Waukee learned their staff was putting way too many resources into helping students decorate their Valentine’s Day trinkets. The school district also realized there was a growing number of families in their community that didn’t celebrate the holiday.
I didn’t know “We don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day” is a position now requiring government accommodation. 😕
Finishing a miniseries of school bond blog posts, I suppose.
A proposal to consolidate elementary schools in the MOC-FV school district would result in one town losing its school.
A story on KTIV says the district is proposing a new building on the east side of Orange City (the story says “between Alton and Orange City” but the towns are three miles apart). The district’s two elementary facilities are in Hospers, on IA 60, and Orange City, the original school in the middle of town.
This is not a case of fewer students; instead it is a case of steady growth and outgrowth. Sioux and Lyon counties have the only cluster of rural districts in Iowa that have gained students this century. But the $37 million bond issue would still result in Hospers losing its school.
Toledo could become the first county seat in Iowa without an active school building.
That statement is both accurate and misleading. The South Tama High School building — and subsequent additions in the 21st century that eliminated all other sites except Toledo — practically abuts the Toledo city limits. Toledo and Tama are, for many purposes, one city (and critical mass for a Fareway). Nevertheless, a bond vote March 3 could eliminate the century-old building currently being used as South Tama Middle School.
The bond vote, according to the Marshalltown Times-Republican, is actually three votes: One to issue the bond that will create a middle school addition to the Tama facility, one to go beyond the levy limit on property taxes, and one to approve a revenue purpose statement regarding use of state sales tax money. The first two need supermajorities to pass.
In early 2016, the College Community School District (Cedar Rapids Prairie) approved a $49.5 million bond issue. This paid for multiple major construction projects on the school’s sprawling campus site on the south side of Cedar Rapids. The campus is a large area that has multiple facilities, including a K-5 building that opened in 2014.
In early 2020, the College Community School District … wants a $54 million bond issue. The Gazette reports that the district wants to build a school building solely for fifth and sixth grades that would hold nearly a thousand students. This is the equivalent of housing the entire Monticello school district – or any of the 214 smaller ones. It might sound excessive, but consider, the district’s enrollment has gone up by 2000 in the past 20 years.
All that has happened because of the district’s fortuitous placement between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. The district’s southern part includes Johnson County north of the Iowa River to east of Shueyville. (And also Walford, but only Walford, in Benton County.) The district’s northern edge, broadly, is the township line that aligns with 29th Street SW in Cedar Rapids and east where that street meets the Cedar River to the US 151 exit. I say “broadly” because there’s one little notch that seems inconsequential, but just so happens to keep the Target and Wal-Mart on Edgewood Road SW out of Cedar Rapids Prairie and in Cedar Rapids proper. Curious, that.
OH COME ON.
Of all the things that Iowans can’t find agreement on, “license plates” probably wasn’t on the list a decade ago.
In 2017, the state offered voters three choices for a new license plate. A reworked version of the 1997 design, with a somewhat garish green stripe, won a plurality of the nearly 300,000 votes cast.
And a notable percentage of Iowans hate it. They hate it so much that they would buy specialty color plates from a tiny college in northwest Iowa so it wasn’t on their vehicles. They hate it so much that the Iowa Legislature wedged in a section in a bill allowing “blackout” plates, with white on black letters, to become an official design available for a fee.
They hate the standard plate so much that multiple counties sold out of their stock of blackout plates in less than three months. They hate, hate, HATE it so much that the blackout plate is now the most popular specialty plate in the state. WHO Radio says that 94% of Iowa’s license plates sold are still the standard ones, but that seems destined to drop.
Iowans hate the standard license plate so much that nearly an entire quarter of the House is supporting a bill to make one of the plates that LOST the vote, in an entirely different color scheme, available in the same manner as the blackout plates. Should this pass, that would make FIVE main varieties of Iowa license plates: 1997 (well, 2012 black alphanumeric) and 2017 series, each with various decal options; the yellow-background college plates with black/red/purple print; the blackout plates; and this “Flying Our Colors” plate that turns the Iowa flag on its side. Line them up and you could think they’re from five different states.
Maybe Bernie Sanders is right, that there is such a thing as too many choices. That, or some things are just too important to be left to democracy.
The depopulation of rural Iowa is now a problem for the National Guard.
In the adjutant general’s “Condition of the Guard” message to the Iowa Legislature earlier this month, he said: “I can’t continue to have quality infrastructure where I’m pouring tax dollars from federal and state funds into a facility that I can’t keep manned because I can’t recruit from the local area because the pool of people just doesn’t exist.”
While much of rural Iowa keeps getting emptier, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas keep getting fuller. Utah, which squeaked ahead of Iowa in the 2018 census estimates, is continuing a rapid trajectory upward. It was the fastest-growing state of the decade. The 2019 estimate for Nevada is higher than Iowa’s 2010 population, and with one pro-sports franchise activated and another one on the way, the only competition Iowa can provide is … gambling on those sporting events (with a pittance for a taxpayer take).
Iowa’s population only rose by about 109,000 in the decade — or slightly more people than North Carolina added in fiscal 2019 alone.
The caucus and football seasons inadvertently provide three examples of population bleed:
Since 1970, Iowa has lost three seats in Congress (1973, 1993, 2013) and California has gained 15. It may be easier to be a representative “from” Iowa than to be a representative from Iowa.
Before, states seeking to usurp Iowa and New Hampshire as the first-in-the-nation for primary cycles would move their elections forward in the calendar in a game of chicken. Now there’s a simpler, yet more insidious method: Early voting.
Minnesota voters can, this very day, cast a ballot in the Democratic primary. They can even vote for Marianne Williamson, despite her campaign succumbing to dark psychic forces. This is because Minnesota moved its primary up to “Super Tuesday”, the first Monday in March, when the state-by-state free-for-all begins — and has a whopping 46 days of early voting.
Minnesota isn’t the only place this will happen. California makes the jump ahead of Iowa too, but only by a matter of hours. Over there, early voting starts on caucus day. If a California resident lives in a county with a polling station, she could vote at noon PT/2 CT and be done before Iowans gather in the evening. It’s a little different since California has vote-by-mail, so there probably won’t be a line at the elections office.
But there are two things neither of those states have: Actually counting votes in February, and extremely close parallels in general election voting. In fact, from 2000 to 2012, Iowa’s and the nation’s presidential party-vote percentages tracked within 1 percentage point except the 2008 Republican vote, where the difference was 1.5.
There was a meeting last week about US 30 in the Nevada area, but what may be more interesting is what it wasn’t about.
In the mid-2010s, there was discussion about closing at-grade intersections on US 30 between Ames and the east side of Nevada, to create a full or nearly full freeway, with either new interchanges or road closures. It didn’t go over well.
Now, or instead, there’s going to be regular pavement reconstruction on parts of 30 that does not involve anything new. It looks like your pretty basic head-to-head with crossovers, with some extra attention at the exit on the east side of Nevada.
The only interesting development from last week’s Transportation Commission meeting was a transfer of jurisdiction. The segment in question is a mile or so of US 65 that was left behind when the interchange in Jasper County was built. You can see it in the center of the above map.
This road has been in its current state for just over a year, but based on the above and its entry in the meeting agenda it doesn’t appear to have been given any secret number in that time.
(BTW, I do have photos of the interchange for a new page. I just haven’t done anything with them yet.)
Am I living in one or are they living under one? From Wednesday.
WATCH: Adam Schiff was an answer on "Jeopardy!" and none of the contestants knew who he was https://t.co/4A8AA2R1kW pic.twitter.com/a693uJV4kJ
— The Hill (@thehill) January 16, 2020
If that doesn’t work, check this version from Mediaite, which points out the show was taped sometime in October, i.e. not half an hour before the congressman in question was in the group walking across the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. And I admit that I didn’t land some clues about 2019 stuff that showed up in the prime-time tournament. But still, really?
Since it was a category about the House, contestants were not asked about the president pro tem of the Senate, Chuck Grassley, who has had quite an eventful week.
(Also, I am very glad Ken beat James.)
