PCE Cuts New Manning Signs
PCE Cuts New Manning Signs
By AUDREY INGRAM, Times Herald Staff Writer
May 21, 2015 MANNING
Puck Custom Enterprises’ Mazak Optiplex 3015 plasma laser cutting machine can typically be heard running for up to seven hours of a 10-hour shift.
One Wednesday night, it ran a few extra hours after the workday to cut new welcome signage for the City of Manning.
The sign project was completed in “the Manning way,” signage committee member Jean Stadtlander said — with oodles of cooperation.
Stakeholders were invited to PCE Wednesday evening to watch one of two front sign faces be cut out. A meal was donated for the project participants and the PCE crew.
Signage committee members Stadtlander, Geri Spies, Karen Reinke and Joann Ohl have been working on the project since Manning leaders competed Iowa’s Living Roadways Community Visioning Program in 2012.
Stakeholders who made Manning’s new welcome signs possible include (front, from left) sign committee members Jean Stadtlander and Geri Spies, landowner Shelly Gruhn, committee members Karen Reinke and Joann Ohl and lighting expert Dave Wurzer; (back, from left) landowner Gene Steffes, Jason Rasmussen of Rasmussen Lumber Co., Puck Custom Enterprises engineers Jeff Blum and Dan Puck and Manning Mayor Harvey Dales.
PCE, Rasmussen Lumber Co. and American Concrete donated materials for the signs, which will be located on Highway 141.
PCE employees Dan Puck, Jeff Blum and Aaron Nissen designed, programmed the machine and will assemble the sign.
Gene and Sherri Steffes and Todd and Shelly Gruhn will allow the city to place the signs on their land.
Dave Wurzer of TFI Lighting of Willey — whose wife, Bonnie, is a Manning graduate — is giving the city the blue LED lighting for the sign at-cost.
Manning Municipal Communications & Television Systems Utility, Manning’s municipal utility company, will run the electrical lines to the signs.
The original estimate for two new welcome signs was about $40,000. With PCE’s involvement, the city will have much sturdier signs, Manning Mayor Harvey Dales said — and with all of the donated materials and labor, the final cost is expected to be about $5,000.
Once concrete is poured, it will take about half a day to assemble the signs, Puck said. The goal is to have the signs installed by Manning’s Party on the Bricks and all-school reunion the weekend of June 20.
No decisions have been finalized about how or if the city’s old welcome signs will be repurposed.