Nov 14 Council Meeting

Lot of stuff on the docket tonite.
Wasn't an agenda item, but heard about a car getting keyed the other night. If you know any details, or anyone else who may have been keyed, please contact the Sheriff's Dept.

We talked a little bit about moving City Hall into the old Library building. We are going to move forward on those efforts. We have a potential layout, the building passed the structural, and the electric is good, minus some minor cleanup issues. It is not 100% done deal, but like I said, we are moving forward on that. I think it will be nice to get City Hall on Main Street. Also to have a more professional office space.

I was in City Hall Sunday afternoon to sign some things. When nobody has been in there in over a day, with the water plant there, and nobody opening doors and such, it reeks badly. I realize the existing location has served us for 75 years, but I think a change would be good.

In other activities, we talked with Brandon Hansen, President of the Park Board, about a replacement for Ed Nerem for park maintenance. The city council was pondering if a city employee might be a better route, and have that person also do snow removal, and other odd jobs for the city. For now, we thought continuing on the same path would be best, with a summer park employee, and contracting snow removal.

We passed ordinances regarding water shutoffs for failure to pay the bill, and also for a stop sign on Progressive Avenue.

We also ended efforts on getting the hazardous mitigation grant. With the expected cost of the project, along with an inability to get enough receipts from citizens showing flood damage, we were told that getting the grant was highly unlikely. So the council had a discussion about what to do next. Anything we do is going to be on us for now. So we could go forth with the new trunk line. The estimate from the engineer on that is $600,000 to $1,100,000 depending on the route we took. Or we may try to line our sewer lines elsewhere in the city. So it will be on the docket for future council meetings, but for now, no definite plans are in the works.

Based on the election, and the desires of the council and myself, we are going to move council meetings from the 2nd and 4th Monday to the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month. That will start the first of the year, or at least that is our plan. We will keep the meetings at the community center, and they will stay at 6PM. Mondays are starting to become problematic for us, so we are going to give Wednesdays a whirl.

Lastly, we appointed our new city clerk to replace Deneen Frost. And that person is Jodi Meredith. Jodi served as our temporary clerk while Deneen was out of the office. Jodi brings experience in being a city clerk. Besides her efforts in Roland for the past few months, she was also the city clerk of Kelley. She will also continue in that role, as that is a part-time position.

We got some very good and directly qualified resumes in. I wasn't sure what we would get, but we were fortunate in having several good potential choices.