It's hard to believe, but area families are already beginning to think about the items that will be needed to send young folks back to school properly equipped and looking good.According to the National Retail Foundation, a typical family with children in school will spend nearly $600 on ...

For Fort Dodge residents - particularly those who bemoan the state of city streets - this summer's spate of road work is good news indeed.With construction season in full swing, orange barrels and barricades are a common sight for anyone driving throughout the city.Among the high profile ...

An early morning standoff in Fort Dodge ended peacefully Tuesday, thanks to cooperation among local law enforcement officials who showed incredible patience, the wisdom that comes with experience and old-fashioned good judgment.Initially, officers had a report that a man had threatened to shoot ...

A new trash collection method in Fort Dodge has not been without detractors.In January, the Public Works Department switched to a new collection method that relies on trucks with mechanical arms to pick up both garbage and recycling materials.Each of the city's roughly 8,400 sanitation ...

The Iowa 4-H Hall of Fame was established in 2002 as 4-H celebrated 100 years of a program dedicated to teaching youth life skills.Every year, Iowa counties select inductees to be recognized for their contributions to 4-H.Among inductees from north central Iowa are:- John and Sandee Bonner, of ...

According to data compiled by the Fort Dodge Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Iowa High School Girls State Softball Tournament is an economic home run for the community.Each year, it brings about 25,000 people to the city, according to the Convention and Visitors Bureau.Those visitors ...

Public school teachers and administrators sometimes grow frustrated at demands politicians put on them. No wonder. Curriculum demands vary regularly, depending on what seems to concern the public most at a given time.But some failings in the priorities we set for schools seem obvious. One is ...

School tragedies are an all-too-common occurrence in the United States.For the past four years, educators and emergency personnel throughout Webster County have met as part of a School Community Safety Committee, dedicated to keeping students and teachers safe.Each month, the committee meets ...

In every town there are special people who contribute to the success of the community through the giving things they do. These folks - whose selfless contributions make life better for others in their hometowns - sometimes go unacknowledged. That's unfortunate because many of the people who ...

One of summer's most enjoyable events is about to begin. The Girls State Softball Tournament, which starts Monday, will be the highlight of the season for the 40 teams that made it to state-level competition. All the teams are outstanding. Making it to this final event of the season means that ...

Estimates by federal agencies that they in effect threw away nearly $100 billion last year should infuriate taxpayers. It is our hard-earned money, after all.But of even more concern should be that the figure represents reports from the very agencies that wasted the money. Analysts at the ...

Many people who work in the private sector would have no trouble answering a "what's wrong with this picture" question about a Veterans Affairs Department official's apology recently.During a recent congressional hearing, VA official James Tuchschmidt apologized for the retaliation some agency ...

So easy a child could do it. The phrase is used to describe everything from assembling toys to programming remote controls.And now, for sneaking across the border from Mexico into the United States.Border Patrol agents in Arizona and Texas have been overwhelmed by thousands of "UAC" illegal ...

A flood of thousands of Central American children who managed, sometimes alone, to sneak across the allegedly secure border between the U.S. and Mexico makes it clear the boundary is nothing more than a line on the map in many places. So yes, more needs to be done to keep illegal immigrants ...

In 2012, a group of property owners formed a team to start the initiative "Keep 15th Clean & Green."The ongoing goal of the initiative is to engage all 15th Street property owners to maintain high standards of appearance so that visitors as well as our own residents know that we welcome ...

National Labor Relations Board members have an opportunity to avoid making their agency look ridiculous, simple-minded and biased.They should take it.A regional arm of the NLRB, based in Chicago, has issued a ruling that would allow many college football players to form unions. That would wreak ...

Fifty-six people, most of them old women selling food to make money so they could eat, died when Boko Haram terrorists set off a bomb in a Nigerian marketplace recently.Boko Haram still holds at least 219 school girls the Islamic terrorists kidnapped in April. During just the past two weeks, ...

For as long as human beings have engaged in the assorted pursuits referred to collectively as agriculture, women have been key players in the success of those undertakings. Over the centuries, the specifics have varied from era to era and community to community, but women have remained central ...

There are many ways to lose freedom - conquering armies, surrendering without a fight. Unfortunately, we are currently surrendering our freedom, not to a foreign power, but to our own government.The growth, reach, and cost of big government is happening before our eyes and eroding our liberty, ...

The boarding pass typically lists two times: the time of departure and the time of boarding. For many airline passengers, the only significant one is time of departure.That's because "time of boarding" marks only the beginning of a long process of which they are at the end. The parade of ...