Local Editor, Iowa City
PatchEmail: stephen.schmidt@patch.com
Facebook.com/IowaCityPatch
Twitter.com/IowaCityPatch
Phone:
Iowa City (319) 210-7862.
Bio: Stephen was born in Cedar Falls in 1982, but has lived the majority of his life in nearby Solon, IA. A graduate of the University of Iowa, Stephen has covered the Iowa City area for the past four years on a freelance basis for Little Village, the North Liberty Leader and Iowapolitics.com and as a staff writer for the Daily Iowan and the Gazette.
At Patch, we believe in transparency. To that end, I am answering the following questions about my politics and religious beliefs.
Politics
The best summation of my political beliefs is that I am more interested in ideas than ideology. The concept that any one person or political party has all of the good ideas or solutions to our problems has never made much sense to me.
With this in mind, I try the best that I can to stay open minded in any political conversation or when engaging in a political topic.
If I was forced to place myself on the political spectrum between Liberal Left and Conservative Right, I would have to say I am situated in the middle of both, with one foot slightly in the Left column. There are ideas at the extremes of both ideologies that I agree with, and other ideas I disagree with, but overall I am interested in the most practical solutions to the problems we face.
Are you registered with a certain party?
I'm a registered Democrat.
Religion
I'm not religious, especially not in a traditional organized sense. I do however feel that there is a sense of the spiritual in how we treat each other, and in how we appreciate and choose to live our daily lives.
Although I am not a part of an organized religion, I feel that religion can play an important role for some people in their lives, and understanding their religion is often the key to better understanding them as people.
Local Hot-Button Issues
Iowa City is a growing college town and the University of Iowa is a growing university, and in many cases both are growing directly into each other. Both city and university are going through the process of dealing with this growth, trying to make the changes required to meet the challenges ahead, without leaving the identity of Iowa City behind.
Whether you are talking about the 21-year-old ordinance, the change in culture downtown or the crowded school district, the conflict occurs because there is a disagreement over what exactly that Iowa City identity was in the past and what it should be in the future.
The man is accused of threatening the girl into silence after coercing her into touching his erect penis.
The following operating while intoxicated offenses are from the Iowa City Police Department and do not indicate a conviction.
An Iowa City resident decided to take matters into his own hands, and those hands into the garbage of a neighbor they suspected of stealing from them.
Here is a documentary profile by the blog "Half Cut Tea" on Mark Jones, a K-6 art teacher at Lemme and Lincoln Elementary Schools.
I hope you absorbed all the nice weather you could on Tuesday, because it's about to get rainy again.
I hope you enjoyed the sunny weather on Tuesday, because it's not going to be back for a bit.
The section of N. Governor will be closed down on Thursday at its intersection with Brown Street. The construction is expected to take six weeks to finish.
The annual Latin dance event will return to the UI April 19
The Marion Rotary Club is putting on the club and released an announcement on the day of the blast to reassure participants that an emphasis is being placed on safety for this weekend's race.
The following is the complete daily activity log for the Iowa City Police Department for April 15, 2013.
ICAD President Mark Nolte leads us on a quick video tour of the Iowa City Co-Lab, which is housed the space formerly occupied by video game producer Budcat Studios.
Other jobs include work as varied as a programming analyst, live-in caregiver, second shift cleaning, and a greeting cashier.
The following information was provided by the Iowa City Police Department. It does not indicate a conviction.
Income tax returns must be postmarked Monday, April 15; we've got Internal Revenue Service tips for procrastinators.
A Christopher Jensen of Marion was listed as running in the Boston Marathon and finishing the race roughly two and a half hours after it began.
Two are dead and 22 injured, according to CNN.com, which appears to have caused by manmade explosives.
Diane Nukuri-Johnson, who ran at the University of Iowa and has competed in the Olympic Games, finished eighth in the race, which was overshadowed by an explosion near the finish line.
More froyo to arrive in Iowa City, photos from various weekend events, features on rebuilding the University of Iowa's iconic arts campus buildings.
The following is the complete daily activity log for the Iowa City Police Department for April 14, 2013.
The following arrest information was provided by the Iowa City Police Department. It does not indicate a conviction.