Happy New
Happy New
The
Graphic - Advocate WEDNESDAY
|DECEMBER 30, 2015|VOLUME 126| ISSUE 52
Rockwell City Office 712-297-7544 • advocate@iowatelecom.net - Lake City Office 712-464-3188 • lcgraphic@iowatelecom.net
$100
www.thegraphic-advocate.com
Rockwell City, Calhoun County select square contractors By Erin Sommers Graphic-Advocate Editor
South Central Calhoun High School counselor Brian Knapp checks his phone outside of the school after a tornado struck it. Debris from the school’s roof is seen behind him. Knapp was asking people who were at the school not to walk north of him, because of downed, live power lines on the road. GRAPHIC-ADVOCATE PHOTO/ERIN SOMMERS
A look back at 2015 - The year in review By Erin Sommers Graphic-Advocate Editor One story blew away the rest this year to become the top story of 2015. Here are 10 of the biggest stories from Calhoun County from the last year. 1. The tornado that hit Lake City May 10 was clearly the biggest event of the year. The EF-1 twister took the roof off of South Central Calhoun High School while more than 100 people took shelter in the basement. Amazingly, no one was injured and the historical school, constructed nearly a century ago, sustained relatively minor damage. By first light on May 11, crews of volunteers had descended upon Lake City, chopping tree limbs and picking up debris from across town. By lunchtime, it seemed as though no exposed roof was left uncovered and while the path of the tornado was clearly visible, via the destruction around town, Lake City was surprisingly neat and tidy, all things considered. So many people showed up to help that the county ran out of volunteer identification tags by midafternoon. Also of note is the way Lake City businesses and churches opened their doors to accommodate eight more school days, allowing the
ninth, tenth and eleventh grades to finish classes. Contractors got to work and had the school back in shape for the start of classes in late August. 2. Certainly a less visual event than the tornado, the next biggest story of the year was no less discussed. In January, Des Moines Water Works officials announced their intent to sue drainage districts in Calhoun, Buena Vista and Sac counties, alleging the tile systems that making farming here so successful were also polluting the Raccoon River watershed. The lawsuit was filed in March and is making its way through the courts now. Farmers and agriculture supporters have speculated about why such rural districts were targeted. 3. Officials with the Dakota Access Pipeline pushed forward with their plans to build an oil pipeline that cuts across Iowa, including through about 30 miles of Calhoun County. Farmers here have split on whether they are OK with allowing the 30inch pipeline running below their crops, and some still haven’t signed easement agreements with the Texasbased company. The Iowa Utilities Board is expected to rule sometime early next year on the request. 4. The South Central Calhoun girls basketball team played their way to
the state semifinal game in March before falling to Unity Christian. 5. In more prep sports, the South Central Calhoun football team won several playoff games before losing a heartbreaking home game one step short of the Dome. 6. Calhoun County investigators were called to a Pomeroy home early one morning in November to check out a report of a man being shot. A week later, Freddy Crisp, 48, was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Dale Potter, a North Dakota resident. Little information has been released about what led up to the shooting. 7. It’s the year before a presidential election, and that means lots of national political attention is focused on Iowa. Calhoun County didn’t escape notice – Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Ted Cruz all made stops in Rockwell City, shaking hands with voters and promising to be the best candidate the GOP could offer. No visits by any Democratic candidates this year, though. 8. The first official South Central Calhoun High School class walked across the stage to pick up diplomas in May. The ceremony marked the culmination of several years worth of work to consolidate the Southern Cal and Rockwell City/Lytton school districts.
9. Area health care organizations expressed concern this fall about plans to switch from a state-run Medicaid program to managed care. One big problem, health officials said, was the timeline Gov. Terry Branstad gave for the switch – less than two months from the selection of the four winning managed care groups to when the new insurance plans would begin. The timeline crunch was making budgeting for next year hard, as well as putting a burden on patients and their caregivers, officials across the state said. A federal ruling required Iowa to delay the switch for at least 60 days. 10. Election results brought new faces to county, city and school board seats. Long-time Board of Supervisors member Dean Hoag retired in March. His replacement, Mike Cooper, was selected in June by a special election. In Lake City, Mayor Gary Fahan was unseated by newcomer Tyler Holm. And when several long-term school board members retired this year, it became a race to win the write-in vote. A bit of ballot-counting confusion delayed the unofficial results a bit, but in the end, it was Ryan Hildreth, Alan Wedemeyer and Tom Steinborn who joined the SCC school board this fall.
The year-long delay for the Rockwell City town square improvement project was worth the wait, a engineering consultant said last week. The winning bid for Rockwell City’s portion of the project, which involves replacing underground infrastructure on the four streets on each side of the courthouse, then repaving the roads and rebuilding sidewalks on the outside of the square, came in at $1.8 million, 2.3 percent lower than I+S Engineer’s estimate. Winning contractor Wicks Construction’s bid was also about $500,000 lower than the lowest bid when the city first tried to contract the project earlier this year. “It was well worth waiting,” engineer David Doxtad told Rockwell City Council members Dec. 21. Also good news, Doxtad said, was that the contractor for the underground portion of the work was already pushing to have documents in place to allow construction to begin. “If we have a nice spring or a winter where we don’t have much frost, he’d like to move in in March and get started,” Doxtad said at the Calhoun County Board of Supervisors meeting Dec. 22. The $117,000 bid for the county’s section of the project was a few hundred dollars lower than Doxtad’s estimate. Both the city council and the supervisors approved resolutions accepting the low bids. The Rockwell City Council also picked up discussions about the impact of the sanitary sewer project, which is still wrapping up. The project goal was to reline sanitary sewer lines throughout town to close gaps allowing storm water to infiltrate the lines. The problem with such inflow and infiltration, officials said, is that the storm water ends up in the city’s waste water treatment plant, when the water doesn’t actually need to be treated.
This month’s heavy rains have still resulted in significant increases in water flow to the treatment plant, Mayor Phil Heinlen said. City residents are also likely seeing lots of water backing up into basements. “I think the reason we haven’t been bombarded by complaints is because people know they’re illegally hooked up” to the sanitary sewer lines with sump pumps, cisterns and tiles, Heinlen said. Heinlen suggested the city use its smoke machine to check for more places where water is entering the sanitary lines. He agreed that sump pumps are likely a problem, but said the amount of water and the speed with which it reached the treatment plant – usually within 15 minutes of a heavy rain starting – indicates the city’s system is still getting too much storm water through an intake somewhere yet to be identified. “Once it starts raining this hard, it flows,” Heinlen said. Doxtad said asking city residents to disconnect sump pumps from the city’s sewer lines is a tough request, but other towns have done it. “If we’re going to go after residential (sources of storm water), have to do go after our own system, too,” Heinlen said. Doxtad said the city had been addressing the problem, with actions such as the $1 million sanitary sewer relining project. “You lined through town,” he said. “You’ve done your part and continue to do your part.” Another problem, Doxtad said, this winter is just how much water is in the ground. “We are seeing the groundwater table significantly higher,” he said. “It is saturated. It will come through (to basements).” Heinlen said the city may need to create a program that offsets the cost for homeowners who have to replace or reconfigure the sump pumps that are currently hooked into the sanitary sewer system.
Appellate court affirms Trott conviction By Erin Sommers Graphic-Advocate Editor
An uprooted tree stump is seen in Lake City Monday afternoon. GRAPHIC-ADVOCATE PHOTO/ERIN SOMMERS
The Iowa Appeals Court upheld Corey Trott’s first-degree murder conviction, which resulted from the shooting death of Rockwell City Police Officer Jamie Buenting Attorneys for Corey Trott appealed the September 2014 ruling, claiming Trott’s constitutional rights were violated when investigators continued to interrogate Trott following the September 2013 shooting in Rockwell City. Trott said officers did read him the Miranda warning. “Indeed, Trott does not argue the warning was improperly given or insufficient,” the appellate ruling said. Just because Trott didn’t initially answer officers’ questions doesn’t mean it was improper for officers to continue asking them, the ruling said. “Unlike the invocation of the right to counsel, a suspect’s invocation of his right to remain silent does not preclude law enforcement from reinitiating interrogation,” the ruling said. “Rather, after a suspect has invoked his right to remain silent, under (other rulings), it is permissible for law enforcement to resume questioning if “the suspect’s right to cut off questioning was scrupulously honored.” As in the precedent-setting cases
the appeals court considered, and Trott’s attorney quoted, investigators did not immediately resume interrogation after Trott invoked his right to remain silent. Trott also argued that he did not knowingly or voluntarily waive his right to remain silent when he began answering investigators’ questions. The court dismissed that argument, too. “Trott was given the Miranda warnings three different times, and his invocation of his right to silence following the first warning evidences he knew both how to invoke his rights and the consequences of abandoning his rights,” the ruling said. “Additionally, while Trott may have been tired when he was interviewed by (an investigator), there is no evidence in the record that Trott was intimidated, coerced, or deceived into waiving his right to remain silent by the agent or anyone.” Even challenges to Trott’s mental competency would not preclude the defendant from being able to voluntarily waive his right to remain silent. A lower court ruled Trott was competent to stand trial.