New Rural Atlas Tells Our Tale

A new on-line atlas from the US Dept of Agriculture has just been posted. It tells many figures about Pocahontas County. Here are a few:

--We had a 10.5% poverty rate in 2009.

--We were 38% employed in services; 19% in manufacturing; 13% in agriculture.

--Nearly 10% of us lack a high school diploma(see poverty rate above but don't jump to conclusions); 28% have a college diploma.

--We had 806 farms in 2007, but a quarter of them had less than $10,000 in sales.

--Only 28% of farm operators work off the farm. Only 1% sell food directly for human consumption.

The new website is a map. Roll your cursor over the county of your choice and read all about it. How does Pocahontas compare to where your relatives live? Why don't they move here?

Laurens Shrinks As Fast As County

The Laurens population fell from 1476 in the 2000 census to only 1258 this time, a drop of nearly 15%. That virtually matches the county decline of 15.6%. In the previous decade the city had declined only 5% while the county shed residents nearly twice as fast. The census reports 106 vacant housing units in Laurens, a vacancy rate of 15% Why can't we escape that number of 15%?

Havelock has 138 residents, down from 177 or 22%. Pocahontas fell 9% to 1789.

Marathon has 237 in the current census, down 22% from 2000. Albert City has 699, down only ten residents from the last census. All the 2010 numbers are at this website.

State Grows But County Shrinks

Pocahontas County shrunk by 15.6% in the last ten years. Our population dropped from 8662 to 7310. We are the fastest disappearing county in Iowa. We won that honor once before. Only seven Iowa counties have a smaller population. Meanwhile the state grew by 4%. The map shows the counties coded by rate of change with dark purple dropping by the greatest percentage and dark green increasing the greatest percentage.

Laurens Wins What Gamblers Lost

More than $15,000 in casino winnings were transferred to Laurens today when the Pocahontas County Foundation awarded its 2011 grants. The money went to four projects. An additional $65,000 went to other projects around the county.

The proposed Memory Lane park on South Third Street was granted $10,000. It was the second largest grant given this year, topped only by the $15,000 award to the Palmer fire station.

The Laurens Library will receive $4,000 to replace computers for patron use. The City of Laurens gets $2,000 for its work of digitizing the cemetery records.

Kids Korner Day Care will buy a Wii and two laptop computers with the $1650 it received today. Director Michelle Sandvig predicted the audience would be able to hear squeals of delight from the children when the computers arrive.

The Havelock fire department won $6,000 for new protective gear for firefighters. The Pocahontas Hospital's new wound center received $6,000. Libraries in Rolfe and Plover also received grants for computers. Among other recipients were Pocahontas Congregate Meals, the cities of Fonda, Pocahontas and Rolfe, Pocahontas Chamber of Commerce, the Pocahontas Community Band, and the Fonda Arts Center.

The Foundation grants were preceded by a speech from Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey at the Rialto Theater in Pocahontas. The Foundation is a creation of the Pocahontas County Economic Development Commission. It has operated since 2006.

Prettiest Train in Havelock

Two long rows of brand new identical hopper cars sit on the Union Pacific Railroad siding at Havelock. When the Union Pacific took control of the old Chicago and Northwestern rail line in the mid-1990's a similarly good-looking set of hopper cars came down these same tracks for the maiden voyage by the new owners. Nothing that attractive had been seen since. Until now.

Prosperous New Year: Local Governments Have Little Debt

Laurens may be surrounded by a debt crisis--from Wall Street to California, from Athens to Washington, D.C.--but local governments are in excellent shape.

Pocahontas County carries no debt whatsoever.

The city of Laurens owes $2.6 million, about $2200 per resident. All the cities of Iowa average about $1500 in debt per resident of Iowa. (Unfortunately this figure assumes all Iowans live in a municipality.) Emmetsburg and Pocahontas each carry about $1800 per resident.

The Laurens-Marathon school district is paying off a debt of $2500 per student. Sioux Central's debt is similar. Pocahontas Area Community School owes nearly eight times as much per student as Laurens, due to the new construction nearing completion. Their enrollment will also increase if they combine with Palmer-Pomeroy in the near future. A vote will be held this winter.

Iowa Central Community College also appears on our property tax bills. ICCC owes $37 million. Its debt ranks exactly in the middle of Iowa's thirteen community college districts.

So that leaves personal credit card debt and mortgage or car payment debts. How is your new year looking?

The figures in this story are derived from data at the office of the State Treasurer.

Laurens School "In Need of Assistance"

Acting under the infamous federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, Iowa officials have put Laurens-Marathon elementary and middle school on the state list of "Schools in Need of Assistance (SINA)." There are 356 Iowa schools on the list, including elementary schools in Spencer, Storm Lake, and Fort Dodge. One fourth of all Iowa schools are said to be in need of assistance, but few of them are small rural schools.

Laurens reached this list after being on the "watch list" in 2009-2010.
Also on the new watch list are Emmetsburg Middle School and Pomeroy elementary school.

"The reality is that every school will end up on the list [by 2014] because statistically it's not possible to reach a 100 percent (student proficiency ranking)." says Barb Besch, Spencer's school improvement director, quoted in the Spencer newspaper in August.

Laurens made the list because students were not testing well on reading. Laurens made a previous poor showing in a Des Moines Register comparison in April, 2008. The Register compared the grades of graduates who enrolled at UNI, ISU and SUI. Laurens was in the bottom half while West Bend-Mallard and Pocahontas ranked in the top ten.

The SINA list was made public in August, and was featured in the school publication Laurens-Marathon Update, December/January/February 2010-2011 which arrived in local mailboxes last week. The Update included two messages from superintendent Iner Joelson. While one message was indeed from Joelson, the second was boilerplate provided by the state officials who put Laurens on their SINA list.

In his personal message, Joelson said the SINA list "often stigmatizes the school and the community, not to mention the teachers, students and staff." But he added, "I am confident that we are not on the list because of bad teachers."

In the second, pre-drafted letter Joelson explained that students had not made "adequate yearly progress" for two consecutive years, but also alleged that L-M is "offering a top-quality education." The sentence "Unfortunately, our district is not able to provide school choices because there are no other elementaries in our district for students to attend" was also taken from the state sample letters. Presumably Joelson does not actually think it unfortunate that we lack a second elementary school.

However that sentence does reveal what many observers say is the ultimate effect of NCLB: not to educate children, but to create turmoil, even to the end of changing schools into cash cows.

Cellulosic Ethanol Alters the Landscape

Here wait several hundred large square bales of cornstalks in a field north of Ware. The Poet ethanol plant in Emmetsburg now buys such bales for its experimental process of making ethanol from cellulose rather than from grain. This is the first year of the experiment which is funded in part by the Iowa Power Fund. Newly elected Republicans have been skeptical of the fund which was created by the defeated Governor Culver.

Meanwhile Iowa State's Bruce Babcock says the ethanol blender's credit should not be renewed next month. It does little to boost ethanol production, he says, and points to the way it subsidizes exported ethanol. At present the oil companies benefit from the subsidy as much as farmers do, according to Babcock.

The Music Man Plays Laurens

With a cast of forty-six singing students, the L-M High School performed a musical before an audience of hundreds Friday night. It is the tale of Professor Harold Hill, a traveling salesman of musical instruments. He arrives in River City and tells the people they need him to form a band. Otherwise the town kids will get in trouble at the local pool hall: "Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool."

When the local school board asks for Hill's credentials he turns them into a musical group, too. Pictured are Trent Kischer, Will Cleveland, Jacob Rosendahl, and Colin Lind. Later he romances Marion the librarian. John Stumpf and Kelsey Slattery played the lead roles.

The musical is remembered for several songs including "Til There Was You" and the signature tune of "Seventy-Six Trombones." Hill may have been a peddler and a swindler, but he can surely sing. He's not alone in that regard.

The production was directed by music teacher Joan Enockson with piano accompanist Connie Dallenbach. There is an encore performance Saturday night at 7 p.m. for only seven dollars. Prof. Hill won't be back in these parts any time soon, so don't miss it.

Tom Shaw is State Representative

Laurens police chief Tom Shaw has been elected to the Iowa House of Representatives. Shaw rode to victory as part of a Republican sweep of Iowa election returns, spending more than $100,000 mostly on television attack ads against his school teacher opponent, Susan Bangert of Algona.

After midnight with one precinct still to report, the result was Shaw 66%, Bangert 34%.