Posted June 30, 2021in Civic Skinny
No state high school baseball tournament this year at Principal Park? You read that correctly. But will the Iowa High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) bring the tournament back to the Iowa Cubs home stadium in 2022? The answer is a definite… maybe. According to the IHSAA, conflicting dates with new
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Posted June 02, 2021in Civic Skinny
Reporter Jim Flansburg’s mind and notebooks were filled with the odd fact, the strong suspicion, the half-story that he never could develop into a piece that would stand alone in The Register. Yet the stuff was usually interesting — it made great newsroom and barroom speculation and debate in those
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Posted March 23, 2021in Civic Skinny
Jim Nahas has been fired as head of human resources for Polk County. It’s complicated, it’s messy, it’s unusual — it’s hard to get fired by the county — and, like many things in the county, it’s political. It’s full of intrigue, allegedly with secretly taped interviews and unannounced meetings,
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Posted March 03, 2021in Civic Skinny
Print circulation of The Des Moines Register continues to plummet. Reported digital circulation is holding more or less steady, but at a low level, but internal numbers show it rising nicely. Executives can’t explain that discrepancy. In the six months ended Sept. 30, the latest period for which figures are
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Posted January 20, 2021in Civic Skinny
Looking fresh and healthy behind his University of Iowa facemask, Marty Tirrell, who led a complicated life as a boisterous sports-radio host and a glib conman and who was an alcoholic and gambling addict who went from living the large life with the rich and notable to being homeless and
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Posted January 06, 2021in Civic Skinny
Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz is an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa, where she has taught for eight years. She makes $75,204 a year, according to state records. A year from now, she will take a one-semester sabbatical. She will, according to a Board of Regents document, “complete
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Posted December 02, 2020in Civic Skinny
Twelve drummers drumming… …for Helen Eddy, the very busy Polk County health commissioner…and Karen Schunk and all the other women (and men) who make and give away masks to help protect us from the virus…including Linda Cravens, who sends masks to Iowa friends from far-off Salt Lake…and the men and
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Posted November 02, 2020in Civic Skinny
The hiring of political veteran John Norris to be the new county manager — which was expected to be announced after CITYVIEW went to press — was not without its drama. There were two finalists for the $230,000-a-year job vacated in June by Mark Wandro — well-connected state and national
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Posted September 30, 2020in Civic Skinny
It pays to be a scofflaw. The proposed consent decree between the federal government and Dico — a decree in which the City of Des Moines would end up owning those 43 acres of polluted wasteland at the corner of MLK Parkway and 16th Street — is a great deal
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Posted September 02, 2020in Civic Skinny
In 2019, Des Moines police officers responded to 202,000 calls. Twice, officers fired their guns in the line of duty. Each time, the officers were fired upon first. So why does the police department need to spend $99,029.76 for 396,000 rounds of ammunition for the next 12 months? What does
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