S THE AU DW BB O.N BU ae lo ae 
tional. Linn county (of which Cedar Rapids is the largest city) has developed 
a school museum by buying, reconditioning and refurnishing a one-room 
brick school as it operated 50 years ago. 
“A few districts have included an old windmill or a covered bridge 
in tracts they are developing. Not only will the flora and fauna of wooded 
areas be preserved in these conservation districts, but rural life as it was 
lived in Iowa in the early days will be available for school children to 
study.” 
Programs vary greatly in the counties, Freed pointed out, and the 
annual budgets vary accordingly. For example Polk county (of which 
Des Moines is the center) in the last few years has had a budget of 
about $425,000. Delaware county, one of the smallest and poorest, has had 
a budget of only $13,000. 
Iowa’s county conservation district boards have been conservative in 
exercising their taxing authority. Everett Speaker, director of the state’s 
Conservation Commission, reports that the average tax for the districts 
is still only about a half mill, or 5 cents on each $100 of assessed valuation, 
and this is one-half of their allowable limit. A few of the counties, he said, 
have gone to or near the full mill limit. but a number of smaller ones 
have operated on a fourth of a mill; this has kept the average at about a 
half mill. 
Linn county, with its extensive development in the Cedar Rapids area 
and with the million dollars in bonds to pay off in 10 years, is one of 
the counties that has gone to the full mill levy. Polk county operated for 
the first five years at a fourth mill rate, went up in 1962 to five-eighths 
of a mill. to three-fourths of a mill in 1964 and 1965, and dropped down 
to two-thirds of a mill in 1966 and 1967. 
In Macon county — the most industrialized and heavily populated 
among the five Illinois counties that have voted to form conservation 
districts — the question was raised in the referendum campaign as to how 
well Iowa’s county conservation district boards are getting along with 
city park district boards in their counties. Inquiry at the Iowa Conserva- 
tion offices in Des Moines, the best clearinghouse for information on all 
the county programs in that state, brought this response from William C. 
Brabham, chief planner for the commission: 
“Our conservation district and city park boards have done no feuding 
that has come to our attention. The two types of boards complement each 
other and work together to give the people more facilities.” 
At Cedar Rapids this writer found that the city and Linn county 
have joined efforts in developing a 127-acre lake in the Squaw Creek 
area at the edge of town. The city park board had 304 acres, and the 
county conservation board is buying 700 acres to add, with the villiage 
of Marion a few miles east of the city providing another 30 acres. 
When all facilities are developed, the park — whose lake will be 
partly within the Cedar Rapids corporate limits but mostly outside in the 
county — will provide a wide variety of activities. The conservation 
district board will operate most of these, according to Elmer Delaney, city 
park superintendent. 
Kenneth Marsh, a Cedar Rapids school teacher and member of Linn 
county’s conservation district board, described relations between the 
two boards as “excellent.” The city wanted a golf course and “we wanted 
a lake, and this prompted the joint Squaw Creek project,” he said. 
