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Shared Floyd-Chickasaw County engineer submits resignation after second offense OWI charge

Shared Floyd-Chickasaw County engineer submits resignation after second offense OWI charge
Dusten Rolando has been the shared Floyd County and Chickasaw County engineer for 20 years. He resigned his position after being charged recently with second-offense OWI. (Press file photo)
By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Chickasaw County Board of Supervisors accepted the resignation of long-time county engineer Dusten Rolando Monday morning, two weeks after he was charged with second-offense OWI.

Today (Tuesday) the Floyd County Board of Supervisors will consider a similar letter of resignation from Rolando, who has held a shared engineer position between the two counties for 20 years.

Rolando, age 50, told the Press Sunday evening that he had sent letters of resignation to both boards of supervisors.

“Monday Chickasaw will act on it or recognize it. Floyd will do the same on Tuesday, and then we will move forward from there,” he said.

At the Chickasaw County board meeting Monday, before the board voted on the letter, Rolando thanked his past and current staff as well as past and current supervisors.

“I’ve been here for over 20 years and, sorry, I may become teary-eyed because I’m very emotional on a lot of this stuff,” he told supervisors before lauding the people he has worked with. “They keep the system running.”

A number of Chickasaw County board members thanked Rolando for his service to the county after they unanimously voted to accept his resignation, effective at the end of the day on Friday.

“You’ve been a big part of this county for 20 years, and you’ll be missed,” said Supervisor Jason Byrne.

After a discussion, the Chickasaw County board hired Assistant County Engineer Roman Lensing as the county’s interim engineer.

Lensing, who has worked in Rolando’s office for the past eight years, said he would not be interested in the “dual-county” role that Rolando has held, and Chickasaw County supervisors said they wanted to wait until Floyd County supervisors met on Tuesday to see if the counties are interested in continuing the sharing arrangement.

The agenda for today’s Floyd County Board of Supervisors meeting, item 11, reads, “Review/Action regarding resignation of county engineer and engineer duties.”

The next item, item 12, reads “Discuss with County Engineer about Secondary Road Activities,” although that is a routine item on most regular meeting agendas.

According to documents filed in Chickasaw County District Court, Rolando was stopped by a Chickasaw County deputy at 9:21 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 27, in Nashua because of an alleged defective headlamp. The report said the deputy allegedly detected the odor of alcohol and asked Rolando if he would perform standardized field sobriety tests.

“Due to the totality of my observations I brought the defendant to the Chickasaw County Sheriff’s Office and requested a urine specimen for analysis,” the criminal complaint states.

The report alleges that on Sept. 13, the Iowa DCI Laboratory returned the results of the test, showing a blood alcohol level of 0.115%. In Iowa it is illegal for a person age 21 and older to be operating a vehicle with a blood alcohol content of 0.08% or more.

The criminal complaint was filed that same day in Chickasaw County District Court, charging Rolando with operating while under the influence, second offense, an aggravated misdemeanor.

Rolando had been previously convicted in October 2019 in Floyd County, after pleading guilty to OWI, first offense, a serious misdemeanor. He had been charged in April that year after failing field sobriety tests and registering a blood alcohol level of more than 0.08% on a preliminary breath test.

At that time Rolando had been stopped after he was allegedly observed by a Floyd County deputy swerving between lanes. He was also charged with an improper lane change and having an open container with an alcoholic beverage in his vehicle, but those charges were dropped as part of the agreement where Rolando pleaded guilty.

A Cerro Gordo County assistant attorney handled that case because of the conflict with the Floyd County Attorney’s Office and Rolando being a county employee.

Rolando was sentenced to 2 days in jail, which could have been served in a state-approved OWI program, and a $1,250 fine plus state surcharge.

Rolando had started work Feb. 1, 2001, in a shared county engineer position for Floyd and Chickasaw counties. He had previously been working at the DOT in Mason City, and he replaced another longtime county engineer, Lyle Laartz.

In June this year, the Floyd and Chickasaw county boards of supervisors had renewed Rolando’s annual contract for another year, giving him a 1% pay increase to $131,995. Floyd County paid his salary, benefits and expenses and was reimbursed for half of those costs by Chickasaw County.

Rolando said Monday at the Chickasaw County meeting that he had made mistakes, but he wanted to focus on the secondary roads department staff and the county’s future, saying he would be available to answer questions from Lensing and the other staff after he leaves.

— Bob Fenske, editor of the New Hampton Tribune, contributed to this report.

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