Community Notes: New year includes renovations, planning, more

By Dean Andrews, Mayor, Charles City

It’s a new year and a new address – at least for City Hall. As of Monday, Jan. 6, the City Hall business and administrative offices are located at 507 Clark St., at the corner of Clark and Jackson streets.

The Police Department, Building Inspection and Permits Department, and the Parks and Rec Department will be in the brick strip mall on Beck Street across from Plaza Mexico Restaurant. We will be conducting business in these locations for the next 18 to 24 months while the much-needed refurbishing of City Hall takes place.

City staff will be meeting with the selected contractor on Wednesday, Jan. 15, for a pre-construction meeting. This meeting will begin to set a timeline for the work to be done. The first step will be asbestos abatement as needed. After all the preparatory work is completed, new construction and modifications will begin.

We would like to thank all those who helped with the substantial moving process. A couple of weeks go we had a large contingent of high school students who spent over an hour relocating many of the documents the city needs to maintain.

These included plat books, city council minutes that are over 100 years old, and many other assorted records.

This past Thursday and Friday, City Hall was closed, and with the help of the “City Street Department Moving Service,” all of the furniture and fixtures were moved to either 507 Clark St., Beck Street, or placed in storage at the city-owned facility in the 800 block of North Main.

Fortunately there was not a snow storm, so the city crews had some extra time.

Moving and reconstruction are always a long process, but the final result will be an updated and more efficient facility.

As another way of looking toward the future, the City Council will hold a strategic planning session on Jan. 8. We hold these sessions every two years with an outside facilitator to evaluate where we have been and how we have met previous goals that have been set, and then to look forward to determine our current/future priorities.

As we all know, strategies and events that we plan today may vary as time passes, but it is good to set a framework of what we see for the future. We attempt to plan for the long-term, but the emphasis is placed on the next two to five years.

The council is always looking for citizen input, as we certainly don’t have all the answers. If you have a direction you would like to pursue, please feel free to discuss it with a council member or myself.

On a last note, I would like to share information about a class that will be held at the Charles City NIACC Center, on the “Fundamentals of Construction.”

We hear all the time from employers in the trade industries that they are always looking for workers. This class will be designed for individuals who are out of high school who are looking to change or upgrade their current employment status.

This class will start on Jan. 27 and will be held from 12:30 to 4 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. At the end of seven weeks, participants will receive a certificate of completion of the construction course, as well as a toolbelt valued at $200. They can then use these to show a potential employer that they have the tools and ability to begin in the construction industry.

There is a tuition fee for this course, but NIACC has several funding sources to help cover this cost of tuition. An open house will be held at the Charles City NIACC Center on Wednesday, Jan. 8, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Please come and check out the possibilities.

You can also contact NIACC in person or by phone at the main campus in Mason City or at the NIACC Center in Charles City to sign up or for more information.