Posted July 20, 2016in Civic Skinny
The Gabus Family Foundation — that’s Gabus, as in Gene Gabus and Gabus Motors — wants back the $300,000 it donated to build a new YMCA in Grimes. Plans [...]
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Posted July 13, 2016in Civic Skinny
The fight between Prairie Meadows and the Internal Revenue Service could last years. It will cost a jackpot in legal fees. And it can’t be settled unless the Polk County [...]
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Posted July 06, 2016in Civic Skinny
The six-year graduation success rate for basketball players who entered Iowa State University in 2008 was 75 percent. That’s pretty impressive. Except the actual graduation rate was [...]
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Posted June 29, 2016in Civic Skinny
State political platforms mean absolutely nothing, practical politicians agree, but the planks often show where the power lies in the parties. And occasionally a plank is so bizarre it can [...]
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Posted June 22, 2016in Civic Skinny
Architect Kirk Blunck had assets valued at about $6.4 million when he died Jan. 24 under mysterious circumstances in a stairwell of the Teachout Building that he owned [...]
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Posted June 15, 2016in Civic Skinny
Michael Gartner is on vacation. This column, about his father, ran in USA Today just before Father’s Day in 2006. My father never drove a car. Well, that’s [...]
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Posted June 08, 2016in Civic Skinny
Your tax dollars — or your medical dollars or tuition dollars or philanthropy dollars or something — at work: The University of Iowa is about to hire McDermott, [...]
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Posted May 25, 2016in Civic Skinny
Bill Ruud is not leaving the University of Northern Iowa for some idyllic small college in some idyllic small town. Marietta College, now with about 1,200 students, is [...]
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Posted May 18, 2016in Civic Skinny
Two of the seven board members of the planned downtown convention hotel have resigned just as the hotel gets ready for its groundbreaking this week. Cynthia Eisenhauer and her husband [...]
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Posted May 11, 2016in Civic Skinny
As schools lower standards, more flunk the Iowa bar. The generous people of Des Moines last week gave $272,344 to around 140 local charities as part of the “Give [...]
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