November 7 Council meeting

Had all remaining 4 members of the city council in attendance. We set the plan for replacing Councilmember Proctor. A subcommittee of Canny, Ford, and myself will talk to prospective candidates, and then make a recommendation for appointment at the November 20 council meeting.

As an aside, we moved the Wednesday, November 21 meeting to Tuesday, November 20 so everybody could get over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house for Thanksgiving.

Back to the appointment, citizens can force an election through a petition. I hope that is not the case, because the election will cost us about $1000 or so. Also, this person will only serve through November of 2013.

We had a discussion about the fees for open records requests. We had one recently, and we are trying to get our ducks in a row for now, and for the future on how best to handle any request. Never had one before, so this is a good exercise for us to do the right thing and follow Iowa law, and have appropriate charges for requestors, and so the city doesn't take an unnecessary financial hit.

We got a report on the sump pump inspections. We are going to go forth with dye testing all homes that were "unknown". I think it was around 70 properties in Roland. I would guess most are going to pass. In most of of the cases, it is where there is a direct connection to the storm sewers, which is how a lot of the homes in our newer subdivisions were hooked up. But in a sense of fairness, and a lack of any hard documentation, we are going to test all homes. Also people who still have not responded for any test are going to get a reminder letter. If they still don't respond, they will be charged a $100 a month sump connection fee.

We had another discussion about the sewer system in Roland, and that is about all I remember for this meeting. Again, the next one will be on Tuesday, November 20 at 6PM