By REBECCA MCKINSEY
r.mckinsey@carrollspaper.com

CARROLL — A Jefferson native was recently named Carroll’s “Citizen of the Year.”

Mike Franey, who grew up in Jefferson and has lived in Carroll since the early ’90s, received the award at the Carroll Chamber of Commerce’s annual banquet Monday evening.

“I was totally shocked,” Franey said. “From an early age, I was taught that that’s what you do — you help others; you serve. I’m very honored to have the award, but it wasn’t why I do it. It was because that’s the way I was taught.”

The Carroll Chamber has presented the annual award since 1963.

“Though there are countless people that work very hard for our community, this award, in a special way, highlights and thanks one outstanding member of our community,” said the banquet’s emcee, Tam Milligan, a Chamber member with Commercial Savings Bank in Carroll.

Milligan and her husband, Paul, who were last year’s joint recipients of the award, presented this year’s award to Franey.

They described a man who grew up sitting on customers’ laps while his mother, Shirley Franey, who still lives in Jefferson half the year, cut their hair. The customers read him stories, and told him their stories.

They told of a man who worked at his uncle Don Franey’s bowling alley, Bowling Greene, which was south of Jefferson and later burned down — a young Mike Franey would run down the lanes to unstick the bowling pins.

They portrayed a man who delivered the Des Moines Register as a child.

“No doubt,” Franey said, growing up in Jefferson contributed to his strong belief that it’s important to serve others.

“You were just always around the neighborhood; the whole town was your playground,” he said. “When somebody asked you for help, you went — that’s what makes small-town America, in Carroll and Greene County, so special.”

Franey was born and raised in Jefferson, graduating from Jefferson High School in 1987 and receiving a degree in management and marketing from Northwest Missouri State University in 1991. After returning to Jefferson for a short time, he moved to Carroll in the early ’90s. He lives there now with his wife, Lynda. His stepson, Payton White, lives in Ankeny.

Franey spent time working for Bierl Realty and Insurance and Lenz Insurance and Real Estate before joining Mid-Iowa Insurance as a partner in 2004 and starting the office’s real-estate division.

“I didn’t ever know I wanted to be in insurance and real estate, but it was the people, the helping — it’s just caring,” he said. “And along the way, I had a lot of people that helped me.”

Now an owner with Mid-Iowa Insurance and Real Estate in Carroll, Franey has also been involved with Carroll’s Family Resource Center, the Carroll Area Development Corp. and American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life.

“This gentleman believes in giving back to your family, friends and community,” Tam Milligan said.

Franey also delivers meals through Meals on Wheels every week — gaining much more from the stories and insights of the people he meets through the program than he gives them, he said.

“I’ve found over the years that you learn more when you listen,” he said.

Accepting the award Monday evening, Franey admitted that he was speechless.

“I wondered why someone said I should wear a tie,” he joked.

He waved to his mother, standing in the back of the room — she’d traveled from Texas to surprise him.

“My parents instilled in me that service to others is the best work of life,” he said. “They built something in me — that it’s always better to give than receive.”

Although Franey said he doesn’t have much family left in Jefferson, Mid-Iowa Insurance and Real Estate has ownership in MacDonald Insurance in Scranton and Jefferson and Jefferson Iowa Realty.

“That’s very exciting for me to own a piece, and to give back to, a town that gave me so much,” he said.

It’s an honor to receive the award, but it’s not just about him, Franey said.

“I’m just fortunate for the people that helped me,” Franey said. “It’s not an individual award.”

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

For a high school Spanish student, a trip to Latin America is like being called up to the big leagues.

But after nearly 20 years in professional baseball, both on the mound and in a front office, Paton-Churdan grad Nate Teut had a word of warning last week for the 38 Greene County High School Spanish students set to visit the Dominican Republic in March — they’re going to be up against a wicked fastball.

“The Dominicans speak the fastest out of all of them,” Teut informed the students, who had assembled in the auditorium.

Considering that about 10 percent of all major league players on opening day rosters in 2015 were Dominican — not counting Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Venezuelans — it goes without saying that Spanish is commonly heard in U.S. clubhouses each summer.

“If you can speak their language, you’ll form a bond that you’ll have forever,” said Teut, 39, who retired from playing in 2005 and is now executive vice president and assistant general manager of the Iowa Cubs.

Junior and senior Spanish students in Jefferson have been taking trips to Latin America every other year since 1994.

Mexico has been a frequent destination, but the high school also has visited Costa Rica, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

The students traditionally give gifts from Iowa to their host families.

Baseball is looming large in the high school’s first-ever trip to the Dominican, March 20-27, simply because baseball is so popular in the Caribbean nation.

Longtime Spanish teacher Beth Vander Wilt reached out to Teut, a 1994 P-C grad, to inquire about buying I-Cubs gear to give out as gifts.

“Since baseball is huge in the Dominican Republic,” she said, “it just made sense.”

The I-Cubs instead donated items — everything from T-shirts to squishy balls — for the students to give out.

“It’s great marketing for the Iowa Cubs,” Teut reasoned during his visit to drop off the gear, “in addition to just being a good neighbor.”

In 2015 alone, he said, the nation’s 160 minor league baseball teams donated $32 million in charitable giving.

“We see a lot of Greene County people at the ballpark every year,” he said.

More major league players hail from the Dominican than from anywhere else outside the U.S.

For all they know, the students will hand a squishy I-Cubs ball to the next Juan Marichal or Pedro Martinez.

“A lot of them don’t have spikes or bats, or real baseballs or gloves for that matter,” Teut said. “They don’t have all the things we have. They have to rely on their skills.

“That’s why they produce such great players.”

For Vander Wilt and Spanish teacher Amy van der Meer, who will be accompanied by middle school Spanish teacher Kristen Heupel, getting to immerse their students in the language is actually secondary to exposing students to a different culture.

“They will definitely learn to appreciate what we have,” Vander Wilt said.

During the trip — which this year coincides with spring break — students will do a community service project one day at a school.

“I like to see the reaction of the kids when they see things they haven’t seen before,” Vander Wilt said. “Some of them have never been out of the state of Iowa.”

Teut, a pitcher who was drafted out of Iowa State in 1997 by the Chicago Cubs, said that even at the I-Cubs’ Principal Park in Des Moines “the language barrier gets broken throughout the season.”

He made his major league debut in May 2002 on the mound for the Florida Marlins in a Saturday game against the Milwaukee Brewers televised on Fox.

Teut took Spanish in both high school and college.

“I don’t remember a lick,” he confessed after all the students left the auditorium.

“I remember all the cuss words,” he added.

Staff report
Kevin and Avonte’s Law could soon give caregivers an Amber Alert-style boost in help in locating people with autism and Alzheimer’s disease who wander away.

Introduced Tuesday night by U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the bill is named in honor of Kevin Curtis Wills and another boy with autism who died after their conditions caused them to wander.

In 2008, 9-year-old Wills, of Jefferson, jumped into the Raccoon River near Daubendiek Park and drowned.

The bill’s co-namesake, Avonte Oquendo, 14, wandered away from school and drowned in New York City’s East River in 2014.

The legislation would reauthorize the expired Missing Alzheimer’s Disease Patient Alert Program, and include new provisions to support people with autism.

“We’ve all seen the heartbreaking stories of families frantically trying to locate a missing loved one whose condition caused him or her to wander off,” Grassley said Wednesday in a statement. “We’ve also seen benefits of the Amber Alert program and other notification systems to locate missing children and bring relief to families through community assistance.  

“Kevin and Avonte’s Law will use similar concepts and other technology to help locate people with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia as well as children with autism spectrum disorders who may be prone to wander away from their families or caregivers.”

The bill also would make resources available to equip first responders and other community officials with training necessary to better prevent and respond to cases.

About 63,000 Iowans are living with Alzheimer’s  disease.  

More than 8,000 Iowa children have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders.

By JARED STRONG
j.strong@carrollspaper.com

A Lake View farmer claims in a federal lawsuit he is the victim of a false narrative that farmers’ cooperative leaders concocted to divert the blame for millions of dollars in losses — partly due to an employee’s thefts over several years.

Bill Wollesen, 57, along with his wife and son, seek more than $6 million in damages from West Central Cooperative, which unsuccessfully sued him in 2011, alleging he bribed a West Central employee with hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for steep discounts on cropseed and other products.

Wollesen was exonerated by jurors in 2014 of the bribery claims after a long trial, and the jury decided West Central owed Wollesen more than a half million dollars for the business losses he sustained in the ordeal.

West Central appealed, and the case is still pending.

Wollesen recently filed the federal lawsuit that claims West Central ignored numerous warning signs that its former employee, Chad Hartzler, was stealing from the cooperative to fund his gambling habits, and that a former chief executive falsified records to conceal financial losses from state and federal agencies.

Further, Wollesen alleges the former executive, Jeff Stroburg, who left the cooperative in the months that followed the jury’s decision, concocted the bribery claim.

“Stroburg suggested to Hartzler that he had been bribed, and Hartzler agreed to adopt Stroburg’s suggestion,” the lawsuit claims.

Hartzler pleaded guilty to a federal fraud charge in 2013 and was sentenced to four years in a South Dakota prison. He was ordered to pay $2.5 million to West Central.

“West Central Cooperative denies these allegations that we, or our employees or board members, engaged in any improper conduct,” said Alicia Clancy, a spokeswoman for the cooperative, in a prepared statement. “While we cannot comment on the specifics of allegations in a lawsuit outside of the legal proceedings, we can say that our West Central employees and our board remain completely focused on helping our customers prepare for spring planting and preparing for our April 1st merger with FC.”

That merger with Farmers Cooperative is potentially jeopardized by Wollesen’s lawsuit.

He asks to nullify a December vote by the cooperatives’ members to merge because it was “based upon insufficient information having been provided to the members” about West Central’s alleged financial indiscretions.

Wollesen claims the cooperative has engaged in racketeering by falsifying its financial records.

The merger of Ralston-based West Central and Ames-based Farmers Cooperative is set to create the largest farmers’ cooperative in Iowa, with an expected $1.5 billion in annual sales.

A Farmers Cooperative spokeswoman did not respond to requests to comment for this article.

Wollesen’s lawsuit says he was wrongly expelled as a member of West Central — and his stock cancelled — not long before the 2014 trial. He wants to be reinstated.

The 49-page lawsuit accuses West Central of malicious prosecution, unlawful expulsion, breach of fiduciary duties, interfering with Wollesen’s business, racketeering and corruption, criminal conduct for falsifying records, and defamation.

Stroburg held eight town-hall-style meetings with members in which he accused Wollesen of bribery and said the scheme deprived West Central of nearly $8 million, the lawsuit alleges. Further, Wollesen claims the cooperative launched a public-relations campaign to convict Wollesen in the court of public opinion before the trial.

“It was widely reported and accepted as true that Hartzler took $480,000 in bribes from Bill Wollesen,” the lawsuit says.

Wollesen claims the cooperative falsely announced Stroburg had retired “for purposes of further concealing their and Stroburg’s malfeasance,” when in reality its officers and directors “forced Stroburg to resign.”

West Central has not yet responded to the lawsuit in federal court.

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

It was the dunk that broke the Internet over the weekend: Orlando Magic forward Aaron Gordon lifts off the ground, soars over the fuzzy head of his team’s mascot and slams the ball through the powder-coated orange rim during the NBA All-Star dunk contest.

A grayish white Morton Building nestled behind AAI/Spalding’s main factory in Jefferson is wildly remote even by NBA D-League standards, but there’s a good chance the next great basketball rim will be created there, capable of withstanding anything the dunk contest can throw at it.

Inside, where the cigarette smoke lingers with remarkable hang time, you’ll find 63-year-old Neal Squibb, a guy who would look more at home at the Sturgis motorcycle rally than he would sitting courtside.

This would seem to literally be the last place on Earth to find an engineering department specializing in the development of world-class athletic equipment.

And Squibb, a guy with the best beard this side of the “Sons of Anarchy” series finale who’s wiry enough to wear his late son’s high school class ring, would seem to be the last person to have anything to do with the world of professional sports.

“Can you dunk?” Squibb asked rhetorically one recent morning.

The longtime Scranton resident, who holds a dozen patents, is arguably the unsung hero in the storybook saga of American Athletic Inc., the homegrown equipment manufacturer that made a cozy little rural Iowa town known to the wide world of sports.

Production of Spalding-branded basketball backstops and volleyball systems was added at AAI, a company long legendary for its gymnastics equipment, after American’s 2004 acquisition by Russell Brands for $13 million.

AAI founder Bill Sorenson, a 1948 graduate of Jefferson High School and a member of the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame, goes so far as to say Squibb deserves “the majority of credit” for AAI’s many innovative products, the likes of which have been used at the highest level of competition, including the 1984 and 1996 Olympics.

Squibb, however, had to think for a moment when asked the last time one of his accomplishments found its way into the local newspaper.

“1972,” he answered matter-of-factly. “I got picked up for public intox.”

Squibb doesn’t consider himself an engineer despite the fact he’s the sole inhabitant of the Morton Building that is AAI/Spalding’s engineering model shop.

He said he’s known plenty of engineers during his 46 years at AAI.

“Some of ’em are bookworms,” he said. “Some of ’em are slugs.”

At the same time, though, he’s far outgrown his role as a welder, which is what AAI thought it was getting in the summer of 1970, when it hired a 17-year-old graduate of Paton-Churdan High School to weld together trampolines on the night shift.

“He just had the knack,” said Sorenson, who in 1954 established what would become AAI in the basement of a downtown Jefferson hardware store, “and that’s how we ended up giving him more and more responsibility.”

“I think of myself as a worker,” Squibb insisted.

He’s not even altogether sure the name of his department.

“They’ve got a name for it, but I can never remember it,” Squibb said. “So I just say I invent toys.”

One of those toys — a patented breakaway basketball rim that flexes from all sides — is on the market as Spalding’s Slammer Competition 180 Goal, a more economical version of the $955, 180-degree breakaway rim in use at last weekend’s NBA All-Star dunk contest.

“Two-year warranty, for Christ’s sake. Lot of faith in that one,” Squibb muttered as he pointed to his rim in the current Spalding catalog.

Before the 2009-10 NBA season, the league’s breakaway rims only flexed from the front.

In order to improve player safety, the league switched to Spalding rims that flex regardless of where the load is received, giving players’ fingers and hands 180-degree protection.

Squibb drew up the design for his self-described “cheap-ass 180” in a bar one night in Los Angeles, where he and co-worker Tim Mobley were sent to install locally-made portable basketball units purchased by UCLA.

“We came up with that idea on a bar napkin,” Squibb said. “He had a couple of beers. And I had a couple of rum and Cokes.

“A lot of ’em come out that way.”

It’s now on file with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as U.S. Patent No. 6,447,409.

The invention ironically enables and encourages the kind of look-at-me, in-yo’-face individualism that makes Squibb bristle, despite the fact he has an entire Morton Building to himself.

“My dad used to tell me there are only two types of people who are easily impressed,” Squibb explained. “The very young and the very foolish.”

But it’s undoubtedly the slam dunk — which until the mid-’70s was considered showboating in basketball — that made the NBA what it is.

Arthur Ehrat’s 1982 patent of the original breakaway rim ushered in the age of the monster jam.

Squibb, on the other hand, might very well be the guy on the team content to lead in assists.

“I don’t take criticism that well,” he said, “and I don’t take compliments that well.”

“He’s just a very modest person,” Sorenson said.

Squibb’s improvement on the breakaway rim, patented in 2002, equalized the strength of the side portions of the rim with the front, increased the speed at which the rim springs back into a horizontal position after a dunk and simplified the design for quicker production.

“There’s not much difference between one rim and another except the guts that control it,” Squibb said.

Sorenson calls Squibb a “marvelous craftsman” and “great inventor.”

“He’s a materials expert and he’s an expert in all of the equipment in a modern machine shop,” Sorenson said recently from his home in Westport, Conn., where he relocated in the early 1970s after AAI’s acquisition by AMF, the company that also owned Harley-Davidson from 1969 to 1981.

“I am very serious when I say this,” Sorenson said. “He deserves enormous amounts of credit.”

For his part, Squibb is the type of guy who loves to read patent filings like other people read Chaucer.

“A further object of this invention,” reads a patent for a balance beam by Squibb and co-worker Mark Lane, “is to provide a reflex action utilizing a urethane spring wherein various durometer values can be used to create different degrees of balance.”

“These and other objects,” it continues, “will be apparent to those skilled in the art.”

When AAI wanted to break into baseball products, Squibb and co-worker Sue Sherlock won a patent in 2000 for their improved ball pitching machine.

“We could shoot a baseball from the office to the four-way stop,” Squibb said.

Basketball products initially started emerging after AAI’s acquisition in 1996 of Basketball Products International, or BPI, which had been the very first company to sign a licensing agreement back in 1983 with Arthur Ehrat, the inventor of the breakaway basketball rim.

Back then, the invention was known as a “deformation-preventing swingable mount for basketball goals,” as Ehrat’s original patent called it.

Before Ehrat’s invention, fixed rims that didn’t flex posed an injury risk to players.

“It’s to keep these multimillion-dollar guys from jamming a finger,” Squibb said of flex rims.

The first collapsible rims, however, had to be put back manually.

Ehrat’s breakaway rim snapped back into place automatically thanks to a spring he swiped off a John Deere cultivator.

If anything, visiting Squibb’s Morton Building is about as close as anyone in rural Iowa will get to visiting Skunk Works, Lockheed’s famous experimental engineering department that slipped us the U-2, the SR-71 and the stealth-fighter.

“A lot of this stuff I do is very confidential,” Squibb confessed.

He would neither confirm nor deny whether a stack of papers laying face down on a table contained drawings for the next great basketball rim or balance beam.

Photography is strictly off limits.

Squibb, who also has a side business installing basketball and volleyball systems, doesn’t worry himself with the corporate activity behind the scenes, which has included acquisitions, mergers and even a bankruptcy through the decades.

Current owner Russell Brands — which in turn is owned by Fruit of the Loom — could ostensibly ship production to China or Mexico with relative ease.

“Do you worry about being hit by an asteroid?” Squibb asked.

Again, rhetorically.

Besides, even if production went away tomorrow, there’d still be a need for the prototypes and special orders he produces.

Squibb was practically born in a machine shop, and was only 5 when he started running his dad’s lathe/milling machine.

“Ever played with Lincoln Logs? Can you ever make everything you want with Lincoln Logs?” he asked.

He’s been modifying things — from Lincoln Logs to breakaway basketball rims — ever since.

His dad, Walter, had welding shops in Jefferson and Churdan, having learned the art during World War II after journeying West to join father-in-law Oscar White in the shipyards of Oregon.

“If your dad was a farmer, what did you do when you grew up? You wanted to be a farmer. I wanted to be a welder,” Squibb said.

Squibb, who turned down an offer to take over his dad’s shop, now has the second-longest tenure of anyone at AAI.

“Most people who work here stay here,” he said.

“I’ll probably get a toe-tag retirement,” he added. “I enjoy work.

“I enjoy this.”

At first, getting a patent was a novelty.

“The first one was kind of exciting,” he said, recalling how he hung it on a wall at home, eventually replacing it with a hunting trophy.

“Maybe the 10th one was kind of exciting, too, because it was double-digits,” he added.

Now, “I’ve got 12 or 13 of those stupid things,” he said.

Keeping tabs on who’s using the equipment he’s invented or redesigned “would be a nightmare.”

They’re in use globally.

“He is really a very important part of American’s success,” Sorenson said.

“If I were to go back into a similar business,” Sorenson added, “he’s the first man I’d pick.”

Staff report
BOONE — Greene County’s Republican state senator will face a Vietnam combat vet in November.

Democrat Keith Puntenney, an attorney and disabled veteran from Boone, announced Tuesday he is running for the District 24 Senate seat currently held by Jerry Behn.

The district is comprised of Boone, Greene and Hamilton counties, in addition to parts of Story and Webster counties.

The recipient of a Purple Heart from combat service in Vietnam with the Army, Puntenney has 33 years experience as an IRS federal estate and gift tax attorney.

For more than 42 years, he also has actively supervised family farmland in northern Boone and southern Webster counties.

A Stratford native, Puntenney graduated from Boone High School in 1964.

Puntenney and wife Sandy have been married for 33 years.

They have two sons and one grandchild. They are members of the Boone First United Methodist Church.

“This district deserves to be represented by someone who listens to the voters, not just business interests,” Puntenney said Tuesday in a statement. “My military and civilian background have provided me with leadership opportunities and skills necessary to be successful from my first day in office.”

Puntenney encourages anyone with questions to contact him at kdp4iasenate@gmail.com or 515-230-1001.

Behn, a Boone farmer, was first elected to the Iowa Senate in 1996.

By DOUGLAS BURNS
d.burns@carrollspaper.com

Greene County’s top economic-development official calls the lack of child care in the region a “crisis.”

“We have a serious problem,” said Ken Paxton, executive director of the Greene County Development Corp.

With the opening of a new casino last summer, perhaps the most high profile in a string of business and job expansions, Greene County posted an unemployment rate of 3 percent in December.

Bottom line: the county is fighting to expand its labor pool to feed growth, Paxton said.

Iowa’s unemployment rate for December was 3.4 percent, and the national rate 5 percent.

Locally, the unemployment rate is viewed as a mixed bag by businesspeople. It reflects a strong economy, but also makes attracting new businesses and recruiting employees challenging.

A key factor in that drive to lure labor is child care.

The nonprofit Greene County Early Learning Center serves 103 kids, but it has a waiting list of 37, said Cherie Cerveny, executive director.

Operating out of a former school building (204 S. Madison St.) south of the middle school in Jefferson, the center’s board is working with a consultant, First Children’s Finance of Minneapolis, on possible expansion or relocation into a larger facility that can accommodate more children — and speed the flow of employees to jobs in Jefferson.

A feasibility study is expected within months.

Paxton and Cerveny say a capacity of 200 children is a reasonable target.

Paxton said child-care availability is essential to existing and prospective business.

“A 37-person waiting list is an automatic ‘no,’ ” Paxton said, reflecting on reaction of new business prospects to reports of those numbers.

Cerveny says 75 to 80 percent of the center’s annual operating budget of about $325,000 comes through tuition for children, who range in age from two weeks to 12 years. The rest of the money comes through fundraising or grants.

The center’s 24 employees start at $8 an hour and most make less than $9 an hour. Cerveny, executive director since 2008, makes $33,000 a year.

“They have a hard time attracting people,” Paxton said.

Staff report
A 19-year-old Jefferson woman is accused of kicking the inside of a police car, spitting on officers, wrecking a holding room at the Greene County Law Enforcement Center and then allegedly assaulting a jailer after a routine traffic stop March 10.

The list of charges facing Tesa Renee Binns includes interference with official acts/causing bodily injury; possession of alcohol; public intoxication; disorderly conduct/fighting or violent behavior; criminal mischief; and three counts of assault on persons in certain occupations.

Police say it began about 3:51 a.m. in the 500 block of West Lincoln Way, when an officer initiated a traffic stop on a vehicle with a defective taillight.

The vehicle pulled south into an alley and proceeded to the backyard of 103 S. Pinet St. before stopping.    

During the stop, the officer reportedly smelled alcohol coming from the vehicle.

Both occupants — Binns and driver Michael Allen Von Stein, 20, of Jefferson — allegedly admitted to consuming alcohol, and also reported unopened containers of alcohol in the vehicle.

Von Stein was cited for possession of alcohol by an underage person.

As the officer continued an investigation, Von Stein cooperated fully. Binns, however, reportedly wouldn’t identify herself and began to exit the vehicle.

Both the officer and Von Stein advised her to remain inside.

Binns then allegedly exited the vehicle and began walking away.

After numerous warnings to get back in the vehicle, the officer advised her she was under arrest.

The officer received minor injuries in a struggle that ensued.

A Greene County sheriff’s deputy arrived and assisted in taking Binns into custody.

While being transported to the LEC, Binns reportedly began kicking the interior windows and door panels of the patrol vehicle, causing damage.

After reaching the LEC, Binns continued to be combative, allegedly spitting on the officer and deputy.

While in the holding room, Binns reportedly caused significant damage to the walls, kicking holes in them, then allegedly assaulted a jailer while being moved to a cell.

The jailer suffered a shoulder bruise and wasn’t seriously injured.

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

Greene County Superintendent Tim Christensen Wednesday evening explained the school district’s budget to the board of education, saying, “Totally driven by student enrollment.”

He then pointed out that enrollment in the Greene County Community School District this year is up 14.43 students.

Moments before, however, the board at its regular meeting approved the firing of two teachers “based on budget,” Christensen noted, “not performance.”

The Greene County Education Association was left bewildered by the district’s first reduction in force since the consolidation of Jefferson-Scranton and East Greene.

“That’s what we want to know,” Sean Thompson, president of the 80-member teachers’ union, said after Wednesday’s two-hour board meeting, when asked how teachers could be eliminated when enrollment is up.

The board voted 5-2 to terminate the contracts of middle school P.E. teacher Ryan Eberly and high school family and consumer science teacher Lisa Hansen.

Board members John McConnell and Mike Dennhardt cast no votes.

A third teacher at the elementary school was included in the cuts, but she filed Wednesday for a hearing, according to Thompson, meaning she’ll get a chance to argue her case.

Hansen teaches a third of the time, according to the district, and works as an associate the remainder. Only her teaching contract was terminated Wednesday.

“It’s just an unfortunate situation,” Thompson said.

He said the union wasn’t notified in advance of the cuts, which were carried out Friday and approved Wednesday.

Teachers had until Wednesday to file for a hearing, he said.

As a P.E. teacher himself at the intermediate school, Thompson could only wonder what the loss of the middle school P.E. teacher, for one, would mean.

“Am I going to fill in at the middle school?” he asked. “How many more teachers can we cut before we affect the value of our education?”

Talk from the February board meeting of a six-figure budget deficit was nonexistent at Wednesday’s meeting.

The district was expected to have a negative unspent balance of around $150,000 for 2015-16, a result of everything from an accounting software glitch to Gov. Terry Branstad’s high-profile veto of supplemental aid.

In a bid to save money, the district previously accepted four early retirement requests and planned to not replace other positions.

The board on Wednesday agreed only to hold its public budget hearing for 2016-17 at 5:15 p.m. April 13.

That budget is mostly set with exception to supplemental state aid, which Christensen said he expects to be 2 percent.

The other two major factors in the school budget — enrollment and taxable valuation — are both trending up.

Enrollment in the district stands at 1,298.8 after this year’s gain.

Taxable valuation in the district is up 1.1 percent, Christensen said.

The meeting Wednesday opened with another personnel issue — one which the board would neither confirm nor deny.

Heather Hinote, wife of varsity boys basketball coach Jeramie Hinote, appeared before the board during open forum to question what she said was her husband’s dismissal from his coaching job.

Christensen said no action had been taken. Board members said they either were unaware of the situation or else had only heard of an evaluation taking place.
“So what you’re saying,” said Catherine Wilson, who was among the supporters of Hinote at the meeting, “is the board has not been notified of the firing of Jeramie Hinote?”

Heather Hinote called her husband’s alleged dismissal a “personal attack on him.”

“I don’t know if we can talk about a particular employee in an open meeting,” board member Teresa Hagen said, explaining the board’s policy of not engaging with the public during open forum.

In other business:

• The board approved the parameters of a new scholarship, the Dixon Scholarship, the result of a $600,000 gift to the district.

Scholarships will be awarded annually to 15 students at $2,000 per scholarship. All students will be eligible.

• The board directed Christensen to continue conversations with the county board of supervisors about possibly buying the former National Guard armory to serve as a new bus barn.

The district’s current lease with the Greene County Fair Board is coming due, Christensen said, but it could be more economical for the district to have its own building.

Construction of a brand new building could run the district $200,000, said McConnell, a contractor.

The fair board wants a decision by May in order to proceed with plans for a new cattle barn — the design hinges on whether the district wants to still park its buses at the fairgrounds.

The district has rented space at the fairgrounds for more than 25 years.

“Absolutely nothing against the fair board,” McConnell said, “but it comes down to numbers.”

• The board gave approval to share its curriculum director one day per week with Southeast Webster-Grand, and its media specialist one day per month with Ogden.

• The board unanimously approved the purchase of 250 new Chromebooks for the high school from the 1-cent sales tax fund at a cost of $65,937, but not before a spirited discussion about whether Chromebooks are the right device.

“My kids who were students thought they sucked,” McConnell said.

By DOUGLAS BURNS
d.burns@carrollspaper.com

Mike Couch, Wild Rose Jefferson general manager since November 2014, well before the casino complex opened, resigned effective Monday, a Wild Rose official confirmed Tuesday to The Jefferson Herald.

No other employees left in connection with Couch’s departure.

Jamie Buelt, a spokeswoman for Wild Rose, said she could not release any other details on the resignation.

“We wish him only the best of fortunes,” Buelt said.

Couch’s final day with the casino was Monday.

In the near term, Tom Timmons, president and chief operating officer of West Des Moines-based Wild Rose Casino & Resort, will serve as acting general manager in Jefferson.

Timmons is familiar with not only the casino in Jefferson, but the full community as well, as he was a consistent presence in Greene County during the casino licensing and election process.

“Tom will be in Jefferson almost daily,” Buelt said.

A search for a permanent successor to Couch will start soon.

Buelt said the casino is on solid financial footing and drawing strong crowds.

“All I can say, and all Tom can say, is that he (Couch) resigned,” Buelt said.

Couch, prior to serving as the general manager of Wild Rose Jefferson, was the director of gaming for Gulfstream Park, a nationally regarded casino and horse-racing facility located between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Born and raised in Pennsylvania — near Penn State University — Couch worked for Wild Rose’s management team in Emmetsburg in 2006 and also lists experience in his wife’s hometown, Peoria, Ill., where he worked for Boyd Gaming.

Wild Rose operates casinos in Jefferson, Emmetsburg and Clinton.

The newspaper does not have a personal phone number for Couch.

By MATTHEW REZAB
Jefferson Herald staff

Earn $25 for an A grade in geometry? How about $100 for completing four years of Spanish?

High school students — and not just the kids with parents ready to dish out the cash — now have an opportunity to earn “micro scholarships” for academic excellence and extracurricular participation.

The University of Iowa announced a partnership with Raise.me aimed at encouraging students to excel. The pilot program allows students to earn up to $1,200 in scholarship money to be accumulated in high school and cashed in at U of I, five other private colleges in Iowa and more than 100 colleges and universities nationwide. Students at participating high schools can visit the Raise.me webpage to sign up and start earning scholarship money.

A single school in each Iowa county was chosen for the pilot program based on the percentage of students using free-and-reduced lunch. Area schools chosen include Paton-Churdan and Coon Rapids-Bayard.

“I think it’s a really ingenious idea,” P-C Principal Annie Smith said. “I love the idea behind it and I’d love for it to catch on at other schools.”

The pilot program is set to run for the next four years before being evaluated for possible statewide implementation.

Students currently in high school are able to retroactively earn money for extracurriculars and grades. For instance, if a current senior played basketball two years ago as a sophomore, he or she would still earn the $25.

Brent Gage, U of I associate vice president for enrollment management, said he hopes the program can eventually expand.

“It is our hope that these micro-scholarships make a difference in student behavior and that after an evaluation period with feedback from schools and counselors we can expand the program statewide,” Gage said in a press release.

Tom Rocklin, U of I vice president of student life, told students at Cedar Rapids Jefferson on March 2 that the initiative is designed to encourage and improve college readiness for high school students across Iowa.

Courtney Walter, a counselor at Audubon High School, said the information is still relatively new to her students, but she’s seen some seniors “perk up” at it. She said the U of I program is unique compared with other Iowa colleges.

“Some students have already signed up, but what is unique about (The University of) Iowa is they stack their scholarships, most other schools consider it part of the merit awards,” Walter said.

Walter advises “two or three” students who eventually choose U of I each year.

Iowa State University will not be participating in the program.

“We have examined the program and believe it has some good features,” John McCarroll, ISU executive director of University Relations said. “However, as we looked at our strategies for recruiting students and providing financial aid, we decided it would not be a good fit.”

Smith said college is expensive and the cost can be a barrier even if a student works hard and participates in school activities.

“I think it can’t hurt and I think it’s a great program for students,” Smith said. “I’m really excited that we were chosen and we can give this opportunity to our kids.”

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

It’s been almost 18 years since John and Vickie Woodford first walked through the door of Spare Time Lanes, which at the time was for sale.

Lane 3 was down.

Again.

John Woodford climbed back behind the pins, fiddled with the decades-old AMF 82-30 automatic pinsetter and, just like that, Lane 3 was back in business.

“This place has offered us lots of stories,” Vickie Woodford said.

Suddenly, though, the one about John walking in off the street, no ties whatsoever to Jefferson, and fixing Lane 3 has never seemed more symbolic.

The last weekend in February, 285 bowlers descended on Jefferson as part of the West Central Iowa Bowling Proprietors team tournament — a number that has only increased since 2012, when the Woodfords modernized Spare Time Lanes with a six-figure remodel that turned a scuzzy bowling alley into a sparkling bowling center.

“It brings a lot of outside revenue to Jefferson,” Vickie Woodford said. “We’ve been trying to tell the Chamber for years we’re probably the biggest source (second only to the casino) of bringing in outside revenue, and we’re probably the least utilized.”

The feeling that Spare Time Lanes has largely been excluded from local efforts to boost tourism and divert gamblers into town from Wild Rose Casino will be even more apparent when the Woodfords are soon featured in a national bowling magazine.

The bowling company QubicaAMF is working on a profile of the Woodfords for Bowlers Journal that will tout Spare Time’s pioneering adoption of its most current and most advanced pinsetter yet, the XLi Edge.

For starters, they no longer have “machines breaking down every five minutes,” Vickie Woodford said.

It’s believed the Woodfords installed one of the first XLi Edges in the Midwest during the 2012 remodel.

“I don’t know what we saw in it,” Vickie Woodford, 58, confessed, recalling that day in 1998 she and her husband first strolled through the door. “It was horrible.”

Buckets hung from the ceiling to catch rainwater.

Vickie Woodford noticed a complete absence of women and kids.

Within a week, though, they were talking to a Realtor.

“Home State Bank and Sid Jones took a chance on us,” Vickie Woodford said. “Our bank in Adel wouldn’t help us.”

That initial bit of faith would put Spare Time Lanes on its current trajectory.

Today, Spare Time Lanes offers glow-in-the-dark “cosmic bowling” — but when the lights turn off and the blacklights turn on, it’s like finding a wormhole to another dimension.

“A lot of people have said they hope Jefferson knows what a beautiful bowling center they have,” said Vickie Woodford, a Chicago native who moved to rural Humboldt County when she was 16.

What was once a bleak hue of brown and green, with a touch of cream, is today an amazing Technicolor playground.

“As they say,” said John Woodford, a 46-year-old Des Moines native, “you have to spend money to make money.”

What once was a bar with a bowling alley is now a bowling center that also happens to have a bar.

Where strippers are said to have once shaken it, kids’ birthday parties are taking place.

A new ramp to assist those young bowlers in the shape of a dragon glows a radioactive pinkish red under blacklight.

“It had a bad reputation for so many years,” John Woodford said.

“It took us probably close to five years to get over that,” Vickie Woodford added.

John disagrees.

“Probably closer to 10 years,” he said.

“It was just a local hangout,” Vickie Woodford explained. “And it really wasn’t family oriented at all.”

Future anthropologists will one day be able to tear apart the building at 118 S. Chestnut St. and be able to determine how its inhabitants evolved over time.

The floor of an earlier roller skating rink is still underneath Spare Time’s 10 lanes.

Underneath new wood paneling they’ll find wallpaper emblazoned with naked women — apparently put up in the ’70s, according to John Woodford, when people remember a funky mix of exotic dancers and country and Western music.

The pinsetters the Woodfords inherited when they purchased the building were from the early 1950s. Whoever converted the building into a bowling alley had bought them used.

By 2012, though, the AMF mechanic refused to work on them.

“He was getting shocks,” Vickie Woodford said.

They were always unreliable. Now they were a fire hazard, too.

The remodel has allowed the Woodfords to fully realize what they saw in their minds all along.

“We’re getting way more kids in here,” Vickie Woodford said. “That’s what we really wanted, to give kids and families a safe place to go.

“That’s what we’ve been working on all these years.”

Spare Time, according to the Woodfords, is now among the smallest bowling centers with a pro shop — a place where you can buy a new ball (maybe one scented like “candy apple”) and have the holes drilled while you wait.

The Woodfords sell shoes, gloves, wrist supports and other accessories.

They also can resurface balls.

“The quality of bowlers is increasing,” Vickie Woodford said. “They’re always wanting that stuff, but they don’t want to wait.”

One of the newly painted walls inside Spare Time features oversized bowling pins in the shape of a W bearing “Woodfords” on one and “Dad’s Dream” on another.

It had been the dream of John Woodford’s father to own a bowling alley, which he briefly did in the late 1980s with Horseshoe Lanes in Adel.

“My dad was the best bowler,” John Woodford said. “He only took one step and averaged 200.”

John Woodford quit his job at Hiland Potato Chip in Des Moines to be his father’s resident mechanic.

“I wasn’t even mechanically inclined,” he recalled.

Vickie just happened to be manager of Horseshoe Lanes when the Woodfords took over.

In May, John and Vickie will celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.

Despite a long family history of bowling, John Woodford’s parents “said we were nuts” when they bought Spare Time Lanes in Jefferson.

“We’ve got more that we want to do,” he said, alluding to the building’s exterior.

Already, though, Spare Time Lanes has jumped out of the gutter and is on a clear course for a strike.

This is exactly what Vickie Woodford envisioned.

“It’s going the direction John and I wanted it to go.”

By MATTHEW REZAB
m.rezab@beeherald.com

The onset of spring will not only save Jefferson residents on heating bills, but possibly parking ticket costs as well.

The Jefferson Police Department this winter issued 65 tickets for Emergency Snow Ordinance violations with fines totaling $3,770, or $58 each.

Last fall at the request of the police department, the Jefferson city council removed the “from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.” language from the Emergency Snow Ordinance. At the time, police said the logistics of only enforcing the code during the day made their jobs more difficult and the regulation less effective in keeping the streets clear for snow removal.

Jefferson city code 69.10 states, “No person shall park, abandon or leave unattended any vehicle on any public street, alley, or city-owned off-street parking area from the time there has been an accumulation of one-half inch of snow until the snow has ceased to fall and has been removed or plowed from said street, alley or parking area.”

Provisions for multiple streets only apply between the hours of 2 and 6 a.m.

Police Chief Mark Clouse said he believes residents are given ample time to move their vehicles when it snows.

“Even though the ordinance goes into effect at 1/2 inch, we do not issue citations until after the vehicle has actually been plowed around,” Clouse said. “We feel this gives even extra time to remove your vehicle from the streets.”

Clouse said the amended ordinance was necessary because snow can fall at any time of day.

“If the city crews need to remove snow from the roadway during daytime hours, vehicles need to be moved,” he said. “They can not effectively clear the streets if they are going around vehicles.”

Violators receive a citation for a first-offense, but vehicles will be towed if the code is violated again, Clouse said.

The ordinance is in effect from 2 to 6 a.m. in the town square to allow for business to continue during the day and removal to happen overnight.

“We have to allow crews to clean our business district and they can not do so around parked vehicles,” Clouse said.

Clouse said the most common complaint he has heard over the years about receiving a snow ticket has been, “Why can’t you guys just ask us to move our vehicles?”

“Obviously we can not do this,” he said. “Most times violations occur overnight and they would not want us waking them up to move their vehicle. And we have told them in the media, etc. each year at the beginning of the season how the ordinance works.”

The Emergency Snow Ordinance is still in effect and citations will continue to be written if Jefferson sees more snowfall this spring.

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

Assistant Greene County engineer and unofficial courthouse historian Don Van Gilder has lost count of the number of times he’s walked out of his office and caught people looking up.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked out and found people like this,” he explained recently, pulling out his smartphone and aiming it skyward.

He’s even caught people laying on their back.

They’re all trying to capture the beauty of the stained-glass dome high above them in the rotunda of the Greene County courthouse.

But without some help, and soon, visitors to the courthouse could get a closer picture of the nearly century-old stained-glass dome than they bargained for — when it comes crashing down.

A 2014 report prepared by The Stained Glass Store of Des Moines noted that some panels in the 21-foot-diameter dome have “extreme reinforcement bar failure.”

“Complete panel failure is a real possibility,” the report warned.

The county board of supervisors recently approved funding for restoration of the dome in the latest budget. It will be an estimated $175,000 project, according to county engineer Wade Weiss.

It couldn’t have come at a better time — and not just because there’s a risk of someone being crushed by falling stained glass.

Plans are well underway to commemorate the historic courthouse’s 100th anniversary in 2017.

The Courthouse 100 committee, of which Van Gilder is chairman, last week rolled out an official logo for the building’s centennial designed by Krystal Berger, a 2004 graduate of Jefferson-Scranton High School now employed in web production at Meredith Corp.

In a series of events commemorating the centennial of significant milestones, Courthouse 100 will rededicate the building’s cornerstone on May 15.

The plan is to have the central dome restored in time for the centennial’s gala in October 2017.

This time, there will be no more quick fixes, as alluded to in The Stained Glass Store’s 2014 report that noted a “plethora of silicone and white caulk attempts to seal broken glass.”

The dome will be removed and taken off site to be restored, according to Weiss, similar to the 2014 restoration of a smaller stained-glass dome in the courtroom.

That project cost the county $30,440 to remove, restore and reinstall the 14-foot-diameter courtroom dome, with the county deeming it an “emergency fix,” according to Weiss.

As the 2014 report noted of the courtroom dome, “one section is precariously hanging by the edge of one reinforcement bar.”

Each piece of glass also was taken out and cleaned. As a result, the dome has never looked better.

“We had no idea there was clear glass in here,” Van Gilder said.

Originally, both domes served a functional purpose — to flood the interior of the courthouse with natural light.

Years of tobacco smoke had actually turned the glass a shade of brown. All of it was peeled away in the recent restoration.

“It was a pleasant surprise,” Weiss added.

When the courthouse was originally dedicated in October 1917, the local Free Lance newspaper proclaimed that the new building had been “carefully designed and honestly built to withstand the wear of ages and the weathering of centuries.”

That was true. To a point.

Unbeknownst to the artisans of the era, the pure lead used in the stained-glass domes only had a lifespan of 60 to 80 years, at which point it becomes brittle.

“It’s beautiful from down here,” Weiss said.

Up closer, it’s a much different story.

Reinforcement bars have rusted, and soldered joints have failed.

After the occasional storm, small puddles of rain will be discovered on the rotunda floor’s mosaic tile.

The 2014 report noted that gravity has a greater effect on skylight stained-glass panels than on vertical stained-glass windows.

“It’s hanging up there,” Weiss said.

The report called the rebuilding and releading of both domes a “high priority.”

Even though supervisors made room in the county budget for the work, it’s still hoped that grant money could be found to restore the large rotunda dome, according to Weiss.

Once it’s rebuilt and releaded with restoration-quality lead, the signature feature of the courthouse will shine for years to come.

“Don,” Weiss asked, “will you be around for the 200-year anniversary?”

By JARED STRONG
j.strong@carrollspaper.com

The owner of Jefferson’s Pizza Ranch was unable to pay back his $450,000 mortgage for the restaurant and — perhaps with the help of one or more people — torched the building in January to collect a big insurance payment, investigators allege.

Robert Duane Schultz, 53, of Ankeny, faces three felony charges for the fire, which damaged nearby buildings with smoke.

The most-serious charge is punishable by up to 25 years in prison.

Schultz was expected to arrive in Jefferson today to surrender for arrest. He will need to pay a $25,000 bail to be released, Jefferson Police Chief Mark Clouse said.

Clouse declined to say how many other people might face charges for the arson. He also declined to say whether or not one of the restaurant’s managers, Melinda Wood, might be implicated in the insurance-fraud scheme.

Wood is a felon who admitted in 2011 to stealing more than $12,000 from another restaurant where she was an assistant manager. Schultz told Herald  Publishing last month, “I hate to point any fingers because Mindy was a good manager.”

Schultz did not respond to a request to comment for this article.

Wood this morning said the criminal charges against Schultz vindicate her.

“A lot of people say he probably used me” as a scapegoat, she said. “I really don’t know what to say about it. I’m a little upset. I put a lot of trust in him.”

Clouse, the police chief, said the investigation revealed that Schultz apparently doused the restaurant with gasoline in several locations inside the building the night of Jan. 26 and someone else ignited it.

Several people reported smelling gasoline in and near the restaurant in the days that led to the fire, and Schultz said he had accidentally spilled some of the highly flammable fuel in the restaurant’s dining area, Clouse said. He claimed he took the fuel inside the restaurant to give to an employee whose vehicle had run empty.

Schultz told investigators that he left the restaurant about 10:15 p.m. on Jan. 26 and arrived at his Ankeny home about 11:15 p.m.

The fire was reported just after midnight.

A video surveillance system in the restaurant that might have recorded the arson hadn’t functioned for weeks, Clouse said, and Schultz had no reasonable explanation for why he didn’t fix it. Clouse did not know whether the security system had been tampered with.

Schultz faces felony charges of arson, criminal mischief and insurance fraud.

County records show he obtained an open-ended real estate mortgage for the building in November 2012 for up to $375,000.

In the next two years, he requested the bank increase that amount three times, most recently in June 2014, when it was raised to $450,000.

Schultz told investigators he was “behind on his mortgage payments,” according to court records.

Clouse said he is investigating a text-message exchange Schultz had with someone else that might reveal others who were involved in the arson scheme.

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

Will new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau showing another population decline for Greene County be the last time the numbers point downward?

Possibly — but until there’s available housing to root new residents, hundreds of new jobs created locally could bear little fruit.

As a result, more housing is still the mantra of Ken Paxton, executive director of the Greene County Development Corp.

“Unfortunately,” Paxton said Monday, “a lot of people working in our community aren’t living in our community.”

There are “very few vacant houses for them to live in.”

“You look at John Deere in Paton,” he added. “Something like 70 percent of their workforce doesn’t live in Greene County.”

New census estimates released March 24 show a population decline of 3.3 percent in Greene County from April 1, 2010, to July 1, 2015, bringing the county’s estimated total population down to 9,027 from 9,337.

Of Greene County’s neighboring six counties, only Dallas and Boone counties saw an uptick in new residents.

Dallas County continues to be the fastest-growing area in Iowa, with the county’s population up 169 percent since 1990, and up another 21.2 percent between 2010 and 2015.

On the flip side, Greene County still experienced more deaths (613) than births (548) during that period, and lost 253 people to “domestic migration,” with 173 people moving out between July 1, 2014, and July 1, 2015, alone.

The county gained 14 new residents during the five-year period, according to the census data, from international migration.

Greene County was one of 71 counties to lose population since 2010, with Dallas, Johnson and Polk counties the state’s fastest-growing counties.

Paxton believes a stalled housing project near the Jefferson water tower could be a start in retaining employees who commute to work at the Wild Rose Jefferson casino, which opened late last summer, and Scranton Manufacturing, which has been in expansion mode.

Huxley-based JCorp owns land near the water tower, but its building plan stalled because of a funding gap. Neither the Jefferson city council or the Greene County board of supervisors was willing to bridge that gap.

Former Fort Dodge mayor Terry Lutz, CEO of McClure Engineering, a company actually founded in Jefferson back in 1956, has been making the rounds of local government in recent days to tout a private-public partnership to get a housing project off the ground in Jefferson.

The Jefferson city council in December named housing its No. 2 priority for 2016 behind economic development.

But is Greene County trying to fight the inevitable?

Population trends would seem to indicate that rural Iowa is getting to be a pretty lonely place.

In fact, 51.4 percent of Iowa’s total population is divided among just 10 counties, according to the data, all with metro areas.

Area population changes 2010 to 2015
Boone County: Up 1.3 percent to 26,643
Calhoun County: Down 3.5 percent to 9,818
Carroll County: Down 1.5 percent to 20,498
Dallas County: Up 21.2 percent to 80,133
Greene County: Down 3.3 percent to 9,027
Guthrie County: Down 2.5 percent to 10,676
Webster County: Down 2.5 percent to 37,071

Staff report
AMES — Landus is live.

Landus Cooperative officially was established Friday with a final merger agreement between West Central Cooperative and Farmers Cooperative.

Landus will be a farmer-owned cooperative headquartered in Ames with approximately 7,000 members and more than 725 full-time employees in more than 70 communities in Iowa and Minnesota.

“Merging two strong cooperatives allows further diversification throughout the supply chain and opens local and global opportunities for added value and growth on behalf of our members,” CEO Milan Kucerak, a Jefferson resident and the former president and CEO of West Central, said Friday in a statement.

“In short,” he said, “the purpose of this merger is to make two cooperative organizations better than either one could be separately for employees, members and customers.”

The cooperative’s interim website, LandusCooperative.com, includes profiles of the newly named executive team and board member listing.

The merger was approved Dec. 18 by a vote of each cooperative’s membership.

Landus becomes Iowa’s largest cooperative, and one of North America’s largest grain storage companies with access to all seven major Iowa rail lines.

Based on reports from last fiscal year, the new cooperative could expect annual sales near $1.5 billion.

Staff report
The health care sector in Greene County generates 591 jobs and more than $24.15 million for the area economy, the latest study by the Iowa Hospital Association finds.

Greene County Medical Center’s 391 employees alone add more than $15.5 million to the economy, according to the study.

The study also estimated that the medical center’s employees spend more than $2.4 million on retail sales and contribute $147,155 in state sales tax revenue.

“The importance of hospitals in counties like ours is becoming more and more critical,” medical center CEO Carl Behne said Friday in a statement. “Of course, the patient care provided close to home is most important, but the positive economic impact is important as well.

“Our employees are loyal to those we serve, as well as to the communities in which they serve.”

The IHA examined the jobs, income, retail sales and sales tax produced by hospitals and the state’s health care sector using hospital-submitted data on the American Hospital Association’s Annual Survey of Hospitals and with software that other industries have used to determine their economic impact.

The study found that Iowa hospitals directly employ 71,348 people and create another 44,935 jobs outside the hospital. Hospitals provide $4.3 billion in salaries and benefits, and generate another $1.8 billion through other jobs that depend on hospitals.

As a whole, Iowa’s health care sector — which includes physicians, dentists and other practitioners; nursing home and residential care; other medical and health services; and pharmacies — contributes $15.5 billion to the state economy while directly and indirectly providing 312,821 jobs.

Staff report
DES MOINES — Gov. Terry Branstad says “philosophically” it makes sense to four-lane more of U.S. Highway 30 in Iowa before expanding Interstate 80 into six or eight lanes across the state.

“My obligation as governor is to try and tie the whole state together,” Branstad said.

The governor spoke April 4 with a delegation of business and community leaders during U.S. Highway 30 Day at the state capitol. Led by Highway 30 Coalition of Iowa president Adam Schweers, of Carroll, about 20 people in the organization met with Branstad and state legislative leaders.

“Highway 30 is near and dear to Carroll County’s heart,” Schweers told the governor.

Other cities represented included Jefferson, Boone, Denison, Missouri Valley, Clinton and Belle Plaine.

Highway 30 is the longest road in the state, running a distance of 331 miles from the Mississippi to Missouri rivers. The U.S. 30 corridor spans 12 counties and 39 cities.  According to the 2010 U.S. Census, more than 551,000 people live in the 12 counties along the corridor, representing nearly 20 percent of Iowa’s population.

The population of those 12 counties increased more than 5.5 percent from 2000 to 2010.

A chief concern of the Highway 30 Coalition is that state transportation officials will seek to six-lane Interstate 80 throughout Iowa, foreclosing opportunities for development of Highway 30 as a relief route for 80 that would also boost the economies of the state’s second-largest city, Cedar Rapids, which has heavy grain traffic, as well as vast swaths of rural Iowa.

Mike Kirchhoff, president of the Clinton Regional Development Corp., and Douglas Burns, a member of the Carroll and Greene county development groups, stressed to Branstad that the issue of Highway 30 versus Interstate 80 is a rural-urban one.

“Remember that giant sucking sound Ross Perot spoke of? Well, that’s what you’ll hear with the transfer of economic opportunity from rural to urban Iowa if a super corridor from the Quad Cities to Iowa City to Des Moines is developed with six or eight lanes on I-80, while we are left with two lanes and no prospect for the economic-development growth that would come with four,” Burns said.

“We risk creating a permanent economic underclass,” Kirchhoff said of any decision to favor the 80 links over rural Highway 30.

Clinton City Councilman Tom Determann, vice president of the 30 Coalition and the retired head of Determann Industries, said six- or eight-laning all of Interstate 80 is too costly a project for Iowa.

Branstad said he sees Highway 30 in the same way he does Highway 20, which is being fully four-laned.

The governor said Interstate 80 is primarily a route for people coming through Iowa, while Highways 20 and 30 carry more local commerce.

“I have a strong interest in these highway projects, and I know how important it is,” Branstad said.

Branstad said the Iowa Department of Transportation makes the call on highway projects. He does, however, appoint the commissioners.

“I’m a fierce supporter of growing all of Iowa,” said DOT commissioner David Rose, of Clinton. He said four-laning 30 will provide relief to 80.

Kim Tiefenthaler, a member of the Carroll Area Development Corp. and the owner of Performance Tire & Service in Carroll, raised the safety aspect on Highway 30.

“It’s hard to pass on Highway 30,” Tiefenthaler said.

“Your point is a good one,” Branstad shot back.

The governor, speaking with Greene County Development Corp. executive director Ken Paxton, said he is familiar with growth and development in Greene County.

“For a small county, Greene County has had a lot of economic-development success,” Branstad said.

Schweers assessed the meetings as positive.

“We had a number of good ideas suggested to assist us in getting more investments made in Highway 30,” Schweers said. “I was very pleased that DOT commissioner Dave Rose was with us most of the day, and I believe the coalition will continue to build a strong safety and economic-development case for four-laning Highway 30.  

“Improving Highway 30 is not just about attracting new businesses. It is about retaining the ones we have and providing a better commuter pattern for existing and future employees.”

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

After 30 years, this is the year the Bell Tower Community Foundation gets over the hump and makes the Mahanay Memorial Carillon Tower a true carillon.

But when you’re talking about adding more than a dozen bells to the 168-foot tower, each to be cast in the Netherlands, the project price tag has been only slightly less scary than the sight of Quasimodo on a dark night.

Last week’s $61,500 grant to the foundation from the Grow Greene County Gaming Corp. by way of new casino revenue will hopefully give the foundation the momentum it needs to once and for all “complete the legacy,” as Bell Tower board president Carole Custer puts it.

“The time is now,” Custer said.

On the back of last week’s Grow Greene grant, the Bell Tower Foundation has officially kicked off what it hopes will be a final fundraiser — with a target date for its $400,000 goal of Oct. 16, the tower’s 50th anniversary.

Grow Greene’s grant will purchase the two largest, and most expensive, bells still needed to create a four-octave carillon — a G-sharp and a C-sharp.

Less than a week later, Dean and Lois McAtee, of Jefferson, committed to buy an A-sharp, Custer said.

The foundation began the year with a $10,000 gift from Ellie Brown on behalf of Velma Radebaugh.

“It’s the momentum of the 50th anniversary that makes this possible,” Custer said.

“We’re going to get this done,” she added.

It’s been a long time coming.

Dedicated Oct. 16, 1966, the Mahanay Memorial Carillon Tower has become Greene County’s single-most identifiable landmark, but its 14 bells don’t qualify it as a carillon.

A carillon must have at least 23 bells.

What we have, in the eyes of a carillonneur, is a chime.

“It’s had its ups and downs for reputation,” Custer said of the Bell Tower.

What spurred the community to action, according to Custer, was when Iowa State University’s carillonneur refused to come play it.

“He wouldn’t come because it wasn’t a real carillon,” Custer said. “That was a major a-ha moment.”

The Bell Tower Community Foundation was established in 1986 as a way to accept donations to improve the tower.

The fruits of an early push to make the tower a 47-bell carillon have been on display inside the Greene County courthouse for a generation now, where 15 already cast bells sit awaiting installation in a glass case.

A more aggressive approach with the tower’s 50th anniversary looming also has led the foundation to apply for a Community Attraction and Tourism, or CAT, grant from Vision Iowa.

The application is due Friday.

“It’s tough to tell citizens how much better it will be,” Custer said.

The existing support structure will hold all 47 bells, she said.

But currently, the tower doesn’t have enough bells to play music. What residents have heard for generations is prerecorded bell music blasted through speakers.

Only the Westminster chime uses the real bells, and even they didn’t work right until recently, when new strikers were installed.

“We’ve had so many people comment how richer the Westminster bells sound,” Custer said.

A Mahanay Memorial Carillon Tower with 47 bells hanging from it would make it only the fourth carillon in Iowa, behind Iowa State’s famous, 50-bell carillon, a 47-bell carillon at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls and a 25-bell carillon at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Des Moines.

But even ISU’s revered carillon wasn’t born a true carillon, either.

It took 31 years after the campanile was built in 1898 for it to gain 26 bells and a playing console. The time between its original construction and the addition of its 50th bell actually spans 69 years.

The Mahanay Bell Tower’s modern design would generate buzz for Jefferson’s carillon, Custer said, as visitors would be able to see the exposed bells ringing.

“At Iowa State,” she said, “you can’t actually see the bells play.”

To inquire about purchasing a bell — which can be inscribed with a family name at no extra cost — contact Custer at 515-370-0009.

Donations can be sent to the Bell Tower Community Foundation, c/o Greene County Chamber and Development, 220 N. Chestnut St., Jefferson, IA 50129.