Locals offer own plans for housing

Gerald Smith
Gerald Smith

By KELLY GERLACH

News Editor

kgerlach@mspress.net

A local group has ideas for a new development to address several different housing needs in Maquoketa.

Those plans would come to life on nine acres at 912 W. Summit St., land the city of Maquoketa bought in October.

The group said that a few weeks ago it submitted a handwritten intent to purchase to City Manager Gerald Smith. 

The city received handwritten ideas for property, “but not on a city-owned site,” Smith said during an interview Thursday. 

Dan Waite disputed Smith’s claim. He is a local resident, property owner, and member of the development group. 

“A local group of investors has expressed interest in purchasing the city-owned property on West Summit,” he said in a statement to the Sentinel-Press. “They have shared their intent with the city manager and Council members. They are interested in a development plan that would address the city’s housing needs and work with the neighbors to preserve the integrity of the existing neighborhood.”

Members of the group said the city had not yet contacted them to further discuss the 

 

Continue Reading

Board talks new hospital

Mike Steines
Mike Steines

By TOM PANTERA

News Editor

tpantera@dewittobserver.com

Two Jackson County boards found some common ground about plans to build a new local hospital Wednesday night, members from both groups said.

Jackson County Supervisor Mike Steines said the meeting with the Jackson County Regional Health Center Board of Trustees appeared to have accomplished its purpose.

“I think it was rather productive,” Steines said. “It got some things out in the forefront that maybe was not out there before.”

Hospital Board Chairman Kevin Burns also was happy with the outcome.

“I thought it was very productive,” he said. “We answered a lot of the supervisors’ questions, and they answered ours.”

The hospital’s Board of Trustees is working on a plan to build a new $33 million 

 

Continue Reading

Nick Surak
Nick Surak

By KELLY GERLACH

News Editor

kgerlach@mspress.net

“The people have spoken tonight.”

That’s how Maquoketa City Councilman Kevin Kuhlman summed up the situation before the council voted, 5-1, against selling nine acres of land for a proposed rental housing development.

The city still owns the land for which it paid $249,000. The Woda Group had proposed buying that property for a government-subsidized housing project for young working people.

Nick Surak, vice president of development for The Woda Group, said his company was still interested in the project but could not promise that would be the case in a year.

“I thought we put together a good proposal,” Surak said during a phone interview after the meeting. “There’s a housing need in Maquoketa, and we’re very good at what we do. But the city decided

 

Continue Reading

Supervisors land series  of cheap shots on hospital

Trevis Mayfield
Trevis Mayfield

 

Over the past 20 years, the Jackson County Regional Health Center’s leadership team has done an outstanding job of managing the taxpayer-supported hospital’s finances and putting it in a strong position.

But the Jackson County Board of Supervisors doesn’t seem to think that’s important.

That became painfully clear last week when Sentinel-Press News Editor Kelly Gerlach asked each supervisor – Jack Willey, Larry McDevitt and Mike Steines – for their thoughts regarding the hospital board’s plan to build a new facility.

The hospital board and the facility’s administration realized years ago that the old hospital – which was built in 1949 and then added on to several times – was on its way to obsolescence. To their credit, they didn’t hide from that reality and kick the can down the road, as other elected bodies so often do.

To ensure the hospital could perpetuate its mission (which is exactly what hospital board members are elected to do), the hospital tightened its fiscal belt so that it could begin saving for the new facility it would someday need. 

Today, it has saved $18 million.

Yes, $18 million!

And that money is now available to be put toward a new facility. It’s enough to pay for half of a modern hospital, and the facility’s revenues are strong enough to pay for the rest. That means Jackson County can build a new hospital without it causing taxes to go up. 

Of course, county taxes might go up, but it will not be because of the hospital. More likely, it will be because our outdated county jail needs to be replaced, and virtually nothing has been saved to put toward that project.

So now, instead of being celebrated for its financial discipline and strategic foresight, the hospital board and its executive leadership are being criticized for having prepared for the future.

Somehow, in all the public hubbub surrounding this issue, that fact is being overlooked. And Supervisors Willey, McDevitt and Steines seem to be chief among those missing that point. Whether the supervisors want a new hospital to be built or not, they owe the hospital and its leadership some respect for accomplishing something that, over the years, members of the Board of Supervisors have failed to do.

The supervisors should acknowledge that the hospital tax existed long before any of the hospital’s board members were elected. It’s not like they created the tax. Their job was to provide governance for the hospital, not to rethink the county’s tax structure.

The supervisors are picking and pulling at the hospital’s plan in an obvious effort to discredit it.

Here are a few of the things they said during their interview with Gerlach:

McDevitt said he believes “we need a hospital,” but went on to make an argument against it. “I don’t think it’s being used. It’s not like if we build a new one, people will come. They won’t.”

Apparently, he has not taken the time to study the readily available information about who uses the hospital and how much revenue it generates. For the record, 21,025 patients used the hospital last year. That’s more than 400 people a week. (I was one of them.)

McDevitt and Steines went so far as to suggest that Curt Coleman, the hospital’s administrator who is contracted through Genesis Medical Center, doesn’t have the hospital’s best interest at heart. They offered no evidence to support the claim, but that didn’t stop them from saying it.

Willey also muddied the water with off-point comments that have nothing to do with the merits of the hospital’s plan.

“Here the trustees are telling people about all the horrible things that are wrong with the building,” Willey said. “But then they think [the county] should buy it and sink money into it for a jail.”

The supervisors are sending a not-so-subtle message that they might refuse to issue the bonds that could be needed for a new hospital to be built. They said their top priority for the hospital was for it to be self-sustaining, which means they want the hospital to no longer receive tax support.

The supervisors should acknowledge that this idea would never have come up if not for the hospital’s financial discipline. If it had blown through the $18 million it has today, its taxing authority wouldn’t be in question. The hospital is being punished for its success.

If the supervisors get their way and the hospital tax is somehow eliminated without a new facility being built first, it’s hard to say what kind of future our hospital has. Without a modern facility, the outdated, wrong-sized, wrong-shaped hodgepodge is not the kind of facility a private healthcare company is likely to want to buy. Maintaining the current facility would consume what the board has saved, and without tax support it is likely the volume of care and services provided would be diminished.

How’s that for progress?

 

Trevis Mayfield is president and
publisher of Sycamore Media. His email address is tmayfield@sycamoremedia.net

Other towns pleased with Woda

Suzane Schulz
Suzane Schulz

By KELLY GERLACH

 

News Editor

 

kgerlach@mspress.net

 

Investment in your community can spark great things and keep it from being stagnant.

 

That’s what Suzanne Schulz said about The Woda Group Inc.’s multiple housing projects in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she is the city planning director.

 

“When you get new investments, this spurs additional investments in the community,” she said. “Next might come someone with market-rate housing. That’s the spark that can lead to other projects and investments.” 

Continue Reading...

Developer says units not designed for low incomes

The proposed Tubbs Orchard Estates might resemble this new housing development in Kendallville, Indiana. It was built by The Woda Group Inc., which has shown interest in building 22 duplexes – 44 total rental units – on nine acres on West Summit Street.
The proposed Tubbs Orchard Estates might resemble this new housing development in Kendallville, Indiana. It was built by The Woda Group Inc., which has shown interest in building 22 duplexes – 44 total rental units – on nine acres on West Summit Street.

By KELLY GERLACH

News Editor

kgerlach@mspress.net

A proposed housing development for young
workers is meeting with criticism from people who fear it will be a project for low-income residents.

 The Maquoketa City Council plans a public hearing Nov. 6 on the proposed development at Tubbs Orchard Estates. 

Some city residents have launched campaigns on Facebook, through letter-writing, and by word of mouth to get people to Monday’s meeting to tell the council what they think of the housing plan. 

The chief concern seems to be that the proposal is for federally subsidized housing, formerly known as a Section 8 program. But city officials and developers insist the Tubbs project will not involve subsidized rent.

According to Nick Surak, vice president of development for The Woda Group Inc., the Ohio-based developer would build duplexes with state tax housing credits, but tenants would be responsible for paying the full amount of their rent without government aid.

“It’s geared toward people who have the means to pay the rent themselves,” Surak explained. 

 

Continue reading...



FEATURED

ADVERTISERS

Click on the ad for a direct link to their website