Irene Ann Gaffey, 87, of Belle Plaine and formerly of the Holbrook area, died Saturday, August 21, 2010 at the Belle Plaine Nursing and Rehab Center following a short illness.  A Memorial Visitation will be from 5-7 p.m. Thursday, August 26 at the Faith Baptist Church located at 1168 78^th Street Trail, or east of the corner of 13^th Avenue and 8^th Street.  Private burial will be at a later date.  A memorial fund has been established.  Hrabak Funeral Home is serving the family.

She is survived by a son, Tim Gaffey of Belle Plaine; daughter, Karen Gaffey of Tiffin; granddaughter, Kiera Gaffey; brother, Frank Horwath of Walton Hills, Ohio; sisters, Mary Kaider of Uniontown, PA and Margaret Thomas of Jappa, MD.

She was preceded in death by her parents and several siblings.

August 17, 2:20 p.m. – Police assisted the fire department with a power line on fire at 1512 Seventh Avenue.

August 17, 2:25 p.m. – Officers responded to Highway 21, a half-mile north of the city, on a report of an injured deer. The animal was euthanized.

August 17, 7 p.m. – Police responded to 1540 15^th Street on a trespassing complaint. No charges were filed.

August 17, 7:32 p.m. – Steven Rethman, 25, Belle Plaine, was arrested following a traffic stop in the 500 block of 13^th Street and charged with driving while under suspension. He was taken to the Benton County Jail.

August 18, 5:30 p.m. – A hit and run accident was reported at 1906 Tenth Avenue. A 2009 Chevy Malibu, owned by Greg Prather, Victor, was sideswiped as it was parked in front of the residence. Damage to the driver’s side door was estimated to be under $1,500.

August 18, 7:30 p.m. – Jeanne Brandt, Luzerne, was bitten by a dog while walking in the 1000 block of 13^th Avenue. The dog, owned by Ed and Nancy Landuyt, was quarantined and the owners were ordered to remove it from the city.

August 18, 11:55 p.m. – Officers responded to 504 Tenth Street on a report of someone knocking on the door and windows of the residence. No one was located.

August 19, 5:29 p.m. – Joseph Hanzelka, 18, Belle Plaine, was arrested on a warrant after he allegedly assaulted Jared Nemmers, 18, also of Belle Plaine. Hanzelka was taken to the Benton County Jail.

August 19, 7:45 p.m. – Steven Rethman, 1502 Third Avenue complained of harassment.

August 19, 9:20 p.m. – A stray dog was reported in the 900 block of Eighth Avenue. The owners of the dog were warned.

August 19, 10:15 p.m. – Ambulance assist in the 1500 block of Second Avenue.

August 22, 2 a.m. – Danielle Bance, 26, Belle Plaine, was arrested on an Iowa County warrant and turned over to Iowa County authorities.

August 22, 11 a.m. – Jeff Moore, Iowa City, reported the theft of a storage trailer from the Longfellow Elementary School area. The trailer was later recovered in Iowa County.

August 23, 10:32 a.m. – Criminal mischief was reported to the exterior of the building at 11^th Street and Ninth Avenue.

August 23, 2:30 p.m. – Ambulance assist at 1540 15^th Street.

August 24, 6 a.m. – A subject was warned following a complaint of trespassing at 1303 Ninth Avenue. No charges were filed.

August 24, 10:26 a.m. – A loud music complaint was reported at 1407 12^th Avenue. A subject was warned.

Police have arrested Daniel Allen Brodie, 39, Belle Plaine, following an incident on August 15. He was charged with two counts of violation of a protective order, harassment in the third degree and trespassing. He was taken to the Benton County Jail. More charges are pending.

A criminal charge is merely an accusation and the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.

Belle Plaine Police have increased traffic enforcement activity on 7^th Avenue, 8^th Street and 13^th Avenue reminding drivers that school will be open Wednesday.

“Everybody lets their guard down a little over the summer.  We want everyone to be aware that the kids will be coming back to school, and the areas near Longfellow School will have a lot more vehicle and pedestrian traffic.” Kris Hudson, Belle Plaine Police Chief said today.

“We want everyone to be very aware of their speed, obeying stop signs, yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks, and just looking out for the kids getting to and from school,”  he added.  “We are aware that there will probably be some traffic congestion in the area around the Longfellow School. To cut down on the traffic congestion, parents should consider allowing their children to walk or ride bicycles to school and teach them to use the cross-walks.”

Hudson added that Belle Plaine Police also get many complaints of parents not properly securing children with seat belts or car seats when taking kids to school.  “We get a lot of calls about parents with a car load of unsecured kids at the schools, and we will be stopping and citing those drivers as well.”

As of July 1 of this year, the State Legislature has set the total fine and court costs for this violation at $195.00.

The calendar may indicate that we are still in the month of August, but many of us are bidding a fond farewell to the summer, as school starts this week, along with fall sports activities.

On the community meeting schedule this week, the library board meets Tuesday at 5 p.m. at the Belle Plaine Public Library. The community center board meets Wednesday at 5 p.m. at the community center. On Friday, preschool story time will be held at the public library at 9:30 a.m.

Friday night, grab some ribs on the way to the first football game. The Belle Plaine Rotary Club will again be serving rib dinners near the museum beginning at 4 p.m.

School begins in Belle Plaine Wednesday, with all of the students now attending classes at Longfellow Elementary or at Belle Plaine Junior-Senior High School. There will be one hour early dismissal the first three day of classes.

On the sports slate, cross country practice began Monday. The Plainsman football team swings into action in a new district with a new schedule beginning Friday when they travel to Waterloo’s Sloan-Wallace Stadium to face Don Bosco.

Have a safe and successful 2010-11 school year everyone!

After experiencing nearly 50 first days of school, first as a student and later as a reporter, I’ve realized that some things never change. If you pay close attention when you walk into a school building that first day, you will notice a pleasant smell of clean and sometimes fresh paint. The floors are buffed to a mirror finish.

Belle Plaine’s students will have so much more to experience this week as they make their way back for the start of the 2010-11 school year. A more than $9 million facelift and expansion is nearing completion at Longfellow Elementary School and what is now Belle Plaine Junior-Senior High School. Last week, I had a chance to take a tour of both buildings. One of the first things I noticed in both buildings is just how bright and airy the buildings are. There’s a lot of new windows at both buildings. They’ll probably have to deliver Windex by the tanker load this year!

At Longfellow, I noticed the hallways and wondered if the track and wrestling coaches had any ideas of using them for sprint work in bad weather. The expanded main hall at Longfellow is really long!

Actually, the first thing I noticed when walking into the Longfellow building was how cool it is inside. Both buildings are now air conditioned, which should really help the concentration level in the first month of the school year. I remember visiting teachers in some of those classrooms at Central and the old junior high building early in the school year, wondering how they could work in such heat and how any learning was accomplished.

Over at the high school, there have been plenty of improvements as well. Finally, the main office is just inside the front door, not socked away in a windowless, basement level area. When plans for the renovation and expansion were underway and it became apparent that the offices would be relocated to the main level, whenever I called the high school, I only half-jokingly reported to the secretary what the weather was like, since they didn’t have any windows to the outside from their old office.

Band and chorus students now have a wonderful center to create beautiful music including a larger rehearsal hall, instrument storage area and practice rooms in a new wing of the building.

Our tour group visited a renovated classroom on the library level that is now a science lab. Now, there are work stations for more than 20 students to conduct various science experiments.

Other high school improvements include more classrooms, renovated locker rooms and an elevator – something that has been needed in that building since the day it first opened. At Longfellow, students will notice a great resource center (library) and a larger gym/lunch room with a stage at one end.

The improvements and changes to the facilities in this school district are indeed historic and past due. The changes should have a profound impact on the future of this community. Administrators and board members have devoted a lot of time consulting with architects and contractors to get thing right. Seeing what they have had to deal with makes the report I read from Los Angeles even more mind-boggling.

Next month, 4,200 students in one section of Los Angeles will be going to a new school complex. The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools cost $578 million. The district has two other complexes under construction, one with a $377 million price tag and the other a mere $232 million. School officials explain that construction costs in Los Angeles are the highest in the country. The price of real estate, seismic construction, etc. At one site, they had to spend $17 million on a methane gas mitigation system after a methane gas field was discovered on the property.

The three schools mention are only three of 131 currently under construction in the Los Angeles School District. They are being funded through $20 billion in bonds and are being built despite a $640 million shortfall in the district’s general fund.

Seeing the wonderful new facilities in our district makes all this information on the Los Angeles Schools mind-boggling. But I doubt even 131 new schools in that community will have the impact on the whole area that our new facilities will have here.

It will be an adventure getting to the Longfellow building in the first few weeks with construction continuing and the narrow Seventh Street in front of the school probably the busiest two-block stretch of pavement in town. But the students should definitely enjoy the improvements. We have a veteran teaching staff and the teachers and administrators deserve the better working conditions.

Once again, the voters in the Belle Plaine district came through in their approval of bonds for these much-needed building projects. We should all be proud of the results. Good luck to all of the students, teachers, administrators and parents of our district this year. Let’s make it a good one!

With the recent announcement of the I-Jobs grant for Belle Plaine’s downtown revitalization project, local leaders have scheduled a public meeting to discuss the project. Members of RDG Planning & Design and the Belle Plaine Community Development Corporation will discuss the project on Wednesday, Aug. 25, beginning at 6 p.m. at the Belle Plaine Community Center.

Acceptance of the grant means that work will begin very soon on the project and City Administrator Bill Daily urged the public, especially downtown property owners, to attend the meeting to learn more about the proposed improvements and the construction timeline.

Daily said anyone with questions or needing further information can also contact him at City Hall.

The Belle Plaine Police Department announced today that they have acquired two HeartStart FRx Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) for the department to use in vehicles, enabling them to assist victims of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). SCA is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, claiming approximately 295,000(i) lives each year.

The AED’s were purchased using grant money obtained from the Benton County Community Foundation.

Since officers are often first to arrive at the scene of a cardiac emergency, it is crucial to have immediate access to an AED in the event the victim is experiencing SCA.  Defibrillation is recognized as the definitive treatment for ventricular fibrillation, the abnormal heart rhythm most often associated with SCA.  While CPR may help prolong the window of survival, it cannot restore a normal cardiac rhythm.  For every minute that goes by without defibrillation, a cardiac arrest victim’s chance of survival decreases by about 10 percent.  After 10 minutes without defibrillation, few attempts at resuscitation are successful.

According to Chief Kris Hudson, “Our mission is to prevent the loss of life and because we are often the first to arrive at emergencies — including medical emergencies — our ability to take lifesaving action is vital.  Having an AED in each of our patrol vehicles will enhance the service our police officers can provide to the community.”

An AED automatically detects potentially life threatening cardiac arrhythmias and can be used to treat them through defibrillation, the application of electrical therapy that stops the arrhythmia, allowing the heart to reestablish an effective rhythm.  The HeartStart FRx AED provides clear, calm voice commands to guide users through every step of the defibrillation process, including CPR coaching.  The FRx is designed to handle extreme weather conditions and to be used successfully by responders, such as police officers, who are not medical professionals.

With the opening of the 2010-11 school year a week away, the Belle Plaine Board of Education spent a considerable amount of its meeting last night (Wednesday) hearing about final preparations for the start of the year, approving several personnel items and touring the new facilities at the junior-senior high school and at Longfellow Elementary School.

As the new school year opens, parents and students will notice that some of the construction is still to be completed, even as they begin to use many new classrooms and common areas. Principal Cherie Brown reported that just over 300 families were registered earlier in the week. Preliminary enrollment numbers were still unavailable, as several parents were continuing to come in to register this week.

The area near Longfellow Elementary will be particularly congested as teachers and parents vie for parking spaces with construction vehicles. Add to that the influx of many more students coming to that building this year, as it will now house pre-kindergarten through sixth grade, and school administrators and local law enforcement officials hope parents will be patient and take advantage of provisions made for the additional traffic in the area.

There will be a slight revision in the start and ending times of classes this year in the district. Classes will begin at 8:10 a.m. And end at 3:18 p.m. Shuttle bus service will be provided from the old junior high building to Longfellow and the junior-senior high building in the morning and back in the afternoon. For those who wish to take their children to the Longfellow building, they may want to drop off their children west of Seventh Avenue on Seventh Street and allow them to walk to the school. A school stop light will be active, along with a crossing guard, at the intersection. Additional school personnel will also help in guiding students to the building through the traffic.

Parents should be reminded that another problem will be the construction on the resurfacing of Seventh Avenue through the city which should take the first few weeks of the school year.

A lot of the exterior renovations at Longfellow still must be completed. Brown was asked what the plan was for recess for the students. She said the playground area in front of the building will be cleared in time for the start of school. She also said that some classes may walk to Franklin Park to take advantage of the playground and playing fields there.

The interiors of both buildings is essentially complete. Teachers were slated to continue moving into their new classrooms later this week. The wood gym floor at Longfellow has not yet been installed, since the moisture level in the concrete base is still too high for proper installation.

Several change orders which will increase the final cost of construction were approved, but only after some questions from Pierce on why the cost of installation of downspouts on the Longfellow gym into a storm sewer was not part of the original plan. Originally, he said the plan was to allow the runoff from the gym roof to empty onto the concrete parking lot behind the school. But Pierce pointed out that this would cause a safety hazard in the wintertime when melting snow from the roof flows onto the concrete and then later freezes on the parking lot. The change orders were approved, with the stipulation that this one be reviewed by school attorneys to determine who should pay for the change.

In personnel matters, the board approved the appointment of Brandon Heying as a sixth grade teacher and head wrestling coach. A graduate of Upper Iowa University, Heying has been a long-term substitute teacher and assistant coach in the Starmont and Wapsie Valley districts.

Ryan Ridout was hired as an assistant football coach, replacing Dennis Kurriger, who retired from the coaching post. Morgan Mitchell was hired as assistant volleyball coach, following the resignation of Evan Hrabak. The board also accepted the resignation of assistant softball coach Katie Stull. The request of Erica Sparks to transfer from the preschool the prep-K position was approved. Sunnie Densmore was hired for the preschool position.

The contract of Greg Walton, activities director, was approved with a 2.8 percent raise. Board member Jim Pierce asked that the administration and board have a future discussion on the proper use of the activity account and the use of purchase orders in the district. The matter will be placed on the September agenda.

The board approved the curriculum for the upcoming school year, particularly the shared programs with the HLV and Iowa Valley School Districts. German and Spanish will be offered at HLV, vocational agriculture will be offered at Belle Plaine, industrial technology will be offered at HLV and a health careers class will be held with Iowa Valley through Kirkwood Community College. Advanced placement classes with HLV will include social studies courses at Belle Plaine and biology and calculus at HLV.

www.boredfactoryworker.com

by Jeff M. Brown

“In a man’s middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.” – E.B. White

“I can think of some body parts, one in particular, that I wouldn’t want to turn over to anybody.” – Jeff Brown

Where no Man has Gone Before

(Part I)

As I write this column, I’m literally starving to death. All I’ve had to eat today is a pop sickle and a couple Jolly Ranchers. That’s about to change, however, because I’m about to eat lunch: a steamy hot cup of chicken broth. Oh, yeah, look out tummy here it comes!

Perhaps the lack of sustenance is causing me to be a little over dramatic, but I’m light-headed and I swear I can feel my strength, my very life force, slowly slipping away. I’m sure I won’t be able to type for very much longer because the caloric demand of striking the keys is stealing energy from my brain. Soon, I’ll forget to breathe. The resulting lack of oxygen will most certainly cause me to lapse into a coma. I’ll probably die right here in front of the computer, hopefully, long before the procedure for which I am preparing for takes place.

Am I trying to lose weight? No. (My wife says she wants me to bulk up, but that’s fodder for another column.) Am I on a hunger strike in support of President Obama taking yet another summer vacation? (Hey, my president needs to be thoroughly rested and fresh before his next golf outing.) Certainly not. What I am doing is getting ready for something so unspeakably horrible that space aliens and human doctors normally render their victims, er patients, unconscious for the act.

I’m having a colonoscopy tomorrow.

According to the literature my doctor gave me, a colonoscopic examination is done by “inserting a long flexible lighted tube into the rectum and beyond.” It’s the whole “and beyond” part of that sentence that is especially disturbing to me. It almost sounds Star Trekish. Jeff’s Colon, The Final Frontier. The mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Frankly, I’d like to keep it that way.

Imagine this…

It’s early morning and you flip on the TV to see what’s going on in the world. Sure enough, there’s breaking news and a familiar Fox anchor holding a microphone says, “This is Geraldo Rivera reporting live from Jeff’s colon. This is truly an amazing day folks. Finally, after all these years, I think I’ve found the true location of Al Capone’s treasure.”

The whole point of having a colonoscopy is to look for polyps, which, I believe, are closely related to voles. My doctor says they’re the last things you want running around unchecked inside your colon. If a polyp is discovered during the examination, according to my patient information sheet, “a thin snare wire is passed through the colonoscope and the polyp is encircled. The snare is tightened and an electric current is passed through the wire, which cuts off the polyp.” The polyp (or vole) is then brought out of the colon and sent to the exterminator for further examination.

What I’m really worried about are possible complications of the colonoscopy and polypectomy (vole removal). They include perforation of the colon (jagged, gaping holes caused by the colonoscope crossing the center lane and skidding out of control), hemorrhage from the colon (mass exodus of polyps out the hole and into other areas of my body such as my cerebrum), and side effects due to the medicines that are given (sedatives, which I hope are given to me in extremely large quantities because I absolutely, under no circumstances, want to be awake for this). “In very rare circumstances,” says my literature, “death could result from a complication.”

That is, of course, if I survive the starvation diet and impending colon cleansing (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) which I have to perform in a few short hours.

To be continued…

BENTON COUNTY – Benton County residents have shared their photographic skills by taking pictures of people, events, and places throughout the county and submitting them to the “Photos of Benton County” contest.  You can vote for your favorite photos at www.bentoncountyiowa.com; until Wednesday, August 18^th at 3:00 pm; however, you can vote in person on August 19^th until 3 p.m. at Fifth Street Koffee Haus (102 East 5^th Street, Vinton).

The winning photos will be announced on Thursday, August 19, 2010, at Fifth Street Koffee Haus (102 East 5^th Street, Vinton) at 3:30 pm.

There will be two winners in each of the three categories as follows:

Adult amateur        – 1^st place, $50, 2^nd place, $25

Adult professional – 1^st place, $50, 2^nd place, $25

Youth (under 18) –   1^st place, $50,  2^nd place, $25

“Whether we’re trying to attract businesses, residents, or tourists; a picture of Benton County best conveys who and what we are,” said Benton Development Group Executive Director Ranae Becker.  “Benton Development Group wants to thank all of those who submitted the wonderful Benton County photos.”

The 2011 “Photos of Benton County” Contest will have a due date of June 16th so photos are available for voting at the 2011 Benton County Fair (BDG booth in the exhibition hall).  Please see the www.bentoncountyiowa.com website for additional details or call 319-472-5545.