The short ‘n’ sweet: There’s a new Facebook Fan Page for Fairfield – Fairfield, Iowa – run by yours truly.

The longer story:

I’ve spend an ungodly amount of time on Facebook since it became the replacement for MySpace… way back in the early 2000’s. Back then there was no such thing as a “Page” we had groups. My enthusiasm for Fairfield was strong then, too, and I created the group “I Grew Up in Fairfield, Iowa” which slowly grew to the current size of 1,058 members.

But it didn’t quite fit. A group devoted to people who grew up in Fairfield was quite limiting (even with a very open interpretation of “growing up”) and missed the mark. As time went on the implementation of “Pages” became better and more popular. So I watched and waited for someone, anyone, to make a fan page for it. Time went on, with every business and organization in town creating a Page of their own…. but Fairfield itself was left alone.

So I took it.

My plan for it is the same plan I’ve run the group by for the past several years: Let’s celebrate our town together. All issues are up for debate in a civilized and adult manner – I won’t hesitate to kick or delete vulgar posts or people. I am neutral on all issues – you’ll never see me posting for or against something. Instead of giving an opinion I will ask for yours. Beyond provoking dialog and editing out obscenities I have a hands-off approach… I enjoy watching a group grow on it’s own.

The success of the Page can speak for itself. In the week it’s been up we’re up to 1,646 fans – we gained almost a hundred more just today. The Mayor has posted his approval, and there’s been no shortage of people posting their favorite memories of the town or voicing their opinions. I’ve added every other Fairfield area business’ Page, along with posting links to other Fairfield websites. So if you’ve missed it, become a fan of our awesome town!

(By the way, if you’re interested in becoming an admin for the Page let me know. I may be leaving town again for a good long while, so I need another neutral person to manage the page while I’m gone.)

It was standing room only at tonight’s Fairfield City Council meeting as over eighty residents packed City Hall. The council opened up the meeting to hear public comments on the proposed vote to shift 12.5% of the local option sales tax (LOST) to create a public-private partnership between the City of Fairfield and the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center.

Mayor Ed Malloy opened the public hearing explaining that the question before the council tonight was whether to put the issue to a public vote, which would probably take place on May 4th. Getting ahead of perhaps the biggest criticism of the proposed funding of the FACC, Mayor Malloy explained that the FACC grows the revenue for LOST and therefore will contribute to sewers and streets (which currently receive 75% of LOST funds). Furthermore the Mayor assured that the re-allocation of LOST funds to the FACC, would not take away any current allocation of LOST funds to sewers and streets.

In a lighter moment from the meeting, residents were asked to limit their comments to two and a half minutes, with a thirty second warning given by City Clerk Joy Messer.

Over a dozen residents addressed the council and nearly all of them told the Mayor the issue should be put to a public vote (no matter whether or not they supported the re-allocation of funding).

Public comments opened with several FACC supporters speaking, including Dave Neff, Ken Ross, Fred Swartz and Pat McMahon (Fred and Pat are both members of the FACC board of directors). They were all well spoken and represented different perspectives on why the FACC is an asset to the community and therefore important to support with public funding.

Ken Ross, who has run several companies in Fairfield, provided a business perspective on one of the biggest criticisms of the FACC – a poor business plan that had to be redone. He explained that it’s common for a business plan to be re-written once a venture is launched in order to adapt to new information and unforeseen challenges.

Ray Griffin was the first resident to speak in opposition to the proposed funding of the FACC. Ray Griffin is also the author of a recent ad in the Fairfield Ledger where he argued that “bailing out the Civic Center” may jeopardize other programs like Little League, Police Department, Jefferson County Trails, Green Strategic Plan, and Parks Department. He addressed the council with concerns over lack of education over the proposed partnership and potential increase of property taxes. Mr. Griffin argued that if the FACC were to take LOST funds, then other entities would be underfunded, which would then force an increase in property taxes to cover the difference.

Another resident who addressed the council agreed to hold the vote, although she was opposed to the proposition of funding FACC. She expressed her opposition by questioning priorities. “What would happen if the public voted on more funds for our streets?”

The most unique comment of the evening came from resident Denyce Rusch, who spoke not of business plans, costs, or tax priorities, but of taking a sick relative to a musical at the FACC, and the emotional value of having access to the arts in our community.

After hearing everyone in the crowd who wished to speak, the council spoke briefly about the proposal, including a short thank you from councilwoman Susan Silvers who thanked the residents in attendance for voicing their different opinions “in a professional manner” (unlike some of the more heated hearings this council has witnessed in the past).

The council voted unanimously to put the proposition to a public vote this Spring. The next immediate step for the FACC board is to find residents of Jefferson County to convince their officials this coming Thursday to approve a similar vote for county residents.

Our first annual Best Of Fairfield poll ended at midnight on New Year’s Eve.  Over 6,000 votes were cast by our readers and we are happy to announce the following winners.

Best Coffee – Cafe Paradiso

Java artisan Cafe Paradiso won our poll with 48% of the votes. In second place was Revelations with 24% and apparently a fair amount of our readers perform their morning coffee ritual at McDonalds, which received 7% of the votes. Check out Cafe Paradiso’s new location on the square, just west of George’s.

Best Musical Act – Porno Galactica

For two months The Jefferson County Green Band was running away with Best Musical Act in Fairfield Iowa. But a few days before polls closed on New Year’s Eve, brothers Philip Rabalais and Dominic Rabalais, also know as local electronic band Porno Galactica, launched a campaign on Facebook to get enough votes (35%) to take the lead from The Jefferson County Green Band (25%). If you don’t start dancing by the time Porno Galactica’s song Sea Best Released is over; then you just might be dead.

Best Restaurant – Revelations

How far they have come! Revelations, once a tiny book store serving coffee, is now considered by 39% of voters in our poll to be the best restaurant in Fairfield. In second place was Top of the Rock Grill with 20% of the vote.  Did you know you can order online at Revelations?

Best Civic Leader – Ed Malloy

Ed Malloy handily won our reader’s choice for Best Civic Leader with 52% of the vote. Those are some shoes to fill! Dave Neff came in second with 20% of the vote.

Best Entrepeneur – Francis Thicke

Francis Thicke of Radiance Dairy and candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, narrowly won with 35% of the votes, over Eric Schwartz of Cambridge (33%). Francis Thicke shows through the power of example how to build and operate a successful, sustainable agriculture business and his next step is to take that example to the capitol of Iowa.

Best Lunchtime Buffet – Noodle House

More votes were cast for this category than any other. With the lead changing daily between Noodle House (25%) and Arandas Mexican Buffet (23%). It makes sense to me – if I were to look back at the hundreds of buffet lunches I’ve eaten out since moving to Fairfield it would probably come down to a toss up between the Coconut Chicken at Noodle House and the Taco bar at Arandas. FYI – you can get Noodle House’s coconut chicken on Thursday’s.

Best Teacher – Kevin Hosbond

Fairfield High School’s English teacher Kevin Hosbond received 30% of the votes in this category. I don’t have the pleasure of knowing Kevin personally, but I’ve seen him recently dressed as the Mad Hatter and have had the pleasure of working with former students of his who give him the highest praise.

Best Art Gallery – Icon Gallery

The Icon Gallery ran away with this award by receiving 55% of the votes. The Icon Gallery continues to bring the quality and presentation of a big city art gallery to Fairfield. I often feel like I am transported to a space in Chicago or New York when I walk through their doors.

Best Spot for a Playdate – Chautauqua Park

My daughter agrees with the our readers response (31%) that Chautauqua Park is the best spot for a playdate. With multiple playgrounds, lots of room to run and trees to climb; it’s hard to beat Chautauqua Park whether your 4 or 40 years old.

Most notable “other” vote – Pizza Ranch

Pizza Ranch received several hundred votes between several categories, including Best Spot for Playdate, Best Lunchtime Buffet, Best Restaurant and Best Art Gallery.

Congratulations to the winners of our Best of Fairfield 2009 awards.  We’ll be featuring each of the winners on Fairfield Voice and providing them with plaques or store window stickers to show off their award.  If you have any feedback on how we can run our 2010 awards, please let us know.

Fairfield Voice launched on March 19th of 2009 with a story covering the controversy around the construction of a new cell phone tower on Depot Ave. Since that story was published there have been over 200 more stories and opinions posted on Fairfield Voice by a diverse group of local writers. Over 1400 comments have been posted to those stories; offering a variety of opinions, feedback and ideas from people all around town.

Looking back on the news and opinion around town we had:

Controversy over cell towers and bike lanes . . .

The completion of the highway 34 bypass which meant a summer of road construction through the middle of town and a significant change to how we drive through town . . .

Together as an community we experienced the troubled economy first hand, with many businesses closed and jobs lost, but also saw residents turn lemons to lemonade by creating new opportunities . . .

Two local stories from this year will carry us into 2010. First the controversy around the FACCs request for public financing, which is sure to be a tough sell to tax payers who are sensitive to anything that looks like another bailout.

Second we have one of our very own, Francis Thicke, running for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture.

Looking forward to 2010, I asked the writers of Fairfield Voice what stories they hope to cover in the coming year:

• The Quiet Zone funded, approved and implemented.
• Noise ordinance enforced (specifically loud motorcycles & Jake brakes).
• How the community took serious steps to reducing townie and roo divisiveness, and found understanding and acceptance.
• Plans in place for program to install sidewalks in the places that don’t have them.
• The election of Francis Thicke to Iowa Secretary of Agriculture and the potential national impact on how we grow food.
• Retail vacancies on the Square filled with new businesses.

What stories would you like to see covered in 2010? Was there a under-reported story from 2009 that deserves mention?

Happy New Year Fairfield!

MSNBC.com has an interactive map for tracking stimulus spending. Nationally $122.7 billion has been allocated for contracts, grants and loans to restore infrastructure. Iowa is receiving $714 million, and of that amount, Jefferson County is receiving $795.3 thousand.

Jefferson County’s cut is going towards two projects local to Fairfield Iowa.

• Bridge replacement Jefferson County Highway V-64 over Lick Creek – $510k.
• Kirkwood Avenue Pavement Replacement – $283.5k

If you click on the details of the Kirkwood project you’ll see that two people have voted this project as “Unneccesary – Not Competitive”. I’m not aware of the history of how this project was bid, but some people are unhappy with the result.

Are you happy with how the federal stimulus package is being spent? Are any of these projects directly having an impact on your quality of life or financial situation? Has anyone in Fairfield gained employment due to the stimulus package?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why Some Countries — But Not the U.S. — Are Stopping Stimulus (time.com)
• World Bank warns unemployment threatens US economy (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Let’s Save or Create Even More Jobs! (themoderatevoice.com)

Update: due to feedback from Fairfield Voice readers the voting for the Best of Fairfield awards will be extended until New Years Eve.

Fairfield Voice is hosting the first annual Best of Fairfield Iowa awards. Awards will be given in each of the following categories:

1. Best Lunchtime Buffet
2. Best Restaurant
3. Best Spot for a Playdate
4. Best Art Gallery
5. Best Musical Act
6. Best Civic Leader
7. Best Entrepreneur
8. Best Spot for Coffee
9. Best Teacher

To vote go to our voting page and make your selections.

Voting will end at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Winners will be announced on the site. What do they win? All winners will be permanently featured on Fairfield Voice’s Best Of page, and have the option to get a plaque made for their award.

Photo by Greg Wood

Greg Brown Performing at the Arts and Convention Center July 31st at 7:30pm.

Since 2004, the Fairfield Live on the Square Concert Series has brought free, family-oriented concerts to the town square in Fairfield, IA. This month features the incomparable, Iowa born and raised Greg Brown, and the Jefferson County Greenband. And although this one isn’t free, the artists have graciously agreed to donate the proceeds to Live on the Square so that we can continue to bring free music to Fairfield for the rest of this year and beyond. In addition to thanking the artists, we’d like to thank Classic 96 for securing the artists for this show as well as the rest of our sponsors for their generous support.

Greg Brown’s songwriting has been lauded by many, and his songs have been performed by Willie Nelson, Carlos Santana, Michael Johnson, Shawn Colvin, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. He has also recorded more than a dozen albums, including his 1986 release, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, when he put aside his own songwriting to set poems of William Blake to music. One Big Town, recorded in 1989, earned Brown three and a half stars in Rolling Stone, chart-topping status in AAA and The Gavin Report’s Americana rankings and Brown’s first Indie Award from NAIRD (National Association of Independent Record Distributors). The Poet Game, his 1994 CD, received another Indie award from NAIRD. His critically acclaimed 1996 release, Further In, was a finalist for the same award. Rolling Stone’s four-star review of Further In called Brown “a wickedly sharp observer of the human condition.” 1997’s Slant 6 Mind (Red House Records) earned Brown his second Grammy nomination. His latest CD, One Night (Red House), is a re-release of a 1983 live performance originally on Minneapolis’ Coffeehouse Extemporé Records.

Tickets are only $17 and are available at the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center website or at the box office. More information about Greg Brown, The Jefferson County Greenband, and the 2009 Classic 96 Live on the Square Concert Series can be found at our fan page on Facebook. You can also follow us onTwitter for additional facts about the artists we’re presenting.

Please support free music in Fairfield by attending the Greg Brown benefit for Live on the Square on July 31^st at 7:30pm at the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center. Hope to see you there!

Burlington re-surfacing project nears completion.  If you’ve driven near the Square this week then you’re well aware that the final layer of asphalt is being laid on Burlington Ave from 2nd St. to the far east of town.  Road crews caught a break this week with cooler weather.  They’re doing a nice job too – I rode down the newly laid North lane of Burlington Ave. on my bike and it’s a joy to ride on fresh, smooth asphalt with just the right amount of grip on your tires.

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