Manning, Iowa Rotary Club

05/22/2026

Our Rotary was led by Manning native and President Luke Potthoff on a tour of Manning's new United Bank of Iowa on May 19th.

The temporary bank building on east highway 141 is gone and replaced by a wonderful brick and mortar structure with modern and convenient amenities. It has geothermal heat and cooling, a conference room, a mother's room, a break room, space for sitting in the lobby with a view, and a choice between standing or sitting teller stations.

UBI is family owned, and roots go back to its charter bank in Arthur Iowa. They have today grown to 37 locations in rural Iowa. Their headquarters are in Ida Grove, and the largest communities served are Carroll, Storm Lake, Fort Dodge, and Boone. One third of their banks are in communities with less than 500 people. UBI's obvious focus is serving rural Iowa.

Rural focus has worked well, because UBI is now the 6th largest bank in Iowa based on asset size, AND the largest agricultural bank. In 2025, they were in the top four Iowa banks for USDA housing loans, and 7th for originating Iowa Small Business Loans. UBI believes in giving back to their communities. Manning has already received over $100,000 from UBI since they've been in town, including a $50,000 grant to the new Park Project.

Pictured below are employes Cindi Gore, Ericka Willenborg, Luke Potthoff, and Max Nielson. Amber Neumann was absent. All of them live in the Manning area. Thanks to Luke for leading Rotary on his hospitality walk through of Manning's new bank.

Next Tuesday, Rotarian Kevin Boyle will share his experience on his market study trip to a huge automated cattle ranch in Texas. You have to see it to believe it, and he's got slides to prove it. Kevin will also include the latest information on the threat to our countries entire beef industry from the live flesh eating New World Screw Fly moving toward our southern border.

As always, the public is invited to attend our meeting in the hospital conference room starting at noon on Tuesday May 26th.

It's great to be a Manning Rotarian. Check us out If you want to serve your community, and have fun doing it.

Tim Weible
President of Manning Rotary

05/18/2026

Manning Rotary will present a Memorial Day Concert at 9:30 AM in the Manning Cemetery. We will feature Patriotic music using the new 'state of the art' sound system provided by the Manning Betterment Foundation.

Our grand finale will be a recording of the Battle Hymn of the Republic sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir accompanied by a big brass band. Its epic ending reverberates for a full 4 seconds after the song is over.

Manning's traditional Memorial service will begin promptly at 10 AM after the concert. Please come a half hour early with your lawn chairs and enjoy the music to honor our veterans and those no longer with us.

Tim Weible

05/16/2026

05/16/2026

IKM-Manning teacher Allison McCarville brought 5 speech students to our May 12th Rotary meeting, AND we got to watch them perform.

If you haven't heard, our school is building a small dynasty in regional and state competitions, especially when IKM-Manning is judged in the same ring as Des Moines Valley and other large schools across the state.

Here's the 2026 tally. Forty two IKM-Manning students participated in nine categories. Thirty three earned all state honors. That's 73%. Fifteen achieved all state honors in two categories or more to move forward to state competition. That's 36%. One student, Nathanael Conner, captured all-state in all four of his performances this year. Nathanael also earned at least one all-state every year of high school. Nathanael now owns the IKM-Manning all-time record with eight all-state awards.

Nathanael, Junior Audrey Muhlbauer, Senior Laura McCarville, Senior Olivia Greving, and Freshman Jackson Shellhorn all showed their talents at our meeting, and wowed us with their confidence in public speaking. Teacher Allison McCarville was proud to share their success. Recognition also goes to Band Instructor Ryan Runyan for helping prepare all the kids for competition.

The picture below shows the students mentioned above in order from left to right.

In addition to the magnificent performances we saw on Tuesday noon, Rotary presented two $1000 scholarships at the IKM-Manning awards banquet in the evening. Rotary received fourteen applicants from IKM-Manning students. Every one of them was qualified to earn our scholarship emphasizing community service. That is NOT an exaggeration. This class is exceptional and deep.

Nathanael Connor and Karlie Arp accepted our scholarships, and are pictured below.

Thanks to Allison for rounding up her speech students at a very busy time of year, and the students coming to share with Rotary. Next week, Rotary will tour the new United Bank of Iowa headed by Luke Potthoff after our business meeting in the hospital conference room at noon on the 19th.

As always, the public is welcome to attend.

Sincerely,
Tim Weible
President of Manning Rotary

05/11/2026

The Director of Manning Municipal Utilities (MMU) Jeremy Carroll addressed Manning Rotary on Tuesday May 5th. His presentation was the relevance of the new Data Center in Manning’s Industrial Park, and an update on the status of the empty nursing home facility on Historic Main Street.

Most people in Manning aren’t aware nor have they seen the Data Center. It looks like eight transformers in a field surrounded by a chain link fence. Investors from Texas collaborated with MMU and signed a 20 year lease to build a tool for the internet cloud in Manning. This tool facilitates Artificial Intelligence, block chain mining, and cloud based storage.

The transformers have a low carbon footprint because they are air cooled and don’t need water. A septic tank is on site but probably will not have anything in it. The Texas investors agreed to be an interruptible customer, meaning Manning gets electricity first. This facility needs as much as 19 megawatts. Manning’s peak demand is 6 megawatts. Not to worry, because MMU has an excess capacity of up to 60 megawatts.

The significance to Manning is continued low cost for electricity well into the future. Our rates now are about 10.5 cents per kilowatt hour. Customers surrounding Manning pay over 16 cents. If a Manning resident pays $1000 in electricity every year, your bill would be $1350 or more if you are not receiving energy from MMU.

MMU is owned by Manning. Gas was the only profitable utility making money when Jeremy became the director. Today, every utility including electric, water, and cable is in the black. Our cable has been replaced by a high speed fiber network that doubled everybody's speed and did not increase cost.

Our utility costs remain comparatively low to other towns and cities. MMU employs more than ten skilled workers that can do almost anything. Their wages stay within the community. We also don’t have far away corporations taking revenue to provide our service. MMU keeps the revenue and invests it to keep rates low. Our privately owned MMU makes Manning very unique.

The Texas Data Center investors would have never looked at Manning as a site without our availability of low cost electricity and fiber network utilities. Jeremy’s strategy is “we build it, and more will come.”

The nursing home is now owned by the City of Manning, and the IKM-Manning school has the first option. Nothing has been finalized on how the nursing home will be transformed. Jeremy says Manning would prefer to have a one customer lease for the whole building.

One of the options would be to renovate the building into an elementary school. MMU could leverage its borrowing power to obtain a loan to pay for the renovation without raising property taxes. No property tax increase means that a bond issue passing would not be necessary. The school board will decide if this is the best option.

On Tuesday May 12th, IKM-Manning school will send participants from the State Speech contest to discuss and perform their work for our Rotary. As always, the public is invited to attend our meeting at noon in the Hospital Conference room.

Sincerely,
Tim Weible
President of Manning Rotary

Pictured below is the new Data Center on the northwest side of Manning.

05/04/2026

First, thanks to our followers and readers for a record 10,000 plus views of our post on President Dan Behrens presenting the upcoming Carroll County Fair to our Rotary last tuesday. Scroll down on our page to read our summary of his talk if you missed it.

Last Tuesday, IKM-Manning teacher Emma Konkler-Petersen talked about her teaching and coaching our kids. Emma has been a science teacher of Physics and Chemistry for 8 years. She also started a Forensics class that has become quite popular.

Emma is a former track star that competed at Buena Vista University. Listening to her speak and observing her character, it's easy to understand how she can mesh so well with our students.

There were 14 girls out for track when she started coaching five years ago. There are now 30 girls out for the sport. There's excitement and pride that's building a sustainable tradition. The girls are getting good and defeating larger schools. Emma's success is based on getting the girls to feel that it's cool to run track, and exciting when you win.

Emma said that they've always had runners. But they now also have field events participants that are getting points previously left on the table.

Good luck to the girls track team in the upcoming conference meets and state qualifying. Thanks to Emma for sharing, and thanks to Rotarian Greg Sextro for inviting her.

On Tuesday May 5th, Manning Municipal Utilities director Jeremy Carroll will present an update on the value and significance of the new Data Center, and the progress on repurposing the empty nursing home on Historic Main. As always, the public is welcome to attend our meeting in the hospital conference room at noon. You might want to be there for this one.

Sincerely,
Tim Weible
President of Manning Rotary