Homers: What's going right

BUILDING MORE HOUSES: Much of Eastern Iowa is enjoying a portion of the national resurgence in new housing construction. From 2010 to 2012, Dubuque, Linn and Johnson counties ranked in Iowa's top 10 for housing growth. Statewide, Iowa ranked 25th in the nation with an overall growth rate of 0.7 percent.

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NEGOTIATING, NOT FIGHTING: Given the long, often bitter history between Linn County supervisors and Audistor Joel Miller, it was encouraging to see last week that supervisors John Harris and Brent Oleson worked out a compromise with Miller on a reorganization of the county's Geographic Information Systems services. The six GIS employees have been under Miller's supervision and supervisors had initially indicated that they wanted to remove all of them and place them in the IT Department. Now, after a review of those employees' duties , it appears some of them will stay with Miller. Harris and Miller both indicated this effort may help lead to more cooperation in the future. Let's hope so.

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FULL STRENGTH: A bump in state funding will allow clerks of court offices statewide to resume fulltime hours by September.

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