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"We tried to keep it alive but the board of supervisors didn’t care enough about public notices or Aurelia,” Publisher Art Cullen told the Chronicle Times.

The Death of the Aurelia Star

Cullen: “We are heartsick. It was a long time coming.”

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The Aurelia Star will cease publication, effective Feb. 1, marking the demise of another small town newspaper.

On Tuesday, the Cherokee Board of Supervisors decided to uphold their original vote from earlier this month when they elected not to name The Star as an official publication for public notices, citing budgetary concerns.

The Star had largely relied on revenue from these public notices to stay afloat.

“It’s regrettable, we tried to keep it alive but the board of supervisors didn’t care enough about public notices or Aurelia,” Publisher Art Cullen told the Chronicle Times.

In his editorial following the supervisors decision Tuesday, Cullen noted that public notices and local news is vital to keeping communities strong.

“The government does not see things that way,” he wrote. “That is one reason that communities in Northwest Iowa are drifting away.”

The Storm Lake Times Pilot took over ownership of the Aurelia Star in September of 2020 in addition to the Cherokee Chronicle Times two years later. It shared content with The Times-Pilot and Chronicle Times. It ran once a week on Wednesdays and focused largely on sports and government affairs in Alta and Aurelia. Its final top headline was the announcement of Aurelia’s citizen of the year. 

“We are heartsick. It was a long time coming,” Cullen said.

Advertising in The Star declined year after year since the acquisition. Circulation has remained steady, but revenue from that segment isn’t sufficient to justify continued publication. The publication’s top source of revenue is legal notices. The Star received just under $6,800 last year from the Cherokee Board of Supervisors for legal notices. The Star was one of three of the county’s official publications. It only needs to run legal notices in two publications with the highest circulation. The Chronicle Times and the Marcus News have the two highest circulations in the county. Aurelia comes in third. 

Hence it was on the supervisors’ chopping block. 

Cities and counties in Buena Vista and Cherokee counties are suffering from budget crunches of varying degrees. Cherokee County was no different. Last year, Auditor Kris Glienke cited a new property tax law that throttles overall tax askings for jurisdictions with moderate to high growth in valuations. The board was also beset with infrastructural liabilities. 

Cherokee County District Court Judge Shayne Mayer ordered the board of supervisors to repave F Avenue, even after the board complained that it didn’t have the money to make good on its promise it made to Little Sioux Corn Processors in 2015. A January bid-letting showed the resurfacing project alone will cost $5.04 million, not including utility movements and right-of-way acquisitions. 

The county also suffered millions of dollars in damages from last summer’s floods. 

The sheriff’s office is losing employees to jurisdictions that pay more. 

And all county departments are requesting a 40-cent raise, Supervisor Cheryl Ellis noted. 

“In this tight of a budget year where we’re looking at people saying ‘we get a 40 cent raise,’ I struggle for us to be in the business of writing newspapers, or funding newspapers. I don’t think that’s our purpose here,” she said during Tuesday’s board meeting. “I cannot ask our taxpayers to pay for that service.”

The board was slated to reconsider its original decision to delist The Star as an official publication. Supervisor Dave Skou said Aurelia residents have been clamoring with the supervisors to keep the publication going. Skou and Supervisor Shane Bellefy brought the issue for the board to reconsider. 

“I think we have the votes to keep it going,” Bellefy told the Chronicle Times.

“I don’t know how much we truly give Aurelia, but I think it is a town that we need to, you know, be passionate for. They are in our county,” he said. “If there’s something we can work with in our current budget, I would be for trying to keep the Aurelia Star going.”

Skou wanted the board to hear Aurelia’s concerns. 

“I didn’t give them an answer, yes or no. All I said was I would bring it back in front of the board and we’ll have a discussion,” Skou said. “But I did in no way promise that we would reinstate the Aurelia paper for publication.”

It didn’t turn out the way Bellefy envisioned. 

Supervisors Ray Mullins, Cheryl Ellis and Bryan Petersen disagreed. 

Ellis struggled with justifying the continued expense of legal publications in The Star, which was just under $6,800 a year. She noted the Star had the smallest circulation of the county’s official publications. She said it was “unfortunate” if the county’s funds were the main source of revenue keeping the paper alive. Circulation has remained steady at around 150. 

Ellis said she was fine with a community of Aurelia’s size not having a newspaper.

“Quimby doesn’t have a newspaper, Larrabee doesn’t have a newspaper,” she said.

Petersen responded saying that those towns did not have a comparable population to Aurelia. Supervisor Ray Mullins agreed with Petersen. 

“And as hard as it is to make decisions this year, we’ve got to come up with some money. We have been going above and beyond what the state says that we have to do,” he continued. “So, in this, I think I’m for keeping it how we voted on it before.”

Readers of the Aurelia Star will have the option to convert their subscription to either the Storm Lake Times Pilot or the Cherokee Chronicle Times and should contact circ@stormlake.com with their preference.

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