Community News

Studio Five Eleven, a hair salon opened last year at 511 East Main Street in Waukon, recently received a First Dollar visit from the Waukon Chamber of Commerce. Pictured above at that First Dollar presentation is Tiffany Rixen, owner of Studio Five Eleven. Photo courtesy of the Waukon Chamber of Commerce.
 

by Julie Berg-Raymond

When Bob and Kristi Hager of Waukon decided it was time to sell the campground they’d owned for 22 years, they knew they wanted more time to travel and to visit family; they also knew they wouldn’t sell unless they found the right people to take over the business they’d nurtured for more than two decades.

“I said that if we sell our campground, I would like to find a nice, hardworking young family to continue building a wonderful business,” Bob says. “Colton and Tessa Willie and their two boys fit that standard better than I could have imagined. They are going to continue to operate Upper Iowa Resort with high standards; and they will bring many new ideas to make the campground even better.”

by Julie Berg-Raymond

If it weren’t for the fact that Don Blocker knows almost everyone in town, people might not realize that this past weekend marked the end of an era - and the beginning of a new one - for a long-time business in Waukon.
Double D Liquor Store is under new ownership; but the name will stay the same. The “D”s that once stood for brothers Don and Dennis will now, instead, stand for Dillon Dietrich of Waukon. He and his wife, Nicole, took over ownership of the business Monday, January 18.

The past week’s timeframe of Tuesday, January 5 through Monday, January 11 marks the third consecutive week that new COVID-19 case numbers in Allamakee County have been around 50 or below, those being the lowest weekly numbers since a late October weekly total of 39 cases. However, this past week is the only one of those three past lower case total weeks that did not involve a holiday that closed testing sites yet still yielded the lowest weekly total, 45 new cases, since those 39 cases were reported for the week of October 20-26 - which, at that point, was a new weekly high of reported cases for the county since the pandemic began.

“Reading Colors Your World” is the theme of Robey Memorial Library’s 2021 Adult Reading Challenge, which began January 1 and continues through December 31 of this year. Robey Memorial Library challenges area individuals to read something new or different this year.

Receive a prize drawing entry for reading from one of each of 12 categories: Based on a true story; Book set in one of 49 states (not Iowa); Book that teaches you something; Book with a blue cover; Graphic novel or Picture book; Hobby-themed; Humorous; Listen to an audiobook; Science; Short Story or Essay; Set in another country; and Suspense.

A storefront with a mixture of antiques and new gifts has been opened at 5 East Main Street in Waukon since October of this past year. Rain or Shine Treasures was established at that location by Daneela McKee and Brady Sorum of Waukon in an effort to expand from an already established online sales arrangement (www.rainorshinetreasures.com) to a retail storefront location welcoming in-person customers. “We love working with people and meeting new people,” McKee and Sorum said.

McKee first moved to the Waukon area in 2003. She remained here after her husband passed away in 2012, and their now 12-year-old son is a seventh grader at Waukon Middle School. She and Waukon area native Brady Sorum began dating three years ago, and the two felt that starting their retail business in Waukon was a good fit.

The tanning salon that has been established at 14 Spring Avenue in Waukon is under new ownership as of the fall of this past year. Nicole Dietrich of Waukon has opened Nikki’s Ultimate Glow, LLC as of September 28, offering a wide variety of tanning lotions and accessories in store in addition to tanning services with a “main focus on keeping things affordable and convenient for everyone,” she said.

Dietrich was born in Waukon but raised in Prairie du Chien, WI. She moved back to the area and married Waukon native Dillon Dietrich. The couple has two sons, six-year-old Dayton and three-year-old Dexter, and the flexibility of owning her own business allows Dietrich to care for her family in whatever manner they may need.

At its Monday, January 4 regular session, the Allamakee County Board of Supervisors proclaimed January as National Mentoring Month. During that January 4 meeting, Helping Services for Youth and Families Mentoring Coordinator Kathy Schwartzhoff shared that currently there are 16 matches of mentors to youth from Allamakee County. During this past year, Helping Services provided mentors to 113 youth in Allamakee, Delaware, Howard and Winneshiek Counties, and 161 people served as volunteers during this past year in Youth Mentoring. Allowances are being made during this time of masking up and social distancing for mentors to meet with their mentees in other ways than in-person. The current need for mentors is actually more vital as many youth are struggling with balancing school schedules, adapting to online learning, and having challenges with families and friends.

by Joe Moses

The Waukon City Council met in regular session Monday, January 4 to address a full agenda of items. In contrast to previous years, organizational matters addressed at the beginning of the year were approved as part of the consent agenda rather than being individually approved as regular agenda items. These organizational decisions include keeping meetings scheduled for the first and third Mondays of the month at 7 p.m., approving depositories of City funds, declaring The Standard as the official City newspaper, among other matters.

by Brianne Eilers

The Veterans Memorial Hospital (VMH) Board of Trustees met in December for it monthly meeting as well as its yearly joint meeting with the medical staff. The month of November ended on a positive financial note at Veterans Memorial Hospital, with a profit of $5,183. While it may not be a huge profit, VMH Administrator Michael Coyle pointed out that it is significantly better than the loss in November 2019 of $31,483 for the month.

Year-to-date, the hospital is showing a positive bottom line of $35,633. At this time in November 2019, VMH was looking at a loss of $427,730. “That’s a nice little turn around,” Coyle said, adding that the difference between where they were at, year-to-date, from November 2019 compared to November 2020, is a positive $463,363. Coyle also noted that they had budgeted a profit margin of $22,800 for the year and currently they are $12,833 positive to budget.