TRUMAN– On Monday, the Truman City Council heard reports from a variety of departments during its first meeting of the year. These included updates from the ambulance, fire and utility department, as well as from the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.

Deputy Matt Owens said that, following the retirement of Mike Anderson, there was a promotion of Cory Ballard to Sergeant and AJ Sowieja was recently hired. Sowieja has been assigned to Truman for the month and all three were present at Monday’s meeting.

Owens also briefly went over the calls of service in Truman for 2025. He said moving forward the department will provided the monthly call list to the council.

Mayor Jake Ebert said, “We hadn’t seen this before. We were given quarterly, but this is exactly what I was wanting. It’s just nice to see.”

Some highlights Owens touched on included an update on the shooting that took place early last spring, which he said is pending trial.

“A lot of manpower and effort went into that case. We had multiple agencies across state lines help us with that,” Owens said.

He said there was also a first degree arson case in town which is on the way to being resolved though he said a lot of effort went into it as well.

Owens also shared that Deputy James Tietje has been in town a lot, helping with the bike rodeo, parade and some classroom visits.

He said the department believes everything is going well on their end, which was a shared sentiment.

“It’s gone as well or even better than I had anticipated,” said Ebert.

Next, Fire Chief Brandon Mosloski gave an update on his department. Mosloski said they had 17 total runs for 2025, which included one hay bale fire, one car fire, two smoke alarms, five structure fires, three motor vehicle accidents, three gas leaks, one confined space rescue and one high angle rescue, standby.

“It was a pretty standard year I think for us; nothing too crazy,” Mosloski said.

He added that there are currently 24 members in the department but that he’s heard of a few who are interested. The department is considered full at 28 members.

Mosloski again brought up the valve on engine 3 and said the quote that he got back was just under $7,400 to replace it. He said he is waiting to hear back from the manufacturer of the truck to see if something else can be done for replacement.

Regarding fees, Mosloski said overall they look good. He said they typically charge $1,000 for a fire call, but in the past they have reduced the fee to $500 if a hose was not pulled off of a truck. Later in the meeting, the council approved putting an incident response, at $500, into the fee schedule.

Finally, Moskloski asked the council about setting an annual meeting with the city and townships, which is typically done ahead of the annual township meeting on the second Tuesday of March.

The meeting was tentatively set for 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 23.

Josh Kitzerow with the ambulance department also provided an update. He said in 2025 they had 202 calls, which was down slightly from the year before. This included 50 calls for falls and 38 calls for sick people.

Kitzerow said that the most calls were in Truman and that Fairmont was down, tying with Lewisville.

He also shared that the department received a grant worth $35,845 from the state. Kitzerow said he wants to use $6,500 for on call, $23,500 for training and the remaining amount to cover the cost of medical supplies.

“This will help us a lot, especially coming into this next year,” Kitzerow said.

Finally, Brent Brown went over some recent utility business, namely some recently received scale drawings from Bolton & Menk on the Jones subdivision project. The council had asked Troy Nemmers to provide the drawings at its last meeting on Dec. 15, 2025.

“I think this is a start. Obviously then you can see how a house can lay in there,” said Ebert.

It was asked whether the lots are for sale and Ebert said they have been for sale, but ever since they have gone up for auction it’s been pretty quiet.

He added, “I think anybody that is willing to get something going out there, I think we would all sit down as a group and–.”

“Entertain it,” Council Member Ron Kelley said.

The council agreed that it will be nice to see something moving there.