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.