$1.25

VOLUME 157, ISSUE 3

7,900 readers like you

enjoy this newspaper!

ANELIA K. DIMITROVA PHOTO

Social studies teachers Miranda Haugen, Whitney Dahlgren and Jason Groth worked on the curriculum

during a professional development day at the middle school on Monday. Students were home on Martin

Luther King’s Day. Wartburg student Jordan Manning also worked with the group.

IndependentBremer county

by ANELIA K. DIMITROVAeditorcft@gmail.com

Voters in 22 school districts will be heading to the polls on Feb. 3 to decide whether Hawkeye Community

College could move forward with a planned expansion.

Residents of 10 counties, including Bremer and Black Hawk, are being asked to approve a $25-million bond so that the college can continue to address workforce development issues and cater to the needs of the communities it serves.

A previous 10-year measure is ending, creating the need for the new bond referendum since community colleges in Iowa are primarily funded by issuing general obligation bonds. If the bond is approved, the average homeowner will continue to pay $1.10 per month for $100,000 home.

The college, which is going to be marking its 50th birthday next year, is seeking to build two new centers, renovate another, and continue to expand job training programs in area high schools.

In three overlapping phases, over the next 20 years, the college plans to build an $8-million adult education center. The 40,000-square-foot state-

of-the-art facility will replace two outdated facilities in Waterloo, the Metro Center at 844 West Fourth Street in Waterloo, built in 1962, and the MLK Jr Center at 515 Beech St.

Additionally, a 75,000-square-foot, $15-million Health Sciences Technology Center will create a com-mon roof for nursing, dental, physical therapy and EMS, and provide space

for new programs.Hawkeye Community College

President Linda Allen stopped at Waverly Newspapers office on Friday to explain the issues on the bond and discuss the college’s strategic plan.

Allen talked about Iowa’s challeng-es in recruiting and retaining skilled

The Neighborhood Closet, located under the water tower on Bremer Ave. in Waverly, has been busy making lots of changes.

In the last year, the store has expanded from 7,000 square feet to over 10,000 square feet. Additionally, the local can redemption facility moved next to Dollar General a l lowing Neighborhood Closet to use that space for a 4,000-square-foot warehouse.

“Our furniture and mat-tress business grew to apoint where we have severalsemis of merchandise com-ing in every week, and ourphysical space had toexpand,” said store managerErica Brand, “We hear frommany customers who comein from a friend referral thatwe have the lowest prices.Hearing this from customersis a great testament to ourteam that we are doing an

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

GO-HAWKS STAY

UNDEFEATED

PAGE A10

County roads need fixing Gigabit internet sounds great but most won’t use it

Council holds budget session

Hawkeye Community College president explains bond issue

by DOROTHY DE SOUZA GUEDES

editorcft@gmail.com

Gigabit internet speed sounds great but is largely unnecessary for the typical home or business internet user, experts explain.

“It sounds really nice and makes a lot of good political talk but it’s really wasted bandwidth,” said Rich McBurney, CEO of Butler-Bremer Communications based in Plainfield.

For about a year, the company has offered speed up to 50 mbps. By next year, McBurney expects to offer

speeds up to 100 mbps. One consider-ation for i n c r e a s i n g s p e e d s beyond that is most elec-tronics, such as WiFi rout-ers, max out at 100 mbps, he said.

His company providesservices to about 2,700 resi-dents in six Bremer andButler county communities.About 60 percent now haveaccess to next-generationbroadband with speeds up

Neighborhood closet celebrates re-opening

See GIGABIT, A18

See RE-OPENING, A18See COLLEGE, A18

PREPPING FOR SCHOOL

ANELIA K. DIMITROVA PHOTO

President Linda Allen came to the Waverly paper to explain the colleges

vision over the next decade.

ANELIA K. DIMITROVA PHOTO

The Neighborhood Closet is expanding its model of

serving the community.

RICH MCBURNEY

CEO

by CHRIS DEBACKnews1@waverlynewspapers.com

The Waverly City Council held a budget session meet-ing to discuss the 2015-2016 plan Saturday morning.

This was the first of two meetings about the City of Waverly’s budget on sequen-tial Saturdays. They also held a budget meeting at 5:30 p.m. before the normal City Council meeting yes-terday.

Department heads pre-sented their proposed bud-get and answered questions from the council.

Currently, the proposed budget is $5,804,997, but

that will change between now and when the budget is finalized. It is a balanced budget which is required by state law.

“This budget, like I have said a number of times, has very minimal changes,” City Administrator Phil Jones said, “The reason we are doing that because we want to see where the state tax level goes in the future, were the property tax value grows in the future.”

Since the meeting on Saturday, the ambulance, under public safety, has increased their budget by $135,000 from $43,000 to

by ANELIA K. DIMITROVA

editorcft@gmail.com

This winter, as county roads get bumpier and drivers grumpier, patching up potholes may not be a sustainable way to fix the roads.

The Bremer County Board of Supervisors on

Jan. 12 signed a res-olution urg-ing the Legislature to find a l o n g - t e r m solution to the county’s deteriorat-ing roads.

The motion, proposed

by District 2 Supervisor Tim O’Neil, and seconded by District 1 Supervisor Ken Kammeyer, is similar to the decisions made by other supervisors in the state at the request of the Iowa State Association of County Supervisors, which wants to shed light on the importance of a good transportation system as a catalyst for economic growth.

The state’s Road Use Tax Fund, which is generated through the fuel tax and

vehicle registration, has not increased significantly since 1989, according to experts.

In 2011, Gov. Terry Branstand’s Transportation 2020 Citizen Advisory Council found that the state would need at least $215 million per year of increased funding over the next 20 years, in addition to the funding being provided by the TIME-21 revenues, just to meet the most criti-cal needs of the state’s

See COUNCIL, A18

DUANE

HILDEBRANDT

SUPERVISOR

See ROADS, A18

www.waverlynewspapers.comWAVERLY, IOWA

Supervisors sendmessage to legislators

A18 NEWS TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2015

WAVERLY DEMOCRAT

www.waverlynewspapers.com

Supervisors affirm need for road funds to keep critical infrastructure

CONTINUED FROM A1

$178,000 to include the purchase of a new ambulance. That additional money is coming from a reserve account that the city had been putting money into for such events.

Public Safety, without reflecting the purchase of the new ambulance, has a budget of $1,880,440 with police asking for $1,686,724 and fire $150,716. That reflects 32.4 percent of the overall budget.

The police have budgeted for the purchase of Ford Police Interceptor Utility while replacing the outdated patrol in-car cameras with a new system.

The council members questioned Waverly Police Chief Rich Pursell about why his department needed the Interceptor Utility.

Pursell responded that it provides increased space in the back seat. Police have sometimes, for bigger sus-pects, had to lay people down in their back seat rather than strap them in properly, he explained. It also receives slightly better gas mileage on top of some other posi-tives.

“We spend a lot of time inside the vehicle, so the ergonomics of the vehicle was an important factor,” Pursell said during the meeting. “The ergonomics of the front seat and the rear seat. They come from a study that Michigan State does annually.”

The city will tap into about $6,000 in Local Option Sales Tax funds for the replacement of the vehicles. Council member Dan McKenzie said that the issue was discussed last year.

“I think the idea that we have with that is, that is a funding source available, to make it available it needs to be for capital items, not on going salaries and commu-nity obligations,” Jones said.

Public Works, which includes public works adminis-tration ($0), engineering ($0), streets ($307,685) and equipment services ($90,605), has proposed a budget of $398,290.

Health and Social Services is asking for $11,750.Culture and Recreation, which includes the public

library ($861,266), leisure service administration ($172,216), parks ($342,927), Harlington Cemetery ($146,957), golf course and pro shop ($545,046), aquat-ics ($93,273) and city hall and civic center ($135,881), is asking for a total budget of $2,297,566. That reflects 39.6 percent of the total budget.

Community and Economic Development, which includes economic development ($120,378), communi-ty development and zoning ($148,931) and other agency contributions ($63,968), for a total budget of $333,277.

General Government, which includes legislative and legal ($112,395), executive administration ($290,204) and account and billing ($386,075), for a total budget of $788,674.

Lastly, the city has budgeted $95,00 for liability insur-ance.

CONTINUED FROM A1

transportation infrastructure, according to the resolu-tion.

While the county supervisors understand thattheir resolution is largely symbolic in nature, theyhope their voice would help enhance the overall cho-rus of voices making the case to the governor and thelegislators that a long-term solution is urgent.

Specifically, the resolution says, the motor fuel taxrevenues need to be increased to cover the $215 mil-lion required to meet the critical needs; that the IowaDepartment of Transportation needs to be in a posi-tion to provide state funds to counties and cities inlieu of federal funds; and that the permit fee for over-size or overweight vehicles needs to be increased.

County Engineer Todd Fonkert thinks some mech-anism of funding needs to be made available as wait-ing is a no-win game.

“The longer we wait to find critical funds for trans-portation, the more expensive it gets,” he said. “One ofthe possibilities may be a sales tax or a combination ofa sales tax on price per gallon.”

For FY 2009-10, Bremer County received$2,278,923.39 from the Road Use Tax fund. For FY2013-14, Bremer County’s fund totaled $2,685,834.01,and to date, for FY 2014-15, that number is$1,694,011.15.

“We are strictly in a maintenance kind of mode,”Fonkert said.

Bremer County has 720 miles of roads, he added.“The cost has increased but we’ve got to do more

with the same money,” Fonkert said. “In reality we, aredoing less with the same money because we cannotafford the materials. We got more projects than we gotmoney for. Things are going to have to slide back orstay stagnant for a while.”

Board Chairman Dewey Hildebrandt noted thatthere are no easy solutions.

“Nobody likes to have a tax increase but some ofthe roads we are driving on are beyond the point thatneed patching,” Hildebrandt said. “The road leadinginto Readlyn is atrocious.”

He added that railroad overpass north of WapsieValley, which is also a county road, is also in badshape.

“It almost knocks the fillings out of your teeth,”Hildebrandt said.

“If you want to get the bottom side of your carclean, drive on it,” quipped Neil.

Gigabit speed is wasted bandwidthCONTINUED FROM A1

to 50 mbps. Most choose packages with speeds of 10 or 20 Mbps, McBurney said.

The higher speeds are possible because the more than 100-year-old company has been gradually replacing older, slower copper cable with higher speed fiber-optic cable. So far Shell Rock, Tripoli and parts of Clarksville have fiber optics installed, with ongoing installation in Clarksville.

“The fiber is just a better alternative to provide these high bandwidth services,” McBurney said.

The company periodical-ly evaluates the customer’s need for increased internet speed. Potential speed is contingent on the technical capabilities of the lines and equipment linking custom-ers to the internet. The older copper lines can handle up to 8 mbps, McBurney said. Copper and fiber-optic lines cost about the same so it just made sense to replace aging copper lines with fiber-optic, he said.

It costs B-B about $3,200 per premise to run fiber optic to the outside of a home – and that’s why not every company is doing it, McBurney said.

For a town of 2,000 to 3,000 people the investment could be about $5 million,

said Dave Duncan, CEO, Iowa Communications Alliance. “For one town.”

High-speed broadband and the affordability of expansion is a hot topic at the Des Moines-based Iowa Communications Alliance, which represents more than 130 community-based tele-communications providers, such as Butler-Bremer Communications.

The good news is there are already incentives in place to offset costs, Duncan said.

For starters, there’s the Universal Service Fund: A fee on every phone bill goes into this fund. Money is redistrib-uted to high-cost service areas because providers are required to provide phone service to all customers with-in their service area. The fund is being expanded to include internet service, Duncan said.

“USSF has been used to build broadband networks to many, many communities,” Duncan said.

Other incentives include the U.S. Department of Agriculture broadband loan program and federal stimu-lus dollars – billions of dol-lars – distributed between 2009-2014 for broadband deployment.

“You’ve got all the differ-ent programs…but they’re not enough because it’s so

expensive,” Duncan said. Unlike Butler-Bremer

Communications custom-ers, not everyone in Iowa has access to next-generation broadband, which Duncan defined as speeds of 25 mbps and up. But the Iowa Legislature, Governor Branstad and President Barack Obama are talking about ways to expand incen-tives to offset costs, Duncan said. The governor is looking at ways to create incentives for providers to “edge out” – build access to more rural customers, he said.

“If it was cheap or easy…everybody would have access – but it’s not,” said Duncan.

Fiber-optic cable is not the only cost. There is also electronics costs on both ends, sender and receiver. For a home or business to receive a fiber-optic signal, electronic equipment is attached outdoors that reads fiber-optic pulses and splits it between internet, televi-sion, and telephone, Duncan explained. On the other end there is specialized equip-ment that changes a signal to light pulses over the fiber-optic.

“Copper networks use electrical pulses to transmit sound, images, data, etc., via switched networks. Fiber optic networks use light pulses to transmit sound,

images, data, etc. A singlevoice call or a video or a datamessage might traverse mul-tiple networks and be con-verted to and from electricsignals to light pulses,”Duncan explained.

There’s just no substitu-tion for fiber optics for thebest and fastest broadbandconnection, he said. Duncanand McBurney agree thatthere are communities otherthan Cedar Falls with gigabit-speed capability. The equip-ment used by Cedar Falls iscommonly used by localtelephone companies. Assoon as there is demand forgigabit service those compa-nies can fairly easily offer thefastest internet speeds.

“So far their consumersaren’t asking for it,” Duncansaid.

Communities offeringsuper high-speed broadbandhave the most demand fromschools, sometimes due toone-on-one laptop pro-grams, and health care facili-ties, due to the constanttransfer of large amounts ofmedical data, Duncan said.

But requests for super-fast internet speeds oftencome on the entertainmentside, especially from peoplewho do live online gaming:faster speed means, well,faster shooting, Duncan said.

“The person with the fast-est connection is going towin,” he said.

Council holds budget session

Neighborhood closet expands

CONTINUED FROM A1

excellent job in customer service.”Samantha Speicher, who is the company’s marketing director,

said the company took a hard look at the mattress line. “In addi-tion to the several mattresses we already offer that are under $100, we wanted to find the highest quality low price mattress that we could,” Speicher said.

The company visited with several manufacturers and decided that it would make the most sense to create the Refreshed Collection.

“As a Wartburg alum, I have experienced the importance of the Waverly Community and we wanted to bring community into this mattress line,” Speicher said. “We have four mattresses which are named after places that are local and that are important to the community.”

The mattresses in the Refreshed Collection are the Kohlmann Firm, Waverly Plush, Wapsipinicon Pillow Top, and Cedar Gel Hybrid. Neighborhood Closet wanted to offer the highest quality standard and these beds have some of the longest warranties in the industry, the Cedar Gel Hybrid, for example has a 25 year war-ranty.”

“Though several things changed at Neighborhood Closet, many things are still the same,” said owner Amy Schneider. “We improved our children and women’s categories by expanding the space in those categories and working with our consignors and suppliers to get even more great merchandise.”

Neighborhood Closet opened a Mattress & Furniture Outlet in December.

That store is now doing its formal grand opening. Schneider said, “With all the changes it made sense to do a Grand Re-Opening in Waverly, in conjunction with the Grand Opening in Evansdale. We are planning to open several large format Neighborhood Closet stores as great people and qualified real estate become available.”

CONTINUED FROM A1

for further economic devel-opment in a competitive global economy.

In the field of nursing, for instance, she said that close to half of Iowa’s nurses are over 50 years old, and are looking for opportunities to retrain because they can no longer handle the physical work.

Providing opportunities for health-related jobs for them is essential, Allen added.

“This allows us to increase capacity in high-demand programs such as nursing,” she said.

The college will also use the money to update Grundy Hall, which was built in 1983, to the tune of $2 million. The upgraded 67,700-square-foot building will allow for tech-nology improvements and customized lab spaces, among other things.

And while the facilities inventory is being upgraded, the college will also expand its high school career acade-mies at an estimated cost of $1.5 million. The academies, which are intended to bridge high school and academic careers, will be hosted at strategic locations through-out the counties so they can serve the needs of learners

most efficiently.Allen said that more than

18,000 people each year go through programs and ser-vices offered by HCC.

The regional economicimpact, she added, translatesin $106 million and 1,348jobs.

“Ninety-four percent ofour graduates stay in Iowa,”she said.

Allen joked about visitingwith Waverly Mayor ChuckInfelt and discussing with him the prospect of a newlocation for the college’s Waverly branch.

“He wore off my highheels,” she joked.

Hawkeye Community College president explains bond issue

COURTESY PHOTO

Amy Schneider, the store’s co-owner, says the furniture busi-ness has grown fast.

waverlylp.comaHH

Building homes insulated with spray

foam will not only provide you with

a more energy eicient home, it can

also help reduce monthly heating

and cooling costs!

Visit waverlylp.com/eefor more information

Introducing the newSpray Foam & Air Sealing rebate!