After Hurricane Andrew, the federal government took a serious look at our industry and decided these homes were not up to par. New codes were adopted for mobile homes from 1994.

The big difference is that we're going to be asking people ahead of time what their plans are and funding those plans and instead of giving block grants and then wondering how it was being used.

The idea here is that you never want to have people get to know each other on the scene of an incident. The more they can build that team ahead of time, the better off we are, and that's what this is all about.

If Iowa has this image that we have a squeaky-clean government, this is a few drops of mud. But have we been buried under an avalanche of mud? No. Not yet, anyway.

The federal government is not putting appropriate resources on the borders. It's unfair to ask local officials, who are essentially volunteers, to address public policy.

We still have a city manager form of government, ... While we can certainly suggest things to the manager, it is for the city manager to suggest things to commissioners.