News

By KYLIE PORTZ
On March 4, 1909, a snow-storm in Washington D.C. prevented incumbent President Willian Howard Taft from taking the oath of office outside. Instead, the 27th president of the United States would take the oath indoors, becoming the first American President to do so since An-drew Jackson.

A few days later, further west, one of the heaviest snowfalls in Iowa history would be recorded in Humboldt County.

According to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information database, on March 7, 1909, a whopping 20 inches of snow was record-ed in Humboldt County.

The Humboldt Republican Newspaper reported on this event in the March 12, 1909 issue.

The headline read, “Gigantic Snow Fall Covers Old Iowa” accompanied by the subheads “Great fall of the ‘Beautiful’ in good old Iowa Monday and Tuesday” and “Prospects for the highest floods in years – Greatest snow fall in North-western Iowa in Twenty Years.”

City offers support for development group

By PHIL MONSON

After deliberating in a 40-minute special meeting on Monday afternoon, Jan. 13, the Humboldt City Council unanimously voted no on purchasing the Reasoner Dam.

The city was forced to consider taking ownership of the dam after the Humboldt County Conservation Board declined earlier this winter to allow the River Development Group to take ownership, instead asking the city to assume ownership and allow the development group to raise its own funds to make necessary improvements to the dam and the wide body of water north of it, known for over a half century as Lake Nokomis.

“Our goal has always been to make Lake Nokomis a recreational attraction that it once was. The potential for boating, jet skiing, kayaking and of course, fishing,” said River Development Group member Susan Tille, who is also mayor of Rutland.

By PHIL MONSON
The Humboldt City Council has scheduled a special meeting for Monday, Jan. 13, 2 p.m., to discuss the possibility of taking ownership of the Reasoner Dam.

The council approved holding a special meeting at their regular monthly meeting on Monday night, Jan. 6.

The Humboldt County Conservation Board has given the city until March 19 to determine if it is feasible for the city to assume ownership of the over 100-year-old dam, to allow a local group to develop the dam and the area north of the dam, known as Lake Nokomis.

Gary Jensen of the River Development Group was at the meeting and stated the Monday’s date and time was suitable for his group. Councilman John Sleiter asked about the actual discussion to take place.

“What kind of discussion are we actually going to have?” Sleiter asked.

By PHIL MONSON

At the last Humboldt City Council meeting, the council approved another payment for the runway rehabilitation pro-ject at the Humboldt Municipal Airport.

The council approved a payment of $212,684.53 to Godbersen-Smith Construction of Ida Grove. Work at the airport began in early August and was completed in four months.

Eric Johnson, engineer with Kirkham Michael Company, and Jeff Sogge, of Clapsaddle-Garber Associates, Inc., construction observer, gave their reports to the council. Humboldt resident Dave Dodgen, who also serves on the airport commission, provided input as well.

“We were very pleased with how everything went on the project,” Johnson said. “All the test results have come back and have exceeded all of the FAA specifications. We are very pleased overall with the project.”

By KENT THOMPSON
In a time of the year that’s about giving and receiving, Humboldt’s Danny Williams was on the receiving end of praise and thanks for his contributions to the community and the families served by the Central Iowa Ronald McDonald Houses in Des Moines.

Williams has been collecting cans in his hometown of Humboldt since 1981. He has been a one-person environmental recycling stalwart, keeping the Humboldt County Fair-grounds and other areas of town free of recyclable aluminum beverage containers thanks to back-breaking work and his many bicycles.

In addition to recycling the cans, Danny has conscientiously removed the pop tabs from the containers and has saved them and turned them in to raise funds for the Ronald McDonald Houses. The weight of the pop tabs total in tonnage over the years, including 500 pounds of tabs in the past five years alone.

By Kylie Portz
The Humboldt Community School District Board of Di-rectors held their monthly meeting on Dec. 16 at the Ad-ministration offices.

Also at the meeting, the board members had the op-portunity to meet the new High School Board member, Shelby Wood.

Wood will act as a liaison between the high school and the school board, attending board members and offering ideas to benefit the students.

Wood, who is a senior at Humboldt High School, has been a student in the school district her “entire life”. She is heavily involved in school ac-tivities, as the drum major for the marching band, President of the IJAG (Iowa Jobs for American Graduates) pro-gram, and a member of the girls' golf team.

She said, “I’m passionate about music, and I love help-ing others. I love trying to be a voice for others who might feel like they don’t really have one.”

Read the story in this week's issue of the Humboldt Independent!

By APRIL KELLEY
The Humboldt County Con-servation Board met on Wednesday, Dec. 11 at noon to tackle the Reasoner Dam issue once again.

After an hour-long discus-sion, it was decided to allow the City of Humboldt to purchase the dam in the same way that the City of Rutland has commit-ted to doing.

Much of the arguments on both sides stemmed from a mis-understanding at the last con-servation meeting. At that meet-ing the board voted to allow the River Development Group (RDG) more time to work with the City of Humboldt to pur-chase land to be able to obtain insurance.

At the beginning of the meeting, it was revealed that much of the funding the Conservation Department would be seeking to lower or tear out Reasoner Dam would no longer be available.

It was an exciting day for the Humboldt Special Olympics team on Nov. 23 as 16 members competed at the State Bowling competition in Waterloo. The team had a successful trip, with three players placing first at the competition.

Results

1st Place
Will Curry
Gage Pedersen
Stephanie Boyd

2nd Place
Heero Phiouthong
Cooper Peters
Braxton Charon
Cami Pedersen

3rd place
Zeke Winter
Sujiery Venegas

4th place
Cain Burwell
Brad Nelson

5th place
Casey (Eve) Sorensen
Zach Pate
Brent Oberhelman
Jon Nelson

6th place
Monica Sias

Scratch
Brooklyn Summers

By APRIL KELLEY

An upgrade to the current Motorola system used by the Humboldt County Law Enforcement Center was a widely debated issue during the last Public Safety Commission meeting.

Chris Madison, IT Director and Kyle Bissell, EMA Coordinator brought it to the Commission’s attention that the system, which is now five years old, is extremely outdated and needs to be updated, or as Motorola calls it, a refresh.

Madison explained that this refresh is necessary to update the flex servers, MAP servers, and VPN servers which is how the officers connect back to the FLEX server from their vehicles and the back-up server.

All of those servers run on one physical box, similar to different rooms in one house. The box that holds all of those servers is now 5-years-old and very outdated.

By APRIL KELLEY
After a full year of back and forth, there is a strong possibility that the sale of the Reasoner Dam is once again a possibility.

According to Conservation Director Todd Lee at the Wednesday, Nov. 20 Conservation Board meeting, the City of Humboldt is looking into the possible sale or lease of land to the River Development Group (RDG) to allow RDG to obtain insurance on the dam if they buy it.

The Conservation Board has been in negotiations for more than a year with RDG to buy the dam. The largest issue RDG has faced in the purchase of the dam is obtaining insurance, a requirement of the sale.

The RDG members discovered during their research into insuring the dam that the only way any insurance company would cover them is if they owned property next to the dam. In that way, the insurance company would insure the land and as a part of the land, the dam as a structure on the land.