Community Notes: Updates and announcements from Charles City City Hall

By Trudy O’Donnell, Charles City City Clerk

We have had some changes here at City Hall this past year. In February, our accounts payable/receptionist Chris Guthart entered into a well-deserved retirement. We sure do miss her around here and I want to publicly thank her for her years of service to the city.

Her replacement is Elizabeth Yaddof and she started here in March. She brings with her a wealth of knowledge of city government, having worked for the city of Nora Springs for several years prior to joining us here. She is doing a tremendous job and we are very happy to have her as part of our City Hall family.

We also recently said goodbye to code enforcement officer Jason Webster and GIS planner Jake Johnson, as they both took new positions with Floyd County. We wish them well in their new endeavors.

Fire chief Eric Whipple will also be leaving us the first part of November, so we thank them all for their service to the city.

I have been researching several online platforms to allow for the payment of items such as dog licenses and food vendor permits online to make these processes easier for our residents. There seem to be hundreds of platforms out there, so we are striving to find the one that best fits our needs and works with our current financial software.

Once we find what we’re looking for and install it, we will get the word out to everyone. I think this will make everyone’s life just a little easier and who doesn’t want things to be easier?

We will be gearing up for the next budget season in a few weeks. This process involves a lot of behind-the-scenes work by the city department heads and City Hall staff. Once we have an initial draft of the budget, we present it to City Council for their deliberation.

Our upcoming goal-setting session will be invaluable as we start into the budget process. Our identified top goals will be used to craft the next few years’ budgets and we can hopefully achieve a good amount of our goals we set.

Since it usually takes money to achieve any goal, we will do the best we can to maximize our budget dollars to cross off as many items as we can on our goals list.

At the recent Iowa League of Cities annual conference in Waterloo, our very own Steve Diers was given the Iowa City Manager of the Year award by his peers. While we all know what a great job he does for us here in Charles City, it was nice to see him get that recognition at a state level. Be sure to congratulate him when you see him and thank him for his tireless service to the city.

Our last brush pickup of the year was Oct. 17-19. Leaf pickups will be done this week (starting Oct. 24.) and the week of Nov. 14.

The guideline for leaf pickup is to rake your leaves into the street, keeping them 12-18 inches away from the curb. This allows for easier pickup and also allows rain water to flow to the storm sewers without plugging the intakes.

Please follow these guidelines so we can keep providing these valuable services to all of our residents. And remember that Shaw Avenue is open year-round from dawn to dusk for Charles City residents only to use for disposal of branches and yard waste.

And lastly, trick-or-treating will be done on Monday, Oct. 31, from 6-8 p.m. Have a happy and safe Halloween!