T-R FILE PHOTO - When disaster struck Marshalltown on July 19, 2018, Marshall County Emergency Management Coordinator Kim Elder was among the responders helping in the immediate recovery.

It’s been a busy few months for Kim Elder, the one-woman staff for Marshall County Emergency Management.

Along with her normal duties, she was among many governmental and community agencies that responded to the July 19 tornado and its aftermath. Elder gave a budget update to the Marshall County Board of Supervisors Tuesday and said there are some areas where she expects less money to come into her department.

“The federal reimbursement that we have on the revenues, I gradually have moved that number down,” she said.

Overall, the proposed Fiscal Year 2020 local emergency management budget comes to about $185,000, down from the current estimated budget of $266,000, per an official budget document.

One area Elder said she expects less money is the Emergency Management Performance Grant. She reduced that line item from the normal $35,000 down to $10,000 in the proposal and said other counties have been doing the same thing in anticipation of that grant funding coming to an end in the near future.

“Another thing that will be gradually going away is the Duane Arnold Energy Center support, which has been around $19,000 a year that they give us to support them and their operations,” Elder said. “I’m bringing that down this year just a little bit because I know we’re going to have to get used to being without that when they shut down.”

The Duane Arnold location is a nuclear power plant near the Linn County community of Palo. Elder said she cut the expected support money from that company roughly in half for the coming fiscal year’s budget because of the plant’s expected closing in 2021.

Board of supervisors Vice Chairman Dave Thompson asked which counties are involved in helping and training with Duane Arnold in case of an emergency event at the nuclear plant.

“Do you know how many host counties across the state that they have for that?” he said.

Elder said all of the surrounding counties are involved in training and preparation to respond to a nuclear plant emergency at Duane Arnold. The reason Marshall County is involved is because Tama County opted out as a partner several years ago.

“Technically, we’re not touching (Linn) County, but that’s the reason why, is because they pushed it over to Marshall County,” Elder said.

She said part of the agreement with Marshall County has been for local firefighters to do specialized training, including radiological training, in case of an emergency at the plant.

Another note from next year’s proposed emergency management budget is a new use for a fund as a way to respond to emergencies.

“We established a hazmat recovery and disaster recovery line item. We already had the disaster recovery there, but we changed what that line item could be used for a couple years ago, right before the tornado, actually,” Elder said. “We discussed that it would be beneficial to open that line item … if one of the members of the commission, which would be any of the cities or the counties, needed money in the midnight hour for a disaster.”

That fund currently has $50,000, but Elder said she wants to build it up to about $210,000 over time. as other similar-sized counties have done.

“That’s not a new fund, but it’s a new way of using that fund,” she said.

Thompson and board Chairman Steve Salasek thanked Elder for her work and good communication regarding her budget.

The Marshall County Emergency Management office is located on the third floor of the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office, 2369 Jessup Ave. For more information, visit http://www.co.marshall.ia.us/departments/em

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Contact Adam Sodders at

(641) 753-6611 or

asodders@timesrepublican.com