• The Mississippi Valley Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) has been awarded funds to refinance homes purchased on contract, which commonly have high interest rates and balloon payments due in a short period of time. NHS hopes to refinance as many as 25 homes a year through a revolving-loan fund financed with $250,000 in Community Development Block Grant money from the City of Davenport. People who are buying their homes on contract can reach NHS loan officers Pamela Ellis or Julie Sanders at (563)324-1556 Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The organization's offices are located at 131 West 3rd Street in downtown Davenport.
• Judith Malone has announced her candidacy for Iowa State Representative in District 86. Malone, a Republican, has been a resident of the district for 12 years and currently services on the Davenport Plan & Zone Commission and as a trustee of the Davenport Museum of Art. Malone says she will focus on reducing state spending, improving education, and creating new jobs if elected. She will face Democrat Cindy Winkler in the November general election.
• Democratic candidate for U.S. Representative Ann Hutchinson launched her Web site recently at (http://www.annhutchinson.com). Voters can learn about Hutchinson, see how she stands on the issues, and view upcoming events. In turn, the site also allows politically active Internet surfers to donate, volunteer, vote on issues of importance, and offer feedback. Hutchinson says that the Web site is a work-in-progress, and she encourages interested parties to visit the site often and offer feedback.
• Five Davenport schools - three more than in any other district in Iowa - have been labeled "schools in need of improvement" by the Iowa Department of Education. Buchanan, Hayes, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington schools were all identified as needing improvement in reading, while Hayes, Jefferson, and Washington were singled out for mathematics. The status is based on fourth-grade performance on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills for schools serving high percentages of poor students. As a result of the designation, parents can ask the school district to bus their children (at its cost) to other schools. The Muscatine and Waterloo school districts had two schools each on the list of "schools in need of improvement," and 17 other districts had one school each.
• The Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring a Web site to lure people back into the Bettendorf and Pleasant Valley area. The Web site is very complete and well thought-out with links to job, lifestyle, education, and housing information and much more. It can be found at (http://www.backtobettendorf.com).
• All people - even those who claim to never do anything illegal - should be trained to exercise their constitutional rights in order to avoid the humiliation of improper police conduct and illegal searches. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report on citizen-police contacts, an estimated 44 million people 16 years or older, or about 21 percent of the population that age, had contact with the police during 1999. More than half of these face-to-face interactions were during traffic stops. Of the 19.3 million traffic stops documented in the study, about 1.3 million motorists said they or their vehicle had been searched. In almost 90 percent of these searches, police found no evidence of a crime. Many, if not most, of these searches could have been avoided if the motorist had properly exercised his or her rights by refusing to consent to a warrantless search. Flex Your Rights is a not-for-profit educational organization working to train Americans to resist improper police tactics. You can find out more on how to exercise your rights at the Flex Your Rights Web site at (http://www.flexyourrights.org).
• Teenage drivers make up almost 7 percent of the nation's total licensed drivers but are involved in 16 percent of all police-reported crashes. In 1998, 6,400 people between the ages of 15 and 20 were killed in motor-vehicle crashes - the leading cause of death for this age group. More than 70 percent of those killed were not wearing seat belts. Seat belts can help reduce death and injury by up to 60 percent. Buckle up!
• Thanks to a $47,000 gift from Trinity Regional Health System, Illinois Quad Cities law-enforcement agencies and the communities they serve will enjoy better emergency cardiac care. The gift includes portable Automatic External Defibrillators (or AEDs), training, and written protocols for the Rock Island Sheriff's Department and police departments in Rock Island, Milan, and East Moline. (Moline already has AEDs.) Time is everything during cardiac arrest; every minute that passes without a heartbeat costs the patient a 7- to 10-percent chance of survival, said heart surgeon Dr. Philip Seaver, medical director of Trinity Medical Center's Open Heart Program. "Of 250,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year, only 2 to 5 percent survive," Seaver said. "That rate increases to about 30 percent when portable defibrillators are available quickly." Seaver, with the help of Trinity Health Foundation president Berlinda Tyler-Jamison, initiated the effort to put AEDs into law-enforcement hands.
• The Alliance for the Separation of School & State's goal is the end of federal, state, and local involvement with schooling. The group believes government should have no role in financing, operating, or defining schools, or even compelling attendance. The organization argues that schools should be removed from government operation and influence for three reasons: a one-size-fits-all style doesn't work in a pluralistic society, it claims, especially for character values; government take-over of parents' duties is often met with an abdication of parental responsibility, and reduced parental responsibility hurts kids; and politically run schooling can't escape the age-graded, time-based model imported from Prussia in the 1840s. Take a look at (http://www.sepschool.org) for more information.
• Judith Malone has announced her candidacy for Iowa State Representative in District 86. Malone, a Republican, has been a resident of the district for 12 years and currently services on the Davenport Plan & Zone Commission and as a trustee of the Davenport Museum of Art. Malone says she will focus on reducing state spending, improving education, and creating new jobs if elected. She will face Democrat Cindy Winkler in the November general election.
• Democratic candidate for U.S. Representative Ann Hutchinson launched her Web site recently at (http://www.annhutchinson.com). Voters can learn about Hutchinson, see how she stands on the issues, and view upcoming events. In turn, the site also allows politically active Internet surfers to donate, volunteer, vote on issues of importance, and offer feedback. Hutchinson says that the Web site is a work-in-progress, and she encourages interested parties to visit the site often and offer feedback.
• Five Davenport schools - three more than in any other district in Iowa - have been labeled "schools in need of improvement" by the Iowa Department of Education. Buchanan, Hayes, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington schools were all identified as needing improvement in reading, while Hayes, Jefferson, and Washington were singled out for mathematics. The status is based on fourth-grade performance on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills for schools serving high percentages of poor students. As a result of the designation, parents can ask the school district to bus their children (at its cost) to other schools. The Muscatine and Waterloo school districts had two schools each on the list of "schools in need of improvement," and 17 other districts had one school each.
• The Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring a Web site to lure people back into the Bettendorf and Pleasant Valley area. The Web site is very complete and well thought-out with links to job, lifestyle, education, and housing information and much more. It can be found at (http://www.backtobettendorf.com).
• All people - even those who claim to never do anything illegal - should be trained to exercise their constitutional rights in order to avoid the humiliation of improper police conduct and illegal searches. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report on citizen-police contacts, an estimated 44 million people 16 years or older, or about 21 percent of the population that age, had contact with the police during 1999. More than half of these face-to-face interactions were during traffic stops. Of the 19.3 million traffic stops documented in the study, about 1.3 million motorists said they or their vehicle had been searched. In almost 90 percent of these searches, police found no evidence of a crime. Many, if not most, of these searches could have been avoided if the motorist had properly exercised his or her rights by refusing to consent to a warrantless search. Flex Your Rights is a not-for-profit educational organization working to train Americans to resist improper police tactics. You can find out more on how to exercise your rights at the Flex Your Rights Web site at (http://www.flexyourrights.org).
• Teenage drivers make up almost 7 percent of the nation's total licensed drivers but are involved in 16 percent of all police-reported crashes. In 1998, 6,400 people between the ages of 15 and 20 were killed in motor-vehicle crashes - the leading cause of death for this age group. More than 70 percent of those killed were not wearing seat belts. Seat belts can help reduce death and injury by up to 60 percent. Buckle up!
• Thanks to a $47,000 gift from Trinity Regional Health System, Illinois Quad Cities law-enforcement agencies and the communities they serve will enjoy better emergency cardiac care. The gift includes portable Automatic External Defibrillators (or AEDs), training, and written protocols for the Rock Island Sheriff's Department and police departments in Rock Island, Milan, and East Moline. (Moline already has AEDs.) Time is everything during cardiac arrest; every minute that passes without a heartbeat costs the patient a 7- to 10-percent chance of survival, said heart surgeon Dr. Philip Seaver, medical director of Trinity Medical Center's Open Heart Program. "Of 250,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year, only 2 to 5 percent survive," Seaver said. "That rate increases to about 30 percent when portable defibrillators are available quickly." Seaver, with the help of Trinity Health Foundation president Berlinda Tyler-Jamison, initiated the effort to put AEDs into law-enforcement hands.
• The Alliance for the Separation of School & State's goal is the end of federal, state, and local involvement with schooling. The group believes government should have no role in financing, operating, or defining schools, or even compelling attendance. The organization argues that schools should be removed from government operation and influence for three reasons: a one-size-fits-all style doesn't work in a pluralistic society, it claims, especially for character values; government take-over of parents' duties is often met with an abdication of parental responsibility, and reduced parental responsibility hurts kids; and politically run schooling can't escape the age-graded, time-based model imported from Prussia in the 1840s. Take a look at (http://www.sepschool.org) for more information.
