Faircloth.

I feel it is important to let Tama County citizens know some of the things going on with the new Board of Supervisors.

As part of a Feb. 14 Sun Courier newspaper article titled “Tama County HR manager fired; supervisors confront ‘budget crisis'” summarizing the Feb. 3, 2025 board meeting, an editor’s note was included which read:

“Since this story went to press in last week’s edition of the Tama-Toledo News Chronicle, Hardin County Supervisor BJ Hoffman advised Tama-Grundy Publishing that Hardin County does not use Paul Greufe as the county’s Human Resources consultant/attorney as is indicated in this article in a quote by [Supervisor] Heather Knebel. “Several years ago we severed our relationship with Paul and are using Ahlers & Cooney. I am certain not all Heartland (Risk Pool) counties use Paul and I’m hard pressed to believe it’s more than a couple as I know Ahlers & Cooney’s footprint has grown exponentially,” Hoffman said in his message to the newspaper.”

The Sun Courier is owned by the same company that publishes the Tama-Toledo News Chronicle and North Tama Telegraph. The Sun Courier’s editor’s note never made it into the News Chronicle so Tama County residents may be unaware how they were misled. [A Clarification was included in the News Chronicle the following week.]

Now for transparency, you may have noticed in the News Chronicle on Friday, Feb. 21, the Board of Supervisors’ minutes as printed in the Legals section no longer has public comments in them. That is because Board Chairman Mark Doland put a stop to the practice. Apparently, he doesn’t like the public to see the comments that make him and the board look bad. Now the [New Chronicle correspondent] also appears to be editing comments because when I talked about the County’s Severe Weather policy the supervisors passed last week, my comment was, “You just showed the secondary roads and deputies that you really don’t care about them, they are the ones that put their lives on the line for us and you don’t care,” but it was not included in the Feb. 21 newspaper article about the meeting.

I was told that Mr. Doland had called 10 counties to see what their severe weather policies were – why didn’t he also have time to talk to the engineer or the Sheriff of our own county? Funny.

I will dig into the money the supervisors are spending, even as they want the public to think we are in such a financial crisis, in a future column.

This column is endorsed by former Tama County Supervisor Dan Anderson.

Bill Faircloth is a rural Toledo resident and former Tama County Supervisor (2021-2024). Prior to public service, he spent nearly four decades working for Fisher Controls in Marshalltown before retiring in 2012; he then worked part-time for Tama County for eight years.