Happy Spring! The month of March was filled with weekly budget sessions as well as union negotiations for Tama County. This takes several hours of time but is critical to ensure the best decisions are made with Tama County taxpayer dollars. The County has been discussing the possibility of ...
Alan Shepard, first American to travel into space, made that astute comment, “It’s a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one’s safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract!” Not to be outdone, Elon Musk made the brilliant observation, ...
You know how you’re going along, and then you have a pulsing black bump on your body that is leaking some unidentifiable fluid? No? Just me? Well, this year started out with a bang, or should I say a bump. I’m going along, and I notice a bump on my leg. A bump’s a bump, right? No big ...
As time continues to pass, my curiosity about Tama-Toledo continues to develop. Thoughts ranging from “How about this new roundabout?” to “I wonder what downtown looked like one hundred years ago?” keep filling my head and occupy my psyche. While a more random entry into the series, I ...
Public education has stood as a foundational pillar in Iowa for almost 200 years. However, in recent years public schools have received meager increases in yearly state aid which fails to keep up with inflation. This, while the number of private schools in Iowa has grown due to the voucher ...
The legislature has finished week 11 of the session, we are busy working on bills sent over from the Senate and preparing appropriations bills for the final weeks of the session. Nearly every year during the session we deal with legislation that to one degree or another seeks to end the ...
There are some in the Iowa Legislature who periodically toy with the possibility of eliminating the requirement that local governments print public notices in newspapers. This is the wrong move today, tomorrow and for the future. Government transparency is more important than ever. In truth it ...
So much of my life has come down to pure chance—and I’m sure you can relate. Opportunities appear out of nowhere, often because of a connection or relationship formed years earlier. If life really is that random, then I’d argue the people we meet and the way we interact with them matter ...
I want to shout out to the Board of Supervisors as they work through this year’s and last year’s budget. It is not an easy job. There are a lot of moving parts and no perfect answers. From our side, we understand the reality. Budgets are tight everywhere, and we are not any different. At ...
This week, Iowa House Republicans in the Ways and Means Committee passed House Study Bill 596, our property tax bill. The committee amended the bill to reflect the feedback we’ve gotten from Iowans and it includes pieces from the Senate Republicans’ and the Governor’s property tax ...