WASHINGTON

Washington County Supervisors Tuesday received two requests for funding, both of which were unchanged from previous years: $120,000 for the Hawkeye Area Community Action Program (HACAP) and $2,256.50 for the Kirkwood Learning Connection.

For HACAP, which has served seven counties for 49 years, the allocation has been same for at least a decade. The non-profit private organization provides services for the elderly, at-risk children and low-income families that includes a local housing program at Old Main and the local emergency social services program at Orchard Hill.

CEO Jane Drapeaux and RenElla Crawford, Washington County operations director, provided a detailed report on services that aided with housing, food (248,000 pounds distributed), and partnerships with 15 other agencies to help with Head Start, the Backpack for School food program, Toys for Tots and utilities.

In noting working with other agencies and the county community itself, Crawford stressed ”it is a very generous community” that has helped hundreds of residents.

The same level of success was in the report from the Learning Connection that showed 1,455 students from Highland, Mid-Prairie and Washington schools participated last year in student career exploration experiences. The experiences involved visits with teachers at the schools, speaker days, career fairs, internships (with local area businesses) as well as concurrent enrollment in regular school and 10-week work-based experiences.

Kirkwood Learning Connection is one of the top ten national programs (from more than 5,000) due in large part to the nearness of a Kirkwood regional facility and a very long list of Business Hosts for the student job shadowing experience.

The requested allocation of $2,256.50 is derived from a five-center per capita fee for the student population in the county. The program calls for three job shadows per student annually. Besides Washington, other counties served are Linn, Johnson, Jones, Cedar and Iowa.

In other business, the board approved the nomination of supervisor Stan Stoops to an ex officio three-year term on the Washington County Riverboat Foundation; approved final payment of $8,167 to Mid West Contractors, Inc. of Cedar Falls for a countywide road patching project (totaling $270,022.30); and reappointed 19 county deputies to office through December 31, 2028, and 12 civil process servers for the same term period.

Supervisor Marcus Fedler said that work on the Orchard Hill renovation/remodeling project should be done by the end of the month and will be followed by remodeling the courthouse. Both involve county administrative offices using ARPA funds.

There also was a brief discussion about the levy for the county emergency services—either 50 cents or 75 cents per $1,000 property valuation -- and that a meeting or meetings will be held between the supervisors and the EMS directors. It was noted that the final decision will be by county voters at an expected election on Sept. 9, 2025.

In the discussion, supervisors noted that a number of voters told board members they had not been aware of a proposed levy. Initially, the board had hoped to have it on the general election ballot on Nov. 5, 2024.