The Sioux City Council on Monday will consider reversing a planned cut to the Human Rights Commission budget, and appoint a new interim city manager.
Friday is the final day for Bob Padmore to be city manager, who is retiring after more than 20 years working for the city of Sioux City. Mike Collett will be the Interim City Manager, and his salary will be just under $7,400 per week.
Also in the meeting, the council members may reverse the February decision to cut the Human Rights Commission budget by $140,000, or 30 percent of the budget for that department.
Karen Mackey, the head of Sioux City’s Human Rights Commission, has said some of the most vulnerable people in the community will suffer from the cuts. Members of the community have also spoken against the cuts in recent weeks.
The city of Sioux City budget for 2025-26 will be set by the council members by the end of April. The current version has a proposed property tax levy increase.
*Additionally, the South Dakota Board of Regents is planning to increase tuition at the state’s public universities for the first time in several years.
Officials on Thursday announced a 2.9 percent increase for most universities for the upcoming academic year.
Tuition in South Dakota has been mostly flat the past five years, including tuition freezes for each of the past three years. These freezes were made possible by increased support from the state, which was benefiting from higher revenue and a variety of Covid-era federal funds.
But this session, the Legislature saw its tightest budget in years, and the Board of Regents was one of the areas that felt the impact.
Board of Regents President Tim Rave called the increase "modest," and said South Dakota's public universities remain among the most affordable in the nation.
*Construction on the $18 million Crawford County Wellness Center is continuing in Denison, Iowa, and a 2026 completion remains on track.
Denison City Manager Jessica Garcia told Siouxland Public Media News about actions taken this week by the city council. That included payments of about $1.2 million to Jensen Builders for the wellness center work.
Officials in Crawford County and the city of Denison are working together to build the Crawford County Wellness Center, which has been sought by some residents.
It will be located at the corner of North 16th Street and Eighth Avenue North, just east of Denison High School. The center will contain a rarity, with indoor soccer fields.
Revenues have come from grants, federal funding, substantial fundraising and more.
Also this week, the city heard an update on the Donna Reed Heritage Museum, which is devoted to the famous actress of the 1950s and 1960s. The Donna Reed Foundation for Performing Arts is applying for a state grant that could be used at the theater.
*In other news, the Iowa Legislature has reached its second key deadline of the session, when most bills have to pass a committee in the opposite chamber to stay eligible.
Republicans have advanced policies like Medicaid work requirements and restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion spending. And it’s the first time the Senate advanced a bill in response to concerns about carbon capture pipelines—though they stripped key House proposals out of it.
A bill to put citizenship status on driver’s licenses failed to advance, as did a bill to remove Medicaid income limits for employed people with disabilities.
Republican Senate President Amy Sinclair says everything the Senate is doing has the goal of making Iowa a “destination state.”
“Those priorities that the Senate had at the beginning of session—property tax policy, working on health care availability, all of those priorities that we had at the beginning of the session will still be our priorities, and we have bills that are alive to make that happen,” Sinclair said.
Democratic leaders at the Iowa Capitol say they’re disappointed the Republican majority didn’t take up Democrat-backed bills ahead of this week’s legislative deadline.
*Also in the Iowa Legislature, a state Senate committee took out part of a bill from the Iowa House that would have restricted Diversity, Equity & Inclusion offices at private colleges.
The bill still blocks entities like state agencies, cities and towns from spending money on DEI offices and staff.
The original bill would have required private colleges to have policies against starting, maintaining and staffing DEI offices. The revised proposal would still block DEI offices at community colleges, bringing them in line with the state’s public universities.
Republican Senator Ken Rozenboom struck the restriction on private colleges, but still supported the restrictions on community colleges and state agencies.
“It is not the proper place of the state entity to promote ideologies and opinions as their official role,” Rozenboom said.
Opponents of the bill say it would erase different forms of identity.
Money that would have gone toward DEI programs at places of higher education will instead be redirected to the Iowa Workforce Grant and Incentive Program.
