After receiving what City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh called “overwhelming financial support” for the city’s pop-up pantries, the City of Kalona is looking to expand their food offering program to cater directly to seniors.

For some seniors, the boxes provided at the city’s previous pop-up pantries have been too much food — the boxes have been heavy and full of items that not all seniors can necessarily use. For that reason, the city hopes to create food bags that can be delivered to seniors’ homes. These bags would contain less in quantity but could possibly contain some perishable items, such as milk and fruit.

Realtor Jessica Hochstedler Yoder of Wellman has donated 10 meals weekly, on Thursdays, to Kalona seniors for January and February. Schlabaugh said he hopes to offer the senior food bags on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to supplement that.

Schlabaugh said the city currently has about $7,500 to spend toward food programs. The city hopes to start with about $1,000 for the senior bag program, which would provide about 150 meals.

“We’d like to earmark some of the money, with the same mission, the same purpose to help people, but maybe change our focus a little bit to see if there’s a demand from our seniors for that service right now,” he said.

City councilmember Joe Schmidt suggested also including a list of area resources – such as mental health, rent assistance and heat assistance programs – in each of the bags.

“There might be other needs that people have right now that we can’t meet as a city,” Schmidt said. “But maybe if we distributed the information in the boxes… it could serve as an extra reminder that there are other programs out there to help if they choose to reach out to them.”

The city also plans to hold another general pop-up pantry on Dec. 18.

In other business during the city council meeting on Monday, Dec. 7, the Kalona Public Library provided their annual report, presented by Library Director Trevor Sherping and Youth Services Director Olivia Kahler. Although the library was closed for 28% of the fiscal year, it has seen an increase in website traffic (8%) and the number of cardholders, which is now close to 5,000.

New services introduced this year include two notaries, circulation librarian Jenny Riddle and assistant librarian Patty Stolbom, who are available free of charge during most of the hours the library is open. The library also overhauled their website, which premiered in May.

Although the coronavirus lockdown was disruptive to the library’s normal operations, the closures and reduced hours gave the library staff time to clean, overhaul volunteer policies and perform major circulation and collection management for the first time since the library opened in 2005.

The library also focused on virtual programs. During the summer reading program, Kahler provided a series of storytime videos paired with a five-minute craft, which garnered over 6,500 views, including over 1,000 views for the straw rocket craft alone.

Kahler was named to the 2021 All Iowa Reads Juvenile Fiction Committee, tasked with choosing the next title for the statewide reading program. Kahler said the committee read about 15 books intended for upper elementary and middle schoolers, and had multiple multi-hour meetings, before landing on “Pie in the Sky” by Remy Lai as the 2021 Kids All Iowa Reads selection.

The Teen All Iowa Reads selection is “Patron Saints of Nothing” by Randy Ribay and the adult title is “Little Faith” by Nickolas Butler. Kahler said the library has copies of all three books in its collection.