At recent Tama County Supervisors meetings, the subject on people’s minds has been redistricting. The Supervisors appointed a group of three locals to a board to work on the redistricting.

The board came up with an unofficial new map that split Tama County into five districts instead of three. The five separate zones are made up of about 3,427 people each. The supervisors then had three public hearings on the new districts, in which the map passed each time. The map was then sent to the state for approval, and this is when a hiccup occurred. The county was told by the state that they were not the ones to do this procedure, so this rendered the approved map null and void.

Tama County Assistant Auditor Karen Rohrs had this to say in an email to Tama-Grundy Publishing: “We are a Plan 3 supervisor county. We were under the impression that we follow the same process of redistricting/reprecincting that was done at the last census. I had emailed the Secretary of State’s office in January asking them about the process and they had referred me to the same worksheets and process that we had done before so we proceeded. Last week I then emailed the SOS office asking them where to send our information and they told me that we do not reprecinct at this time and that we just needed to send a letter to the SOS office requesting the LSA [Legislative Services Agency] to draw our supervisor district boundaries.”

At this Monday’s Supervisors meeting, the FS hazmat storage facility was the main item on the agenda. After much discussion at previous meetings over how the facility should be zoned, the supervisors made their decision today. It was decided that the facility would be zoned Agricultural and taxed as Commercial. Work has already begun on the facility just north of Toledo.

The Tama County Engineer reported that currently, the department is moving west retrieving shoulders on roads. Progress on Toledo’s Deer Creek bridge is moving along swiftly as they are currently doing dirt work. Work on the shop is also moving along, with punch list items being taken care of currently. The purchase of ROW for culverts was also approved.

Jathan Chicoine with the Home Base Iowa Program also spoke to the supervisors pitching the program for Tama County. The program aims to help veterans throughout Iowa.

Claims totaling $225,089.08 were approved.