Taming Cable

The current franchise agreement between the City of Davenport and the city's provider of cable-television services was drafted in 1974. Nixon resigned that year. Pong was a state-of-the-art video game. Of course, nobody had even heard then of terms such as fiber optics, digital cable, or the Internet, or had any conception of how they would impact the way people watch television or communicate in the 1990s and beyond.
In its third year, organizers of the ArtStroll street festival have stopped making predictions. After drawing an estimated 2,000 people at the inaugural event two years ago, planners expected 4,000 last year. They think they ended up with about 5,000.
• Operation T.I.P.S. (Terrorism Information & Prevention System) is a new nationwide volunteer-reporting government program scheduled to begin in August. According to a government Web site, "The program will involve the millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to serve as extra eyes and ears for law enforcement.
This is the situation that Linda Downs is jumping into. When the Davenport Museum of Art began raising money for a new facility, it bypassed the charitable Friends of the Davenport Museum of Art for the job.
A look at Linda Downs' career shows one thing for certain: She knows how to stick with her jobs. After getting her Master of Arts in art history at the University of Michigan in 1973, she was an adjunct faculty member in that field from 1976 to 1989 at Wayne State University.
• Vera French Housing Corporation (VFHC) and Heartland Properties (the housing subsidiary of Alliant Energy Resources) have joined together to address the housing needs of persons with mental illness in Scott County with the construction of a 10-unit special-needs housing development for persons with mental illness.
When public-radio station KUNI finished last month's "Drive to Survive" having raised $106,000 over five days, it didn't see the total as a failure even though it fell far short of the massive budget cut it was about to endure.
• Governor Tom Vilsack and Lieutenant Governor Sally Pederson announced the appointment of Jamie Howard of Davenport to the Commission on the Status of African Americans. Howard currently serves as alderman at-large and mayor pro-tem of the City of Davenport.
When Charles Ara fell in love, at the age of 39, he faced an anguished choice. As a priest in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, he had taken a vow of celibacy. But after working alongside the 28-year-old religion educator in his parish for almost three years, he felt that his vows had become impossible to live out honestly.
• The pro-life Life & Family Educational Trust has announced the opening of the newly completed Women's Choice Center at 2711 Happy Joe Drive in Bettendorf. The Woman's Choice Center is a facility - located across the street from Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa - providing information about pregnancy, fetal development, and related issues.

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