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Shenandoah hotel fights bed bugs

November 6, 2009 By
Paul Hughes and new carpet at the Shenandoah Days Inn

Paul Hughes and new carpet at the Shenandoah Days Inn

The new management at Shenandoah’s Days Inn hotel is dealing with what one former employee says is an old issue — bed bugs. A former employee who wishes to remain anonymous says the bed bug issue is nothing new.

He said, “They had bed bugs for about 6 – 8 months and would never get rid of them, they said it would cost too much to exterminate. I found one and put in a bag to show the health inspector,and the boss said, ‘Throw it away or you’ll be fired.’ They’d just wash the sheets with blood stains and bugs and put them back on the beds and not get new sheets. They knew about this for a long time.”

The man claims that OSHA just down the hotel this week because of the issue and the old management and many on staff recently quit because of cleanliness issues. New to the position this week is Essex native Paul Hughes. Hughes says crews are replacing every carpet and bed in the building. : “We’re getting everything taken care of that needed to be taken care of 6 months to a year ago. We’re doing this to better the hotel and give the people coming in to stay here a better place to stay,” Hughes says.

Hughes says they’re working to become a FEMA certified hotel.

Contributed by Kristan Gray, KMA, Shenandoah

Filed Under: Business, Health & Medicine

Harkin: enroll kids, along with seniors, in Medicare

November 6, 2009 By

Senator Tom Harkin says two new ideas are likely to be aired when the Senate debates health care reform legislation in November or December, although Harkin doesn’t expect either idea to win approval. One provision would enroll all American children in Medicare, through their 19th birthday. 

“We ought to debate it.  We ought to see, now, what’s the cost, but what’s the savings?” Harkin says.  “..What’s the benefits? What’s the detriments?” 

Harkin, a Democrat, is the chairman of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee which passed its version of health care reform this summer.  It did not include this proposal.

Medicare is the government system which currently provides health care coverage to Americans who are 65 and older.  Harkin says enrolling babies, toddlers, kids and teenagers in Medicare would “bridge” a generation gap.

“Young  people of child-bearing age tend to think about Medicare as, ‘Gee, that’s just going to all those older people. What’s in it for me?  There’s nothing in it for me or it won’t be there for me when I retire,’ that kind of thing,” Harkin says. “But if they see that now their babies and their kids that they’re having during their child-bearing years are covered by the same program, well, you get an intergenerational connection.”

Many American children are covered through state-run health care plans which allow low income parents who do not qualify for Medicaid to buy low-cost insurance for their children.  Others, from poorer households, are enrolled in Medicaid, which is government-run insurance for those living in poverty.  Harkin says as a parent’s income fluctuates, so does a child’s insurance coverage.

“People who are on Medicaid, especially families with small kids, they may be on Medicaid for a while, then they get a job, then they’re off. Then they may lose their job, somebody gets sick, their income falls down, they’re off.  They’re in and out and in and out,” Harkin says.  “Every time that happens, it’s an administrative nightmare and it costs a lot of money. Well, if you just have Medicare (for all children until their 19th birthday), that’s the end of it.”

The other idea Harkin expects to be considered during the Senate’s health care debate this year would allow any state government to choose to run a “single payer” or universal health care system for its residents.  Harkin describes it as a “state’s rights” issue.

“I learned this in political science in college.  States are sort of the testing ground for different ideas and different ways of doing things,” Harkin says. “Well, this might be a good test, to see if it works or not — if a state wants to do it.” 

Harkin, though, doesn’t expect that idea or the idea of enrolling kids in Medicare to win senate approval or be included in the health care reform package that lands on the president’s desk. 

Harkin predicts the Democratically-led congress will pass health care reform, but a final version may not get to President Obama ’til early 2010.  Harkin made that prediction during taping of the Iowa Public Television program, “Iowa “Press,” which airs tonight at 7:30 and again on Sunday morning at 11:30.

Filed Under: Business, Health & Medicine, Politics & Government Tagged With: , , ,

Three more H1N1 deaths reported in the state

November 6, 2009 By

The Iowa Department of Public Health today confirmed three more H1N1 deaths. The health department says two adults in Polk County and one adult in Woodbury County are the latest victims of H1N1.

The department say two of the three who died had known risk factors for complications from the disease. The latest three deaths bring the total in the state to 14 — 13 adults and one child. D.P.H. medical director Patricia Quinlisk says state surveillance shows an increase in the illness among adults.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Health & Medicine

Health official says don’t go overboard with hand sanitizers

November 6, 2009 By
Hand sanitizer

Hand sanitizer

The state’s medical director is warning users of hand sanitizers not to go overboard. During the flu season, the Iowa Department of Public Health has recommended using hand sanitizer when soap and water aren’t available. But, Dr. Patricia Quinlisk says it doesn’t much to do the trick.

“You don’t need to get a lot of this on your hands. You just need to have enough that you basically spread it all over the skin,” Quinlisk said. “If you’re putting so much on that your hands are wet for a period of time afterwards, you’re using too much.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Health & Medicine

Cities look to new budgets facing tough decisions

November 6, 2009 By

With local elections now completed, city governments will begin working on their budgets for next year. The budget picture for many communities does not appear as dire as the state budget situation, but it’s not going to be an easy year. The executive director of the Iowa League of Cities, Alan Kemp, says property tax collections are stagnant while healthcare and pension costs are rising.

“There are many services that cities provide that they simply can’t say well I’m not going to do it. If it snows, you’re plowing snow, you really don’t have the ability to say well I guess will skip it because we don’t have the money this year. And there are all kinds of services like that there is an expectation that you’ll pick this up,” Kemp says. Cities rely primarily on property taxes for their funding. Kemp says property taxes don’t drop as quickly as sale taxes during a recession.

He says Iowa did not enjoy the sort of the big build up that you saw in other parts of the country where property valuations raised dramatically and so there wasn’t a precipitous drop in property taxes. “Having said that though, just because of the national recession you’re either seeing valuations begin to flatten or slightly decline,” Kemp says.

In the north-central Iowa town of Garner, city administrator Brent Hinson has been warning his department heads it’s going to be a tight budget year. He expects to avoid job losses, furloughs, or even deep cuts to city services. But Hinson says the community may have to delay some capital improvement projects. He says that’s preferable to asking Garner’s 3,000 residents to pay more.

“I don’t think there’s gonna be any appetite for property tax increases here if at all avoidable you know we’ve actually cut our property tax levy five years in a row, Hinson says. Des Moines projects an $11-million shortfall over the next two years. Since the recession, the city has issued fewer construction permits and earned millions less in interest payments. Des Moines city councilman Brian Meyer says couple that with the rising cost of healthcare and pension benefits, the city will have to eliminate some jobs.

“I expect job losses and furloughs or a renegotiation of the union contracts which is still being talked about. But you can’t close a six-million dollar gap by mowing the parks less,” Meyer says. Des Moines is holding a town hall meeting next week to gather citizen input on the budget.

Even cities that have seen business growth will still have to watch their budgets. Dubuque says I-B-M recently opened a new service center and that hopes to employee 13-hundred people by the end of next year. But Dubuque city manager Mike Van Milligan says the economic benefits won’t be realized soon enough to counter a $670,000 projected decline in sales and hotel/motel taxes.

He says the mayor and city council in last year’s budget process did anticipate the national economic downturn would be affecting the city of Dubuque and they added one million dollars to the city reserves to create a cushion. Van Milligan says they don’t think they’re going to be in any kind of a crisis situation — but that could change if the national economic downturn lasts too long.

Dubuque won’t be collecting meaningful property tax revenue from the new development for awhile.

Filed Under: Business, Politics & Government

Documentary features Field of Dreams ghost players

November 6, 2009 By

A documentary about the afterlife of the ghostly baseball players who faded into the corn in the movie “Field of Dreams” will make its Iowa debut this weekend. Joe Scherrman, of Dyersville, is producer and director of “Ghost Player: Relive the Magic.” He says most of those dozen or so men who were hired as “extra” actors had a baseball background and were from northeast Iowa and the surrounding area.

Scherrman says, “They were everything from a farmer to a banker to insurance salesmen, quite a mixture of people, but the one thing they had in common is they were all very, very good ball players.” Just as “Field of Dreams” won great popularity in 1989, he says the men who played on that field found their own fame continuing to rise many years after the original movie left theatres. While they played baseball games to appreciative crowds at the movie site in Dyersville, Scherrman says requests continued to come in that the show go on the road.

“They started teaching the fundamentals of baseball,” Scherrman says. “They have a comedy routine called ‘The Greatest Show on Dirt’ and then they would play competitive baseball or softball, depending on which corporation hired them to come, and eventually it turned into a tour in Japan and after that, a tour of U.S. military bases, which was very special for all the guys.” Scherrman journeyed along with the men in their black-and-white old-style Chicago White Sox uniforms.

“Whenever I could, I videotaped it so we ended up with like 900 hours of video,” Scherrman says. “The state of Iowa thought there was some historical significance to it and so we’re archiving the footage and out of that footage we made a one-hour documentary, telling the story of the Ghost Players.”

The documentary will be screened Saturday at 12:30 P.M. at the State Historical Building in Des Moines as part of the Wild Rose Independent Film Festival. Iowans who can’t make the premiere can catch the documentary on Iowa Public TV on November 29th. For more information, visit: “www.ghostplayer.us“.

Filed Under: Recreation & Entertainment Tagged With:

Northwestern next in Iowa’s path to perfect season

November 6, 2009 By

The Iowa Hawkeyes can take another step toward a perfect season with a victory over Northwestern. Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz says the Hawks have gotten to this point by treating each game like it is the biggest of the season and this one is no different. ferentz says the team understands they are going to be “up against it” week in and week out. He says he can’t imagine any games being tougher than the last two emotionally and physically.

Ferentz says that’s conference football and the teams that handle it will do well and the teams that can’t it shows up eventually. Northwestern quarterback Mike Kafka is expected to play. He suffered a pulled hamstring in last week’s loss to Penn State. Ferentz says if Kafka can’t go, they have a talented back up, and he says Northwestern always seems to have talent at the quarterback spot.

Ferentz says there is no way the Hawks are looking ahead to next week’s visit to Ohio State. He says it’s easy because all they have to do is look back to the last game and see how tough it has been. “If we’re lucky, we’ll all put our feet up over Thanksgiving and says ‘this is a good year, this is a good year’, but we’re not there yet,” Ferentz says.

Filed Under: Sports Tagged With: ,
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