Charles City Press • www.CharlesCityPress.Com monday, november 4, 2019 11

PARSON REAL ESTATE CO.

www.parsonrealestate.comFollow Parson Real Estate Co Housing News on Twitter @conniejparson2

OPEN HOUSES Thursday, Nov. 7th 641-228-6597 • 1-800-471-6597 400 Gilbert Street, Charles City

Great looking acreage with home and garages perched on approximately 3.53 acres. House features 3 bedrooms, formal dining, den, family room with access to deck and 30’ above ground swimming pool. Kitchen, 1 1/2 baths, main f loor laundry set up, single attached garage, 16x18 detached shed , p l u s , 24x40 detached g a r a g e / s h o p , heated and very well insulated. $138,000

206 Meadow Lane, Charles City (PRICE REDUCED)

501 S Main St., Bassett, IA

1894 Riverview Drive, Charles City (NEW LISTING)

2012 Airy Acres, Charles City

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Located 3 miles east of CC directly off Highway 18 E, this brick ranch home is located in picturesque Airy Acres Subdivision. This heavily wooded property features a large front deck, double attached garage, 3 bedrooms and a new full bathroom on the main floor, large eat-in kitchen. Recent improvements: all interior painting, new carpet in bedrooms, laminate flooring throughout, updated electrical work, new garage door and new A/C unit. As an extra bonus for this property, the adjacent .79 acre lot is included in the purchase price. $175,000

This 2005 ranch style, 4 bedroom, 2 3/4 bathroom home features a double attached garage, large oak kitchen with pantry and eating bar, main floor laundry, dining area with glass doors to rear yard patio, large Livingroom with gas fireplace, master bedroom with walk-in closet and 3/4 master bath, full, finished basement w/family room, 4th bedroom (with egress window), full bathroom, exercise room, and large storage room. $233,000

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The stunning view of the bend in the Cedar River from most rooms of this home creates the aura of living with nature! This 2 story, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths home features a screened in porch overlooking the river, newer oak kitchen cabinets. A gas fireplace gives adds warmth to the open kitchen, dining room floor plan. The main floor laundry room also accommodates a home office. The double attached garage, professional landscaping and new inter ior decorating makes this property a one of a kind. This home is located in a zone A flood zone. $185,000

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and Wartburg was there to help facilitate.

Sande said that for some of the students, the activities at the enrichment center on Saturday were their first introduction to the science field.

“This is the first time doing it out here,” said Sande. “Whether you’re going into science or en-gineering, or becoming a weld-er, or becoming an electrician or becoming something like that — if they don’t have this kind of exposure, they’re not going to be able to go into that.”

Students from Wartburg and Iowa State directed the activities at the five different work stations.

One simulated an oil spill and cleanup, one included the pro-cess of taking fingerprints, one station designed small boats and filled them with pennies to see how much weight they could hold and still remain buoyant.

Then there were the tow-ers built from raw noodles and gumdrops — one of which reached over two-feet high — and the always-exciting explo-sions created from combining baking soda with vinegar.

“The kids are the ones guid-ing their own experiments,” said Sande, who added that the college students kept the grade-school students engaged. “The Wartburg students and the Iowa State students are excellent be-cause they ask them questions. I think it’s been nice just having three in a group, because then

they get lots of one-on-one at-tention.”

Every student was able to participate in each of the five morning workstations, then stu-dents broke for lunch. The stu-dents then participated in a large group activity in the afternoon, which was a “team-building en-gineering design challenge.”

Sande said that they were looking into doing another event in the spring, and there are plans to do these events on a regular basis in the future.

ACADEMYContinued from page 1

Press photo by James Grob

Alexis Casler reacts to the minor “explosion” they created with vinegar and baking soda Saturday at the Floyd County Enrichment Center.

second term, the same problems will face the country that are facing it now.

“The sun’s gonna be com-ing up on a country that will be even more divided than we are now,” he said. “And all the big issues that helped us get to this point will still be waiting for the next president,” including economic issues, climate issues, the need for better health care options, and others.

It will take leadership to “boldly answer those issues with something a lot better than the political warfare we’ve got-ten used to out of Washington, and unify the American people while we’re doing it,” he said.

“That is a tall order, but I’m running to be the president who can do that, who can pick up the pieces,” he said. “And we can do this resting on the val-ues that unite us as a country, if you have a president who un-derstands that these values are something used to bring us to-gether, not to drive us apart.”

He said while he knows not everyone will agree, there is a “strong majority” of people in the country who are ready to do something about health care, and he talked about his “Medi-care for all who want it” plan.

“I’m not going to kick you off your private plan. I’m going to set up one and let you decide for yourself whether it’s better,” he said. “I think the plan we create is going to be better but I’m not going to assume that it’s the right one for you.”

Later, answering an audi-ence question, Buttigieg said his plan to get everyone health care would cost $1.5 trillion, “which by the way is still an awful lot of money, but a fraction of what some of the others do,” in one of the rare references to his competitors for the Democratic nomination.

He said America needs to stop being the only developed country that doesn’t have a paid family leave policy, and he said the majority of Americans back “sensible” gun laws such as mandatory background checks and “red flag” laws.

“And if we really want to protect this country and pro-tect each other, we’ve got to protect our future,” Buttigieg said. “Which is why we’ve got to treat climate change like the security threat of our time, be-cause it is, and in order to tackle it we’re going to have to lead the world into doing something about it.”

Here are some of his com-

ments on some of the other issues:

• FAITH: “Values like faith … should not be used to divide us against one another. The Constitution protects people in this country of every religion and of no religion equally. It’s one of the founding ideas of this nation.

“It’s also the case though, and while honoring that separation of church and state, I want vot-ers of faith to know my commit-ment to building a White House, a presidency, a federal govern-ment where you never have to look at Washington, scratch your head and say, whatever happened to, ‘I was hungry and you fed me. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Whatever you have done the least of these you have also done to me.’”

• RACISM: “We need to tackle systemic racism with the sense of urgency that lets all of us know, all of us, that we have a stake, in the name of the fu-ture of the Republic, of seeing to it that in this country your race has no bearing on your health or your wealth or your life expectancy or your relation-ship with law enforcement.”

• IMMIGRATION: “We haven’t upgraded immigration in this country since the 1980s, and the consequences are that the levels that we set country by country are out of whack, the process is bureaucratic, the backlogs are enormous, and we’ve got 10 million people liv-ing and often working right here in the United States who don’t have documentation.

“This is why we need to cre-ate a pathway to citizenship to those who are here. That’s why we need to support and protect Dreamers who are as American as I am but don’t have the pa-perwork for it,” he said.

Regarding a question from a business owner who said unem-ployment is so low he had diffi-culty hiring workers, Buttigieg

said he was proposing “com-munity renewal visas,” where a community could apply for a number of visas to be issued to immigrants who commit to bring their skills to live in that area for a fixed amount of time.

“It’s gonna be good for busi-nesses, it’s gonna be good for the community and it’s gonna be good for people who get the visas,” he said

Regarding a question from a young person about separating families at the border, Buttigieg said he would put an end im-mediately to any chance of that kind of separation happening.

He also said that children who have gone through that are owed something.

“We need to make sure that they have compensation and that we do things to try to make it right and to better take care of them after what we have done to them.”

• PEOPLE WHO MIGHT MAKE AN ISSUE OF HIM BEING GAY: Pointing out that he was re-elected with 80% of the vote to an office in Indiana when current Vice President Mike Pence was governor there, Buttigieg said, “I find that elec-tions are not so much about my life. I’m happy to tell my story and I’m proud of who I am. It’s really about your lives.”

• TAX POLICY: “The better you have done, the better you have benefited from living in America, from the roads and streets and bridges and even the national security this country provides, and our system of schools and universities — all of those things that we take those tax dollars and use them for.

“To my mind, it’s only fair that those who have benefited the most, contribute the most. … We are going to make sure that income tax rates for the wealthiest are higher. We are going to make sure that invest-ment income is taxed, too. …

It’s not just people, it’s compa-nies.”

• NATIONAL DEBT: “It used to be the Republicans talk-ed about it all the time. Then they took over Washington and revealed that they don’t actu-ally care, because they have increased the deficit — just a year’s worth of deficit — to al-most a trillion dollars.

“Even as my campaign pro-poses really serious, significant and sometimes ambitious in-vestments, we’re always going to make sure two things are true. One, we’re only ever going to make a promise that we can keep. … We’re going to be real-ly measured in the promises that we make. But we’re also going to make sure that everything we’ve put forward, we’re will-ing to pay for it.”

• CAMPAIGN LAW: He said a constitutional amendment would be in order if the Citizens United legal decision could not be overturned by legislation.

Elks Lodge Manager Tina Schmidt said there were 276 people at the event, and there were also about 20 members of the national and regional press who are following Buttigieg’s campaign.

Buttigieg has consistently polled in the No. 4 spot in na-tional political polls, behind for-mer Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Those four are significantly ahead of any of the other Democratic candi-dates.

The latest New York Times/Sienna College poll of people who say they are likely to attend the Iowa caucuses saw Butti-gieg move into third place, with 18%, and Biden dropping to fourth place with 17%. Warren led that poll with 22%, followed by Sanders with 19%.

The second-through-fourth positions are all within the poll’s margin of error.

BUTTIGIEGContinued from page 1

way or the other going forward. That would then first be shared with the council on the 13th with potential action at the fol-lowing meeting,” said Diers.

First, a decision needs to be made where to locate the nerve center of the operation, and a recommendation made to pur-chase that property.

“We’re close. There’s a few pieces we’re trying to iron out on this,” said Diers.

Commission members, along with city leaders, have gone into closed sessions in each of the last two meetings to discuss the purchase of property for a data center and to review proprietary financial information.

The commission is trying to come to a consensus on what services will be offered as well as the pricing for what will be a triple-play package of high-speed internet, video/TV and telephone.

On Wednesday, after com-ing out of a closed session, the board approved a motion for the city administrator to continue negotiating on a purchase option with a specific property, ” said broadband commission Chair-man Mark Wicks.

Members of the board rec-ommended to get an appraisal and look into an option to buy the Unggoy Broadband building at 800 N. Main in Charles City at a meeting this past August. The appraisal would run around $1,500 and that cost would be split with the owner and city. Diers said an option to buy would be around $1,000.

Diers would not state which property or properties were be-ing discussed in the two closed sessions that have taken place this month, but he did say the commission is still looking at more than one property.

“We’ve got tWo or tHree in mind. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. If we can get one for the price that we’d like, then we’ll go that direction, other-wise we’ll look at a different direction,” said Diers.

A key factor this late into the construction season is the com-mission giving the design team enough time to map out what needs to be done if construction would start in the spring.

Lookout Point Communi-

cations, along with NewCom Technologies, is currently work-ing on the business plan as a part of the design and engineer-ing phase.

“At some point — and that point’s not exactly clear — it could push us into the follow-ing year just by the way every-thing has to line up timewise,” said Diers. “We want to try and make this decision in Novem-ber, possibly December. Cer-tainly, we’re trying to get this done as soon as possible.”

Charles City is looking to be-come the first community in the state to fund a broadband proj-ect without using its own elec-trical utility as backing to fund the project. The benefit of also having a community utility is shared services with staffing and large amounts of liquid assets to fund the project or help borrow through the utility.

“There’s a number of com-munities across the state that have done these. They all have electrical utilities. They have some economies that they have by having that electric in place. That’s something we don’t have,” said Diers. “The projects are working that are going in.”

When voters approved the creation of a municipal telecom utility in 2005, they voted to have it managed by a separate utility board. Diers has stated that the board would need to be in place prior to the issuance of any revenue bonds that could fund the project.

“Our plan is to fund this thing pretty much completely with revenue generated from the project,” said Diers. “We don’t want to use tax dollars. The way it’s looking right now – we don’t know this with 100% cer-tainty – we’re going to be able to do that.

“We’re going to be able to borrow the money to get start-ed and as the revenues come in from selling subscriptions, that’s what’s going to pay for it. That’s what we’re seeing and that’s our intent,” said Diers.

Mayor Dean Andrews would form a five-person utility board that would be responsible for hiring a general manager to oversee the operation if the council approves the project. Diers said members of the cur-rent commission could be on that utility board.

The next Broadband meet-ing will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 12, at 4 p.m. in the council chambers.

FIBERContinued from page 1

Press photo by Bob Steenson

Democratic candidate for president Pete Buttigieg answers questions from members of a large crowd during a campaign stop Sunday afternoon at the Elks Lodge in Charles City.

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