After reading “Sabbaticals:…” (Civic Skinny Nov. 28) and the projects approved by the Board of Regents, I have the same question I have often wondered about the meetings that “Family Guy” creator Seth McFarlane and his staff must have when reviewing ideas and scripts. If this is what they chose, I would love
Read More →With essentially no public input, resistance or outcry of the arbitrary renaming of Nollen Plaza to Cowles Commons, can the selling of naming rights for our city high schools and cemeteries be far behind? Could one of our city’s oldest final resting places become “Kum and Go” Woodland Cemetery? With
Read More →Now that Gov. Sarah Palin has been here (she was a featured speaker at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s 13th Annual Family Banquet) and made her now famous remark that has gone viral on the Internet: “When that note comes due — and this isn’t racist, but — it’s
Read More →I think you have broken my heart with your writing about Lois Bright (Civic Skinny, Nov. 7). I wish I would have known her. But I feel maybe I do. A young mind does not travel with the resources to develop it, necessarily. Social policy does not always manifest to
Read More →After reading the Cityview fact-checker article (Civic Skinny, Oct. 31), let me see if I understand this correctly. If I gave large sums of cash (more than $2.99) to a decision maker (state employee) to consider my product, it would (correctly) be considered, illegal, immoral and unethical and, quite frankly,
Read More →Years ago I rode on the bus with a loquacious blind man. One day he told us that he was going to buy a power saw and explained why it would be perfectly safe. We didn’t see him for a while, and the next time he got on the bus
Read More →Your recent headline questioned whether the Gortz Haus owners “like Gays” (Civic Skinny, Oct. 17), but this question was overshadowed by the article’s inclusion of a sampling of the vitriolic anonymous emails the Odgaards received from people who feel differently than they. The crude, hateful, vulgar and obscene comments, along
Read More →I read Michael Gartner’s “Comment” in (Civic Skinny, Oct. 10): “But, the poll makes clear, they do not have highly partisan feelings about The Affordable Care Act.” This is wrong and contradicts his previous sentence and the poll. A correct statement would be that they do not have highly partisan
Read More →Two quotes by Des Moines traffic facilities administrator Michael Berry, in the cover article “Towed” (Oct. 3) interested me: “Parking is an enterprise system similar to a non-profit,” and “Parking is not a way to generate revenue.” I usually get a little nervous when a government official tells me that
Read More →There are many “lame” reasons for eliminating the red-light cameras in Clive and many good reasons to keep them. The best reason is the number of red-light violations. Doesn’t that mean something in the minds of reasonable people? Do the math. At $700,000 in fines each year, there has to
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