Councilwoman Julie McAleer (from left), city clerk/treasurer Melinda Hinners and Winkelman are among those giving Scranton a jolt of energy. They’re taking the downtrodden former school playground and turning it into a new city park with new equipment (below). Residents are invited to submit a name for the yet-to-be-named park by June 30.

‘IT’S OUR TIME’

With a litany of projects, Scranton shows that there is life after losing a school

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

A couple of years ago, Randy Winkelman drove into Jefferson from Scranton and dropped off some cards for his business at the local veterinary clinic, which is a perfectly logical place for maybe a dog groomer or a guy who sells kennels to advertise.

Winkelman is a taxidermist.

Let that sink in for just a second.

That man is now coming to the end of his first term as mayor of Scranton, a town that stands like so many others across rural Iowa at the crossroads of extinction and reinvention.

Winkelman has boldly chosen the latter, and there seems to be no end to his left-of-center ideas.

He’s pitched a course for disc golf at Pond Park, along with RV hookups.

He thinks Scranton needs more colorful trees.

He personally contacted the corporate office of Casey’s General Store, whose gas station is Scranton’s lone place to buy food, about expanding.

And then there’s this one — what if they painted the town’s iconic steel water tower, the oldest in Iowa and Scranton’s claim to fame, so that it glows in the dark?

“If we don’t do anything, what’s the other option?” Winkelman asked last week. “Do we want to be Farlin? If we don’t do anything, that’s where we’re headed.”

All seven of Greene County’s cities are losing people, according to newly released city population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Scranton, however, took the biggest hit — a 4.5 percent drop in population — between 2010 and 2016.

The population now stands at 532.

“At some point in time,” Winkelman predicted, speaking from personal experience, “people are going to be leaving the big cities looking for a more rural setting to either raise their families or retire.”

It’s his hope Scranton will be ready to welcome them with open arms.

“If we want it,” he said, “there are certain things we have to do.”

Winkelman, a few sympathetic city council members and a savvy city clerk/treasurer have discovered there’s a lot of money out there for them to spend — other people’s money, that is.

Scranton has been on a hot streak of winning competitive grants for projects, and its ability to root out free money and services may well serve as an inspiration to Grand Junction, which now finds itself without a school of its own for the first time in history.

The Scranton school was closed as an attendance center in May 2008, a blow that some fear is almost always fatal to a small town.

Nearly a decade later, you can still stand in the middle of Main Street on a Thursday afternoon and not have to move for a single car, but Scranton is proof that there is life after a school closes.

“It’s our time,” Scranton Councilwoman Julie McAleer said.

The list of ongoing projects includes:

• The modernization of the former school playground. When complete, the yet-to-be-named park at Eagle and State streets will be Scranton’s fourth city park.

A $75,000 project, Scranton in November won a $10,000 Community Kickstarter grant from the Wellmark Foundation to replace the playground’s decades-old equipment with all-new equipment.

That was followed in March by a competitive grant of $27,413 from the Greene County Community Foundation — the foundation’s top award for 2017 — to assist the project.

The city is currently holding a naming contest for the park through June 30.

The new playground equipment is expected to arrive in July, said McAleer, who joined the city council in January 2016.

• A Community Development Block Grant that will allow the city to begin rehabilitating owner-occupied houses.

Winkelman said they’re hoping to announce the first four houses this summer. Region 12 Council of Governments will be selecting the homeowners and also bidding the contractors. (They’re just waiting on the federal government to part with the money, he said.)

Each home will receive up to $25,000 of work, Winkelman said, and homeowners will owe nothing if they reside in the house for five years.
After the first four homes are complete, Winkelman said the city can pursue additional CDBG money to fix up additional houses.

• A to-do list created by professional landscape planners and designers.

Scranton in November was selected to participate in Iowa’s Living Roadways Community Visioning Program, which provides professional landscape planning and design services to communities with populations under 10,000.

“It sounded like something we needed to get involved in,” Winkelman said.

A joint program of Trees Forever, the Iowa State University Department of Landscape Architecture, the Iowa Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration and the Iowa Living Roadway Trust Fund, facilitators are in the process of prioritizing the list of potential projects that would beautify Scranton while making it more accessible.

Focus groups of recreational users, the mobility impaired, older adults, youth and parents aided in identifying possible improvements to Scranton.

For starters, they identified some flooding issues around town, and the fact that people on foot have to cross the railroad tracks to access Pond Park, which Winkelman considers the most underused of the city parks.

They also came up with a wish list of projects both big (a bike/walking trail; a soccer venue) and small (an entry sign; a community garden in a city park).

Scranton would have to devise additional ways to pay for the projects it wants to do, according to Winkelman, but participation in the Community Visioning Program typically acts as a seal of approval for grants.

According to the program, about 98 percent of the visioning communities complete at least one project; 50 percent complete four or more projects.

• A spruced-up water tower.
It might not sound like much, but Scranton’s water tower is a major source of pride.

Erected in 1897, it’s the oldest working water tower in Iowa, and it’s believed to be one of the 10 oldest in the nation.

The city in April won a $40,000 competitive grant from the Grow Greene County Gaming Corp. for the project, which will be complete in time for Scranton’s sesquicentennial celebration in June 2019.

It will be repainted for sure, but whether Winkelman gets it to glow in the dark like he wants remains to be seen.

“You throw out anything and everything,” he said of the idea process.

Winkelman and McAleer credit city clerk/treasurer Melinda Hinners with finding grant avenues for the city to pursue.

Hinners said the city of Scranton is more active now than at any other time in her more than nine years working at City Hall.

Even City Hall itself is new.

The city moved to a refurbished section of the old school — now the Scranton Community Center — in November 2015, giving the mayor his own office for perhaps the first time in town history.

Winkelman is particularly proud of the large white board in his office where he can jot down goals.

“We have some progressive minds,” Hinners said of the current council.

There’s a time, she said, for a city to sit back and watch its funds.
“There’s a time when you have to start moving forward,” she added.

Winkelman, a Scranton native and Navy veteran who returned home in 2012 after a 23-year police career in Connecticut, said he personally has a “tendency to step up to the plate.”

“With all we’ve done,” Winkelman confessed, “I’ve thought, ‘What was getting done prior to me?’ ”

Winkelman is still unsure whether he’ll run for re-election in November, but he indicated it may not matter who holds the office.

“Things are at the point of no return stage,” he said.

“I hope I’m setting a good example for anyone who assumes this position,” he explained, giving it more thought. “Fresh ideas and eagerness and motivation to better the community, it’s a win-win.”

A 1978 graduate of Scranton High School, Winkelman moved back home in part because that’s what he always told his fellow cops out on the East Coast he was going to do.

He also swore he was going to take up taxidermy in retirement.

A deer mount juts out from the wall behind his desk at City Hall.

When he got back, though, he found a town that had changed.

“It wasn’t like it was when I left,” Winkelman said. “There’s probably a lot of answers. Is that generation gone? Do people not care? Of course, we lost a school. We lost the grocery store.

“It was like the whole atmosphere changed from a real community to a transient community.”

Naturally, there have been naysayers.

After all, even in 1897, there was some vocal opposition to the now-famed water tower, according to town lore. The doubters were worried the elevated steel tank would blow over.

“I’ve been told that I should just let things be,” Winkelman said.

“I guess I’m not that kind of mayor,” he added.

When he brought up adding camper hookups to Pond Park, the doubters said the park floods.

When he brought up creating a course for disc golf at Pond Park, the doubters said there isn’t enough room.

He said he’s heard some residents say the city isn’t interested in hearing what they have to say.

“You couldn’t be more wrong,” Winkelman said.

“Everybody,” he added, “should have a shot at trying something at least once.”

The new park is seen as a small first step in Scranton’s renewal.

Winkelman said he’s heard of residents leaving Scranton to use parks in other communities.

“There’s no reason for that,” he said. “We should be able to supply certain things for our residents. It’s bad enough we have to drive to Jefferson and Carroll for groceries.

“This is a start.”

On this day, after posing for a photo next to the old playground equipment with Hinners and McAleer, Winkelman suddenly disappeared.

When he reappeared, his hands were full with the litter he couldn’t resist picking up.

“You’re either part of the solution,” Winkelman said earlier in his office, “or you’re part of the problem.”

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