SIOUX CITY – A big national college sports tourney hosted in Sioux City will conclude tonight, when a Siouxland team squares off with a team from Indiana, in the championship of the 2023 NAIA volleyball tournament played at the Tyson Events Center.
The championship match pits Northwestern College, of Orange City, Iowa, with Indiana Wesleyan. Both teams have played in the national tournament in Sioux City over the years, but neither has ever won a crown, so one of the programs will reach a historic first.
Northwestern coincidentally opened play in the tournament last week, and will also play in the conclusion tonight. Northwestern is the top seed in the tournament, while Indiana Wesleyan is seeded second.
The NAIA tourney is being held in Sioux City for a 16th consecutive year. The weeklong event brings hundreds of players and an additional big number of fans to the downtown, for a boost to hotels and restaurants.
Additionally, the city of Sioux City is moving forward with two sizable projects that will each cost more than a half million dollars, in a splash pad and parking ramp payment system.
An eighth splash pad will be added to City of Sioux City parks options by 2025, when the latest fun water piece is added at Headington Park on the city’s west side.
The Sioux City Council members in their Monday meeting approved the plans for the Headington park splash pad, which is estimated to cost roughly $560,000. Being a large one-time cost, the money will come from the city’s Capital Improvement Program, and is designed to boost the number of summer recreation options.
The park is located in the 2900 block of Isabella Street. Parks and Recreation Department Director Matt Salvtore said people enjoy splash pads as an alternative to pools in some neighborhoods. The seventh splash pad opened this past summer along the Missouri Riverfront trail, and the others are in the parks of Cone, Cook, Dale Street, Leeds, Rose Hill and Riverside.
Salvatore said bids for the Headington Park splash pad will be received in two weeks, then work is set to be done by fall 2024, for an opening for usage in June 2025.
Also in the Monday city council meeting, the members approved a system costing more than $600,000 dollars to modernize the fees collection system for the four downtown Sioux City parking ramps.
A city committee reviewed six proposals, and the council approved the $628,683 dollar plan by Flash Parking Inc., from Austin, Texas. It is designed to provide better usage options by parkers than the current system.
The plan gives cash and other payment options at the ramps of Rivers Landing, Heritage, Discovery and Martin Luther King Jr. Transit Building.
The previous system dated to 2006 and had reached the end of its useful life, a council memo said. The agreement with Flash Parking includes, software, training and a warranty for two years. The portion going into the Rivers Landing Ramp is the most expensive of the four, at a cost of $221,000.
Additionally, with Woodbury County Board of Supervisors member Jeremy Taylor adamantly saying he will not resign his position, county officials are expected to remove him from the county vice chairman post on Tuesday, while also investigating possible input from the Iowa Attorney General office to have him removed.
Three of the other four supervisors have said he should resign his supervisor position, but since he is not, they plan to strip Taylor of his leadership post.
His wife on November 21st was found guilty of 52 counts of voter fraud, as she sought to boost Taylor in two 2020 elections.
The jury in a federal trial found Kim Phuong Taylor, the wife of Jeremy Taylor, guilty of the voter fraud counts, after prosecutors laid out a case about her illegally filling out election documents and ballots for members of the Vietnamese community, who had limited ability to read and understand English.
Jeremy Taylor has been named an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. He plans to complete his entire term, which runs 13 more months through the end of 2024.
