The Kalona city council met with members of the Washington County Board of Supervisors, 911 Committee and Washington County Sheriff Jared Schneider to discuss the future location of communications equipment to best serve the city of Kalona and northern Washington County. The group discussed their goals for radio coverage for emergency responders in the area, talked about preliminary work done on the equipment project, and where that equipment could be positioned to enhance signal. Discussion surrounded using the existing water tower as a communications tower. City Administrator Ryan Slaubaugh talked about the evaluation of the tower and the equipment that could be placed there. “One of the things they wanted to do was evaluate our current water tower with respect to seeing if they would be able to affix two, six foot, radio frequency dishes on. Essentially, that means putting a coral on top with a building and stand alone generator up there. That would allow them to meet those requirements for coverage in our area that the county is moving toward. 

Engineers were on scene to begin the evaluation of the tower and the council agreed to allow the equipment to be affixed if the engineers did not find any issues. The timeline is to have this project completed in the first or second quarter of 2020.