Digital TV Transition

Tonight, we had a meeting at city hall to present information on the digital TV transition that will take place on February 18, 2009. If you receive TV through cable or satellite, you do not have to do anything. However, if you receive TV through an antenna and you bought your TV before July 2007, chances are that you will need a digital converter box. More information can be obtained by going to www.DTV.gov or calling 1-888-dtv2009. You can apply to get up to two $40 discount certificates to purchase the converter boxes.

Winter Is Almost Gone!

According to 7-day forecasts on the TV news, we should be getting temperatures in the low-40s next week with lows in high-20s. We have to endure a couple of days of cold weather and then hopefully things will start turning around. I realized last week how tired I was of seeing white everywhere. I never thought I would get tired of seeing so much of a certain color! I don't know how our street department keeps hanging in there with this mess. Each time a piece of equipment goes down or breaks the street department is able to get it back together and keep right at pushing and removing the snow.

Last Friday, the steering mechanism went out on one of the dump trucks and the bearings went out on the snowblower. We thought we would be stuck with the snow windrows downtown, but the street, water and water pollution control departments worked together to bring a smaller snowblower from the wastewater plant to clear 1st Avenue and 4th Street so that the downtown shopperscould enjoy their time downtown on Saturday instead of having to navigate around the long rows of snow. This city is really fortunate to have such great resourceful employees working for it!

P.S. The pictures above are of the snowblower taken apart to fix the bearings. You can see the damage the blower has taken over the years--most of it has been this year alone!