Dear Vision Iowa, can we have money?

By Chris Baldus, cbaldus@charlescitypress.com

Dear Vision Iowa board people,

I live in a great little town in north central Iowa, but we have some issues that I think you can help us with. We have industrial businesses that need employees, school enrollment that has been slipping, a nifty old school that needs a new purpose, a ballpark that floods a lot and no high school soccer teams. (OK, that last one is more of a personal plug to my readers and school officials who will more likely read this that Vision Iowa board people.)

Anyway …

I’ve been reading about the requirements for your Enhance Iowa grants and see we are the perfect candidate. We have a school district in need that can partner with a city in need for major renovations of a building and construction of sports facilities.

I don’t think we can have a grant application ready by your Jan. 15 deadline, but I see you have other dates by which we can submit our application. We might be able to make April 15, but we need to get some people to bury hatchets and work together. You’d think we would easily make the July 15 or  Oct. 15 deadlines.

Now, I also see you typically give up to 20 percent of the cost of the project. We’ll be thankful for that. It might just be a uniting force for our community. We’ve been, um, kind of rough on each other for a while now over some of these issues.

You have helped us before, but it’s been a while. The last time we received a grant in Charles City was in 2013 when you gave us roughly  $36,000 for Riverfront Park improvements — picnic shelters, trail paving and a retaining wall.

We sure do appreciate that, and are excited at our prospects for a bigger project when we look at your history of grant awards. You sent $1.6 million to Osage in 2007 for its recreation and fine arts complex. It’s really nice.

You gave Postville $850,000 for a two-story addition to the community’s recreation center in 2008. That project included putting in a pool. Well, we already have a pool in the old school that can just be built around.

In 2010, you gave Dewitt  $1 million for a community performing arts auditorium at the high school.

You did a really great thing this year by giving nearly $300,000 for the Parkersburg Youth Sports Complex and Miracle Field, which is a wheelchair accessible ball diamond allowing children with disabilities to play the great American pastime as well.

I think you will be impressed with what we come up with. We are, of course, the first community in Iowa to have a whitewater course. It’s right next to our downtown.

I’m looking at a concept laying on my desk right now for the back wing of our old school that includes a community center and an academy to teach the skills our industries need and the YMCA or maybe another family health and fitness organization. This all would be near the center of town, be accessible by kids on bikes or walking and could help revitalize a neighborhood.

We have lots of studies of the problems with our ballpark, which seems to boil down to bad soil that’s too low. With your help, I think we can really fix up the whole facility.

I sure hope you will be able to help. It really sounds like you can.

Gotta go now. I need to write my letter to Santa, too.

Sincerely, Chris Baldus, a little voice in the wilderness

Contact Editor Chris Baldus at cbaldus@charlescitypress.com or 228-3211, ext. 19.