Alta mayor urges school board to keep homecoming football game in town

Alta’s homecoming football game turned into a fight over who controls one of the town’s most visible symbols, with Mayor Desi Suter leading residents in asking the Alta-Aurelia Community School District to keep the game in Alta. About 15 people attended the school board meeting, and four of them openly backed Suter’s push as the district considered a broader proposal to move high school football, and possibly track meets, from Alta to Aurelia.

Suter said the petition was not a demand to reverse every part of the district’s plan. Instead, it asked that one homecoming game be played in Alta from August 2026 through March 2032, the period before the current shared-use agreement expires in April 2032. The city filed the petition under Iowa Code 279.8B, which required the board to hear public comment.

At the center of the dispute is a 1972 reciprocal-use agreement between the City of Alta and the school district. Under that 28E arrangement, the city uses school-owned baseball fields, while the school uses the city-owned football field and track, and each side maintains the property it uses. Suter said the district’s move would ignore that history and run against a clause tied to the continued use of city property. She also pointed to ownership, saying the Alta field belongs to the city, while the Aurelia field belongs to the district.

The school district has argued that the Aurelia athletic site, because it is district-owned, is the better place to invest school-taxpayer money. That reasoning has widened the dispute beyond one homecoming game and into a larger argument over where Alta-Aurelia should spend money, how much weight should be given to Alta’s ownership of the football facility and whether the town is losing influence over decisions that shape its identity.

Suter said the city had not heard a long-term plan for the property, including the three ball diamonds on school land, and she raised questions about what happens when the agreement ends in 2032. School board president Tom Hinkeldey said the homecoming game issue was not up for discussion, but he also offered to appear before the Alta City Council to explain the board’s reasoning. The council has already discussed the matter, and city officials have said they are not ruling out legal action, even as the fight remains centered on one game, one field and which side of the partnership gets the final say.