Mike Jones is the mayor of Windsor Heights.

If you’ve been overseas, you have to love the buses and trains. It’s effortless to get around in Paris, Berlin, Munich or London. They have vast transportation networks that can cheaply and quickly transport you miles in only a few short minutes. With a few exceptions, such networks don’t exist in U.S. cities.

Ford’s assembly line method of mass production finally made the automobile affordable for the everyman. After World War II, cheap mortgages, the construction of the Interstate Highway System, and veterans receiving benefits from the G.I. Bill gave birth to the sprawling suburbs that we see today. The convenience and the independence granted by the automobile became part of our culture and for better or worse, shapes how we fund infrastructure and public services in our country.

Unfortunately, the automobile revolution has also resulted in the minimizing and under-funding of mass transit.

It’s a textbook example of spending to influence an election.

A brand-new organization, “Citizens For Des Moines,” was registered with the Iowa Secretary of State on October 20. Its president, Doug Gross, is a prominent Republican attorney and major donor to city council member Connie Boesen’s mayoral campaign. The group paid to print and send at least two mass mailings attacking Boesen’s main rival in the mayoral race, which reached numerous Des Moines voters less than a week before the November 7 election.

Iowa law requires disclosure of independent expenditures that support or oppose a candidate for office, and requires political action committees to periodically report on their fundraising and spending. But Citizens For Des Moines exploited gaps in the law, so voters will be unable to find out who donated to the group or how much was spent on mail targeting city council member Josh Mandelbaum.

Mitch Henry chairs the Iowa Unity Coalition.

The Iowa Unity Coalition believes Chelsea Lepley has a proven track record of working side by side with the citizens of Des Moines Ward 2. She is a third generation east-sider who was raised by a single dad who had a good union job. Chelsea is a homeowner in Capitol Park and a graduate of Iowa State University.

Chelsea has served as a neighborhood leader and president of her own neighborhood association. She has served on the Des Moines Park & Recreation Board, the Polk County Trust Funds Board and many other local boards and commissions with the City of Des Moines.

Chelsea is a highly effective and down-to-earth leader. She has experience working with local small business owners, nonprofits and her fellow neighborhood leaders. Chelsea is invested in strengthening her community.

Vote Chelsea Lepley, a new generation leader on November 7.

Top photo of Chelsea Lepley provided by the author and published with permission.

Editor’s note from Laura Belin: Bleeding Heartland welcomes guest posts advocating for progressive or Democratic candidates in the upcoming city or school board elections.

The Des Moines Register’s editorial board has also endorsed Chelsea Lepley for Ward 2, saying she “has the better conception of the innovation and oversight people need from the council,” and has done “practical work that gives her perspective on the sometimes subtle dynamics that determine whether policies succeed or fail.”

Two candidates announced mayoral campaigns in Des Moines this week: community activist Denver Foote, and city council member Josh Mandelbaum.

Bleeding Heartland only occasionally endorses candidates in city or school board elections. But I welcome guest posts about local races in Iowa, including those by candidates or urging readers to support a candidate. I copy edit guest commentaries for clarity and to conform to my “house style,” but I let authors speak their truth and publish all substantive pieces.

My advice for anyone wanting to write about any city or school board election in Iowa this year:

RJ Miller is an advocate, activist, and executive director of Greater Opportunities Inc, a Des Moines-based nonprofit. He was an independent candidate for the Iowa House in 2022.

I’m running for the at-large Des Moines City Council seat now held by Carl Voss, because I believe the council needs more diversity and more council members who come from a grassroots background, for and from the people they represent.

I’m running because our city needs real leadership. Des Moines needs someone who will unify and truly fight for the people’s best interests. Residents deserve someone who will fight against gentrification, redlining, and eminent domain. More important, the city deserves an anti-sellout, anti-establishment councilman.

Dr. Brian Campbell is Executive Director of the Iowa Environmental Council and a member of the Des Moines Citizen Task Force on Sustainability.

I joined the Des Moines Citizens Task Force on Sustainability in 2017. Formed in the wake of the Paris Climate Agreement, this small, dedicated group of volunteers have worked with the city on important sustainability initiatives over the years, including the city’s 2021 resolution committing to 24/7 clean energy by 2035.

It’s hard to overstate how important MidAmerican Energy is to achieving this goal, with 50 percent of Des Moines’ greenhouse gas emissions from electricity and another 25 percent from natural gas—all supplied by MidAmerican. Although the utility has made significant investments in wind energy in Iowa, it remains the state’s largest climate polluter by operating five coal plants.

The Des Moines Black Liberation Movement and Des Moines People’s Town Hall co-authored this piece. Des Moines BLM can be reached through Facebook, Twitter, or email: contact@desmoinesblm.org. Des Moines People’s Town Hall can be reached through Facebook, Twitter, or the group’s website.

The City of Des Moines will soon begin plans to make major alterations to George Flagg Parkway on the south side. The road grade will be raised several feet above the floodplain. Part of the road will also be realigned to connect to SW 30th St to avoid flooding on this heavily-used truck route.

The investment of millions of taxpayer dollars into this project should not happen without conversation around the road’s current namesake. We created our petition to showcase public support for changing the name.

Natalie Harwood: Most of the Des Moines City Council left our most vulnerable open to frostbite and death in the elements.

This week in Des Moines, temperatures are anticipated to plummet into the negatives. Despite this fact, and even in light of the freezing death of a Des Moines citizen last year outside of a closed warming center, the Des Moines City Council is refusing to act on opening a 24-hour emergency warming center. In doing this, they are condemning the most vulnerable people in our community to suffer in the frigid temperatures, or worse, and are in direct opposition to their own campaign promises.

Larry Anderson is a retired civil engineer and former general manager of the West Des Moines Water Works. He prepared these comments to submit to the West Des Moines Water Works trustees on December 13.

I’m a civil engineering graduate of Iowa State University, was a Registered Professional Civil Engineer in Iowa and the first general manager of West Des Moines Water Works, having been privileged to serve the utility for 27 years, between 1977 and 2004. However, my concern about regionalization of water production isn’t about any of those things.

The proposed change to regional, politicized governance of water production gives away a substantial part of West Des Moines destiny to others. Yes, West Des Moines would receive a voice in the decision-making of wholesale water rates. Whether it is a strong voice or simply a voice in the wilderness, due to the newly added politics, is a definite concern of mine and it should be to all West Des Moines residents. 

More important, the proposal gives an added political body the ability to simply say, “No, we cannot provide additional water right now to West Des Moines. We might be able to do that later, but not now.” So, an economic development proposal offered to West Des Moines will occur elsewhere. That is very concerning to me as a resident of West Des Moines since 1955. 

The Iowa House Democratic caucus is poised to have more turnover than usual after the 2022 election, as the new legislative map created open seats in some solid blue areas, and several sitting lawmakers have confirmed they won’t seek re-election.

In Des Moines, Megan Srinivas and Sean Bagniewski are the first Democrats to begin campaigning in two House districts where the winner of the June primary is virtually guaranteed to be elected next November.

Tanya Keith is an activist and small business owner in Des Moines.

We find ourselves at a pivotal point in history, and Indira Sheumaker is the right leader for this moment in every capacity.

As Des Moines looks to the future, we are poised to be a beacon for the possible, but we need the right leaders to bring us to the next level. In my work revitalizing homes in the urban core of Des Moines, I have become concerned with the direction of the current City Council’s “Blitz on Blight” campaign. What I thought would be funding and policy to support neighborhood revitalization has become a wrong-headed race to destroy our architectural history while traumatizing the people in marginalized neighborhoods.

When done properly, blighted houses can become a source for affordable house and good paying jobs. Ms. Sheumaker is the candidate who understands that potential.

Iowa’s local elections are nonpartisan, but Bleeding Heartland welcomes endorsements of Democratic or progressive candidates for city offices or school boards. Please contact Laura Belin if you are interested in writing.

The Progressive Caucus of the Iowa Democratic Party is proud to announce its first slate of endorsements for the 2021 municipal election cycle. These candidates have been identified as those who exemplify the goals and values of the Progressive Movement. They use their campaigns and platforms to amplify the voice and concerns of marginalized individuals and bring attention to issues of social, economic, and environmental justice.

Editor’s note: Ward 1 covers much of the north and west sides of Des Moines. Bleeding Heartland welcomes guest posts endorsing Democratic or progressive candidates for local offices.

With the following official statement, Our Revolution Iowa has endorsed Indira Sheumaker for Des Moines City Council Ward 1, in the November 2 election:

“Indira Sheumaker actively displays the best in community organizing in her commitment to have the Des Moines City Council enact progressive policies put forth by Des Moines groups she has helped lead over the past year,” said Pete D’Alessandro, Organizing Committee Member of OR Iowa.

Carolyn Uhlenhake Walker is a Des Moines resident and retired teacher.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently issued its Sixth Assessment Report on the Physical Science Basis of climate change. The report pulls together the best scientific knowledge about climate change, and it’s clear that the situation is more dire than ever. Human-caused climate change is undeniable. Its scale and scope are unprecedented, and its impacts are already being felt. Significant climate changes are inevitable, and we need to do everything we can to stem the bleeding. 

At a bare minimum, every elected official should recognize the climate crisis and be committed to meet it head on.

That’s why I’m disturbed a climate denier, Cory McAnelly, is running to unseat Josh Mandelbaum, a climate champion on the Des Moines City Council.

Brandi Webber is a candidate for Des Moines City Council in Ward 3.

So about the Des Moines City Council meetings… You may have seen coverage (again) about distractions, protests and arrests. “Why is this happening?” you may be asking yourself. I certainly can’t answer that alone, but I can add some important context as someone who was inside the chamber during the July 19 meeting.

The council has continually attempted to limit public comment and abuses the consent agenda to push through controversial items, items on police funding, criminalizing and punishing the houseless, denying accessibility concerns and much more. This has been happening over the course of the last year and a half, while the public has been speaking up and begging to be heard. During the virtual meetings the council was able to silence the public. Now that meetings are back to in person, there is no mute button to silence and control the public.

Brandi Webber is a local artist, volunteer, mother, and candidate for Des Moines City Council in Ward 3. -promoted by Laura Belin 

Gross abuse of power.

Those are words you won’t read in any newspaper, local tv, or online news article about the Des Moines City Council meeting on June 28 – or any council meeting, for that matter. However, that is exactly what has been happening for more than a year. 

Brandi Webber is a local artist, volunteer, mother, and candidate for Des Moines City Council in Ward 3. -promoted by Laura Belin 

A community’s priorities can be made visible by looking at the breakdown of the city budget. Looking at Des Moines’ city budget, you see that our largest single priority, at roughly 39 percent of spending, is policing.

With such a large portion of our budget devoted to policing, examining the effectiveness of police and their role in our community should be non-controversial. When we talk about “defunding the police,” many will conjure an image of a city in disarray as the pillars of society crumble to the ground. The reality is, our society relies too heavily on a policing system.

Justyn Lewis is a candidate for Des Moines City Council. -promoted by Laura Belin

When I attended East High School in Des Moines, I played cornerback on the football team for three years. My senior year had arrived and it was time for me to step into the coveted starting role I worked so hard for. During training camp, I was asked by my coach to make a switch to defensive end–a position I knew little about–in order to round out the strength of the starting lineup. While this was not the role I dreamed of, I understood it was for the greater good of the team. I knew if one of the 11 positions on the field was not at its best, it affected the whole team. There was no doubt my team needed me here and I would answer the call. 

Hello, my name is Justyn Lewis, and I am running for Des Moines City Council At Large. Born and raised in Des Moines, I know that the communities of this city are equally valuable and unique. However, several of our neighborhoods have been unjustly left behind and are facing systemic barriers to fulfilling their basic needs.

Tyler Granger is a climate change activist in Iowa. -promoted by Laura Belin

Between the presidential election, the special U.S. Senate elections in Georgia, the Capitol insurrection, the second impeachment of President Donald Trump, and Joe Biden’s inauguration, political happenings have overshadowed many other newsworthy events. Several climate change stories received little media attention but are worth noting.

Raihan Rashidi, a clean energy field organizer for the Iowa Environmental Council, wrote this post, which first appeared on that organization’s blog. -promoted by Laura Belin

Reading incessant news about climate-related disasters across the country and here in Iowa has made me wonder if we are just going to sit idly and hope the world miraculously recovers while we maintain our current ways. Or if we are going to accept the science and quickly act to prevent prolonged power outages or severe crop damages the next time a storm or drought hits us. Despite the many challenges 2020 has thrown upon us, I am hopeful it will be the latter.

This is where the 100% DSM movement comes into play.

Katie Rock is the campaign representative in Iowa for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, based in Des Moines. You can follow the effort on Twitter at @IABeyondCoal and @KatieRockIA. -promoted by Laura Belin

This year has pushed us all to reconsider what it means to be a safe, resilient and just community in the 21st century. And while many of us anxiously look to the future, we should remember the tremendous opportunity we have to take control of our path today. It is time for our city of Des Moines to accelerate the transition to clean energy by passing a resolution committing to buying 100 percent renewable power by 2030.

MidAmerican continues to own and operate one of the largest coal fleets in the country right here in Iowa, selling coal-generated power for the benefit of their shareholders, while Iowans pay the price of the pollution to our air and water. The company currently owns more generation than it needs to reliably keep the lights on. The time has come for MidAmerican to walk its talk and make a plan to retire its coal fleet, starting with its most uneconomic plants.

Iowa’s seven largest cities are spending more on policing per capita and a greater portion of their municipal budgets on law enforcement compared to the 1990s, according to a new report by the Iowa Policy Project. Over the same time period, spending on social services per capita and as a share of the municipal budget has declined in six of those cities.

Colin Gordon and Peter Fisher authored “Policing, public safety and community priorities,” published on July 22 (also available in pdf format). They examined budgets for the 24 Iowa cities with populations of at least 20,000, because “it is in our larger urban settings in Iowa that the problems with policing — including a well-documented pattern of disproportionate minority contact — are most acute.”

Seven of the cities studied are “metropolitan”: Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Sioux City, Waterloo, Council Bluffs, and Dubuque. Seven are suburbs in large metro areas: West Des Moines, Ankeny, Urbandale, Bettendorf, Marion, Coralville, and Johnston. Three are college towns: Iowa City, Ames, and Cedar Falls. Seven are micropolitan cities: Mason City, Marshalltown, Clinton, Muscatine, Burlington, Fort Dodge, and Ottumwa.

Joe Henry is a community activist who served on the Des Moines Civil Service Commission from 2013 to 2020. -promoted by Laura Belin

The City of Des Moines’ hiring practices do not reflect the diversity of our community.

Nearly 90 percent of the city’s police department employees (472 total) are white. Only 57 officers are Black or Brown. In addition, the majority of police officers do not live in the city and have never lived here!

“They took our land, they took the grocery store, they took the community center,” Joyce Bruce recalled of a project that destroyed the African-American neighborhood anchored by Center Street in the late 1950s and 1960s. “They just wiped that whole block completely out, all, all the way down.”

Bruce’s words and other personal stories are featured in a new interactive exhibit devoted to the history of racist housing policies in Des Moines. Federal government programs and city initiatives over many decades contributed to persistent, wide-ranging racial disparities in Iowa’s largest metro area.

Five years ago, I started taking stock of my most labor-intensive posts near the end of each year. Not all of these are my favorite projects, though invariably, some of my favorites end up on these compilations.

Before getting to the countdown for 2019, I want to give another shout out to guest authors who poured an extraordinary amount of work into two posts Bleeding Heartland published last year.

Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie won a fifth term earlier this month by the smallest margin of victory in his long political career. He spoke to Bleeding Heartland on December 5 about his takeaways from the results.

Three cities in Iowa received the highest possible score for “inclusive municipal laws, policies, and services” for LGBTQ people in the latest report by a leading national advocacy group.

Iowa city and school board elections are nonpartisan, but in some races, the candidates’ party affiliations are clear. Democrats or candidates backed by organized labor won quite a few mayoral, city council, and school board races on November 5.

The authors of this post are Des Moines students Finn Andersen, Hunter Andersen, Isabelle Brace, and Ayanna Minnihan. -promoted by Laura Belin

Heather Anderson is truly a champion for students. Students lack diverse administration, but Heather, as a woman of color herself, will help bring representation and fight for underrepresented students.

Bleeding Heartland welcomes guest posts endorsing progressive candidates in local elections. Kathy Byrnes and Ed Fallon are climate activists with Bold Iowa in Des Moines. -promoted by Laura Belin

Even with the relentless focus on the presidential campaign, it’s important that we now turn our attention to local elections. There’s one race in particular that we want to weigh in on: the at-large seat for the Des Moines City Council.

A whole lot of fine candidates have thrown their hats into the ring. But one candidate stands out: Sheila Knoploh-Odole. (Yes, Sheila’s last name is a mouthful — try saying it “ka-NO-plo oh-DOH-lay. Come on. If we can learn how to pronounce “Buttigieg,” we’ve got this. And for reference, you’ll see Sheila’s nickname — SKO, or Sheila KO — on yard signs and literature across Des Moines.)

Two Des Moines City Council members seeking re-election on November 5 used their appointment powers to perpetuate a gender imbalance on a key board in the state’s largest city, despite a state law requiring certain local boards to have no more than a simple majority of male or female members.

Joe Gatto, who represents Ward 4, and Linda Westergaard (Ward 2) both named men to fill vacancies on the Des Moines Plan and Zoning Commission when state law indicated a woman should have been appointed. Gatto has done so twice. The second time, his choice worsened the commission’s imbalance and happened well before the end of a statutory period during which officials are supposed to make a “good faith effort” to find someone from the underrepresented gender.

Brent Newman is a resident of Ward 4 in the city of Des Moines. -promoted by Laura Belin

Joe Gatto, who “represents” Ward 4 on the Des Moines City Council, proudly displays a picture of him with Donald Trump in his Des Moines restaurant. Which seems out of touch considering the demographics of this side of the city.

The framed photo of Trump is one small example of how Gatto does not understand what being a public servant means, nor does he reflect the integrity and welcoming spirit of those who call the south side and east side their home.

Former State Senator Jack Hatch will run for Des Moines mayor, he announced on WHO-TV on September 19, the last day for local candidates in Iowa to file nominating papers. A few minutes later, his campaign released a statement and a video, both enclosed below, and launched a website at JackHatchforMayor.com.

Key issues for Hatch will include fixing roads and neighborhood infrastructure, addressing “the urgent mental health care crisis that has been ignored,” protecting drinking water, improving area schools, and public safety measures including steps to reduce gun violence. All of those topics were mentioned in a telephone poll Hatch commissioned earlier this month, which Bleeding Heartland summarized here.

Defeating sixteen-year incumbent Mayor Frank Cownie will not be easy, and Hatch will have only six and a half weeks to build his case with voters. However, unlike most challengers, he already has very high name recognition. Hatch represented parts of Des Moines in the Iowa House or Senate for more than 20 years, was the 2014 Democratic nominee for governor, and is a well-known property developer.

Hatch told WHO-TV’s Dave Price he started thinking about running for mayor after Cownie “decided not to protect our drinking water when he had a chance to,” adding that Cownie “was silent” as Republican legislators tried to break up the Des Moines Water Works in 2017. Hatch acknowledged he was starting his campaign late, saying others had considered running against Cownie but backed off. He’s in the race because sees the future of Des Moines “being blurred” without strong leadership.

Turnout on November 5 may be higher than usual for a city election, because Des Moines has multiple competitive city council races, and this is the first year school board elections will be held concurrently with elections for municipal offices. Early voting begins on October 7.

Former State Senator Jack Hatch appears to be seriously considering a campaign for mayor of Des Moines.

In recent days, numerous Democrats living in the capital city have received a lengthy telephone poll testing positive messages about Hatch and mostly negative messages about Mayor Frank Cownie, a four-term incumbent who has held the position since 2004.

Hatch did not immediately respond to a phone call and e-mail seeking comment on his plans and whether he commissioned the poll. I’ve paraphrased the questions below, based on detailed notes from a source who took the survey on September 9, and will update this post as needed when Hatch makes his intentions clear.

UPDATE: The council approved the ordinance by 5 votes to 2, with Mayor Frank Cownie, Connie Boesen, Chris Coleman, Bill Gray, and Josh Mandelbaum voting yes. Joe Gatto and Linda Westergaard opposed the ordinance.

Sheila Knoploh-Odole is an attorney and local sustainability consultant who served on the advisory committee for the Des Moines Energy Policy Task Force. -promoted by Laura Belin

With a surprising vote of 7-0, the Des Moines City Council voted on April 22 (Earth Day) to advance a proposed ordinance for energy- and water-use benchmarking in buildings over 25,000 square feet throughout the City. On Monday, June 3, they will take the final vote to make this ordinance city policy.

By measuring the energy and water use of large buildings, Des Moines is poised to address its goal of lowering citywide greenhouse gas emissions 28 percent by 2025. This ordinance won’t cover the entire goal, but will put the city on a path of reducing up to 16 percent overall – IF certain unpopular parts of the ordinance are maintained.

A West Des Moines police officer followed and eventually arrested an African American man who was canvassing on behalf of U.S. Representative David Young. Keilon Hill came to Iowa to work for a Republican-aligned super-PAC and recorded his interactions with Officer Clint Ray on October 29. Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement released those videos today, saying the incident provides “more evidence of racial profiling among police officers in the Des Moines metro area.”

Laural Clinton is a member of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement’s racial justice team and the mother of Jared Clinton, who was the passenger in a recent racial profiling video released to the public. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Racial profiling. It’s a tough topic to discuss. But for us in the Black community, racial profiling is a reality we deal with every day–when we go to the store, when we drive our cars, when we eat at restaurants.

As a mother of three Black sons, I am intimately familiar with this issue.

The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board voted unanimously on July 13 to fine and reprimand the city of Windsor Heights for sending a mass mailing that appeared to advocate for passage of a local-option sales tax in Polk County.

Iowa’s campaign regulator may soon break new ground on interpreting language that forbids government bodies from spending public money for political purposes. When deciding whether two city governments went too far in encouraging residents to vote for a local option sales tax, the board will determine whether “express advocacy” can include language that stops short of explicitly urging citizens to vote a certain way.

Heather Ryan makes her case against the local option sales tax for Iowa’s largest county. -promoted by desmoinesdem

In case you haven’t heard, there is a special election scheduled on the intentionally obscure date of Tuesday, March 6, 2018. Polk County residents must decide if they believe an additional 1 percent sales tax will help solve their financial woes. I will be voting “No.” Twice if I don’t get caught. Here’s why:

A government that does not provide adequate services is more regressive than a sales tax, writes Des Moines City Council member Josh Mandelbaum in this case for Polk County residents to support the measure on the March 6 ballot. -promoted by desmoinesdem

There is a cliché that the start of one’s term in public service is like drinking from a fire hose. My experience the last few months definitely shows the merit of the cliché. More comes at you quickly than you can possibly absorb. The budget is a perfect example of this, but in the case of the budget, I don’t have the luxury of time because local budgets must be certified by the end of March. I want to share with all of you some of what I have learned.

In examining the budget, one thing becomes clear quickly: the city will not be able to maintain its current service levels without new revenue or significant increases in property taxes.

Thanks to Stefanie Running for a play-by-play of the October 10 candidate forum for Des Moines City Council Ward 3, featuring Michael Kiernan, Josh Mandelbaum, and Abshir Omar. First-person accounts of campaign events are always welcome at Bleeding Heartland. -promoted by desmoinesdem

6:30 PM
It’s really a lovely night. Mid 60s, you can smell fall emerging from the hundred-year-old neighborhood trees and the glowing sunset inching forward sooner each day. Max Knauer and Kate Allen have been working with neighborhood associations and advocacy groups since August putting this forum together. I volunteer as a social chair for Gray’s Lake Neighborhood Association (GLNA), so I’ve seen the work that they’ve put into the program. They’ve scheduled the forum right in the heart of my own neighborhood, so it’s barely a half mile for me to travel.

As I arrive, other neighborhood reps are setting up, Knauer fields questions from co-sponsors and attendees alike. The candidates arrive. I’ve spoken to all three digitally via email or facebook. Tonight I introduce myself. I’m Stefanie Running. I’ll be the rep for this very neighborhood. I’ll also be writing about tonight’s forum for Bleeding Heartland. All three are gracious and welcoming.

Unpacking my camera gear, I realize it’s non-functional. I forgot something. I can’t go back home because the event is about to start and I didn’t drive. So I sit and I prepare to take notes. I apologize, dear reader, for my lack of photos. That’s my favorite part. Sadly, what I lack in photos, I’m going to make up for in article length. I apologize in advance.

To make this article a little more readable, from this point on I’ll show the panelist’s comments in bold, the candidate responses will be in standard font, and my own comments in italics.

The Des Moines metro area has received top-ten rankings from dozens of national organizations or publications that evaluate the job climate, housing markets, or other factors affecting the quality of life.

Unfortunately, extensive research on the State of Black Polk County revealed “significant racial disparities in the traditional economic and financial indicators including banking, savings, employment, and housing.” The Directors Council and State Public Policy Group coordinated the yearlong project, producing the first-ever “snapshot of the financial stability and well-being of African Americans and Africans living in Polk County.” Iowa’s largest county is home to more than 31,000 black people, a little less than 30 percent of the estimated statewide African-American population.

I first learned of this study, now nearly six months old, when Teree Caldwell-Johnson presented key findings to congregants at Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Des Moines during a break between Yom Kippur services on September 30. The full report is after the jump. For each portion, I’ve highlighted the facts and figures that most struck me.

These numbers partially explain why analysts for 24/7 Wall Street ranked the Des Moines metro area the country’s ninth-worst city for black people in 2015 and the third-worst last year.

On a related note: The Fifth Annual Iowa Summit on Justice and Disparities, co-sponsored by the NAACP, is happening in Ankeny next Tuesday, October 10. More details are here and near the end of this post.

Many posts about Iowa’s 2018 campaigns for state and federal offices are in progress, but for this weekend, I want to focus on elections happening in 2017. The weather looks almost perfect for the last few days of GOTV in Jefferson, Davis, and Van Buren counties, where voters will choose a successor to State Representative Curt Hanson this Tuesday. The House district 82 special election may not foreshadow what happens in next year’s legislative races, but the outcome could shape the media narrative about whether Democrats or Republicans have momentum in small-town and rural Iowa, which in turn could influence people thinking about running for the state House or Senate in 2018. If you’ve been knocking on doors or phone banking in House district 82, please share your stories in the comments.

August 3 was the filing deadline for the September 12 school board elections across Iowa. In future years, school board and local elections will be held on the same day of November in odd-numbered years. Proponents say the shift will increase turnout. John Deeth isn’t a fan of the change.

Candidates for city council or mayor will need to submit nominating papers between August 28 and September 21 in most Iowa towns, which don’t hold primaries before the November local election. (The filing period for local candidates runs from August 14 to 31 in cities that sometimes hold primary as well as general elections for local offices; this document explains more.)

Anyone thinking about running for school board or city office should read Lauren Whitehead’s advice on waging a successful local campaign.

Iowa’s most closely-watched city elections include the Cedar Rapids mayoral race, where Monica Vernon is one of several well-known local figures hoping to succeed Ron Corbett, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor. (Former State Representative Tyler Olson considered that race but decided against it.)

Four candidates have announced in Des Moines City Council Ward 3, where longtime incumbent Christine Hensley opted to retire: Josh Mandelbaum, Michael Kiernan, Chris Draper, and Abshir Omar. Mandelbaum has the most backing from local political leaders and organized labor. CORRECTION: Draper recently dropped out of the city council race.

Quite a few central Iowa incumbents don’t yet have challengers, as far as I know, including the mayors of West Des Moines and Urbandale.

I expect an intense city council campaign in Windsor Heights, where some residents are outraged that sidewalks are finally being installed on three streets near two elementary schools. You probably don’t understand why hundreds of people in this small suburb fiercely oppose making the neighborhood more walkable. I can’t explain it either, even after living through several of these battles during the past fifteen years. Most residents of the Des Moines metro area find sidewalks convenient but otherwise unremarkable. For whatever reason, multiple city council races in Windsor Heights have turned into a referendum on the sidewalks question. Even though the city is paying the full cost of the installations this summer, I expect a strong backlash from the anti-sidewalk contingent in November.

When Iowa Republicans destroyed all meaningful collective bargaining rights for public employees earlier this year, they also enacted major union-busting provisions, such as frequent re-certification elections for public-sector labor unions, under rules making it difficult and costly for a union to remain certified. Those elections will begin in September Brianne Pfannenstiel reported this week in the Des Moines Register. Excerpts from that story are after the jump.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Former Des Moines City Council member Michael Kiernan announced yesterday that he will run for the open seat in Ward 3 this year, focusing on an “agenda of improving public safety, fixing potholes and continuing progress.” He held the at-large city council seat from 2004 to 2010 and served as Iowa Democratic Party state chair from January 2009 to June 2010. You can find his campaign on Facebook and on Twitter @mjkiernan.

Josh Mandelbaum has been campaigning in Ward 3 for the last two months. His strong challenge drove 24-year incumbent Christine Hensley to retire rather than seek re-election. Now that the odds of a Democrat winning this seat have increased, Kiernan has decided to give it a shot. In a thinly-veiled swipe at Mandelbaum, Kiernan posted on Facebook yesterday, “I’ve been hearing a lot about crime in our city lately. I keep expecting to hear people who say they want to serve our community talk about this issue. Instead, all I’m hearing about is political endorsements and campaign war chests.” He echoed the talking point in his news release and on Twitter: “Lot of talk about politics, political endorsements and political cash…no talk of public safety. That’s why I am running.”

If Kiernan had attended Mandelbaum’s first event as a candidate, he would have heard his opponent talk about many substantive issues including “the importance of public health and public safety” and “providing resources to our first responders, police and fire.” Granted, Mandelbaum’s campaign did announce last month that he had raised more than $110,000 in three weeks, “recruited over 150 volunteers to help door-knock and hold house parties, and will soon have an elected official and labor leader endorsement list.” Taking on an entrenched incumbent requires a lot of groundwork, including early fundraising and lining up prominent supporters. But contrary to the impression Kiernan is trying to create, endorsements and cash have not been the focus of Mandelbaum’s message to Des Moines residents. You can read or listen to his first speech as a candidate here.

I enclose below a map of the ward, covering west-side and south-side neighborhoods, as well as Kiernan’s news release, more background on his life and career, and the list of elected officials backing Mandelbaum. (His campaign hasn’t rolled out the labor endorsements yet.)

Mandelbaum has not publicly commented on Kiernan entering the race. I anticipate his case to Democratic voters will be similar to a statement his campaign released after Hensley disclosed her retirement plans: “When this race looked impossible to win, Josh stepped up to run because the values we share as a community were being threatened everyday.” I’ve closely followed Mandelbaum’s work over the years and will encourage voters in the ward to support him, because of his skills and commitment to progressive policies.

Local elections are non-partisan, but I expect some Republican backed by corporate interests to join the field in Ward 3 before long. I welcome tips on other possible candidates.

UPDATE: Added below new comments from Kiernan, who answered some questions by phone on May 18.

Christine Hensley will not seek re-election to the Des Moines City Council this year, she announced today in an interview with the Business Record. The 24-year incumbent told Perry Beeman, “I’ve got a tremendous amount done, and it’s time for me to look at the next chapter and figure out what I’m going to do.” Hensley discussed spending “a little more time with family” and didn’t mention her challenger Josh Mandelbaum, though his capacity to run an effective campaign likely factored into her retirement plans.

The race for Des Moines City Council Ward 3 was shaping up to be a focal point for central Iowa progressives. Mandelbaum has raised more $110,000 in less than a month as a candidate, his campaign told Iowa Starting Line today. More than 150 people have volunteered to help spread the word.

While winning an open seat is usually easier than beating an entrenched incumbent, no one should celebrate victory too soon. Republicans and business groups will surely recruit and heavily promote someone to run in Hensley’s place. Proxies of the Iowa Farm Bureau have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on television and radio advertising bashing the Des Moines Water Works during the last two years, so I anticipate a well-funded smear campaign against Mandelbaum. Countering that message will require a strong grassroots effort. City council races are usually low-turnout affairs, so a few thousand people will decide the outcome. You can sign up to volunteer here.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in the west-side and south-side neighborhoods that are part of ward 3 (a map is at the end of this post). That reality, along with Mandelbaum’s early start and big fundraising, may deter other potential candidates. But some ambitious person with business connections will step up. Any speculation about who might enter the Des Moines City Council race is welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: Mandelbaum released the following statement on today’s news.

I want to thank Councilwoman Hensley for serving her community for 24 years. While Councilwoman Hensley and I have our disagreements, we should all honor and respect the work that all of our civil servants do every day to make our community stronger.This race was and still is about representing the interests, values, and concerns of the residents of Des Moines. I will continue to champion clean water, strong neighborhoods with strong public schools, and investing in people through policies that support decent wages. I also want to thank my supporters. The outpouring of support throughout the community in the month since we have announced has made it clear that Des Moines is ready for a progressive voice on the City Council. With your continued support, we will be prepared to fight outside special interests that have been attacking champions of clean water like what the so-called Partnership for Clean Water has done to Bill Stowe and the Des Moines Water Works. This election will still be a fight to be won even if it’s not the original one we anticipated when we announced one month ago. This campaign has just begun and I look forward to continued conversations with residents throughout the third ward as I keep running vigorously all the way through Nov. 7th, 2017. Thank you again-

According to Jason Frerichs of the Progressive Voices of Iowa blog, he has interviewed another Democrat planning to run for city council in this ward. Will update once that person’s identity is known.

P.S.- Hensley’s decision to stand with the Farm Bureau against her local water utility was a political mistake as well as a betrayal of her constituents. And it was all for nothing, because despite lobbying by groups including the city of Des Moines, the plan to dismantle the Water Works stalled in the Iowa House and won’t be attached to an appropriations bill this year. Since the Water Works lawsuit against three northwest Iowa counties will not move forward, state lawmakers will have little reason to pursue this goal during the 2018 legislative session either.

P.P.S.- If outgoing Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett seeks the Republican nomination for governor in 2018, as I expect him to do, Hensley will be a leading contender for the lieutenant governor spot on his ticket.

APRIL 24 UPDATE: Multiple central Iowa sources have relayed a rumor that Hensley is being considered for the lieutenant governor position under Kim Reynolds after Governor Terry Branstad leaves for China. Offering Hensley that job could be a way for Reynolds (who has a big head start on fundraising for the 2018 governor’s race) to hurt Corbett’s ability to tap major Republican donors in the Des Moines area. If Hensley joined the Reynolds administration, it would be a slap in the face to Corbett, with whom she has worked closely as an original board member of the Partnership for Clean Water.

Promising to be a “voice for strong neighborhoods and strong schools,” defending local interests and fighting harmful state policies, Josh Mandelbaum confirmed Thursday night that he will run for Des Moines City Council against 24-year incumbent Christine Hensley. I enclose below the audio and full transcript of Mandelbaum’s first campaign speech, along with background on the candidate and a map of Ward 3, which covers west-side neighborhoods south of University Avenue and much of the south side.

I’ve been acquainted with Mandelbaum since before he was a policy advisor for Governor Tom Vilsack and Lieutenant Governor Sally Pederson. More recently, I’ve closely observed his work on renewable energy and clean water issues through our mutual involvement in Iowa environmental circles. I’m an active supporter of the non-profit Environmental Law & Policy Center, where Mandelbaum is a staff attorney. Last year Midwest Energy News named Mandelbaum to its “40 Under 40” list of list of “emerging leaders” working on “America’s transition to a clean energy economy.” He was one of only two Iowans to receive that recognition.

Even if I couldn’t personally vouch for Mandelbaum’s talent and work ethic, I would be excited to see a progressive willing to take on this incumbent. Hensley’s 2015 vote to extend a tax abatement program was indirectly a vote to benefit her employer. Timothy Meinch reported for the Des Moines Register at the time that the city attorney “warned of an ‘appearance of impropriety’ and ‘potential of a conflict of interest’” before Hensley “cast a pivotal vote in favor of developers.” Des Moines Cityview’s Civic Skinny column explained here how Hensley’s deciding vote benefited Midwest Housing Equity Group, “an Omaha-based firm that syndicates and sells tax credits from developers” where she “is a director and paid consultant.”

Hensley has given Des Moines residents plenty of other reasons to look for new representation. Mandelbaum covered several of them in the remarks I transcribed below. Her most egregious act was joining the small board of directors of the Orwellian-named Iowa Partnership for Clean Water. This advocacy organization grew out of the Iowa Farm Bureau’s desire to discredit the Des Moines Water Works, which delivers drinking water to half a million central Iowans, including all of Hensley’s constituents. My theory is that Hensley hitched her wagon to this cause in the hope of becoming Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett’s running mate in the 2018 race for governor. Whatever her motives, she chose to stand with Big Ag against her own city’s utility, despite evidence connecting farm runoff with high nitrate levels and toxic algae blooms that threaten the local water supply.

This year Hensley urged the city council to support legislation that would disband the Des Moines Water Works. The bill is widely understood to be retribution for the Water Works lawsuit against drainage districts in northwest Iowa (see the first part of this post). Mandelbaum spoke against House File 484 at a public hearing earlier this month; scroll down to view the video.

Taking on an entrenched incumbent is always an uphill battle, especially for a first-time candidate. Hensley will raise a ton of money. Even so, this race is winnable for Mandelbaum. City council elections are low-turnout affairs. Hensley didn’t have a challenger in 2005 or in 2009 and defeated Cal Woods by 3,536 votes to 2,248 four years ago.

Ward 3 “has an overwhelming Democratic registration advantage and has a D+20 performance index,” Pat Rynard noted last month. The Water Works issue alone is highly salient for Des Moines residents. A large number of teachers and public workers live on the west and south sides of Des Moines, as do many progressives interested in economic and social justice. If Mandelbaum can tap into outrage over statehouse Republicans destroying collective bargaining rights and lowering the minimum wage in Polk County, don’t bet against him turning out a few thousand Democrats who have never voted in a local election before. He won’t be able to match Hensley’s fundraising, but with Pederson and former Attorney General Bonnie Campbell co-chairing his campaign, he should raise enough money to get his message out to Ward 3 residents.

This race will be one of the most important local elections in central Iowa this November. Please spread the word.

What election results were you watching tonight, Bleeding Heartland readers? I was excited to see the “Core 4” progressive slate sweep the Iowa City council elections, despite a well-financed campaign for the rival group, representing Chamber of Commerce types who have long dominated local government. John Deeth described what was at stake in those races, and Tom Carsner put it succinctly in a letter to the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

The “growth at any price to grow the tax base” philosophy of the present council majority puts Iowa City at financial risk when one TIF-financed Big Bang project turns south. A series of smaller investor-financed mixed use — business and residential — projects can energize multiple neighborhoods and build a more reliable and sustainable tax base.

[…] I urge Iowa City to welcome the just, equal, affordable, inclusive and sustainable growth vision presented by John Thomas, Rockne Cole, Pauline Taylor and Jim Throgmorton. Vote for them to shake loose the scared establishment of the present City Council.

UPDATE: In his analysis of the Iowa City results, Deeth sees outgoing Mayor Matt Hayek’s “ham-handed editorial” in the Iowa City Press-Citizen on October 14 as “a turning point in the campaign.” Bleeding Heartland user corncam points to another factor that may have helped the “Core 4.”

Davenport voters resoundingly elected Frank Klipsch mayor, ousting incumbent Bill Gluba by more than a 2: 1 margin. It’s the end of a long political career for Gluba, who won his first election (to the Iowa legislature) 45 years ago. Gluba was an activist even before running for office, participating in the 1963 march on Washington for civil rights. His handling of some local controversies this year, including his role in forcing out Davenport’s city manager, prompted the Quad-City Times to endorse Klipsch, a former CEO of the local YMCA who has a “reputation for bringing diverse groups together” and a “more collaborative style.”

In my own corner of the world, I was pleasantly surprised that challengers Threase Harms and Zac Bales-Henry defeated the two Windsor Heights City Council incumbents on the ballot. CORRECTION: Only Harms won her seat outright. Bales-Henry will have to face Charlene Butz in a December 8 runoff election. Butz and Dave Burgess were frequent “no” votes on any kind of change or progress, and Butz was a particularly dedicated opponent of new sidewalks on streets where they are badly needed. Bales-Henry promised to work to “Create a more efficient and walkable neighborhood […] and ensure that each citizen can walk, run or bike to any location within city limits safely and easily,” as well as trying to improve the local trails system. Harms also expressed support for new sidewalks on key city streets. You never know what could become a hot-button issue in local politics, and the sidewalks question has been one of the most divisive issues in Windsor Heights over the past decade. UPDATE: The anti-sidewalks voters may come out in force for the December 8 runoff, but even if Butz is re-elected, there might be enough votes for change, because two of the incumbents who were not on the ballot this year (Steve Peterson and Tony Timm) have expressed support for new sidewalks in the past.

My son and I stopped at Harms’ home while trick-or-treating on Friday. When I mentioned that I’d seen lots of her yard signs around town, she responded, “Yard signs don’t vote.” Right answer! Clearly she knows how to GOTV, because she finished way ahead of the rest of the field in our at-large elections. That’s a rare accomplishment for a first-time candidate running against incumbents.

UPDATE: I was sorry to see that Cedar Rapids residents rejected a levy to fund public libraries. Todd Dorman covered the campaign for library funding over the weekend.

Voters in Des Moines re-elected Mayor Frank Cownie and the city councillors who were on the ballot. I didn’t realize that Cownie is now the longest-serving Des Moines mayor. In the most hotly-contested race, the open seat in Ward 2 on the east side of Des Moines, turnout was down and Linda Westergaard, backed by business interests including a realtors’ lobbying group, defeated Marty Mauk.

photo credit: Mark Carlson

The Des Moines metro area has made plenty of “best places” lists during the last five years, but Chamber of Commerce types won’t be bragging about the top ten ranking that appeared last week. After examining “the disparities between white and black Americans in several economic and social measures” across the country, Thomas C. Frohlich and Sam Stebbins of the 24/7 Wall St. website “identified the 10 worst cities for black Americans.” The authors noted, “Four of the cities with the worst racial inequality are in Illinois, two are in Iowa, and all are in the Midwest.”

Follow me after the jump to learn why the Des Moines metro area ranked ninth and the Waterloo/Cedar Falls metro area tenth on this list.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Congratulations to Hawkeyes and commiserations to Cyclones over the outcome of yesterday’s big game. Not being a football fan, I can’t remember how many years it’s been since I watched Iowa play Iowa State. The last time I focused on the Cy-Hawk game was in 2013, when Iowa running back Mark Weisman’s decision to play on Yom Kippur (the most important Jewish holiday) was a big topic of conversation for central Iowa Jews.

The hoopla surrounding yesterday’s game reminded me of a good commentary by “Civic Skinny” in the Des Moines-based weekly Cityview last month. Skinny called attention to how rapidly athletic budgets have grown at Iowa and Iowa State in recent years, and how the athletic departments “continue to find ways to spend” the extra money, “without shipping any to the libraries or the English departments or any other academic endeavors at the two big universities.” I would bet few Iowans know that for many years, Iowa and Iowa State “regularly subsidized the athletic departments with money from the general fund.” I recommend clicking through for all the data in the original piece; excerpts are after the jump.

For two days, the Des Moines Register reported the Des Moines School Board District 1 race as “too close to call,” but Shane Schulte finally conceded to Heather Anderson on Friday. Schulte had earlier indicated plans to seek a recount, but truthfully, the race was never too close to call. When all the precincts reported on election night, Anderson led by 36 votes out of a little more than 2,500 ballots cast. The next day, her lead in unofficial returns grew to 46 votes. That’s a close election, but not close enough for a recount to have a realistic prospect of changing the outcome. Recounts of two Iowa Senate races in 2010 did not overturn Mark Chelgren’s twelve-vote lead out of more than 19,000 ballots cast or Tod Bowman’s 70-vote lead out of nearly 20,000 ballots cast. Two years later, Republican leads of fewer than two dozen votes in Chris Hagenow’s Iowa House race and Mike Breitbach’s Iowa Senate race both held up after recounts of roughly 17,500 ballots and 30,000 ballots, respectively.

Ever since the Affordable Care Act became law in 2010, conservative pundits and Republican politicians have predicted that “Obamacare” would force many businesses to drop health insurance coverage for their employees. This week, the Des Moines Register’s Tony Leys covered the latest data on employer-provided insurance in Iowa. The Clive-based David P. Lind Benchmark research firm surveyed 1,001 employers and found that only 1 percent (mostly “companies with fewer than 10 employees”) stopped offering health insurance coverage this year. The cost of insuring employees in 2015 increased by an average of 7.7 percent, up from the 6.8 percent increase in 2014 but “significantly lower” than typical price hikes “Iowa employers faced a decade or more ago.” Michael Ralston, who leads the Iowa Association of Business and Industry, told Leys “he heard more complaints about insurance costs years ago, when employers’ health insurance prices were rising at more than double the current clip. He still hears grumbling about the complex requirements of the Affordable Care Act, but not as often as in the years after it passed in 2010.” Scroll to the end of this post for more excerpts from Leys’s report.  

Iowans elected school board members yesterday. Turnout remained depressingly low, considering the importance of public school governance. The Des Moines Register’s editors were right to call for moving school board elections to another time of year either coinciding with city elections in November or in the spring.

Nevertheless, thousands of highly engaged Iowa voters–including many Bleeding Heartland readers–got involved in their local school board races or followed them closely. This thread is for any comments about any election that attracted your attention.

I was thrilled to see Heather Anderson 36 votes ahead, according to unofficial results for the Des Moines School Board District 1 seat. On Monday, I heard longtime Des Moines School Board incumbent Dick Murphy had endorsed the other candidate, which strengthened my belief that Anderson can help change the culture of that board. Incidentally, her hard-working campaign manager was Finn Andersen, a former student in her classroom who is now in high school.

The returns from the Des Moines races pointed to the wisdom of shifting that school board to a combination of wards and at-large seats. More than 2,500 people cast ballots in the District 1 race (covering the west side), compared to fewer than 1,200 voters in District 2 (north side) and fewer than 600 voters in District 3 (east side). For many years, all the Des Moines School Board seats were elected at-large, and west-siders dominated the governing body. I share the widespread opinion that the phenomenon perpetuated inequities in Des Moines public schools.

John Deeth posted a detailed write-up of the Iowa City school board results. Turnout was a bit down from 2013 but still the second-highest recorded. The planned closure of Hoover Elementary has been a divisive issue for the community, reopening some wounds from the losing battle to save Roosevelt Elementary.

Congratulations to Drake University undergraduate Josh Hughes, who won the at-large seat on the I-35 school board. He must be one of the youngest Iowans elected to a school board in recent memory, and I hope others will be inspired by his example. Those who have recently experienced any district’s schools as a student will bring a different perspective to the table, compared to the parents who dominate most school boards.

I always vote in school board elections, even non-contested ones, to prevent any stealth write-in candidate from winning. But until this year, I had never knocked on doors for a school board candidate. Nor have I endorsed a school board candidate at Bleeding Heartland before now.

Heather Anderson would be an exceptional voice on the Des Moines School Board. She is a creative thinker, hard worker, and good listener.

Anderson was one of five finalists for the Iowa Department of Education’s Iowa Teacher of the Year. She won the Iowa Division of the Izaak Walton League’s Teacher of the Year award. She won the Iowa State Education Association’s Excellence in Education Award too. None of those honors surprised anyone who had seen her in action.

Before either of my sons was assigned to Anderson’s classroom, I was aware of her efforts to enrich the learning environment at their elementary school. During the years she taught my sons, I continually saw her go above and beyond for her students and colleagues.

Watching her interact with children and adults in the classroom, on field trips, or at other school events, I saw how well Anderson relates to people with different temperaments and personality types. I think she possesses a rare combination of traditional intelligence (the “ability to learn, understand, and apply information and skills”) and interpersonal relationship skills (often called “EQ”).

Over the past decade, the Des Moines School Board has been too willing to go along with the recommendations of the superintendent, whoever he or she may be. I believe Anderson would provide a counterweight to what appears to be a “business as usual” board culture.

You can read more about Anderson’s background and comments from other supporters on her campaign website. The Des Moines Education Association, South Central Iowa Federation of Labor, and Central Iowa Building & Construction Trades Council have endorsed her candidacy.

If you live on the northwest side of Des Moines or in the Windsor Heights neighborhoods that are part of the Des Moines School District, I hope you will give Anderson your serious consideration for the District 1 seat. After the jump I’ve enclosed a map showing the district boundaries. Polls are open on Tuesday, September 8, from 7:00 am to 8:00 pm.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

According to Gallup’s latest well-being survey of people in the 100 largest U.S. metro areas, residents of the Des Moines metro area “are the most likely to say they are proud of their community,” with some 76.5 percent of central Iowa respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing with a statement about community pride. Gallup’s write-up noted a correlation between that sentiment and feeling “safe and secure.” A remarkable 85.7 percent of Des Moines area respondents said they “always feel safe and secure,” a higher level than in any other metro area Gallup surveyed.

Washington Post reporter Philip Bump speculated, “The two proudest cities are in Iowa and S.C., because people love being fawned over by politicians.” I really don’t think so.

In the past few years, at least three dozen lists measuring quality of life or economic factors have put the Des Moines area in the top five or ten communities nationwide. Former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne has raved about some of the amenities our metro has to offer. Having lived in a couple of great American cities and a couple of great European cities, I moved back to the Des Moines area for the long haul. Although I am way more politically engaged than the average person, I wouldn’t factor presidential candidate visits into a decision on where to raise my children.

Speaking of being fawned over by politicians, eleven declared or potential contenders for the presidency spoke at the Iowa GOP’s Lincoln Dinner last night. Three declared candidates missed the event (former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz), as did at least a couple of others who are considering the presidential race (Ohio Governor John Kasich and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie). A dozen or more candidates will likely crowd the stage at GOP primary debates. My thoughts about the Lincoln Dinner speakers are coming in a future post. Philip Rucker and Jenna Johnson wrote a good piece for the Washington Post on Republican insiders’ growing anxiety about their large presidential field. Their sources included a heavyweight hated by many Iowa conservatives:

We’re in a danger zone,” said Doug Gross, a top Republican establishment figure in Iowa. “When the party poobahs put this process together, they thought they could telescope this to get us a nominee who could appeal to a broad cross-section of people. What we’ve got instead is a confederation of a lot of candidates who aren’t standing out – and in order to stand out, you need to scream the loudest.”

Speaking of people who stand out by screaming loudly, Representative Steve King posted a picture of himself yesterday with Dick and Betty Odgaard, who (in his words) were “targeted by LGBT activists/litigated out of 1man/1woman wedding business.” False. Here’s what really happened after the Odgaards refused to let a gay couple rent the Görtz Haus in Grimes for a wedding.  

Iowa City received a perfect score and four other Iowa cities above-average scores in Human Rights Campaign’s new Municipal Equality Index. The LGBT advocacy group evaluated 353 cities across the country to see how inclusive their “laws, policies, and services” were for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people “who live and work there.” You can read more about the ratings criteria here. According to KCRG, the national average score was 59.

Iowa City was one of 38 municipalities to receive a perfect score of 100. Human Rights Campaign awarded scores of 86 to Davenport, 85 to Des Moines, 68 to Cedar Rapids, and 61 to Sioux City. Council Bluffs was not rated, but just across the Missouri River, Omaha received a score of 51.

KCRG noted in its report,

Iowa City did lose points in several areas, including not having transgender-inclusive health benefits or an ordinance requiring equal benefits from city contractors. However, the city also scored well in the bonus point system that was also part of the Human Rights Campaign’s rating.

You can view the detailed Municipal Equality Index ratings on Iowa City here, Davenport here, Des Moines here, Cedar Rapids here, and Sioux City here.

Business Insider put three central Iowa suburbs on its new list of 50 “best suburbs in America.” Business Insider cited schools, short commutes, and low costs of living among the reasons Waukee ranked 37th, Ankeny 36th, and Johnston 25th. On all of those counts, and more, I favor Windsor Heights, Iowa’s only “inner ring suburb.”

1. Windsor Heights residences feed into either the Des Moines or West Des Moines school districts. Both contain good high schools and a more diverse student body than the growing-too-fast Waukee, Ankeny, or Johnston schools.

2. Homes in Windsor Heights have more character than the cookie-cutter housing developments in “taupetown.” Moreover, a lot of these older brick homes were built to last, in contrast to the cheap construction that’s gone up lately in outlying suburbs.

3. Commutes are even shorter in Windsor Heights, only 10-15 minute drive from most places in the Des Moines metro area (more like 20 minutes to the airport or State Fairgrounds).

4. Windsor Heights is better-served for bike trails than the suburbs mentioned by Business Insider.

5. Most lots in Windsor Heights have mature trees.

Incidentally, I reject the premise that suburbs always offer a higher quality of life. My dozen or so favorite Des Moines neighborhoods are in my book nicer places to live than Ankeny, Waukee, or Johnston as well. Not even close.

Iowa City ranks tenth on Livability.com’s second annual list of “100 Best Places to Live” among small to mid-sized cities in the U.S. Looking at 2,000 cities with populations between 20,000 and 350,000, researchers calculated each city’s “LivScore” using 40 data points falling under eight broad categories, explained in more detail here: amenities, demographics, economy, education, health care, housing, social and civic capital, and transportation. The website said of Iowa City,

Annual cultural events and a strong literary history with writers like John Irving and Flannery O’Connor have helped shape Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa. The college community offers a hardy arts and entertainment environment along with good health care for residents, highlighted by Mercy Hospital and the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics.

Iowa City has previously been recognized as Iowa’s most walkable city.

Farther down the list of “Best Places to Live,” Iowa cities mentioned were Ames at number 30, West Des Moines at number 57, Cedar Rapids at number 65, and Des Moines at number 82.

Livability.com explained the methodology underlying the list here. The website tweaked the criteria they used last year to compile the first “Best Places to Live” list:

Specifically, we wanted to add some more variables about health care; look at the role of proximity to institutions like hospitals, colleges and universities; and create a better balance between our survey questions and the topics we were measuring. We created some new variables including a measure of racial and ethnic diversity and a rather unique look at the diversity of housing stock.

Those changes allowed Iowa City to move up from number 47 last year to this year’s top ten. Iowa’s highest-ranking city on Livability.com’s inaugural list was Cedar Rapids at number 30, followed by Ames at number 32. Des Moines was ranked number 70 and West Des Moines number 77 last year.

Hardly a month goes by without news about Des Moines scoring a top-ten national ranking on some economic or livability metric. Here’s something I didn’t expect, though: the new “Vocativ Queer Index” rates the Des Moines metro fourth among the top 35 queer-friendly cities in the U.S.

Vocativ examined the 100 largest metro areas on sixteen factors related to the quality of life for the LGBT community. Click through to read the full list and how Des Moines scored in each category. In particular, the website hailed the Iowa capital’s “inclusive attitude toward adoption and marriage equality, not to mention its high-profile out politicians” like State Senator Matt McCoy and State Representative Daniel Lundby (whom they mistook for a member of Congress).  

Happy Pride Month to everyone in the Bleeding Heartland community. After the jump I’ve posted recent news about how Iowa Safe Schools, a Des Moines-based advocacy group, is working to improve the environment for LGBTQ students in public schools all around the state.

Via Julie Zeveloff at Business Insider, I see that the Des Moines/West Des Moines metro area ranked eighth on Gallup’s latest survey measuring how satisfied Americans are with their city of residence. The latest Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index is based on 531,630 interviews the polling firm conducted in 189 metropolitan areas throughout 2012-2013. Data collected are based on at least 300 respondents from each metro area. Click through for the full chart. About 92.2 percent of respondents in the Des Moines metro area said they were satisfied with where they live, not far off the highest satisfaction reported, 94.9 percent in the Fort Collins and Loveland, Colorado area.

The Omaha/Council Bluffs metro fell just outside the top ten, with a 91.6 resident satisfaction rate, according to Gallup. The Quad Cities area ranked 75th out of the 189 metros; 86.6 percent of adults surveyed were satisfied to live in the area. Cedar Rapids was a lot lower in the rankings (112th) but not much different in terms of satisfaction: 84.4 percent.

Judging from Gallup’s data, Americans are surprisingly content with their cities of residence. Even at the bottom of the table in Rockford, Illinois, more than 72 percent of respondents said they were satisfied. I would guess this data point reflects the relatively low barriers to moving in the United States, compared to some other countries. Many of those who hate where they live are able to pull up roots and try somewhere else, depending on their priorities (job prospects, cost of living, family nearby, mild weather, proximity to mountains or ocean, good schools or other amenities).

Business owner Joe Gatto defeated real estate agent and longtime community activist Joe Henry in yesterday’s special election to represent Ward 4 on the Des Moines City Council. Unofficial results from the Polk County Auditor show that Gatto won by 1,687 votes to 1,283 (57 percent to 42 percent). Ward 4 covers most of the southeast side of Des Moines. The City Council seat became open when Brian Meyer won a special election for an Iowa House seat last October. Henry had begun campaigning for that Iowa House race but stepped aside once Meyer made his intentions known last August.

The Ward 4 special election campaign was not quite as bitterly contested as last year’s at-large race between Skip Moore and Chris Diebel, but it was a close call. Gatto has long lived in Ward 3 while owning a business (Baratta’s restaurant) in Ward 4. In September, after it became clear that Meyer would leave the City Council, Gatto took possession of his mother’s home in Ward 4. A Des Moines resident who works with Henry’s wife challenged Gatto’s eligibility for the race, since he claimed residence at his mother’s home rather than where his wife and children still reside in Ward 3. Gatto said his elderly mother needs help because of health problems. A three-person panel including Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie ruled Gatto eligible for the ballot. He appears to have won on a strong early voter drive; Henry’s campaign claimed to have won more votes cast yesterday. After the results were in, Gatto pledged “to focus on the real issues of Ward 4 and get to work for the people of the Ward.”

Voters in Des Moines will decide today whether to allow the city to collect a “franchise tax” on utility bills. The money would be used to repay tens of millions of dollars collected in “franchise fees” between 2004, when a class-action lawsuit was filed challenging the fee as an illegal tax, and 2009, when the Iowa legislature approved and Governor Chet Culver signed a law allowing cities to charge franchise fees. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled in March 2012 that the city would have to refund the franchise fees collected between 2004 and 2009. The Iowa legislature approved language that would have allowed the city of Des Moines to collect a franchise fee for seven years, but Governor Terry Branstad vetoed that line item.  

Des Moines city leaders then considered three options for repaying the estimated $42 million: cutting city staff or services (which already took a hit during the “Great Recession”), raising property taxes, or raising the franchise fee on utility bills. City leaders opted for the franchise tax, but it will only happen if Des Moines voters approve today’s referendum.

Bleeding Heartland user Jon Muller made this case for a yes vote:

There’s an election in Des Moines to approve a Franchise Tax today.  I encourage voters to approve the measure.  It’s a very simple choice for any homeowner.  You can pay a modest tax on your utility bill for 7 years, $2.50 on a $100 monthly bill.  Or, if the measure does not pass, you will pay 41 cents per thousand of taxable valuation for 20 years.  On a $150,000 house, you’re looking at $32 a year for 20 years.

This was the easiest Yes vote I have ever cast.  Not even a line call.  This isn’t about past mistakes, which many of us agree could have avoided this entire situation.  It’s only about how you prefer your taxes be raised, how much they will be raised, and for how long.  More than 40% of the property in Des Moines isn’t even subject to property taxes, but virtually all of the property in Des Moines consumes electricity.  A Yes vote means we spread the burden across more taxpayers, at a lower rate, for less time.

Simple.

An analysis by the city determined that raising property taxes “would cost a typical homeowner about $444 over the next 20 years,” while the proposed franchise fee increase “would cost a electric customer about $273 over the next seven years.”

UPDATE: Unofficial results from the Polk County auditor’s office indicate that “yes” passed easily by 8,095 votes to 1,422 (85 percent to 15 percent).

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.

Des Moines continues to make national news as a place with a generally high quality of life. This week NBC’s Today show named Iowa’s capital as “the city where regular folk can live a rich life,” because the “cost of living is almost 10 percent below the average for the country.” Last summer, Forbes magazine named Des Moines the country’s best city for “business and careers,” noting it was “the only place that ranks among the top quartile in at least nine of the 12 metrics we graded the cities on.” Previous research indicates that Des Moines has “one of the shortest commute times in the nation with an average commute of about 19 minutes.”

But given that Iowa wages skew lower than salaries in many other metro areas, how affordable is Des Moines, really? The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Transportation recently launched a Location Affordability Portal that takes into account “the percentage of a family’s income dedicated to the combined cost of housing and transportation in a given location.” (I’ve posted more explanation after the jump.) The algorithm takes into account that many Americans are now spending more on transportation than on rent or mortgage payments, so you can’t just look at housing costs when deciding whether a particular neighborhood is “affordable.”

On this page you can search by a specific address, a zip code, city, county or state to pull up information on average household income and how much a household in that area could expect to spend on housing and transportation.

Windsor Heights (zip code 50324) has a “location affordability” rating of 42 percent. The average household could expect to spend 25 percent of annual income on housing and 17 percent on transportation. Affordability numbers on the west side of Des Moines (50311) are similar. The near north side of Des Moines (50314) is more affordable, and the combined average cost of housing and transportation is lower still on the south side (50315) and around downtown (50309).

Residents in the Iowa City zip code of 52242 can expect to spend less on transportation (16 percent of annual income) but a lot more for housing (39 percent), for a total location affordability of 55 percent. The Cedar Falls zip code of 50613 has a nearly identical combined affordability rating as downtown Iowa City (54 percent), but residents can expect to spend less on housing (29 percent) and more on transportation (25 percent)–unless they take advantage of the bicycle-friendly atmosphere in Cedar Falls.  

Voters in Iowa’s two largest cities chose new representation for their city councils yesterday. In Cedar Rapids, the top four candidates from the November 5 election competed for two at-large seats. Ralph Russell and Susie Weinacht finished first and second, while incumbent Chuck Swore lost his seat in fourth place. Swore was the top vote-getter on November 5, but didn’t win a high enough percentage to avoid a runoff.

In Ward 1 on the northwest side of Des Moines, Bill Gray narrowly defeated Sean Bagniewski yesterday. Gray won the most votes in a field of five candidates on November 5, but fell short of the 50 percent needed to win outright. I knew Democrats on both sides in the Ward 1 race, but thankfully, the battle for that open seat never got nasty like the campaign between Skip Moore and Chris Diebel for the Des Moines at-large seat.

Polls closed at 8:00 pm across Iowa. What local elections are you following tonight, Bleeding Heartland readers?

Polk County voters appear to have approved Public Measure A to fund improvements to the county court system. UPDATE: With all precincts reporting, “yes” on A has 21,702 votes (67 percent) to 10,611 votes (33 percent) for “no.”

With 65 of 71 precincts reporting, Des Moines at-large City Council member Skip Moore has 7,720 votes, while challenger Chris Diebel has 4,725 votes. Incumbent Chris Hensley has been re-elected in the third ward, and in the open first ward, Bill Gray has a lead over Sean Bagniewski, the candidate preferred by many progressives and labor activists.

UPDATE: Windsor Heights results are in: for the first time I can remember, all of the candidates I supported won! Longtime city council member Diana Willits won the open race for mayor (Jerry Sullivan retired). Diana is one of the few Republicans I’ve consistently voted for over the years. Unofficial results for city council indicate that the winners were incumbent Betty Glover (whom I didn’t support) and candidates Steve Peterson and Tony Timm (for whom I voted). Peterson is a former city council member and was the Joe Biden precinct captain in Windsor Heights 2 in 2008. Timm is the executive director of the largest homeless shelter in Des Moines.

SECOND UPDATE: By a 2-1 margin, Iowa City voters upheld the city ordinance keeping 19 and 20-year-olds out of bars. The Iowa City council results will be a disappointment to those who were hoping to elect more progressives in the “people’s republic.”

THIRD UPDATE: Looks like the incumbents were re-elected in Coralville, a big loss for the Koch brothers’ group Americans for Prosperity.

FOURTH UPDATE: Two local officials who are running for the state legislature as Republicans lost yesterday. Royce Phillips was a city council member in Tiffin and is a candidate for the open Iowa Senate district 39. Mark LeRette was a city council member in Muscatine and is a candidate for the open House district 91.

Cedar Rapids voters re-elected Mayor Ron Corbett. An ten-year extension of the local-option sales tax also passed easily in the Cedar Rapids metro area.

I can’t remember a local race that’s been more divisive for central Iowa Democrats than the Des Moines at-large City Council contest between Skip Moore and Chris Diebel. (That includes Ed Fallon’s challenge to Leonard Boswell in the 2008 Democratic primary to represent IA-03. In that race, the whole local establishment was on Boswell’s side.) I’ve been meaning to post an update on the city council race for the past week, but frankly, I wanted to avoid sparking a flamewar like some of the Facebook threads I’ve seen.

The early returns tonight indicate a big victory for Moore.

After the jump I’ve posted examples of positive and negative messages from the Diebel and Moore campaigns, along with one of the direct-mail pieces the National Association of Realtors Fund sent to Des Moines residents. The realtors’ group appears to be polling voters to gauge whether their mailing and radio ads have helped Diebel. During the last couple of days, several of my acquaintances in Des Moines have received telephone polls that asked them why they were supporting the candidate of their choice, and whether Diebel’s mail or the realtors’ mail affected their vote.  

For the first time yesterday, I heard radio commercials supporting Chris Diebel’s campaign for the at-large Des Moines City Council seat. The National Association of Realtors Fund paid for the radio spots. I managed to tape one this morning and have posted the transcript after the jump, along with a comment from Diebel.

Both Diebel and Skip Moore, the incumbent he is challenging, are Democrats, but the realtors’ ad seems designed to appeal to Republican-leaning voters. The election will take place on November 5.

Following up on yesterday’s news, Des Moines City Council member Brian Meyer will be unchallenged for the Democratic nomination in Iowa House district 33, where a special election is set for October 22. The two Democrats who had announced campaigns, Karl Schilling and Joe Henry, both endorsed Meyer yesterday. Felix Gallagher confirmed by telephone today that he had considered running for the House seat but decided against the race. By the way, I forgot to mention that Gallagher was the treasurer for Desmund Adams’ campaign in Iowa Senate district 22 last year.

Meyer’s press release spoke of entering the race “in the hopes of unifying the party and continuing the good work of former Representative [Kevin] McCarthy.” I don’t see any urgency to unify the party in a district Republicans have no realistic hope of winning. The latest Civic Skinny column in the Des Moines weekly Cityview suggests another reason for Meyer to get into the race:

Word is that Marshalltown’s Mark Smith, who bested Des Moines’ Rick Olson, 24-20, in the caucus vote to succeed Kevin McCarthy as head of the Democrats in the Iowa House, has let go McCarthy’s key aide, Des Moines City Councilman Brian Meyer. The move has surprised – and upset – some Democrats. …

In all likelihood the Iowa House seat will be Meyer’s for as long as he wants it. That would force a special election to replace Meyer as the Des Moines City Council member representing Ward 4. Bleeding Heartland user Columcille raises the interesting possibility of Chris Diebel running for that seat, instead of challenging incumbent Skip Moore for the at-large council seat. UPDATE: A Bleeding Heartland reader alerted me to a big problem with that scenario: Diebel lives in Ward 3, not Ward 4 (city council map here).  

Some intensely competitive elections are coming up in Iowa, and naturally, Bleeding Heartland readers will have different preferences regarding the best Democratic candidate for governor, first Congressional district, or other races. I noticed some problems with comment ratings on this post about the Des Moines City Council at-large election, which pits two well-liked Democrats against each other.

It’s time for another reminder about the rules for rating comments at Bleeding Heartland, so I’ve posted them after the jump. “Zero” ratings can lead to comments being hidden from view and should not be used to signal your disagreement with the commenter. Doing so is ratings abuse. A “2” is sufficient to show that you strongly disagree with the person. If you have applied a 1 or zero rating to a comment based solely on your opinion, please go back to that diary and remove your rating from the comment.  

Less than 24 hours after news broke of Chris Diebel’s candidacy for the Des Moines City Council’s at-large seat, incumbent Skip Moore’s campaign announced the endorsement of the South Central Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, “a coalition of 52 local affiliated unions.” Moore was a unionized city employee for many years and had strong backing from organized labor in his successful 2009 campaign.

Diebel is a marketing specialist who worked for several hip downtown Des Moines businesses before becoming a managing partner in LPCA Public Strategies, the public and government relations firm headed by Iowa’s most prominent Democratic consultant, Jeff Link. A former “young professional of the year,” Diebel has volunteered for a wide range of non-profit organizations, including several that will generate support from “upscale” Democrats and Republicans (e.g. Des Moines-Westside Chamber of Commerce, Des Moines Arts Festival).

Local elections tend to have low turnout, and it will be fascinating to see which campaign does a better job of mobilizing supporters: organized labor’s boots on the ground or LPCA’s cutting edge campaign management techniques.

UPDATE: On August 1 the Central Iowa Building & Construction Trades Council became the second large labor group to endorse Moore for re-election. According to a news release, “The council represents 17 local labor unions and over 5,000 skilled union workers in central Iowa.”

The Salisbury House Foundation was founded in 1993 to preserve, interpret and share Salisbury House for the educational and cultural benefit of the public. Implicit in this mission is a role we have embraced since our inception as caretakers of the Weeks Family history: not just for Carl and Edith (who built the house in the 1920s), but for their forebears, their four sons and their later descendants. (Social media has proven an incredible asset in this latter regard, as we have connected with many Weeks grandchildren via our Facebook page). In 2012, we received a Historical Resource Development Grant from the State Historical Society of Iowa specifically to research and interpret Weeks family history, so we have spent much of the past year delving deep into local and remote archives to better tell the story of this remarkable family.

Having exhausted all possible appeals, the city of Des Moines will have to refund tens of millions of dollars collected through “franchise fees” attached to residents’ utility bills between 2004 and 2009.  

In 2011, Governor Terry Branstad played hardball to force Cedar Rapids leaders to abandon a project labor agreement for a public building. Last Friday, one of the governor’s line-item vetoes boxed in Des Moines leaders. The governor’s action may eventually push capital city officials toward unpopular ways of refunding so-called “franchise fees” to residents.

Transportation for America released a new report today examining structurally deficient bridges in U.S. metro areas. Among communities with a population between 500,000 and 1 million, the Des Moines metro ranked fourth-worst with 24.3 percent of area bridges in the structurally deficient category.

UPDATE: Representative Leonard Boswell’s comments on this report are at the end of this post.

Voters across Iowa elected school board members today. I discuss some of the Polk County results after the jump, and I hope Bleeding Heartland readers will share anything interesting that happened in their neck of the woods.

When the city of Des Moines put Ingersoll Avenue on a “road diet” last month, some locals warned the change would inconvenience drivers and hurt area businesses. I drive down Ingersoll several times a week and have noticed no change in the traffic flow. Now a new study shows commuters have hardly been affected:

In early May, Ingersoll was “re-striped” between Polk Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway, decreasing the number of vehicle lanes from four to three. There is one lane in each direction, a center left-turn lane and bicycle lanes on both sides of the street.

In the worst case, travel times increased roughly 20 seconds for westbound motorists traveling between Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway and 42nd Street during the afternoon rush hour, said Gary Fox, the city’s traffic engineer. There were essentially no changes overall and slight improvements in midday vehicle travel times, he added. […]

The Ingersoll plan is part of a broader “complete streets” initiative that aims to make Des Moines streets more accessible to bicycles and pedestrians.

Giving people safe alternatives to driving is the main reason to adopt “complete streets” policies, but this re-striping also created about 50 additional on-street parking spaces, which helps Ingersoll business owners and their customers. Click here for more information on road diets and here to learn about complete streets. Like Des Moines, the small town of Cascade, Iowa City and the Johnson County Council of Governments have also adopted complete streets policies. Earlier this year, Dubuque received a federal grant to help residents of the historic Millwork District commute to work on foot, bike, or via public transit.

LATE UPDATE: On June 24 I had to drive west almost the whole length of Ingersoll just before 5 pm, which must be around the worst time for “rush hour” traffic. I didn’t notice any problems, and hardly saw any congestion except for the stretch between 24th and 31st streets. Even that wasn’t bad.

The Des Moines City Council voted 6-0 today to impose a six-month moratorium on new payday lending operations and pawn shops.

City leaders will spend the next 180 days examining long-term zoning regulations on such businesses. The action was taken partly in response to concerns voiced by neighborhood leaders and business owners.

Plans to open new Pawn America shops on Merle Hay Road and SE 14th Street prompted the City Council to act. Ideally, Iowa would have enacted stronger regulations on the payday lending industry long ago, because the industry’s business model depends on trapping borrowers in cycles of debt. Some Iowa Democrats tried to pass new regulations on payday lending during this year’s legislative session, but unfortunately the bill didn’t have the votes to get out of subcommittee before the first “funnel” deadline.

After the jump I’ve posted Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement‘s reaction to today’s news. Iowa CCI was one of several organizations that urged the legislature to act to protect consumers from payday lenders.

It’s not yet clear whether payday lending restrictions will be part of the federal financial reform legislation Congress is now considering.

Iowa's waters are dangerously polluted. The problem is caused by big industries (e.g. coal plants, meat processing facilities) which dump straight into our waterways toxic chemicals that cause cancer and reproductive and developmental disorders (see our 10/2009 report). Large-scale farming operations are also implicated.

The results are devastating for the health of human and natural communities across the state. The Iowa River, an important recreational resource and supplier of the Iowa City area's drinking water, has been listed as “endangered.” In Des Moines, the water works had to stop drawing drinking water from the Raccoon River in September because of the growth of pollution-fed algae.

Whether in Iowa City or Des Moines, we all are near some body of water and these waters are where we smim, fish, canoe, and indeed where many of us get our drinking water. It is imperative that we protect them.

Many Iowans know that the DNR has recently nominated certain waters in the state as “outstanding waters,” sparing them from further pollution. This process, known as the “anti-degradation” rule-making process, is required by federal law under the Clean Water Act (CWA).

Yet what many Iowans may not know is that, like the Iowa River, the CWA is itself fast becoming endangered.

Forbes.com compiled a list of the best “bang for the buck” cities in the U.S.:

To find the cities that offer the most bang for the buck, we looked at the country’s 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas–geographic entities defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, for use in collecting statistics– across these measures: foreclosures as a percentage of home prices; vacancies; unemployment rates; a three-year job-growth forecast; a three-year home-price forecast; housing affordability; median real estate taxes; and median travel time to work.

The Des Moines/West Des Moines metro area ranked fourth out of 100:

With low unemployment, at 6%, few vacancies and a promising home price forecast, the real estate market shows fresh signs of robustness. And its home prices make it possible for budget-conscious home buyers to get in the door–it scores above average for home price affordability.

The Omaha/Council Bluffs area ranked first on the Forbes.com list, and also ranked first on the list of cities “best surviving the recession. “No other Iowa metros were large enough to be considered for this analysis.

Click here and scroll down for more details on the methodology used to assess unemployment and healthy housing markets. Click here for the list ranking all 100 most populous metro areas. If you’re feeling down now that snow has arrived in Iowa, consider how much more affordable life is here compared to most of the sun belt cities.

The Des Moines Register brought to my attention a new report ranking 200 large metropolitan areas and 124 smaller metropolitan areas:

The 2009 Milken Institute/Greenstreet Real Estate Partners Best-Performing Cities Index ranks U.S. metropolitan areas by how well they are creating and sustaining jobs and economic growth.  The components include job, wage and salary and technology growth.

The list of smaller cities includes eight Iowa metros, and you can view the details here. My short take is after the jump.

This Saturday, participants in over 3,000 events in 170 countries will observe the 350.org International Day of Climate action. Activists will ask international and national leaders to take real action to reduce CO2 levels from 390 to 350 parts per million and protect our planet.   

1Sky has helped plan many of these events and here in Iowa, we'll also be calling for Senators Harkin and Grassley to take real action to create clean energy jobs.

If you're concerned about Climate Change, please check out one of the events occurring in a town near you.  

And if you're in Des Moines tomorrow night, 1Sky will be hosting an open house at our new office at 118 SE 4th Street, inside the Market Street Media Foundry, at 6:00 P.M.

Wherever possible, at events across Iowa, 1Sky will provide postcards and scripts so that you can tell Senators Harkin and Grassley that you hold them personally responsible for the action we need to save our climate for our children and grandchildren and boost our economy with new green jobs.

Links to events planned by local activists in Fairfield, Ames, Des Moines, Waverly, Cedar Falls, Quad Cities, and Iowa City are available after the cut… 

For Immediate Release: September 10, 2009

Contact: Eric Nost, Environment Iowa, 515-243-5835, enost@environmentiowa.org

New Report: Strong Energy Efficiency Policies in Energy/Climate Legislation Would Save Iowa Families $282 per Year, Create 6,200 Jobs

Des Moines, IA – A new national report finds that Iowa households would save an average of $282 per year and 6,200 sustainable jobs would be created in the state over the next ten years if Congress acts now to include strong energy efficiency improvements in energy and climate legislation. The report, entitled Energy Efficiency in the American Clean Energy Security Act of 2009: Impacts of Current Provisions and Opportunities to Enhance the Legislation, was released by Environment Iowa and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. The efficiency provisions would prevent 5 million metric tons of global warming emissions from being released here in 2020 alone, the equivalent of taking over 900,000 cars off the road for a year. (The report is publicly available at http://www.environmentiowa.org)

(continues after the jump) 

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement is holding its annual convention this Saturday, July 18, at the Hotel Fort Des Moines:

Iowa CCI’s statewide annual convention will feature workshops and plenary sessions on factory farming, campaign finance reform, immigration reform, and predatory lending. The convention will conclude with an exciting direct action targeting an undisclosed payday lender in a low-income community in  Des Moines.

More details on that and other events coming up soon are after the jump.

As always, please post a comment or send me an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) if you know of another event I’ve left out.

To Bleeding Heartland readers who plan to do RAGBRAI next week: consider posting a diary about your experience or any candidates you encounter during the ride. I saw this at Bob Krause’s campaign site:

Eric Rysdam of  Fairfield, Iowa has agreed to ride across the state in  RAGBRAI, The Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa with a big Krause banner and shirt. Eric will be the core of an amorphous group participating and getting the word out about for us! Please wish Eric well with his training in anticipation of the July 19-25 event! Eric’s number is 319-293-6306 if you want to wish him well, or if you want to be on the ride with him.

After “an emotional public hearing,” the Des Moines City Council voted 6-0 today to restore the original name of the Archie Brooks Community Center on the south side:

Brooks, a long-time councilman who was first elected in 1975, pleaded guilty of conspiracy and misappropriation of public money stemming from his role in a payroll scandal at the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium, where he once served as board chairman. He was sentenced in January to a year and a day in prison and was ordered to repay $400,000 of the nearly $2 million lost in the scandal.

Some argue Brooks’ actions not only disgraced himself, but shamed the city, while others say decades of public service outweigh any of his admitted misdeeds.

The nice facility will once again be known as the Pioneer-Columbus Community Center.

City Council member Tom Vlassis abstained from today’s vote. He was a CIETC board member when crimes occurred at the agency and has admitted that he was a “rubber stamp” for what CIETC executives wanted.

Most Des Moines residents who contacted City Council members about the matter supported taking Brooks’ name off the community center. However, listening to those who stand by Brooks even now provides a good reminder of how well patronage can work for local political bosses.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread. Bonus points if you can explain why the CIETC scandal, involving about $2 million, has generated more intense public outrage than the billions of taxpayer dollars squandered in wasteful, no-bid federal contracts every year.

I suspect this is mainly related to “agenda-setting” by local media that put CIETC on the front page for months. Perhaps some armchair psychologist in the Bleeding Heartland community knows of other reasons why certain crimes involving public money make people angrier than others.

Former Des Moines City Council member Archie Brooks was sentenced to one year plus one day in prison, plus a $400,000 fine and two years of probation, for his role in misusing about $2 million funds at the Central Iowa Employment Training Consortium (CIETC). Brooks was the board chairman of CIETC at the time.

Depending on how you look at it, Brooks’ sentence seems long or short. It’s long when you consider that billions of taxpayer dollars spent in Iraq can’t be accounted for, yet there is not even a serious investigation (let alone prosecution) of those who may be responsible.

On the other hand, Brooks is getting off lightly compared to Ramona Cunningham, who did not cooperate with prosecutors and got 7 years in prison for her role in the CIETC crimes. Also, the former CIETC treasurer was sentenced to two years in prison followed by three years of house arrest.

Marc Hansen’s latest Des Moines Register column notes that Des Moines City Council member Brian Meyer wants the council to discuss renaming the Archie Brooks Community Center. The south-side facility used to be called the Pioneer-Columbus Community Center.

Meyer says he’s getting a lot of feedback from south-siders, most of whom want to change the name. I agree that an elected official who abused his power to enrich a few people should not have a neighborhood landmark named after him.

Hansen nosed around the community center and found that most of the people agreed with changing the name, but the most interesting quotes in his column are from the minority who want to leave the name alone.

If you want to understand why patronage works and why political machines have been so powerful in so many cities, read this:

“I’m not going against Archie Brooks,” she said. “I like Archie. I don’t like what he did. I think he should be punished, but I don’t think he should go to prison.”

The body of his good deeds, in other words, outweighs the CIETC bad. Pazzi recalled the floods of 1993 and how the city removed water pumps from some south-side basements and sent them – where else? – west.

Somebody told Brooks, who made a few phone calls and had the pumps back where they belonged, proving that not every call he made during the flood was a bad one.

“You know what?” Pazzi said. “The south side must have wanted him back. He knocked the fireman out of the City Council.”

The fireman is Gene Phillips, who defeated Brooks in 1995. Phillips left the City Council and won a seat on the county Board of Supervisors, setting up Brooks’ return to the council.[…]

Larry Marlin […] said Brooks kept his VFW post from closing.

“If it wasn’t for his connections to the City Council,” Marlin said, “the post wouldn’t be there. He knew we were eligible for a $10,000 grant. There were a lot of times he’d tell me where to go and it was never go to hell. Sure, he made some mistakes, but he trusted the wrong people. I definitely don’t think he should get jail time.”

That’s an old-school political boss. Good for Brooks for getting those pumps back to the flooded south-side basements and keeping the VFW post open.

But we don’t need a building named after a convicted criminal.

John Wenck, an outreach coordinator for the Department of Natural Resources, had a good guest opinion column in Monday’s Des Moines Register about why building a new road through the Des Moines River Greenbelt is a bad idea.

This road project used to be called the “MLK extension,” because it would extend Martin Luther King Drive north through the river greenbelt. A group of environmental advocates and interested citizens helped defeat that proposal years ago.

Now it has been revived as the “Northwest 26th Street extension,” which is the Ankeny street that would be extended south through the greenbelt to connect with MLK on the Des Moines side.

A new name does nothing to lessen the impact of this road. A Sierra Club “sprawl report” from the fall of 2000 had this to say:

Tearing down urban highways has brought new life to neighborhoods long hemmed-in by the roads. Unfortunately, Des Moines seems to be heading in the opposite direction with the proposed extension of Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway. This project will put a highway in what is now an urban green space and flood-control zone.

The Des Moines River Valley is a unique urban green space that provides a variety of habitats for wildlife, plants and people. It is an important wintering ground for the bald eagle and ideal habitat for many species of migratory birds. This area also serves as a buffer between existing neighborhoods and the current interstate. Two bicycle trails run along the river and improve the transportation choices for Des Moines residents.

Building a highway through this area will clearly harm its value to wildlife, reduce the value of the land as a floodplain and make areas downstream more prone to flooding. The proposed extension will also encourage sprawl outside the city and add to the traffic and air pollution problems of the region. Middle- and low-income neighborhoods near the proposed route will suffer from more noise and air pollution.

Given that new highways draw more drivers onto the road, the parkway extension would do little to ease traffic. Rather than building a major new highway and destroying this open space, a smarter plan would enhance this urban green space and use public transportation to ease the area’s traffic congestion.

The last paragraph is crucial: this road project would do little to ease traffic. I am old enough to remember the debate over extending 100th St. in Clive over the Clive Greenbelt during the 1980s. That was supposed to solve a lot of traffic problems in the western suburbs, but it didn’t do the job. Instead, there has been more sprawling development and more traffic in the area.

The Des Moines River Greenbelt contains outstanding habitat for birds that are very sensitive to noise that would accompany a major road. We don’t have an abundance of riparian forests in central Iowa anymore and should preserve the ones that remain.

If you care about wildlife habitat and/or sound transportation policy, I encourage you to get involved with one or more of the organizations that are fighting the NW 26th St extension. They include the Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club, 1000 Friends of Iowa, and Iowa Rivers Revival.

Last weekend I wrote that Des Moines City Council member Chris Coleman should have disclosed his business relationship with Ed Boesen before voting to approve an urban renewal district encompassing part of Beaverdale. Boesen was an investor in a development project for Rice field, which could qualify for tax breaks because of the urban renewal area.

Coleman initially said he saw no need to disclose his business relationship with Boesen, because the “CoBo” partnership had supposedly ended years ago.

But in an interview with the Des Moines Register, Coleman now says Boesen owed him $20,000 at the time of the key City Council votes:

Coleman today acknowledged Boesen owed him money even as the councilman voted three times in 2007 in support of Boesen’s Rice Development Partners $11.6 million Beaverdale project.

“I don’t think that the appearance of a conflict (of interests) means there is a conflict,” Coleman told the Register today. “It is two different things. I didn’t in any way feel that it was in any way tied to the Rice project.”

Coleman also acknowledged to the Register that he had a second business relationship with Boesen, in addition to a partnership called CoBo Investments that was formed in 1998.

Coleman sold a Beaverdale home on 49th Street to a Boesen-managed company in January – two months after the final vote on Rice Development Partners’ project – for nearly twice the current assessed value of the property.

But Coleman said he did not receive all of his proceeds from the sale of the house on 49th Street or from the 2005 duplex sale by CoBo Investments because Boesen did not fully pay him for either transaction.

Let me spell out to Coleman why there was a conflict of interest. If someone owes you money, you might have an interest in helping that person make a profit on some other project, because that might increase the chance that you’d get paid back.

In addition, it looks very bad for Boesen to be buying property from a City Council member shortly after the Beaverdale votes, especially for twice the assessed value of that property.

The fact that Coleman never received the full proceeds from the house sale makes no difference. Presumably he was expecting to receive that money.

This situation warrants further investigation.

Boesen’s death last month has been ruled a suicide. Several creditors are suing his estate. It is not clear whether his business partners will be able to go ahead with the Rice field project.

This column by Marc Hansen should be required reading:

John Morrissey, president of the Highland Park Neighborhood Association, asks a good question.

“Here we have a levee the Corps of Engineers said would fail, and yet it hasn’t been rebuilt in 15 years. And why is that? Why have our leaders not taken up the banner to protect the people who live and work and put their sweat and tears in this town every day?”

[…]

Improvements were made to the Birdland-area levee. Money was spent after the 1993 soaking, but obviously not enough. Why?

These are some of the most vulnerable residents in the metro area. We’re talking about people who might not be getting paychecks for weeks or months, people who have the most to lose.

[…]

Zero in on the north side of town, however, and something wasn’t so right. Morrissey wants to know why the focus is on cosmetic projects like the Principal Riverwalk, at the expense of essential needs like keeping working-class neighborhoods dry.

[…]

The Birdland levee was approved for renovation. But when the flood arrived, it was still on the waiting list.

Here’s hoping the Des Moines Register will devote some investigative reporting to this matter in the coming months. The damage to the Birdland neighborhood caused more human suffering and will cost a lot more public money to fix than crimes committed at the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium (CIETC), which the Register covered at great length.

Also worth reading regarding the flooding:

href=”http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080618/OPINION01/806180345/1166/OPINION01″>This column by former Register editorial writer Bill Leonard, called “Eroded soil sends message: Step up conservation.”

This diary by Matthew Grimm on a benefit concert scheduled for tonight (Thursday, June 19) in Iowa City.

Apparently you can spend more than a million dollars on a wedding in Des Moines. I thought that level of absurdly conspicuous consumption was limited to places like Chicago or New York, but Cityview sets the record straight in an article on Des Moines extravagances.

Caterers and event planners describe cakes that cost more than $5,000 or take more than 30 hours to make. The article culminates with several paragraphs on a dinner for 14 friends that cost $25,000 “just in food and wine costs.” Many foods were flown in to Des Moines for the meal. My favorite example was vinegar that sells for $250 a liter, which the host requested because he “likes his foie gras glazed in it.”

Consider this an open thread to discuss ridiculous extravagance you have observed or heard about. For instance (this is a true story), one of my college friends attended a wedding reception where butternut squash soup was served featuring the couple’s initials written in heavy cream in every bowl.

It would be a terrible mistake for the Des Moines school board to go down the path outlined in the Des Moines Register on Friday:

Fine print in a new statewide election law gives the Des Moines school board the option to cut short controversial member Jon Narcisse’s three-year term, a move he says would be “an assault against democracy.”

[…]

Eric Tabor, chief of staff for the Iowa attorney general’s office, said the Legislature has the authority to alter school board terms. Secretary of State Michael Mauro said there was “absolutely, unequivocally, no intent to put any board member in any district in jeopardy.”

Boards are instructed to consider the number of votes board members received in the last election when they decide how to meet the law’s requirements. Patty Link won 4,021 votes and Narcisse 3,029 in September.

[…]

Phil Roeder, spokesman for the district, said a few options would comply with the law:

– Shorten Narcisse’s and Link’s terms by one year, with re-election in 2009.

– Decrease Narcisse’s term and increase Link’s by one year, with re-election in 2009 and 2011, respectively.

– Alter the 2008 election terms so that one or two members are elected to one-year terms; Narcisse and Link would then be up for re-election in 2009 and 2011, respectively, or both in 2011.

I don’t care what the law allows them to do–any solution that appears to favor Link (a well-connected and well-liked white woman) over Narcisse (an outspoken critic of district policies who is also the only African American on the board CORRECTION: Teree Caldwell-Johnson, who is African-American, also serves on the Des Moines school board) would be a disaster.

If the goal is to get Narcisse off the board sooner, I doubt making him into a martyr is going to achieve that. He was elected precisely because of his criticism of past leadership on the school board and in the district administration.

I know people involved in the Save & Support Our Schools organization who strongly backed Narcisse’s candidacy. They felt that too many Des Moines school board members had failed to ask tough questions of superintendent Eric Witherspoon over the years. (The current superintendent, Nancy Sebring, seems to be more responsive to community concerns.)

The school board should find a way to implement this new law without appearing to single out Narcisse for punishment.  

John McCain is coming to Des Moines on Thursday, and the Iowa Democratic Party and Moveon.Org are planning public events to mark the occasion. This is from an e-mail the IDP sent out this week:

Democratic Activists are needed to help welcome John McCain to Des Moines This Thursday!

Wednesday Night:

Sign Making/Pizza Party to help make all the signs needed for Thursday’s big event. This will be from 6:00 PM-8:00PM at 420 Watson Powell, Des Moines IA, 50309.

Thursday:

Thursday we will be staging a counter protest to McCain’s visit; please join us at 12:30 PM at the IDP office, 420 Watson Powell, Des Moines IA, 50309, where we will meet as a group and then proceed over to make our voices heard across the street!

If available please contact Jeff Perry at jperry AT iowademocrats.org or 515-974-1703.

Moveon.Org sent this e-mail out as well:

With the Obama-Clinton primary still underway, John McCain has largely gotten a free ride in the media. He’s coming to Des Moines on Thursday, hoping to get lots of fluff media coverage. Well, we’re not going to let that happen.

MoveOn members in your area will be putting on a fun event called The Bush-McCain Challenge to make sure local voters and the media know that a McCain presidency would equal Bush’s third term. We’ll have a carnival-style table where people can answer questions and win prizes if they can tell the difference between Bush and McCain’s stances on issues. Media will be invited to come.

Can you help out at The Bush-McCain Challenge table this Thursday between 12:00 p.m. and 1:30 p.m.? It will be fun, and the more the merrier. Event details and RSVP link are here:

WHAT: The Bush-McCain Challenge in Cleveland

WHERE: 501 Grand Avenue, across from the Convention Complex, Des Moines, IA, 50310

WHEN: Thursday, May 1 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

RSVP: http://pol.moveon.org/event/ev…

We’ll supply the questions and decorations. We need your help to ask the questions at the table, or to hand out flyers to people walking by-promoting the challenge. Local media will be invited and national media who fly around with McCain will receive photos and local news clips of the event to incorporate into their reporting. We’ll also put the best clips from these events around the nation on YouTube.

We saw the impact of regular people fighting back locally during President Bush’s Social Security privatization tour.1 In town after town, we and coalition partners matched or beat Bush’s media coverage by planning events surrounding his local visit that showed why he was wrong.

The Bush-McCain Challenge will be a lot of fun. Together, we’ll make sure voters realize that electing McCain would, in effect, be voting for Bush’s third term.

We hope you can join us for this event. Thanks for all you do.

-Adam G., Lenore, Anna, Noah, Ilyse and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team

 Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

1. Video of pushback events held during President Bush’s Social Security privatization tour

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=742&…

Incidentally, if you are a Moveon.Org member but are not a fan of Barack Obama, you can opt out of their Obama-related action e-mails and still receive their other e-mails. I appreciate that!

Here are some links to the video we recorded at the October 27th Iowa peace rally.  I have labelled each video with the name of the speaker, and the youtube page has a short description.  I highly recommend Ako Abdul-Samad, and Mayor Cownie also gave some good comments.  We wanted to share this with everyone who wasn't able to make it, feel free to post or pass it around!

http://www.youtube.c… –  Sue Dinsdale Speaking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlAT4JpEXy4 –  Mayor Cownie – You will have to go to the user profile through another link to get to this one, youtube is saying it's a malformed video id for some reason.
http://www.youtube.c… – Ako Abdul-Samad
http://www.youtube.c… –  Terri Jones
http://www.youtube.c… –  Mona Shaw
http://www.youtube.c… – Students Beyond War
http://www.youtube.c… –  The Raging Grannies

Ako Abdul-Samad:

The A28 Website

A28 – April 28th – will see a number of nationwide impeachment actions.  Iowa will have a presence, thanks to volunteer Sue Ann Johnson:

The A28 Iowa Impeachment Portrait Caravan: I am planning to drive across the great state of Iowa on Saturday, April 28th and meet friends and supporters at various locations along the way (Fort Dodge, Ames, Des Moines, Iowa City, etc.) to photograph people from across Iowa holding block-letter signs to spell “IMPEACH”. I want to demonstrate that Iowans support impeachment and to remind our state legislators of that, too. My schedule is as follows: I’ll be starting out at 8 am in Fort Dodge at the Fort Dodge Public Library. My next stop will be in Ames at the Iowa State Memorial Union (ISU campus) north side fountain (between Union Drive and the front door) at 10 am. At 12 noon, I’ll be in Des Moines at the Iowa State Capitol Building, Spanish-American War Monument (E. 12th Street). The last stop of the day will be in Iowa City at the south side of the Iowa Memorial Union (UIowa campus), near Hubbard Park at 3 pm. This event is for anyone who supports impeaching America’s leaders regarding their decisions to involve our nation in a war in Iraq and their consequent decisions to spy on the American public in open violation of the law and sanction the use of torture. Participants can meet me at one of the above locations, or drive with me caravan-style to several locations. Make a statement without saying a word! Contact: sueannjohnson79 [at] Hotmail

(email address altered for anti-spam sanity- if you can’t figure it out, contact me.)

I’ll be meeting our caravan Saturday at Noon at the Capitol!  Bring your signs –  I’ll be bringing my car with it’s impeachment stickers.