Quad-City Times. October 2, 2019
Our picks in the Davenport City Council primary races
This year’s city elections in Davenport have seen a large number of candidates eager to run for office. That’s good.
Davenport has a lot of challenges in front of it, so the more choices the better.
On Oct. 8, voters in the 3rd, 4th and 5th wards will select two people each to move on to the Nov. 5 general election.
Over the past two weeks, this editorial board has had a chance to interview all but one of the candidates, and as we did Sunday in the mayor’s race, we are offering our endorsements in these primary races.
Third Ward
In the 3rd Ward, we believe incumbent Alderwoman Marion Meginnis and challenger Phil Armer are the two best choices.
Meginnis, first elected in 2017, is an energetic and studious alderwoman who fits her ward, with its diverse and historic neighborhoods. She impressed us with her enthusiasm for seeking to expand on the progress that’s been made in the downtown by advocating formation of a redevelopment group to encompass the area just west of the central business district.
Meginnis sees opportunity there, with the area’s mix of small business and empty commercial structures. We do, too, with the proper advocacy - and she offers it.
The others in the race are Armer, who works in construction management, and Paul Vasquez, who is retired.
We found Armer to be the preferable of the two. Armer seemed in touch with the needs of the ward and is likely voicing the beliefs of many when he says the city has spent money on riverfront development that could go to infrastructure.
Armer also said a top priority of his would be to improve youth outreach to deal with crime.
Vasquez has a long history with the 3rd Ward. But too often he did not offer solid ideas to deal with some of the city’s problems, even those he identified.
4th Ward
In the 4th Ward, longtime Alderman Ray Ambrose is facing Jeffrey Bass, the general manager for a construction supply business, and Bud Wilkins, an account manager for a steel distribution firm.
(Heather Brinkschroeder announced Monday she’s no longer pursuing the seat.)
We believe Bass and Ambrose give voters a solid choice in November.
We were impressed with Bass. He struck us as a forward-thinking leader who would be a good representative for a ward made up of mostly working-class families.
He urged greater attention to the West Locust Street business corridor and tighter coordination with Davenport schools to make neighborhoods stronger and safer. Bass also impressed us that he would do the job with a sensible point of view. He talked about ways to make parks programs more affordable and about mitigating flooding by leaning on less intrusive remedies.
Ambrose has been on the city council for 22 years, the longest-serving of any current alderman. This board has had its disagreements with him over the years. He is often controversial and reactionary. Still, he is undoubtedly devoted to his ward.
Ambrose is bullish on Davenport, lauding the economic progress in the city over the last 22 years. And he is adamant about keeping taxes down to enable future economic success.
Wilkins proposed expanding some of the downtown beautification projects, and wants to help form more neighborhood watch groups. But, in the end, we did not find him to be as ready for the job as the other two.
5th Ward
In the 5th Ward, our choices are Matthew Dohrmann, who works in accounting at Deere & Co., and Auston McLain, a Family Resources employee who advocates for the victims of sex trafficking.
This was a difficult choice, especially because we also liked Kristi Miller, who worked in the banking and mortgage industry.
We found Dohrmann to be smart and well-traveled. He’s lived recently in North Dakota, Wisconsin and Kansas, which has given him a perspective of how other Midwest places are dealing with some of the same infrastructure, demographic and economic development challenges that Davenport faces.
Dohrmann wants to sell the city to 20-somethings like himself, and it’s clear he has given some thought to how to do it - by focusing on improving neighborhoods and incentivizing high-demand job creation.
McLain also brings a varied background to the job, working in several states himself. He said he wants to help organizations that “give back,” those groups that deal with some of the more vulnerable in our community.
This as a good instinct. He also brought a thoughtful view to riverfront protection and investment.
For her part, Miller seemed pretty tapped into the ward and recognized the difficulty that problem rental properties can have on neighborhoods, which has long been a problem.
Her financial background also was impressive, as is her ability to relate to people.
The others running for the seat are Patrick Driscoll, Jr., a former city employee, as well as Tim Kelly and T. Ragnvald Jacobson.
We did not get a chance to meet with Kelly, unfortunately. Jacobson told us he got into the race because he objected to people being able to file neighborhood complaints anonymously. That does not seem to us like a solid foundation to run for alderman.
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Fort Dodge Messenger. October 1, 2019
Shellabration Inc. does it again
The all volunteer group that is Shellabration Inc. recently produced another masterpiece.
Even with the skies threatening rain throughout the day on Sept 21, about 3,800 people crammed into the intersection of Central Avenue and Ninth Street for a few hours of live country music called the Downtown Country Jam.
The rain stayed away and performers Casey Muessigman, Brad Morgan, and the headline act, Chris Janson, put on an electrifying show.
Making it all possible was Jim Reed, the leader of Shellabration Inc., and his team of hundreds of volunteers.
“It’s a total team effort, all hands on deck,” Reed said shortly after the show. “And so the thing that is always paramount is this doesn’t happen without collective support.”
The work starts long before concert night, when the volunteers start scouting prospective talent for the show. Then they have to negotiate with the performers to get them to come to Fort Dodge.
The physical work to set up the Downtown Country Jam started on Sept. 20. That’s when volunteers went to work building the stage and setting up every other needed facility.
Then on Sept. 22, the volunteers took it all down.
The exact number of volunteers hard at work on any given concert varies, but Shellabration Inc., which also puts on a rock concert in the summer at Harlan and Hazel Rogers Sports Complex, has had amost 450 people involved in producing some shows.
No matter how many volunteers there are, they take time out of their own lives to provide a special event for Fort Dodge and the surrounding area. That’s worthy of praise.
We join music lovers from throughout the region in saying thank you.
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Dubuque Telegraph Herald. October 2, 2019
Keeping score: Let’s move on
The Telegraph Herald on Sunday reported that the City of Dubuque is about to stop its decade-long practice of tracking whether people arrested locally are receiving federal housing vouchers through the city.
These statistics have been kept during a rather turbulent 10-year period, marked by community debate regarding the correlation (if any) between crime and Section 8 participants, city efforts to modify and scale back its Section 8 participation, and chastisement (and worse) from the federal government, which portrayed those modifications as racist.
It is time to move on. Ten years of record-keeping have shown, in general, that blame attributed to Section 8 for crime is overblown.
With that stated, it must be noted that Dubuque’s compilation of statistics was inexact. Authorities did about the best they could, without committing incredible amounts of additional resources just to chase down facts that might not have been available anyway.
Mark Twain once said, “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”
And such is the case here. How and where to apply statistics - especially in the absence of certain facts - leaves the Dubuque initiative with generalities more than specifics.
Call it getting into the weeds or chasing down a rabbit hole - pick your saying - but we don’t plan to go there regarding all of Dubuque’s numbers. But some numbers should be mentioned.
The numbers city officials are pushing to the fore are these: Dubuque’s Section 8 participants make up about 3.1% of the city’s population, and they accounted for 3.6% of the arrests made in the city.
Those two numbers are pretty darn close. However, for the arrest rate to get down to 3.6%, arrests of non-residents and people whose addresses or Section 8 status could not be verified were assumed to have no connection with the Dubuque housing assistance program. They were lumped into the bigger number.
Backing out arrestees with a permanent address outside the city - they account for one in four arrests overall - that 3.6% figure increases to 4.7%.
Is that cause for alarm? No.
Considering the strong correlation between poverty and crime, and considering that the Housing Choice Voucher program helps low-income residents, if there was any surprise about Dubuque’s numbers it is that there isn’t the huge disparity that Section 8 critics suggest.
Do away with Section 8 in Dubuque? Not only is that not justified, if even possible, it likely would force into the streets hundreds of our most vulnerable neighbors, including veterans, seniors and people with disabilities. Section 8 allows a roof over their heads.
Are there some bad actors and incidents involving Section 8 participants? Certainly. And we’ve heard about them. What program anywhere - public or private sector - is free of problems?
Section 8 addresses an important need in the community, and a decade of record-keeping has provided some perspective into the conversation.
Now, it’s time to turn the page, close the book and allow local leaders to devote those resources elsewhere.
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