it was first, right at 6PM. No public there to comment on it. It was in regards to entering a loan agreement for the initial work on our new sewer project.

During public input we heard from the sheriff's department. They check in at our meetings to see if we have heard any issues, and to give us an update on law enforcement issues. They have a suspect for the vandalism that took place in Roland, Zearing and McCallsburg about a month ago. Some jackwagon threw rocks through various windows of houses and cars. I know a few citizens on the east side of town got hit.

We then had a housekeeping type thing raising the amount of money we can keep in a bank. With our sewer project coming up, we will have more money than normal after we get the loan. So it is upped to $2.5 million at First American Bank in Roland. Apparently there is a law that you can only keep so much in a bank to what a city council has approved.

We got an update on our sewer project. We approved payment for test drilling of 4 core samples along the proposed route of the sewer. That is just to make sure the soil can support the horizontal drilling that will take place. If all goes as planned, we should have our new sewer line by summer.

Lastly, it was the last city council meeting for Duane Canny. He chose not to run after serving 2 terms (8 years) on the council. Duane has always done a good job at watching out for the taxpayer dollar. So thanks Duane for your efforts!

November 20 Council Meeting

Quick meeting. All council members were there except CM Sargent. CM Elect Webb was also in attendance. There were only 3 non usual items on the agenda. (By usual, I mean the consent agenda, dept head reports, and public comments).

So for those 3 items...we approved our health insurance contract. It actually went down by $500 a month. It was by a new way of figuring it, and a new pool our employees are in. We all praised 0bama and are expecting a trip to the State of the Union address, because we are the only people in the country that have seen health insurance rates go down.

We cancelled our January 1 council meeting. Jan 1 is the 1st Wednesday of the month. We decided we could get by with the meeting just on the 15th. As a 5 Wednesday month, we could add another one in late January if need be to get budget stuff squared away.

And lastly the council approved the hiring of Linda Sharer to be our new utility billing clerk. That is a part-time position and she will be replacing Janet Olson who is retiring. Linda brings a lot of experience, and she has a nice personality that I think will work well with the various folks who come into City Hall. We had a lot of good applications, and it wasn't easy to choose. I believe she will be starting around December 12.

We will only be having one council meeting in December as well. We cancelled the Dec 4 and 18 meetings, and will only be meeting on the 11th.

Grant #3

Grant #3 this month is a nice one as well. I went to Reiman Gardens in Ames to pick up a $6000 check from the Story County Community Foundation. The money is to be used towards construction of the new concession building at Britson Park.

The SCCF funds various projects around the county. Most are what I would call human services type grants. I think 3 different libraries got money as well. Ours of course will help out kids all around the county, and of course I'm biased, but I think was a worthy choice. I sat at a table with grant recipients from Story City. The group working on restoring the outside of the building housing the carousel got $3000, so that was nice too.

It is nice to see our local projects being recognized by a foundation like SCCF. As for Britson Park, we still have more money to raise to get the building built, which should start next spring. We are going to have a chili cookoff in January, and another 5K run in March.

Here is an article from the Ames Trib about the grants that the Story County Community Foundation awarded.

Grant #2

I had the privilege this week of going to Theisen's in Ames to pick up a $1000 check. The money was donated to help build our new concession stand/restroom/storage building in Britson Park. I read the list of Theisen's donations. They donate to a lot of different organizations in Iowa. Kudos to them. HERE is a link to that list.

I think Theisen's is my favorite store in Ames. And I'm not just saying that because they gave us $1000. I buy my shoes, ammo, cleaners, car stuff. And free popcorn to eat while shopping. Here is a pic of me getting the check (I love big ceremonial checks!) I am with Store Manager Shane Skala who just happens to be a Roland resident.

Grant #1

I'm gonna trickle out news of 3 grants that Roland has or will receive over the next week. So here is #1. I and City Clerk Jodi Meredith worked on a grant request from Story County with money directed for Economic Development. The money is coming from TIF revenues from the windmills in the eastern part of the county. We put in a request for the expected cost of asbestos abatement in the two properties the city owns on Main Street that will be torn down--namely the old library building, and the one just north of it--218 and 220 N Main to be exact.

Our request was funded at 50%, so we are receiving $6950 towards this project. So that is nice.

In case you've missed it in previous posts, we have been saving our dollars to tear down those buildings and construct a new city hall in that location. How the project ties in to economic development is downtown revitalization. And then the idea of the council is to have a more professional city hall that potential residents can see. Right now it smells bad in there with our co-located power plant, and is harder to find, not being right on Main Street.

The Ames Tribune has an article on our request, and the 5 other communities that received funding. HERE is the link.

Updated City Website

Led by council member Jerry Balmer, and some assistance by me, the city has set up a new website. We worked with Hobbs Design to modernize it a bit, and make it so city staff can more easily update it for things going on.

Roland was one of the first cities in the county with a functional/informational website. I was a big proponent of that way back when, when I was on the city council. I'm guessing that was 10 or more years ago. And it has served us well, and had most of the basic info that people were looking for.

For the most part, it will have the same information. But it will have more pictures, and hopefully be more of a selling/marketing point for Roland.

So give it a whirl. It can be found here: http://cityofroland.org/