Doug Ray

What things did you see in Tama within the last month that inspired you about how Tama citizens responded to the derecho? What I saw was people helping people. Friends and neighbors were jumping in and working on getting their yards and the city back up and going. All the city’s employees jumped up to the challenge to get things up and running even before they got their own places cleaned.

Where is the city at with cleanup after the derecho? We have come a long way since August 10. We still have the park and cemetery to get done but there are alot of volunteers stepping up and helping a lot of the town. It is hard to think about what it looked like then compared to now.

What are some of Tama’s goals for the next year and how does that fit into the Comprehensive Plan Tama has been working on? We are going to hit cleaning up a lot of junk houses that we got sidetracked on because of COVID-19 and the storm. Both towns need to get the business up and back to running normal.

What are the challenges you see the Tama Ambulance facing? In your view what would it look like if the city is not able to recruit more volunteers? I hope we can get more volunteers. That’s the key but we are not having much luck so we have to look at other ways to keep it up and running being hiring another EMT or going together with Toledo to make one service we are going to sit down with our group and talk about options to keep it up and running because we can’t shut it down.

What makes the city of Tama a special place? What makes it a great place I think in most cases is when people step up to help even when it’s tough and grim out. Also everyone knows most of the people here and are willing to drop everything to help them out when they need help.