Hunger in the breadbasket

Cutbacks in state funding are forcing social service agencies to reduce their services to the people of Iowa, including Buena Vista County. Area Education Agencies, including our Prairie Lakes AEA, are cutting staff and services to schools. Early Childhood Iowa, which aims to improve the health and welfare of children from birth to age five, likewise has to reduce services in Buena Vista, Sac and Crawford counties. The latest hit is to Upper Des Moines Opportunity, which will close its offices and furlough its staff throughout northwest Iowa next week, including Storm Lake, because of budget shortfalls as it seeks to help people with basic living needs like food, housing and utilities. The closure comes at a particularly bad time for UDMO here, because next Wednesday is the scheduled monthly food delivery that sustains more than 400 needy local families. The food is distributed in the parking lot behind UDMO’s Michigan Street office. The distribution is coordinated by the Storm Lake Hy-Noon Kiwanis Club and other volunteers. The truckload of food is delivered monthly by the Food Bank of Iowa from Des Moines. The UDMO staff helps facilitate the big distribution, which attracts hundreds of carloads of people lining West Sixth Street for more than a half mile. With the UDMO office closed, the volunteers are faced with a giant headache controlling traffic and safely preserving and distributing the food, which includes perishables that normally are stored inside. The job, which usually takes about an hour and a half, will get done, but it won’t be easy.  UDMO also operates a food pantry out of its building on Thursdays which draws more large crowds needing assistance. Not next week, though. Storm Lake is actually lucky. At least our UDMO office will reopen after the one-week layoff. Other offices, like Pocahontas, are closing permanently because of cutbacks in funding. What are the hungry to do? Come to Storm Lake and hope there might be some extra food here? That’s doubtful, since the local food allotment is just enough to feed the 1,400 or so Storm Lake residents who depend on it. This isn’t a one-time problem. UDMO will close its offices again for one-week layoffs in June, July and August. It’s hard to understand why Iowa can’t afford to feed her people but has enough money to send Iowa State Patrol troopers and Iowa National Guard soldiers to roam around southern Texas looking for immigrants. Or pay Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird’s salary while she jets to New York City to cheerlead for Donald Trump at his hush money sex trial. Iowa taxpayers picked up the tab for all of this, but we can’t care for our neediest families and children. Could Texas, flush with oil and high tech money, send us something so we can keep UDMO and our Area Education Agencies open? Doubtful. The problem isn’t a lack of money in Iowa. Republican Governor Kim Reynolds turned down $22 million from the federal government to feed Iowa children this summer because the money came from President Joe Biden, a Democrat. Plus, Iowa is sitting on billions of dollars in reserves that could be used to care for her less fortunate people, pave disintegrating old Highway 110 between Schaller and Storm Lake or help Storm Lake come up with $93 million to keep our water system from going dry. The United States of America is the wealthiest nation in history. If everyone just paid their fair share in taxes no one in this nation would go hungry. Or homeless. Or lack medical care. But billionaires get by paying nothing in taxes while our state doles out millions to trillion dollar corporations like Apple and Google to build server farms around Des Moines that employ just a couple dozen people. So there’s little left for needy people in Storm Lake.