Sioux City has lost two notable restaurant owners of popular eateries in recent days, as Bob Roe and Pete Utthachoo have died.
The funeral service for Roe, who died at age 85, will be on Saturday. He worked at a young age for the Roe Dairy family business, then in 1977 with wife Karen opened a first restaurant, Westside Pizza.
Over the years the other businesses included 20th Pizza before it was moved and renamed Bob Roe's Point After, plus also Townhouse Pizza, and finally Bob Roe's North Endzone, which opened in 2012.
Roe supported many schools and colleges, plus a wide variety of youth sports with contributions. He was a member of such groups as the Boys Club Board of Directors and the Abu Bekr Shrine Temple.
Also dying in late January was Utthachoo, at age 56.
Utthachoo was a native of Thailand, and eventually operated two Thai food restaurants in Sioux City. As a young boy, his mother told him there was good work to be had in working at a restaurant, so he followed that path. After coming to America in the 1990s, Utthachoo first worked as a sous chef in California.
He moved to Sioux City and opened Diamond Thai along West Seventh Street in 2006. He later owned Pete’s Thai On 5th.
Additionally, major changes in which categories of longstanding taxes could be increased or decreased are being debated in the state legislatures in Iowa and also Nebraska.
Iowa House and Senate tax committees this week released a plan that would eventually eliminate the state income tax, and have it in part be replaced by sales tax growth.
Meanwhile in Nebraska, Republican Governor Jim Pillen continues to propose a major decrease in property taxes, to be offset by an accompanying increase in state sales tax revenues.
That could mean a host of new items be subject to a state sales tax, including possibly candy or soft drinks, or increasing the sales tax higher than the current 5.5 percent.
Pillen has proposed that the amount of property taxes collected across the state of Nebraska be slashed by 40 percent, from an all-time high of $5 billion dollars in 2022 down to $3 billion.
Additionally, a bill in the Iowa Legislature would require schools to commemorate certain national holidays with lessons and what are called patriotic exercises.
The bill specifically mentions the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, and Veterans Day, plus a few others, as part of making “sure Republican State Representative Brooke Boden said the state should look at making celebrations more consistent from one school to another, as part of, quote, “teaching our children to respect America and that they should know what each one of these holidays mean.”
Opponents said schools already mark many of the holidays listed in the bill under existing educational standards. An Iowa House subcommittee advanced the proposal to the Education Committee.
In related legislation last week, an Iowa House subcommittee advanced a bill that would require students to daily sing the National Anthem. At least one verse of the anthem would have to be sung in each class every day, and all four verses on patriotic holidays.
