Mar 19

Waterloo rebuilding part of San Marnan Drive

One of the biggest construction projects on San Marnan Drive since the route was built as IA 412 is Waterloo’s big project this summer. The road is going to be rebuilt this year, and much of the underlying road likely is original to state construction 65 years ago.

The project is in three stages that go west from IA 21 nearly to Ansborough Avenue. Most of the time the intersection with Kimball Avenue will be open. There is a frontage road between IA 21 and Kimball but it’s hard to get to from 21.

The city’s website outlines the stages of the six-month project.

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Mar 13

School enrollment map, 2000-25, and more

This is the second part of my work on 2025 enrollment information. It’s a map of changes since 2000 for districts that haven’t substantially changed in size, and also the roundup of eye-popping Waukee statistics.

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Mar 11

School enrollment and ESAs for 2024-25

My number crunching for school enrollment has a new dimension: education savings accounts, or vouchers, and where students using them are from, and how much money the state could have given to public schools instead of private schools.

By the way, as of Monday night, the Senate STILL has not taken up the House’s call for 2.25% plus $10 per student in the supplemental aid bill. The Legislature was (cough) too busy before funnel week.

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Mar 07

Orient-Macksburg dissolution passes

The Orient-Macksburg school district will dissolve after the 2025-26 school year. The vote wasn’t close, 203-18, with 10 of the no’s coming from Madison County. Most of the district’s land and students will become part of Nodaway Valley.

Orient-Macksburg’s speech club has posted a video of a performance of “The Last Letter Jacket,” which I wrote about last month on Substack.

The (vertical) video is at this Facebook link, at least for now.

A bill to synchronize Iowa Code on reorganizations and dissolutions, to make them all effective the July 1 of the subsequent calendar year, was passed by the Legislature but remains to be signed by the governor.

Apparently the governor was extremely busy last week, if you know what I mean.

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Mar 05

Some people will drink to this

Tama County now has a (one, singular) Starbucks. It’s not a standalone site, it’s inside the casino, but it still counts … right?

(Funny enough, it’s about equal distance from Traer to the casino as it is from Traer to the nearest Starbucks in Waterloo [Crossroads Mall], both about 24 miles.)

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Feb 28

Dubuque wants roundabouts on University Avenue

Four roundabouts are planned for central Dubuque on the University Avenue corridor. KCRG reports that drivers are using that street to get off US 20. (University is an ancient alignment of 20.) This plan would require buying houses at certain intersections for right of way. The city had a meeting Thursday night.

University Avenue is not a straight street, and the intersections where roundabouts are being proposed are not right-angle intersections. That means that I can kind of waggle my hand neutrally at them.

The roundabouts are part of a much larger plan to:

  • three-lane Asbury Road west into Asbury
  • add “enhanced crosswalks”
  • reconfigure at least one intersection
  • add/improve sidewalks along Asbury Road and Pennsylvania Avenue
  • make intersections on University Avenue between Asbury and Pennsylvania right-in-right-out

Thursday’s meeting was very early in the process. There is no dedicated funding or schedule.

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Feb 25

Does it need a ‘SLOW’ triangle?

There’s going to be something big moving on the highways in Washington County today and tomorrow. (Too bad I already have something in the works for Substack this week.)

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Feb 24

Watching TV is so hard nowadays

About a month ago, Mediacom shut off its unencrypted cable signal. That means my favorite way to watch TV — on the computer — couldn’t work with cable anymore. Ironically, even as I write this now, the signal to my tube TV still works — but only for the networks, network subchannels, and C-SPANs.

Posted in Iowa Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Watching TV is so hard nowadays
Feb 20

Fixing West Fork’s ancestry

A reader informed me that my school timeline page had the merger of Meservey-Thornton off by a year. I double-checked through the Mason City Globe Gazette archives, and the reader was right. M-T formed in 1962.

The thing is, the website for West Fork, the descendant of SCMT and Rockwell-Swaledale, also has the incorrect year, and doesn’t have any year for R-S. I hope, in a roundabout way, that wasn’t my fault.

R-S formed in 1959, based on articles also from the MCGG.

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Feb 17

Headline goes here

January 8, 1883, was the last Monday that residents of Cedar Rapids didn’t have a hard-copy newspaper sold at stores or delivered to their doorsteps.

Until today.

Tuesday will be 600 days since I lost my job there.

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