by Jeanne Duffy,

Director,  BPCDC

Anyone interest in learning the secrets to no cost or low cost promotions, may attend the workshop via ICN at the Library on June 7 from 6 p.m.  to 8 p.m.  What could be more appealing to merchants in this economy?

Also on June 16, Jim Thompson from Main Street Iowa will be in Belle Plaine to talk to merchants who request a session with him on what they can do to increase business.  Jim is very tactful in his suggestions on what to do to increase business.  Both sessions are free and informative.

Once again I’d like to thank the folks of Belle Plaine for their wonderful welcome.  Who said you can never go home again?

It won’t be long now. The halls that once were filled with the sounds of loud voices and laughter will be eerily quiet. School ends this week for another year. By the time the students return in a few months, there will be plenty of changes, thanks to the extensive building projects underway in the district.

Follow along, if you will, as a writer with a sometimes strange imagination takes you on a journey of what life might be like if school buildings had minds and souls. I know bricks and mortar don’t have a heartbeat, but what if?…

Like a mother saying goodbye to a child who is moving to adulthood, you could almost hear a sigh at the high school as more than 50 kids left for the last time on Sunday at a graduation. They received a grand sendoff, complete with a special address by a U.S. Senator and capped off with a shower of Silly String.

So now some of the kids have left home. This week, the rest are getting ready for grand adventures outside of the confines of the school building. But the building won’t be quiet for long. The plastic surgery and enhancement is already well underway. It is the newest building in the school district, but many people have questioned the functionality of a building with several levels. It offers a daily workout for students and staff, but is certainly less than ideal for those who are physically challenged.

The surgery gets more intense in the coming couple of months and by the time the students return in late August, the plan is for a totally renovated and expanded facility that will house not only the high school students, but junior high as well, in a building that should allow students who might be confined to a wheelchair or who use crutches to get to class in a more timely manner. The new construction includes a much-needed elevator.

Across the field, more cosmetic surgery and enhancement is underway to a building that has served as the first education experience for hundreds of local students over the years. Longfellow Elementary School will be expanded and will house several more grades starting in August. Some of the new classrooms are already in use. But just imagine the wide eyes and smiles of students and teachers when they come back in a few months and see all of the grand changes.

While the future looks bright for the school district’s south campus, across town the other two school buildings are on borrowed time. In other years, maintenance crews would be preparing to clean and wax floors and paint and provide other necessary maintenance to nurse an aging building through another year. Central Elementary, a building that would have nearly a century of stories to tell if a building could talk, will finally be retired. It’s final fate has not yet formally been decided, but it’s pretty clear that its days as a center for education are at an end. It would take considerable funds to renovate the structure for any other use and the wrecking ball might finally win.

Across Ninth Avenue, a much newer building, where hundreds of junior high students roamed for years, will also become silent. It is still a viable building, although not as a junior high building in an era where teaching, instruction materials and equipment must be used in the most economic way possible. It will be interesting to see how that building can be used in the future.

A school district is certainly much more than bricks and wood and window glass. Graduation is an annual celebration of the accomplishments of the seniors and a sad time as well. It’s time to wish them well, with a fervent hope that as they succeed in their future lives they might remember all of the good times they experienced in Belle Plaine.

It’s quite natural for graduates to look forward to getting away from home and experiencing some of the rest of the world, either through college, the military or perhaps their first full-time job. But just maybe at least a few of them will decide what they had as young Belle Plaine citizens is something they want to experience again. A community can only flourish if it continues to change in a good way. Much of that change can only come with new ideas. Ten years from now, maybe at least a few of the members of the Class of 2010 will come home to help make this community even better. Until that happens, we wish them all the best and thank them for some great memories!

By Jeanne Duffy

BP Community Development Director

With the beautiful weather we are finally experiencing, and the desire to get out in the yard and work, last Saturday, I decided to attend Belle Plaine Lumber’s Open House.

First I wanted to wish them well on their new adventure (formerly GCI Lumber) and next I wanted to get some lumber for my “projects”.

I was surprised to find that they carry much more than lumber and I was able to pick up a couple other items.  I was made to feel so welcome that I realized small town stores like the lumber store are falling by the wayside as it has become a habit to shop in larger towns in larger stores. However, a nice welcome and free local delivery brings it down to real people appreciating your business.

If you stop in, Doug or Amy will explain the name change to Belle Plaine Lumber and give you a tour on what’s available in the store besides lumber.

By Jeanne Duffy

Belle Plaine Community Development Director

GCI lumber has a brand new name and a brand new look. Now known as “Belle Plaine Lumber” and located at 509 13^TH St. in Belle Plaine they will hold their Open House on Saturday, May 15^th from 8 a.m. to noon.  There will be lots of door prizes and special gifts for the kids.

Since that Saturday is Armed Forces day, as a special thank you, Belle Plaine Lumber will be offering a 20 percent discount to all military personnel who have served or are serving our country.  And don’t worry about purchasing items too big for your auto.   Belle Plaine Lumber offers free local delivery.  Now there’s an extra perk you can’t beat.

By Jeanne Duffy

BP Community Development Executive Director

Last week was an exciting week for downtown when two great assets were added to our choices in shopping.  Double Take Designs with Jackie and Jerilyn is an outstanding store featuring home décor.  Don’t be fooled by the unique items, their prices are very reasonable.

Clark’s Ice Cream Shoppe opened almost directly across from my office and freed me from the everyday frustration of going home for lunch hoping to find something besides peanut butter and jelly. Clark’s is open at 7 am for breakfast with offerings including biscuits and gravy. Lunch is healthy with top quality sandwiches of your choice and the calories you save on this, of course, entitles you to any flavor of shake you happen to crave.  Drinks are made the old fashion way, carbonated water and syrup and if you like, just add a flavor such as cherry or chocolate etc.  Just like the good old days.

The Clarks are a great family.  It’s a pleasure to just visit with them.  In addition to their menu, they have lazer products and scrapbooking.  It’s a wonderful store to just browse in and absorb the options for crafts.  As for me, I am so glad they are across the street which makes me think….a black raspberry shake sure sounds good about now.

By Jeanne Duffy
BPCDC Executive Director
Can you imagine the excitement this week in Downtown Belle Plaine as not one, but two businesses share a grand opening.
With much pride, owners Matt and Timalee Clark will have their grand opening on both Friday, April 30th and Saturday, May lst at 823 on Main Street. Family owned and operated, their store contains a variety of interests. Within is Clark Soda Shop with old fashion drinks and shakes made from scratch, American Lazer Creations, and Paper Cuts and Other Stuff. Each area is managed by an individual in the Clark family. Opening is 7 am and seating is perfect for coffee clutch meetings any day of the week. And did I tell you, during the grand opening, milk shakes are 25 cents?
Just a few steps away, Double Take Design will celebrate their grand opening on Saturday, May lst from 10 am to 6 pm. Owner Jerilyn DeRaad will be showcasing both the downstairs which has furniture and home décor plus her upper design studio. Double Take Design is located at 823 on Main Street. Stop in and meet Jerilyn for a tour of her business and enjoy some delicious snacks.
Join Belle Plaine Community Development Corporation in welcoming these merchants to our downtown area.

A year ago, I set up shop in perhaps the most optimistic place in town – the offices of the Belle Plaine Community Development Corporation (BPCDC). In tough economic times, this was the place where the glass is always viewed as “half-full.” I have to keep that in mind when I tell you that this is my last day as editor of Belle Plaine Now.com.
They say you need to take chances to make anything good happen. About 15 months ago, a couple members of the BPCDC board approached me with an idea of creating an avenue for local news. The thought was that there’s enough happening in Belle Plaine that we really needed a news source devoted exclusively to what’s happening in our city. The first thought of printing a weekly newspaper was quickly discarded due to the ever-rising costs of newsprint and other associated printing costs. Besides, although I had more than 30 years of experience in the weekly newspaper game, I know that more and more people are growing impatient to receive their news. We live in a 24-hour news cycle, especially with national news, so why should local news take a back seat?
The BPCDC Board quickly embraced the concept, although I suspect some of the more conservative business people had their doubts. The site was launched with considerable fanfare and with one employee – me. I had little doubt I could find at least one story to post each weekday. Selling advertising in this economy was another matter.
But the initial response from local business people was wonderful. Most of the ads you see on our site represent business people who have been with us since the beginning.
Besides the financial support of those first advertisers, we received considerable moral support from folks who began to log onto our site in more and more numbers. I heard from people who lived far from Belle Plaine who still had an interest in what was happening in their home town. They began to rely on this site to keep them informed with local city and school news, local sports, obituaries, etc.
Unfortunately, while the news continued to flow, the ad prospects began to dwindle. Numerous attempts to add local advertisers fell short as we became more and more aware that the tough economy we are all facing individually is reflected in local business. Numerous attempts to convince regional and national advertisers to come on board did not bring results.
So after just over a year on line, the board made the tough decision to pare back expenses and eliminate the editor’s position, throwing yours truly into the growing ranks of the unemployed.
Quite often when an employee is separated from his work, there are hard feelings. Nothing could be further from the truth in this case. I was never really good at business, but the financial reality of the situation was impossible not to see. In order for the BPCDC to continue with its vital mission of bringing business to our city and the administer the wonderful Main Street Iowa program, some tough choices had to be made.
Online delivery of local news will increase over the coming months and years. At some point, advertisers who have relied on print ads will realize this. In fact, one the first ads I sold was to a local business whose owner said he knew the internet the coming thing.
So I still believe in online local news. I also believe in Belle Plaine. If my next career takes me back home to the Davenport area, I might be the only guy in Scott County walking around wearing a Belle Plaine Plainsman t-shirt. But if anybody asks me where Belle Plaine is, I will be glad to tell them. It’s a place full of great people who are excited about the future of their town.
Several months ago, as many of us began meeting to map out the future of this town, we were in a constant battle with a small group of people called “Cave people.” I recently heard a definition for cave people, “citizens against virtually everything.” As the months have passed and more local folks have seen the progress being made, the number of cave people in our town seems to be falling.
People are excited about the new aquatics center opening next month, about the new additions to our school buildings that will mean an enhanced learning environment for all of our children. Every day, people stop by this office to look at the designs for the streetscape project. Local officials hope to begin construction before the end of this construction season. Once completed, our downtown will be totally transformed and should be a place many people will want to come to shop and meet their friends.
I leave this position today with no bitterness, some sadness and a lot of appreciation to the people of the BPCDC board that had the courage and the foresight to give this venture a try. They hope to continue this site with the help of volunteers, so if you have some time and some interest, be sure to stop by and volunteer to keep this site going.

I know I can sometimes go two or more weeks without posting a column, but sometimes I feel the need to hop up on the soap box from time to time, so please excuse the short time since the last column.
A couple of recent tragic stories in the national news got me to wondering about just how our government operates. No, this is not going to be a slap at one political party or the other, since these things have apparently been happening for a long time now and anyone in power, regardless of political affiliation, deserves to take some of the blame and/or credit.
It was reported that the federal government was going to fine Toyota $16 million for the accelerator fiasco. Apparently the claim is that the company knew about the problem for some time before going public.
We take it for granted that when someone is found guilty of a criminal or sometimes a civil infraction, he or she may face a fine. When corporations make mistakes, the fines are just a lot bigger.
I’ve always wondered where that fine money goes. People were injured or lost their lives due to malfunctions of their Toyota automobiles. But will any of that $16 million go to them? I doubt it. Any compensation due to those folks or their families will probably have to come from settlements of lawsuits. If the fine doesn’t go to the victims, I would hope that it would go to the Consumer Product Safety Commission to help ensure that our products are safe.
When someone is convicted of a crime, especially a violent crime, he or she is generally assessed a hefty fine, along with a long prison sentence. If someone is convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison and also fined $100,000, how will that fine ever be paid? Prisoners who have jobs within the walls of their new home are paid less than $1 a day. So what use is a fine? Besides, especially for those facing a shorter prison term, one of the goals of the prison system is to rehabilitate the inmate. What incentive does the inmate have to be rehabilitated when he knows he will have to pay a big fine once he’s released?
The court system should be allowed to incarcerate those who are judged to be a danger to re-offend and for the other violators, assess the fine, but make sure the money goes for restitution for the victim and for the cost of apprehension and prosecution and place the defendant under closely-monitored probation at least until the fine is paid.
It’s just another one of those things about our government that on the surface seems to make so much sense, it would probably never work for some reason.
This week’s tragic mining accident in West Virginia raised a lot of questions. Only after the explosion did the public learn that federal officials had cited the owners of the mine for more than 500 violations, many of them safety related, in 2009. They were apparently on a course to meet or exceed that number of violations in 2010.
There was a report that the mining company had been fined $168,000, but that was equal to how much the company makes in one hour of mining.
If there was a business in Iowa, such as a restaurant or a nursing home, that was cited 500 times in a year, does anyone think it would still be open?
I also heard a report that the mine was a non-union mine. I know there are plenty of arguments for and against union operations. But most reputable unions, such as the international group that is the main union for miners, puts the safety of its members first. Maybe the union dues would have been well-spent by the miners in this instance.
Several times each day, we have trains loaded with coal roll through our town. It’s unfortunate that it took something like this disaster to make us all stop and think that for every pound of coal that passes by, somebody had to risk his or her life to pull it out of the ground.

So now it’s been almost two months since the last pro football player was tackled and it’s still about three weeks before the NFL draft and four long months until the first preseason game. What’s a diehard fan supposed to do?
Fear not, the Arena Football League has been reborn. Tonight (Friday), the Iowa Barnstormers will host the Chicago Rush at the Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines. The game will be broadcast on the NFL Network.
For those of you with short memories, arena football is a game that has similarities to regular football, but with a lot of different rules. The players all wear regular football pads and uniforms. But they play on an indoor field that may have been a hockey arena earlier in the year. There are eight players per team on the field at a time. Of course, the field is smaller than the outdoor variety, but since the action is much closer, it is an exciting game.
If you are a fan of Iowa State athletics and you’ve always wondered what happened to Brent Curvey or Todd Blythe, you can spot them in Barnstormers uniforms tonight. Fans of the Iowa Hawkeyes may remember Eric Rothwell, Pete Traynor or Tim Dodge. All are now Barnstormers, as are Charles Johnson and Tanner Varner from Northern Iowa.
Obviously there are few household names on the Arena League rosters. Some of these guys are clinging to the hope of getting a shot at the NFL, even though some of them may be as old as 33 or 34 years old. There have definitely been some success stories coming from players who got experience in the Arena League. Probably every player has heard about Kurt Warner, who went from Northern Iowa, to NFL Europe to the Arena League to eventual NFL Most Valuable Player.
With a salary of $400 per game, they certainly aren’t in it for the money. Perhaps those who still have some football skill but realize their hope of playing on Sundays in front of 75,000 fans is past still like the idea of playing a team game and getting a chance to travel. There are 15 teams in the league. Besides the Iowa Barnstormers and Chicago Rush, there is the Milwaukee Iron, Oklahoma City Yard Dawgs, Orlando Predators, Cleveland Gladiators, Arizona Rattlers, Alabama Vipers, Bossier-Shreveport Battlewings, Utah Blaze, Dallas Vigilantes, Spokane Shock, Tulsa Talons, Jacksonville Sharks and the Tampa Bay Storm.
The schedule has games listed through the end of July. The Iowa team will be shown on the NFL Network five times this season. The Arena League has a web site with a lot of information, though some of the teams are still developing their individual sites. I also Googled “Arena Football rules” and found several informative sites to get up to speed on the rule differences.
If you are suffering from football withdrawal, the Arena League may be worth checking out.

By Jeanne Duffy
Well a week has past since I became Director of BPCDC. The time spent packing up an entire house in Phoenix, keeping track of that yellow Penske truck with all my earthly belongings for three days and living on fast food are just a memory. However memories of my teenage years in Belle Plaine remain.
Oh, I’ve driven through downtown over the years but I am pleasantly surprised to feel the energy that still exists but is somehow obliterated by forlorn storefronts that look as if they too feel the loss of their former grandeur. The energy I feel now is in the spirit of our residents. However, hope for Belle Plaine springs (no pun intended) eternal as I learn of pending changes such as new facades, streetscape, plans to seek improvements to the back of buildings.
I must confess, coming from a city of four million people and freeways, I was definitely in the dark about the progressive activities going on in Belle Plaine. I see men and women working hard beyond their day jobs to volunteer time working on intensive projects to make Belle Plaine a better place.
I am amazed to see that the BPCDC board is a “working board” and members volunteer so much time. Innovation is alive and well with much of the money for improvements coming from grants which does not have to be repaid. I find that a cohesiveness exists here that is priceless.