State budget woes may affect Luster Heights

By Trudy Balcom

With Iowa facing across-the-board budget cuts, the future for Luster Heights Correctional Facility may be bleak. By next
week, the Iowa Department of Corrections may decide to close the facility.
   
    “This is the year I would be afraid,” said Von Denlinger, who retired from his position as correctional security manager at
Luster Heights in September. He has seen the prison camp’s future called into question during other budget crisis, most recently state budget negotiations last March.

“As far as correctional staff, they’ve cut all they can cut,” he explained.

Since Denlinger’s retirement, his position has been replaced by a part-time security manager, Kevin Haggeman, who comes
up from Anamosa State Prison three day a week.

Denlinger’s position was full-time.

Sergeant Rod Lammers is now the ranking employee at the facility which houses 68 inmates currently. Most inmates at
Luster Heights are transitioning out of the prison system and go to the facility to receive drug and alcohol treatment and
learn work skills.

According to Iowa Corrections Media Relations staffer Fred Scaletta, this change in administrative structure poses no threat to the community. There is still sufficient security staff at the facility for day-to-day operations he says.

“That routine and process has not changed,” he said.

Inmates at Luster Heights also provide affordable labor to area communities and non-profit groups.

The city of McGregor has one staff position filled by an inmate on the city street crew at the cost of $4.16 per day.
The city must provides transportation and oversight of the individual. Other area cities also use this service.

Besides low cost prison labor, Luster Heights provides 15 high-paying jobs which would be lost if the facility is closed.

Pikes Peak bow hunt worth returning for

By Trudy Balcom

Over the past few years McGregor residents have grown accustomed to seeing deer on Main St. periodically.

More often they see them in their yards eating carefully tended perennials and shrubs.

Part of what makes McGregor so attractive to both deer and people is the fact that the city borders hundreds of acres of
protected state park land at Pikes Peak. But with whitetail deer populations climbing steadily, the elegant animals have become both a nuisance and a traffic safety hazard.

To respond to this problem The Iowa DNR began allowing carefully managed bow hunts at Pikes Peak and on state lands
surrounding the city of McGregor in 2005. Since then, 121 deer have been taken from the park by about 20 hunters who
participate in the annual hunt.

According to Park Manager Matt Tschirgi, Pikes Peak is not the only state park that sponsors a bow hunt.

“A lot of them are getting hunts…they were finding that a lot of these parks are having the same problem, too many deer,”
Tschirigi explained.

Because the hunters must share the park (and park lands that abut the McGregor city limits) with other users during hunting
season, safety is a very important consideration.

To be eligible to participate, bow hunters must be Iowa residents who posses a hunting licence, and they must first past a
shooting proficiency test. Hunters may take does only, but hunters who take three does become eligible for an any-sex tag for
he following year’s hunt. Hunters are only allowed to shoot from tree stands, and most shots are made at close range,
about 20-25 yards distance. The park is divided into a north and south zone for the hunt, the north zone contains the lands north
of Main St.

Several of the hunters come back each year to participate. Some come from other parts of  Iowa, some are more local.

Rich Werges, who lives near Elkader has participated in the hunt every year since it first began.

“It gives me a little bit more opportunity to take deer for the freezer,” Werges said. “I’ve seen a lot of nice deer out there,” he
added.

He said he enjoys hunting in the park, even though his hunt has sometimes been interrupted by a hiker or cyclists. Mostly he
hunts the deeper woods of the south zone, away from the disturbance of trails.

Rich has been very successful in his hunts—this is his third year he has qualified for an any-sex tag. He as taken two
bucks in the past, including a 13-pointer (with one broken tine) that took him all winter to recover.

“I looked for that buck for a week, walked till my legs hurt,” Werges said. But he still didn’t find the deer. Finally, after searching
for him off and on through the winter, the buck was recovered during a spring thaw with the help of Park Ranger Rylan Retallick.

He has taken two does already this year, but one he had to share with the coyotes. Although he found the deer the day
after he shot it, “the coyotes had eaten it from neck to tail,” he said. Werges doesn’t seem to mind much. He knows there are
more deer in the woods, and he still has his any-sex tag to fill.

Werges is a promoter of the Pikes Peak hunt. “I tell people about it all the time,” he said. “It’s pretty much a positive thing,
we’re reducing the herd,” he said.

But the deer have changed their behavior somewhat too. “They’re getting wise,” Werges said. They don’t think
everyone they see is a hiker…they look up in trees now,” he said.

The hunt has occasionally run into some controversy. Some city residents offered complaints about hunter behavior at a
McGregor city council meeting last summer. A few McGregor residents complained about hunters who left gut piles in the woods
near residences, or who occupied other people’s tree stands. But the city council remains supportive of the hunt. 

Ranger Rylan Retallick does not take complaints lightly. He wants to be able to keep the hunt open and keep the
community’s good will. At the meeting, he asked residents to contact him immediately if they had any complaints or problems.
And a new rule was added to the hunt, requiring hunters near residential areas to bag and remove entrails.

According to hunt records, October seems to the most active month for hunters, followed by December. The hunt is
open from October 1 through January 10; the regular state bow hunting season. Since there is no gun hunting allowed at
Pikes Peak, the hunt remains open during the December gun season, when it closes elsewhere.

 Interested hunters still have time to apply for the hunt by contacting Rylan Retallick at (563) 880-4569. No new hunters will be admitted after October 25.

New childcare center to open in December

Crozier’s Comments

By Dr. Dale Crozier,
MFL MarMac
School Superintendent

The school year is moving fast. Academically, the high school is coming into the final two weeks of the first term, and then the year will officially be one-fourth over.  It is hard to believe how fast it all flies by. Football, Volleyball, Cross Country and Marching Band are well past half-way, and we will soon be into the winter activities. The fall play “Annie, Get Your Own Gun” will be held Nov. 5-7 and we are all looking forward to that.  I have been very impressed with the sportsmanship and the attitudes of our students this fall. It is great to be in the company of students and parents who show respect to their teammates, classmates and the teams and programs of other schools.

I wanted to thank all of those people who were involved with last year’s State Wide School Visit. Our report was more or less stellar and it is on file for anyone’s review.  This report was essentially the result of a lot of work by our teaching staff and support staff at all levels. Considering the results of this report it appears that the staff is finally being recognized for their work. We actually had no citations or areas that we needed to fix in our academic program and accreditation, and they told me that this basically never happens.

They gave us many areas of praise and a few suggestions.  We are going to try to build on these strengths and improve on our weaknesses.

Now that the state has realized that we are doing things right we must realize the necessity to keep it that way. Generally speaking, organizations never stay still and stagnant; they are either getting better or getting worse. Now that we have some empirical data to demonstrate that we have moved in the correct direction, we need to take some serious steps to keep us in that direction and to move forward further. This process is going to happen through the district leadership team and the School Improvement Advisory Committee (SIAC).

The district leadership team is a team of members from each building and the administration. Their job is to analyze data, look at appropriate professional development, and evaluate past practice for new direction.

The SIAC committee worked with the state visit last year, and will now work to develop a plan based on the visit recommendations to move forward even further. The work of the District Leadership Team and the SIAC committee will be assimilated together. Anyone who wants to be involved with this committee can contact me.

A continued congratulations is appropriate to McGregor and Marquette for being selected as an Iowa Great Place. The MarMac Area Chamber planning committee is working on a Wetlands Centre.  This will involve the school for a portion of the project.  A science area will be a part of this center, and the program will be available to students.  There will be a lot of work ahead for the Great Places Committee, and the final outcome is still in the process of development.  Regardless of the outcome of the Wetlands project, it should increase the opportunities that we can give to our students and future residents.

The weight room-wrestling room project is under the final stages of construction.  The high school wrestling team should be able to use the room this school year. The weight room is still being developed, and weights are being purchased.  Along with having a new weight room we will be encouraging students in all sports to develop a culture of fitness.

The Dr. Smith Childcare Center should be open by December 1.  If anyone wants to utilize this center for your children please contact the school or the Little Bulldog Center. The center will serve kids from birth to school-age.  The center will be operated by a board with representatives from both centers.

The Dr. Smith Center was originally intended to be opened with the start of the school year; however in the development we encountered a mold problem. All areas both outside and inside have mold, but the mold in the center was higher than normal.  This problem was encountered early on at the onset of construction.  Norman Lincoln handled the problem from the city’s perspective and I handled it from the school’s perspective; however there wasn’t much of a difference of opinion as we needed to either solve this problem completely or abort the project. At that time we halted construction and we contacted several experts.  After serious and careful analysis of several options, we had Shive-Hattery Engineering Firm conduct pre-tests and post-tests and they guided us through the process.  Shive-Hattery is a well known reputable engineering firm.  The mold had developed because the building was left vacant for several years, and the roof had not been repaired.

Gundersen Lutheran had supplied a new roof, and the school sided the building so that problem was solved for the future, but the mold from the past still existed. The long-term solution was to gut the building entirely, treat the remains, and rebuild. This is exactly what we did.

The building is now ready to be opened and its mold content is no different that any new house in Northeast Iowa. The cost for this work was approximately $40,000.00 and it all came from local option sales tax, as well as an insurance settlement.  This project did not affect, nor will it affect property taxes, as well as any of the other projects of recent times.