Here are the ABCs of the Davenport Promise.

A. Promise is a scheme to take city taxpayer money from improving Davenport streets, sewers, and other infrastructure and use it to try to attract residents with children to bolster enrollment in Davenport schools.

B. The Upjohn study funded by Promise backers says the likelihood of the plan working as hoped has "a high level of uncertainty." Those are fancy words for "don't hold your breath."

C. The plan contains no commitment by Davenport schools to improve graduation rates and student academic performance, measures currently below neighboring Iowa districts. It divides students within the district between Davenporters who are eligible for scholarship help and those in the district but outside the city who are not eligible. That doesn't sound right.

Summary: A. Unwise, B. Unlikely, C. Unfair.

Vote "No" for the Davenport Promise referendum March 3.

Keith Meyer

Davenport

Click the image for a larger version.

I just wanted to provide an insight from a family that left Davenport because of the schools. I grew up in Bettendorf, moved to Davenport, and after having children moved them to Geneseo, as I refused to put them in the Davenport school system. As a parent, I would not subject my children to 13 years in that school system to earn money for college. Not only is the crime rate in that school system high, but the schools do not adequately prepare the kids for college.

I was chairman of the board of the Davenport Chamber of Commerce when it successfully promoted passage of the one-cent sales tax. There was enthusiasm for infrastructure improvements then and, clearly, that enthusiasm remains.

The most recent Davenport Community Survey finds residents give their highest priority to continue improving the city's streets and infrastructure. That is fact.

Approving the "Promise" proposal would divert millions of dollars from such work. That, too, is fact.

The various claimed benefits of Promise are not facts. They are estimates and questionable ones at that.

To download a pdf of the puzzle, click here.

For the answers, click here.

For the answers to last week's puzzle, click here.

It can be a traumatic thing to have something familiar and comfortable ripped away from you and given something new, even when the new is so much better than the old. So it is with the River Cities Reader. First they reduce the printed version down to every other week and removed content like the calendar from the printed version as well. Then they go and change their website to something totally different!

Well, admittedly, the calendar on the new site makes iu much easier to find what I am looking for and the cool new features of the site are nice but having that piece of paper in my hands is just... well... uhm....

Dirty? Yeah, my hands get filthy from holding that paper and ink in them. And then the used paper just takes up room in my recycling bin, hopefully to be recycled but who really knows.

But wait, the paper is easier to read! Yeah! Well, at least scan quickly through.

Well, until I want to go back and find that article I read and not sure exactly which issue or where. Then, the website is quicker, easier, and quite frankly less messy.

But I can't read it while sitting in my favorite coffee shop. Well, I could technically. Amazon's Kindle does allow me to do some minimal browsing on the web so I guess I could take the Reader anywhere provided I can get wireless coverage (never know about Sprint). And yeah, eventually I could see the Reader even becoming a regular download on the Kindle.  That could be sweet. And having my whole library of books in the palm of my hand is an awesome thought. But I digress.

Yes, it is traumatic to go through change but in todays fast pace world, companies like the Reader have to change with the world or die quickly. I would rather see the Reader live on in new formats than to just go away.  So I applaud the visionaries at the Reader for taking this brave new step and encourage them to keep improving the site and making it a place we all want to come back to.

720-coverthumbEach year, Sonoma State University's Project Censored produces a list of the most "important national news stories that are underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the U.S. corporate media," according to its Web site (ProjectCensored.org).

Below is the list of the most-recent choices, with selected excerpts. The full summaries, including sources, are available at (ProjectCensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2009).

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