February 9, 2012

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Legislators question Atalissa council members about bunkhouse

February 17, 2009 By

The Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee opened hearings today into the case of 21 mentally disabled men living in a bunkhouse in Atalissa. The Texas company that ran the bunkhouse paid rent to the eastern Iowa city of Atalissa, which owns the 105-year-old building.

Long-time Atalissa City Council member Angie Dickey said she didn’t realize the men were living in a fire hazard until she heard the story in the news. “Believe me, if they were mistreated or something was going on with them, there are a lot of people in town who would be very upset about it and would want to make sure that nothing bad was happening to them,” Dickey said.

According to Dickey, Atalissa lacks the resources to inspect the building on a regular basis. ”We are obviously a small town. We have three part time employees, two part-time police officers and we have a part time clerk. When it snows in our town either the mayor or a council person is the one that goes out in a snow plow and cleans up our streets,” Dickey told legislators, “so we do not have anything like building code inspector, or a housing inspector, or anything like that.”

Dickey said Henry’s Turkey Service, the firm renting the old schoolhouse in Atalissa, had promised to replace the broken boiler with baseboard heat, but Dickey admitted city officials never checked to make sure that happened. Space heaters were providing the only heat in the building.

Dennis Hepker, another member of the Atalissa City Council, told legislators he once called the Department of Human Services to ask about the situation, but Hepker said he was told without proof of abuse, the agency didn’t have time to investigate. Hepker said he never felt the men were being mistreated, so he dropped the issue. “You can tell by a person’s dress and everything about where they live and these guys were always well dressed and clean and polite. There was no evidence they were living someplace nasty,” he said. “Maybe we should have looked a little bit harder, but this had been going on all our lives.”

After the Atalissa city council members spoke several legislators on the committee expressed their appreciation for small town life and declined to lay any blame at city officials’ feet. Representative Vicki Lensing, a Democrat from Iowa City, was among them. “Your remarks show your concern for these gentlemen and that they have been part of your lives,” Lensing said. “I don’t think anyone wants to cast blame on anything you’ve done and that shows through, so thank you for being here.”

That prompted Representative Wayne Ford, a Democrat from Des Moines, to weigh in, charging that if a similar bunkhouse were discovered in a city, heads would roll. ”There’s blood on everybody’s hands, on everybody. Anybody who try to think there’s not blood on their hands is not dealing right,” Ford said. “To say well somebody didn’t get a phone call or I don’t know who I made the phone call to or we don’t have inspections cause we ain’t got no money — I mean that’s just too naive.”

The Government Oversight Committee meeting began with testimony from the Department of Human services which responded to a call about the bunkhouse just over a week ago. Vern Armstrong, a D.H.S. administrator, said within 48 hours the fire marshall had ruled the building unsafe and his staff immediately went to work to find the 21 mentally retarded men a new home. “Our staff, in my opinion, responded quite quickly on this. To have 38 workers respond on a weekend is pretty amazing. They all volunteered to do it,” Armstrong said. “We provided 24/7 supervision for these gentlemen while they were in the hotel and so that’s how we’ve responded.”

The Government Oversight Committee will reconvene on Thursday to question the Department of Inspections and Appeals about complaints it received about the Atalissa bunkhouse earlier in the decade.

Filed Under: Politics & Government Tagged With: , , ,

Bill would force public hearings over proposed livestock confinements

February 17, 2009 By

A bill that’s under review at the statehouse would require more public input before livestock confinements may be built on Iowa farms. Under current law, county supervisors can review construction applications and forward their opinions to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, but those county officials have no authority to reject a livestock farmer’s permit.

Representative Marcie Frevert, a Democrat from Emmetsburg, is pushing a bill that would require a public hearing in the county where a new livestock confinement is proposed. "No one is, at this point, required to have a public hearing. That is current law," Frevert says. "This would change it to say that there shall be a public hearing."

Environmental groups favor public hearings. Jerry Peckham, a farmer in Greene County, heads a group called Iowa Rivers Revival. "There’s a great deal of frustration in our area of Greene County with the feeling that people have very little input on how facilities are sited and whether they should be built," Peckham says. "The Raccoon River that I’m very interested in is polluted a lot of times with manure."

But county officials aren’t wild about the bill. Nate Bonnett of the Iowa Association of Counties says it’s unfair to put supervisors out before the firing squad in a public hearing. "Supervisors are going to be going out on a limb with these hearings and quite frankly receive a lot of negative input from citizens a lot of times and really it’s out of their control of whether the confinement’s going to go up or not," Bonnett says. "We don’t want to put ourselves in a position where we have to have a hearing and get beat up by the public over something that we have no control over stopping."

But legislators like Frevert who back the bill have very little sympathy for that argument. Frevert says if she and other lawmakers in Des Moines have to hear the complaints about hog lots, then so should county supervisors. "You know, they make as much as I do and they get to sleep in their own bed at night," Frevert says. "It’s my job to listen and it’s their job to listen."

Potential critics of the bill attended a statehouse hearing on the legislation, but representatives of the Farm Bureau and an agribusiness association declined to publicly comment on the bill. Some large hog producers have gone public with their opposition to the legislation.

Filed Under: Agriculture, Business, Politics & Government Tagged With: , , ,

Business group runs ads attacking bills backed by "union bosses"

February 17, 2009 By

The Iowa Association of Business and Industry has launched an ad campaign to protest union-backed bills which are under consideration in the legislature.

Charles Sukup, president of Sukup Manufacturing in Sheffield, is chairman of the business group’s board of directors. "Our members are very concerned about the direction and multitude of bills being introduced that are going to have a very detrimental effect on business," Sukup says.

The 1400 companies that are members of the Iowa Association of Business and Industry have collectively produced a radio ad attacking "union bosses" who the business group accuses of "writing a very scary" wish list of bills. Sukup says if those union-backed bills become law, property taxes will go up and health care costs for businesses with go up at least five percent. "Seems to me the last thing you want to do is make it harder on business to expand and take care of their employees here," Sukup says.

A bill that would require a "prevailing wage" for those who work on most taxpayer-funded construction projects in Iowa is scheduled for debate in the Iowa House on Thursday. Another labor-related bill under consideration would expand the topics union workers may bring up during contract negotiations. Governor Culver vetoed a similar bill last year, and Sukup says his business group is hoping to fight an "uphil battle" and kill what he calls a "perfect storm" of union-backed bills.

"We need to get the word out to people and explain the dire circumstances because things can very quickly happen here at the capitol and then we have to live with them for years and years thereafter and then people slowly wake up to the consequences," Sukup says. "…We’re scared to death by what we’re seeing (in) some of these proposals."

Sukup’s company makes grain bins and grain dryers, and employs about 330. Sukup was among three business executives who held a news conference at the statehouse today to lodge specific complaints about what they called "a wide range of bad bills" that expand the illnesses and conditions which insurance policies must cover — things like substance abuse treatment and eating disorders.

Listen to the Iowa Association of Business and Industry radio ad by clicking on the audio link below. 

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AUDIO: Iowa ABI radio ad (mp3 runs 1 min)

Filed Under: Agriculture, Business, Politics & Government Tagged With: , , , ,

State audit finds nearly $67,000 mishandled by former city employees in Monticello

February 17, 2009 By

State Auditor David Vaudt says a special investigation by his office has found a husband and wife mismanaged nearly $67,000 in taxpayer money in the eastern Iowa town of Monticello. The state audit was requested after concerns were raised about the salary paid to Debi Oldaker-Tedrow, who served as the Quality Assurance Coordinator for the Monticello Ambulance Service. Vaudt says the investigation found Oldaker-Tedrow received nearly $30,000 in salary that she was not entitled to because she was actually working for a private hospital or taking flying lessons during the time she claimed to be working for the city of Monticello.

Oldaker-Tedrow’s supervisor was Larry Tedrow. "Her husband was the former ambulance director, so obviously he was responsible for supervising his own wife – who wasn’t working during the time she claimed to be working," Vaudt said. Tedrow and his wife were both fired in November of 2007, after the city administrator hired a private investigator to monitor Oldaker-Tedrow’s schedule.

Vaudt also reports that the city was unable to collect nearly $28,000 for billings for ambulance services because the billings were incorrect or not filed in a timely manner by Oldaker-Tedrow. The investigation also found just over $7,600 of improper disbursements from the Monticello Emergency Management Team. Tedrow and his wife served as president and secretary, respectively, on that nonprofit organization.

Copies of the report have been filed with the Division of Criminal Investigation, the Jones County Attorney’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts, Politics & Government

While Iowa home sales fall, ex-Hawk realtor bucks trend

February 17, 2009 By

Cy Phillips The number of homes sold in Iowa fell 11% last year, while the average statewide sales price dropped two-percent. With so many job cuts and troubles in the banking and housing industries, now might not seem to be the best time to go into real estate.

Still, one new realtor in central Iowa says he’s excited after his first year in the business and chalks up his stellar record to his roots, having grown up on a farm. "Once I come in contact with someone, either a referral or someone I meet at an open house or randomly in a grocery store, once I’m in contact with them, I try and treat them like I treat my wife," Cy Phillips says. "I try and do the best job I possibly can. Communication’s the key in this business and that’s one thing I’ve learned in my short career."

The 25-year-old Phillips won the "Rookie of the Year" award from the Des Moines Area Association of Realtors after selling 31 homes last year, his first full year on the job. That’s more than six times better than the average.

Phillips says, "The average closed transaction for a realtor in Des Moines was just over five (homes) over the course of the year so with 31, it was a pretty good year." The average of 5.4 homes sold was compiled from the sales of some 1,500 central Iowa realtors. Phillips graduated with a communications degree from the University of Iowa in 2006 and became a realtor in 2007.

Like farming, he says being a realtor means he’s in to work early, working hard and working long hours, but he says that ethic is paying off, even in tough economic times. He’s upbeat about the year ahead. Phillips says, "2009, it’s started off really well and I think it’s actually going to be a good year, at least where I do the majority of my business, the west side of Des Moines, could not be more solid."

He’s a native of Arkansas, where he grew up on a rice farm. Phillips was recruited to the U-of-I to play football, where he was a back-up quarterback during the seasons from 2002 through ’06. His wife, who he met during his freshman year at Iowa, is a Clive native and she’s the reason they ended up settling in central Iowa.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: ,

Culver appoints task force in response to Atalissa bunkhouse case

February 17, 2009 By

Governor Culver this morning signed an executive order creating a Dependent Adult Task Force. The move is in response to the situation in the eastern Iowa town of Atalissa, where 21 mentally retarded men were living in a bunkhouse which the fire marshall shut down for fire code violations. Officials later discovered the men were being paid little, as most of their paychecks from a turkey slaughterhouse in West Liberty were turned over to a Texas firm which ran the bunkhouse.

"In Iowa, we expect all employers, including the out-of-state corporations doing business in our state, to take the high road and to play by the rules and above all there will absolutely be no tolerance for those who would take advantage of our most-vulnerable citizens," Culver says.

The governor vows to "fully investigate" other unlicensed facilities which house dependent adults. Culver has asked the task force to make recommendations for changes in state regulations or in state law to ensure the "deplorable" situation in Atalissa isn’t happening elsewhere. "We will not allow dependent adult citizens with mental retardation to be the victims of the kind of predatory behavior that seems to have been practiced by the Henry’s Turkey Service," Culver says. Henry’s Turkey Service is the Texas company that ran the bunkhouse in Atalissa where mentally retarded men ranging in age from 29 to over 70 lived.

The mayor of Atalissa and a member of the city  council are testifying this morning before the Legislature’s Oversight Committee. The City of Atalissa owned the 105-year-old school building which was turned into a bunkhouse for the mentally retarded men and the Texas company paid rent to the city for over 30 years.

Filed Under: Agriculture, Politics & Government Tagged With: , , , ,

Class 4A: Harrison Barnes, Ames

February 17, 2009 By

The junior guard averaged 20 points and shot 87 percent from the field in two victories for the Little Cyclones. Barnes scored 25 points, including 7-of-8 from three point range, and added three assists in a victory over Fort Dodge. He finished the week by making 10-of-12 shots from behind the arc.

 

Filed Under: INS Player of the Week, Uncategorized
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