Feb 6 Council Meeting

A couple days past the meeting, and finally getting around to some notes about the meeting. Anyway, at the 6PM hour, we did not have a quorum, as we, at the time, only had 4 council members due to a resignation, and only had 2 CMs there at 6. But Doug Sargent was able to get from wrestling practice, and walk in a 6:01, so we had the 3 people needed for a quorum.

We immediately increased our council member count, to the full complement of 5, with 4 in attendance as Brian Hill was appointed to replace Jeri Neely on the council. He agreed to step in immediately, so we got him sworn in, and he served out the rest of the council meeting.

We then had a presentation from Brett Comegys, who is working on capital improvement programs around the county, and will be talking to the Board of Supervisors about funding some of this for the smaller cities in the county. No particular action was taken, and we received some handouts to look over.

We got a check-in from a rep from Alliant Energy. As the gas and electric provider in Roland, they stop by our meetings every now and then to see how it is going. As far as I know, all is well, so that was simply a friendly chat.

We had a couple other "business" items to take care of. CM Balmer was appointed as my alternate to the Story County 911 board, and the council authorized me to sign our annual contract for police protection with the Story County Sheriff's Office.

We also had a presentation from Steve Olson, President of the Roland Library Board. He talked about the possibility of increasing some program presentations at the library, as well as changing how the library is staffed. That was going to take a bit more money. No decision was made, but I'm guessing the council will defer on that, as we still need to come up with some more cuts, or increased tax rate to fund the planned items for this coming year.

We talked about our goal setting session that we had held the Wednesday prior. I think the consensus was that the main goals that came out of the meeting were worthy for further review. We set a planning session meeting to come up with a plan to carry out those goals to follow our next regularly scheduled council meeting. Via an unofficial survey of the council/mayor, here are the goals ranked in priority: 1. Getting something squared away with the sewer trunk line; 2. Putting together a 5 year underground structure plan; 3. Working on a new City Hall; 4. Working on a streets 5 year plan; 5. Updating the city website; 6. Coming up with a drought condition plan; 7. Working on a sidewalk plan; 8. Working on an update to the employee handbook and reviewing compensation/benefits.

Some of these are more simple than others. And we would like to work on all of them. The order is just kinda how we prioritized them.

Lastly on the night, we talked about the budget. After crunching the latest numbers, we found out that we are about $30,000 short in our proposed budget if we are to keep our mil rate the same. So the council has been tasked with deciding what areas of proposed spending need to be pared back and/or increasing the mil rate. My 2 cents, though I don't have a vote, is a combination of each. I see some places were we can cut from the proposed-namely lesser employee raises, some less on the pool capital improvement, and some less on sidewalks. But we have scrimped and tried to pull in half of a city hall construction in this budget. If all goes as planned, it will be a nice improvement to our Main Street, and a one year bump in the mil rate of 50 cents meets my muster. That would be a property tax bump of about $30 for one year for a $100,000 house.

But that's just my proposal, I'm the mayor, I don't get to vote, that will be up to the city council. I guess we'll find out on the 20th, as we have to get the budget knocked out then to meet the state requirements.