This will be a short letter. Thankfully we have had a quiet month here in town. Hope everyone has gotten over Christmas by now and if you are lucky you have missed the flu bug. I know a lot of folks have not. Our ambulance squad is busy in the process of hiring a full time manager/EMT person. We need one with most of our squad working out of town it is hard to get members to respond during the Monday – Friday 8-5 time slot. They are OK at night and on the weekends. It takes two people to report – a driver and an EMT person. We are lucky that Mark Lowry can and will drive during the work day but that can put a real strain on his city job if he is gone too much. Justin Miller also can help if he is not busy with farm work. This only gives us two to respond. It would be better if there were more. We are required to have at least two people on 24/7. If not we will loose our accreditation and have to go to First Responders instead of a full service crew. That is not good. First Responders are very limited in what they can do by law. They cannot transport or give aid in any way. Basically, they can knock on your door, try making you comfortable and hold your hand until an ambulance from Marshalltown, Traer, Grundy Center or Toledo can get to you. This full time person will definitely cost us quite a bit of money. Call rates will be be going up as well as property taxes. We need this service and an ambulance around 24/7. City Clerk, Jackie Stephenson, and your city council are working very hard on the 2017-18 budget. It is going to be a tight one. Our city had had too many unexpected bills this year. We have had to drill a new well, put in several tens of thousands of dollars of new sewer and water lines along with several other unexpected items that have come up. Going forward into 2017-18 we will need more money for the ambulance, library, street repair, well field, law enforcement and salaries just to name a few. Your council will make it work but not everyone will get what they want.

Keith Sash, Mayor