Other Mayor Duties

Wednesday night I went to the quarterly meeting of the Story County Emergency Managment Agency. As Mayor of Roland, I am our representative to that board, as are all other mayors in the county. Most mayors were there last night, from small Kelley all the way to big Ames.

We had to approve the EMA budget. Its funding comes via the county, and county taxes, along with some revenue from grants. I learned if it was billed separately on your property taxes, like many other agencies (you can see them on your property tax statement), it would be 4 cents per $1000 of assessed valuation. With the rollback, and all that, if you have a $100,000 house, about $2.40 of your property taxes goes to this agency.

So what does it do? There are 2 employee positions, but only 1 currently, as the director resigned at the end of 2010, so that position is currently open. They do planning for natural and man-made disasters--be it a hazardous chemical spill, or a flood or tornado, and then help coordinate relief if one of those items strike somewhere in the county.

I found out that the interim director, who is Melissa Spencer of Roland by the way, will be touring the old Pella plant/new Land O' Lakes facility soon. Land O' Lakes will be keeping a large stockpile of chemicals, as they use it as a new distribution facility. So what types of things are in there will be inventoried, and that info given to responding fire departments and such.

They also do what if scenarios for towns in Story County, and the likelihood of various disasters. I've seen the doc, and we are one of the "safest" cities in Story County, as we don't have a railroad, or major highway, or major river. Though of course we know Bear Creek can be problematic. Our biggest risks were all natural; flood, blizzard, and wind/tornado. Earthquakes, terrorists, and airplane crashes were determined to be minute odds of happening. Yay! Also I saw no concern over zombie attacks, which is really good.