For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. –I Corinthians 1:18 I was at the pinnacle of my Holy Week preparation (for my church’s Maundy Thursday and Good Friday Worship Celebration) when I wrote this ...
Retirement from a farm business may not mean moving away or giving up on mentoring the next generation, but it does entail transferring management decisions to someone else. It can be a gradual or sudden process. It may be driven by long-term goals, by sudden health issues, or events outside ...
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 ...
What if school didn’t just prepare students for tests, but for life? Across our communities, that question is turning into action. Through work-based learning opportunities supported by Central Rivers AEA, students are stepping beyond the classroom and into the workforce. What they are ...
There’s a saying in business: “Where there’s mystery, there’s margin,” meaning complexity, confusion, and a lack of transparency create profit opportunities for those at the top. Sounds a lot like the privatization of Medicaid, and Iowa insiders’ plans to fund it. Medicaid alone ...
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 ...
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 ...
To see the Traer pharmacy close is sad. Hopefully, it will see a similar outcome like the medical clinic with a new organization. It may have been years since stepping foot in this small pharmacy, but it still evokes memories. After visiting the doctor’s office, the pharmacy was a hop and ...
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 ...
I want to shout out to the Tama County 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 ...