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People needed to join the ranks of blood donors

The idea of getting poked with a big needle and having some of your blood siphoned out is not at all a pleasant one. However, people who are brave enough to get jabbed and allow some of their blood to be drawn out are a type of hero commonly called a blood donor. They save a lot of lives. Donating blood takes about an hour, according to leaders of Lifeserve Blood Center, which has a facility in Fort Dodge. In that hour, a blood donor can save three local lives, they say. Blood and blood products are needed by trauma patients, premature infants, cancer patients, organ transplant ...

Using federal COVID money for airports is good move

The Fort Dodge Regional Airport is on the verge of some much needed improvements that will be done without spending local property tax dollars. The airport is eligible for $1,585,761 from the Iowa Commercial Aviation Infrastructure Fund. That money will be spent to build new hangars to house planes. The state fund has that money available for Fort Dodge, plus millions more for seven other commercial service airports in Iowa, because Gov. Kim Reynolds deposited $100 million of federal COVID relief money into it. The high dollar federal COVID relief programs have lots of detractors, ...

Group of FDSH graduates helps today’s students

Students at Fort Dodge elementary schools had a special visit this week from Mike Artell, an author and illustrator of children’s books. That visit was courtesy of a group of Fort Dodge Senior High School alumni that has been a steady, but relatively little-known, supporter of the local public schools since 1998. The Fort Dodge Senior High School Alumni Association paid the expenses for the Artell visit. Every year, the association pays for an author to visit the schools. It also funds five $1,000 scholarships for students graduating from Fort Dodge Senior High who are enrolling ...

Road workers deserve our respect

The calendar tells us that spring has arrived, and that also means the start of another season: road construction season. In Fort Dodge, we have already seen some of that as crews have been doing permanent repairs to various streets that had to be dug up to fix broken water mains. One of the year’s big projects, the reconstruction of Third Avenue Northwest, is getting started. In the coming days and weeks, more projects will begin on city, county and state roads. Barricades and orange barrels will be a common sight once more. All this work will yield smooth roads that will help ...

Help celebrate National Ag Week

As another growing season approaches, we are in the middle of National Ag Week as set by the Agriculture Council of America. One goal of National Ag Week is to recognize the contribution agriculture makes in the lives of all of us. The council sponsors and encourages programs during National Ag Week that help Americans: • Understand how food and fiber products are produced. • Appreciate the role ag plays in providing safe, abundant and affordable products. • Value the essential role of agriculture in maintaining a strong economy. • Acknowledge and consider career ...

Iowa Central Community College is key to area economy

A recent report on the economic impact of Iowa Central Community College contains a head-spinning array of big numbers, all of which are big in a positive way. But if you want to zero in on the importance the college has for Webster County and eight nearby counties it is helpful to look at one fact contained in the report. It shows that one out of every 27 jobs in the region is supported by the college. Think about that for a second. One out of 27 jobs is supported by the college. In other words, if the college didn’t exist one out of every 27 workers might not have a job. ...