February 1 Council Meeting

A few things on the agenda for this one. We got a reminder that we are having a public input meeting on Wednesday, Feb 15, at 7PM at the Community Center, after our council meeting, regarding our city's sewers. The council is interested in getting the input of citizens on what we should do with our sewer system. I will have more on that on a future blog post.

We updated our speed limit ordinances for Roland. The new streets in west Roland didn't legally have speed limit, so we put that in. Now, everywhere in Roland is 25 MPH, except some spots still in the city limits in and out of town on E18 and R77.

We gave a raise to Nathan, our water/wastewater superintendent for getting is Grade 2 certification for wastewater treatment. That is nice for Nathan to have, and for the city. Good job outta him for completing the course work to get that certification.

Most of the meeting was to discuss the budget. Fortunately we are sitting pretty good. All departments and boards did a good job of getting reasonable budgets to us. We may have a little snipping here and there, and we still need to decide what percent pay raise is appropriate for the city employees.

I will have more discussion on budget in a future post. The good news is the city's levy will actually go down. We have paid off the bond for one of our wells, so that is around $35,000 a year we don't have to pay. My quick estimate is that on a $150,000 house, that will save that homeowner around $50 a year. Not a lot, but 50 bucks is 50 bucks.

I can't guarantee your property taxes will go down tho. It appears overall valuation in Roland went up, which kind of surprised me, considering the housing market and all. We do have a few new properties, and some coming off tax abatement which helps increase the total valuation of all properties in the city. So for any given homeowner, you will need to refer what the assessor came up with for your home. Also, the city only collects around 29% of your property tax. The school takes half or a little more, and the the county, DMACC, and others claim the rest.

But as I mentioned, our levy is going down. We are holding everything else at last year's rate, then minus the well bond payment. So I am happy about that as a property tax payer.

That was pretty much it for the meeting. Stay tuned for more on the meeting on the 15th, and more for a more in depth discussion of the budget.