Toddville will get cleanup help on July 4

TODDVILLE - Monroe Township Fire Chief Kale McBurney said July 21 wouldn't do.

On Thursday, the Linn County supervisors seemed to have heard him as they hustled to get resources into Monroe Township's largest population center, the unincorporated village of Toddville, to help clean up the mess of downed trees left by stiff Monday afternoon winds that some in town thought a tornado.

Just the day before, the supervisors concluded that getting help to Toddville would have to wait until July 21 when county road crews, who are repairing storm-damaged county roads, thought they would have time.

However, Toddville residents, including Fire Chief McBurney, got the supervisors' attention, and by early Thursday afternoon, Supervisor John Harris had come up with a big part of a solution.

At 7 a.m. Friday, contractor Mark Ralston from nearby Palo has agreed to send two endloaders and four dump trucks into Toddville to pick up all the tree debris along the village streets. By noon, the job should be complete, Harris, the former of mayor of Palo, said.

For now, the debris will be deposited on the grounds of the American Legion hall in Toddville, where county crews will pick it up the week of July 21 and take to the Solid Waste Agency's compost and recycling landfill sites, Harris said.

I was at the end of my rope,” Harris said in his effort to get help to Toddville as quick as he could on Thursday. He said he called Ralston to see if he would donate an endloader for the weekend, and Ralston and his employees decided to do more.

'On Friday - Independence Day - he and his crew will be in Toddville to help out,” Harris said.

He said Ralston may get some reimbursement if the Federal Emergency Management Agency covers some of the costs. But he said Ralston hasn't asked for reimbursement.

He and Supervisor Linda Langston on Thursday also called on the Linn County Emergency Management Agency to see if it could get state equipment and personnel to Toddville by Monday to help remove storm debris.

On Tuesday, the supervisors approved a local disaster declaration, which positioned them to ask for state help. And on Thursday they asked.

Mike Goldberg, executive director of the Linn County Emergency Management Agency, on Thursday afternoon said he will wait to see what Mark Ralston and his crew get done on Friday before he decides if state resources are needed.

Goldberg said the state help would be in the form of Iowa Department of Transportation trucks, supervised inmate labor and a 'volunteer chain saw crew” organized through the Iowa Disaster Human Resources Council.

Supervisor Harris had visited Toddville about noon on Thursday, and he was returning later Thursday afternoon to help knock on doors to let residents know that the Palo contractor would be in town to pick up debris early Friday morning.

Before Harris' visits on Thursday, Fire Chief Kale McBurney, his father, former Fire Chief Larry McBurney, and others were praising employees from Clickstop, an e-commerce firm in nearby Urbana, Iowa, who were in Toddville with chain saws and muscle to help with the cleanup.

At the same time, they wondered where the county help was at.

'The county considers this a village, so nobody is really going to do much for us,” Larry McBurney said.

His fire chief son said Toddville was kind of a 'forgotten community” to county officials, though he credited Supervisor Harris with paying attention. That was even before Harris arranged for Friday's help.