The Muni Update
Oct 27, 2024

Good Morning,
The Spencer Municipal Golf Course is happy to announce we will be partnering with Upper Des Moines Outreach to host a music bingo night on November 21. This event will help raise funds for UDMO of Clay County to help citizens of our community with a lot of great support. We hosted this same event on February 29 and it was a huge success. To reserve a table for your group follow the information on the flier posted below:
This past week we spent quite a bit of time working on irrigation repairs. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were dedicated solely to this repair process. We were able to go through about 100 irrigation stations to assess the issues with each individual valve. We cleaned the water out of the valve box with a shop vac in order to determine the cause of each issue. Out of the 100 valve boxes we worked on, there were over 70 repairs completed.
Some of the more time consuming repairs were documented and we will start addressing them this coming week. The irrigation system will need to be shut down in order to complete this process. We need to drain all the water from the main lines in order to complete the repairs. There will be quite a few valve boxes dug up in order to repair damaged lines and clean out the diaphragms in the valves. We will most likely have a few valve boxes dug up and exposed for a couple of days during this process.
Our pumphouse received damage to all three irrigation pumps during the flood on June 22. We recently had two pump companies on site to determine the correct repair process to eliminate any future damage from flooding. On Monday night the city council approved the proposal from Dakota Pump and Control. They will be installing a new 75 HP turbine pump and a 5 HP submersible pump in our wet well to replace the current three centrifugal pumps. They plan to start the installation process in December and complete everything in late March or early April of 2025.
The pumphouse project will require coordination with the pump company, our irrigation consultant, SMU, Pixler Electric, and city staff. The initial set up, scheduled for December, will include all of the wiring and six inch line installation being done in the pumphouse. This should take a couple of days. The company will then take all the piping back to their office and weld it all together followed by painting. The spring session will consist of the final installation of the controls, pumps, and motors. The irrigation consultant and pump company will have the pumphouse functioning for the 2025 season at this time.
We have kind of limped through the golf season with the existing centrifugal pumps that run our irrigation system. The seals and bearings were all damaged from the flood. This has caused them to constantly leak water and also allows air to enter the system when the pumps are running. There has been a lot of time spent making repairs to our intakes in the pumphouse and helping the pumps limp along this season. It will be nice to have everything functioning properly for the 2025 golf season.
The new irrigation renovation around our greens has functioned quite well since installation in early June. We continue to tweak the irrigation patterns for each head to try and get the perfect coverage pattern as well as nightly time frame for irrigation. Overall it has been a huge success and helped us operate the irrigation stations covering the golf greens and surrounds more efficiently.
I have received quite a few questions about the functionality of the irrigation system throughout the season. The new irrigation renovation around the greens has been a big success and is functioning as it should. We still need to remember the remainder of the system is 25 years old and is prone to issues arising. Our irrigation lines and valves are still functioning at a high level. Irrigation heads are constantly evaluated since, again, they are 25 years old and experience wear over the years. Irrigation is a never ending process that requires a lot of time to monitor and repair. The staff is doing a great job addressing all of the issues we have had over the past few years.
On Monday I attended an all day class for ServSafe Manager certification. This certification is required by at least one employee wherever food is sold in the state of Iowa. This was a renewal certification for me and will expire in 2029. Every five years it is required by law to renew certification to ensure a safe food service environment is operated by every business with a food license.
The Park Department was on site one day to assist us with removing the majority of existing tree stumps around the golf course. They used their stump grinder to remove the stumps and we filled the areas in with soil. We still have a fair amount of tree stumps to remove and will hopefully complete this project next week.
I met with Tailored Graphics to set up an online order link for clothing merchandise from The Muni. This link should be completed in the next couple of weeks. It will give our golfers the opportunity to select clothing options in their color choices over a one month period. At the end of the month timeframe Tailored Graphics will print all of the clothing. I will pick up the sorted clothing for customers to pick up in the clubhouse. We will evaluate the success of this process at the conclusion. Hopefully it is well supported and we will be able to do it again in the spring.
This concludes another week at The Muni. The season is coming to an end but we have had a lot of golfers taking advantage of the beautiful fall weather. We will continue the golf season until the weather takes a turn. Please reach out with questions or the need for further information on any topic at the golf course
Brian C Mohr
Director of Golf Operations
City of Spencer
101 W 5th Street
Spencer Municipal Golf Course
Spencer, Iowa 51301
712-260-5370