Ground is being broken on an expansion of one of Clear Lake’s most historic sites, on what will be called The Surf Ballroom Music Enrichment & Immersive Center.

It will include a visitors center, a gift shop, lesson studios, a conference space and an exhibit area to showcase the ballroom’s significant contributions to music history.

Jeff Nicholas with the North Iowa Cultural Center & Museum, which oversees the Surf Ballroom, says the new facility will offer a great opportunity for young people to learn about the community’s culture, the ballroom’s history and music.

“This place is bricks and mortar, but it’s so much more than that.”

City Administrator Scott Flory says the improvements will ensure the legacy of the ballroom remains relevant for many generations to come.

Rock-and-roll stars Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and “The Big Bopper” J. P. Richardson all died in a plane crash near Clear Lake in February of 1959 after playing a concert at the Surf Ballroom. Connie Valens, Ritchie’s sister, says the center will continue to teach and enrich future generations about what the Surf Ballroom represents.

The future of sexual assault support services is unclear in southeastern Iowa.

On Wednesday morning, the Iowa Attorney General’s Office announced that more than $400,000 in federal and state funding are up for grabs. That money used to fund comprehensive sexual assault support services at the Rape Victim Advocacy Program. The organization served eight counties, including Johnson County.

But the University of Iowa announced at the beginning of April that it was shuttering RVAP.

Attorney General Brenna Bird’s announcement is at odds with the UI’s own messaging about the closure. The UI claimed that services would be “transferred” to the Domestic Violence Intervention Program, which serves the same eight-county area. DVIP will have to compete with other applicants if it hopes to secure the funding.

Applications are due at the end of May.

The National Weather Service says a minimum of four tornadoes touched down in Iowa on Tuesday, including one each in Calhoun, Dallas, Lee and Pocahontas counties.

Among the damage, a barn was leveled near Dallas Center and there was major damage to a house near Salem.

NWS Meteorologist Kristy Carter says survey teams fanned out Wednesday morning to look over the damage at the various sites.

There are multiple reports of large hail all over central and eastern Iowa, while winds were clocked up to 72 miles an hour in Cedar County near Stanwood. All across the state, there were reports of fallen trees and tree limbs, which caused dozens of power outages.

Funnel clouds were reported over Le Claire and near Cedar Rapids, but neither reached the ground to become tornadoes. No injuries are reported.

An Iowa State University study concludes that the state is offering a successful program model for young people after they leave the foster care system.

Professor Carl Weems, who chairs ISU’s Department of Human Development and Family Studies, helped develop the study, which gauges the risks and effects of trauma, along with prevention and interventions that bolster resilience.

“Community agencies who do this work with the kids directly provide mentoring and access to different services. We’ve compiled five years of that data to look at how they’re doing in terms of finishing their education, getting their high school diploma or going on to college and employment, their general satisfaction with the services.”

Young adults who leave foster care are less likely to have a safety net and financial support from family, he says, adding to the challenges in the transition to adulthood.

Weems says most youth in the state’s foster care program enroll in the Iowa Aftercare Services Network shortly after they turn 18, and they engage in the program for more than two-and-a-half years.

“Our report is about how well that support network is working and the data that we published in our paper and a peer-reviewed journal is suggesting it’s a pretty good model and working really well.”

Sheila Brummer

/

IPR

There’s another delay for the new Woodbury County Law Enforcement Center. Four years ago, voters approved a bond issue of more than $50 million to help pay for the project that has been plagued by construction problems and increased costs.

Originally, the jail was supposed to open last year, but the opening was pushed back several times, including last month, when the jail failed a walk-through by a state inspector.

Now, the authority that oversees the project says instead of being ready to go by the middle of May, the new substantial completion date will be in early July due to acoustical concerns with the mechanical system and other technical issues.

The LEC Authority blames an engineering consultant for the new problem. In a news release, the authority said it will hold the responsible parties liable for additional costs and damages.

The Iowa DNR’s Environmental Protection Commission voted Tuesday to adopt changes to proposed regulations governing Animal Feeding Operations, known as CAFOs.

Part of the agency’s efforts to conform with Gov. Kim Reynolds’ Executive Order No. 10 issued last year, the order mandates every state agency to review and overhaul rules and regulations, thereby reducing the regulatory burden on Iowa businesses.

Several people spoke in favor of tighter regulations, including Barb Kalbach, a farmer and board member of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. She pointed to the role CAFOs have played in degrading the state’s water.

“We are getting nowhere. This commission has as much impact on that as anybody.”

Wally Taylor, legal counsel for the Iowa Chapter of Sierra Club, spoke against the change, and in favor of stronger protections for drinking water. He says the DNR rejected almost all of the public comments filed by Sierra Club on the grounds that they fell outside the scope of the governor’s order.

“It seems to me that Executive Order 10 violates the Administrative Procedure Act, because the governor doesn’t have the authority under state law to micromanage the rulemaking process like that.”

The revised regulatory language was supported by the Iowa Pork Producers Association and the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association.

The maker of a well-known brand of sour cream and cottage cheese is planning to open a production facility in Boone.

The Boone City Council voted to submit an application for Daisy Brand to the Iowa Economic Development Authority. The application is for tax incentives from the state’s High Quality Jobs program.

Boone Mayor Eli Stine says a state board is expected to approve the application Friday.

The City of Boone has agreed to a number of infrastructure improvements to attract Daisy’s investment and over 250 jobs. Stine says Daisy is “an incredibly well-run company” and its $708 million project is by far the largest capital investment the community has seen.

The headquarters of Daisy Brands is in Dallas, Texas. The company currently operates plants in Arizona, Ohio and Texas.

Kavahn Mansouri

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The Midwest Newsroom

A company that bought hundreds of single-family homes in the Omaha-Council Bluffs area now says it must sell over 1,700 of them in order to stay in business.

Starting its shopping spree in 2019, VineBrook Homes quickly became the region’s third largest property owner. Now, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, the company must sell homes to meet a $1.2 billion debt it says it cannot pay.

Single-family rental expert Noel Christopher says it's all according to the company’s plan.

“This is what these funds plan for — this is part of their thesis. When you get into hard times, it's easy to cull the portfolio and sell homes and get that full value.”

A 2023 investigation by the Midwest Newsroom found many tenants have complained of quick evictions, rapidly rising rent and poor customer service.

There are at least three proposed measures to rein in mega-property owners pending in Congress. And an Omaha state representative is backing proposed legislation calling for local ownership, among other requirements.

Read the full story from the Midwest Newsroom.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he’s gathered enough petition signatures to qualify for Iowa’s general election ballot due to turnout at a campaign rally in central Iowa.

Iowa law gives independent presidential candidates the option of holding an assembly and collecting at least 500 signatures from Iowa voters, with at least one person from 25 different counties. A Kennedy campaign aide announced the results Saturday to a convention of Kennedy’s “We the People” party in West Des Moines.

“We have 686 credentialed delegates representing more than 35 counties in Iowa,” the campaign staffer said.

Those nominating petitions will be submitted to the Iowa Secretary of State’s office for review. Kennedy vowed to return to campaign in Iowa before the November election.

While the Iowa Democratic Party offered no comment on Kennedy, Iowa Republican Party chairman Jeff Kaufmann issued a statement on Friday, accusing Kennedy of “peddling toxic conspiracy theories” instead of the kind of solutions former President Donald Trump is offering voters.

Utah officials have announced Kennedy has qualified to be on their state’s General Election ballot and Kennedy’s campaign says Iowa is one of seven other states where they have met the requirements for ballot access.

A training session for severe weather spotters in Carroll County that was scheduled for Monday night is canceled due to the threat of… severe weather.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Brad Small says warming temperatures are bringing on the weather.

“The storms later tonight could be severe across western Iowa, with the main threat being large hail… but the severe weather threat will be squarely over Iowa by Tuesday.”

Des Moines set a record high of 88 degrees on Sunday, beating the previous record of 87, set in 2006. Small says highs this week should drop back into the seasonal 50s and 60s, with lows in the 30s and 40s.

Home insurance rates have been rising steadily over the past few years, and are expected to hit another record average by the end of the year.

The Insurance Information Institute says the average annual premium in the United States will be over $2,500 by the end of the year, up 6% from last year.

Rates have been rising steadily over the past few years. In the Midwest, premiums have been higher than the national average.

Jeff Menary’s company, Grinnell Mutual, offers individual policies and provides insurance for other carriers. The CEO says for the past few years, insurance claims have been outpacing premiums.

“There’s more losses going through that equation than the premium that’s being charged. And so there’s no way companies can operate this way and so they’ve had to make adjustments in their pricing. And with that, that affects the consumers.”

Menary says he feels for consumers and suggests looking at ways to lower premiums by increasing deductibles and investing in hail-resistant roofing materials. He says farm owners who have older outbuildings they don’t plan on replacing may want to adjust coverage on them to lower insurance costs.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture thinks cows are getting sick after exposure to wild migrating birds who have avian influenza. 

So far, the virus seems to result in mild cases for the cattle. And in impacted herds, only about 10% of cattle get sick. 

Missouri dairy farmer Sean Cornelius says he is watching developments closely. 

“Farm owners, farm managers are definitely keeping in touch with their veterinarians and with their other resources to understand how the situation is evolving. Not really alarmed by it, but being very vigilant.” 

The USDA says pasteurized milk is safe to drink because the process kills bacteria and viruses. 

Read the full story from Harvest Public Media.

One hundred people gathered in Iowa City Saturday mourning the coming closure of the Rape Victim Advocacy Program.

RVAP services eight counties, and in a news release, the University of Iowa said the majority of clients aren’t affiliated with the university.

Elyssa Brock, who lives in Washington County, said she turned to the program when she was sexually assaulted at 17. She said she worries about the impact the closure will have on rural survivors like her.

“We don’t have Uber or Lyft in rural areas. We don’t have buses or public transportation. We don’t have countless therapists at our fingertips. So to not talk to us or even mention us in the media? Disgusting. Had anyone talked to us, the rural counties, they would know how this would affect us survivors. There will be a loss of coverage.”

Iowa City’s Domestic Violence Intervention Program has said it will pick up the services the University of Iowa is dropping. While the closure was announced this month, details on how DVIP will add sexual assault support services are still being developed.

Iowa Public Radio/Sheila Brummer

As more refugees move into the state of Iowa, advocates say there is a critical need for health care providers who understand their unique needs.

Nick Wuertz, the director of immigrant and refugee community services for Lutheran Services in Iowa, says 11 agencies are helping resettle 2,500 people across the state of Iowa, which is more than the year before. Most are coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria and Burma.

“We do see additional challenges for newcomers who don't speak the language and are learning how to navigate insurance and all of these things.”

Wuertz says there is a shortage of physicians, dentists and mental health workers who can treat refugees.

He attended a conference at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City Friday on how to achieve cultural awareness in health care. The event also attracted college students who plan to go into the medical field after graduation.

Only two states in the Midwest have regulated toxic “forever chemicals” in drinking water. But now, PFAS chemicals will be federally regulated, following an announcement from the Biden administration.

The Environmental Protection Agency is implementing the first-ever drinking water standards on six PFAS chemicals.

They join a list of nearly a hundred contaminants, like lead and copper, that all states must now screen for in their public water systems.

Sandy Wynn-Stelt, a Michigan resident whose drinking water was contaminated by a shoemaker, says she felt like the government had failed her when she lost her husband to liver cancer — a disease associated with PFAS exposure.

"This has been a long journey, not just in our state where we have made incredible progress, but for our country. This is really a day of celebration."

Roughly 10% of public utilities in the U.S. will need to make changes to meet the new standards, according to an EPA estimate.

Three yellow, bug-like creatures crawl in perfectly straight lines across the dead grass of a flat, brown February field in Cheney, Kansas. Two lights peer out from each side of the boxy machines, almost appearing like eyes. Blades whir at their base, about a half an inch from the ground – the perfect height to chop weeds, though there’s nothing to cut down on a frigid winter day.

The robots stick out in an otherwise rural landscape – and GreenField Robotics CEO Clint Brauer said he frequently hears from curious passersby.

Brauer founded the company in 2018. The start-up has now grown large enough to attract investment from Chipotle’s $100 million venture capital fund and to secure partnerships with dog food and baking mix brands.

Read the full story from Harvest Public Media.

The Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments Thursday about Iowa’s law that would ban most abortions after a so-called fetal heartbeat is detected, as early as six weeks of pregnancy.

Solicitor General Eric Wessan argued for the state that Iowa has a vital interest in protecting life, and the court should use the “rational basis” standard to allow the abortion ban to take effect.

“There is no right to be found for abortion. And so what my friends on the other side say — that the right might be hiding here, it might be hiding there, in some combination of clauses — it’s simply not what this court historically has done.”

Peter Im, argueing for Planned Parenthood, said the law should be found unconstitutional using the “undue burden” standard that allows abortions before a fetus is viable.

“On the one hand you have autonomy and dominion over one’s own body, and also because as the PPH 2022 plurality stated, parenthood is a life-altering obligation that falls unevenly on women in our society. So because of those rights that are recognized under the Constitution, that’s why rational basis isn’t appropriate.”

The court is expected to issue a ruling by the end of June. Abortion is currently legal in Iowa up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Community Action Agency

Months after turning down $29 million in federal funding for a summer food program, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced a new state-run grant program Wednesday.

The state is offering $900,000 in grants to schools and organizations to help pay for summer food programs.

Jean Logan, who oversees the Community Action Agency of Siouxland, says the new action shows the governor “doesn’t care” about helping families.

“I'm very disappointed. And I really don't feel that $900,000 is anywhere close to being able to meet the need that we have in Iowa to feed children.”

More than a dozen states, all Republican, also turned down the federal money, which would have cost Iowa an estimated $2.2 million. At the time, Reynolds said the program did not promote proper nutrition, and she worried about sustainability.

Read the full story.

The Midwest is seeing a rise in cases of Lyme disease and other health problems associated with ticks, and experts say the trouble is that millions of the tiny insects are now surviving our warmer winters.

Megan Meller, an infection preventionist at Gundersen Health System, says now that spring is here, Iowans should start doing tick checks on a regular basis.

“Tick season essentially now is moving year-round. I think we previously would think that we would have started looking for ticks once the weather turned warmer in April and May, when we’re spending more time outside, but this year, we were seeing warm weather back in really from December through January and currently, and even those brief cold spells didn’t kill the ticks.”

There are more than a dozen species of ticks in Iowa. The three most common are deer ticks, dog ticks and lone star ticks.

Meller says some are easier to spot than others.

“If we’re lucky, they’re large and we can find them right away, but some of them are really tiny, the size of a dot at the end of a sentence, and if you overlook those, they can also cause an infection.”

Meller says there is a greater push for vaccine development to prevent Lyme disease, and a vaccine in stage three clinical trials is showing promising results.

“Hopefully, at some point in the near future, there’ll be a vaccine that helps prevent Lyme disease, so we don’t have to keep worrying about this potential added fear in the woods.”

The University of Iowa says it will directly fund the expansion of the Domestic Violence Intervention Program to include sexual assault support services. The move comes after the university announced the closure of the UI’s Rape Victim Advocacy Program, which serves the same eight-county area.

The university has not made any agreement with the DVIP available or explained how much money it plans to use to fund the Iowa City-based organization for expanding its services.

Katy Rasmussen, who coordinates the Johnson County Sexual Assault Response Team, says RVAP has made sure victim advocates were present during sexual assault exams. She said it’s common for peer organizations to comingle domestic violence and sexual assault services in the same organization.

“It is fairly common, and there is a big overlap in terms of patient populations when you’re looking at domestic or intrapersonal violence as well as sexual violence."

Rasmussen says she is concerned about the potential loss of RVAP’s experienced sexual assault advocates.

The IRS is warning Iowans about bad tax advice circulating online.

IRS spokesperson Christopher Miller says there are scams that collect personal information for identity theft. There are also videos on platforms like TikTok urging people to misuse common tax documents like W-2 forms, or more obscure ones, like Form 8944, involving a technical e-file form not commonly used by taxpayers.

“Bad advice regarding taxes on social media platforms can lead to normally honest taxpayers filing fraudulent tax forms and other information, and that can lead to civil and even criminal penalties.”

Miller adds there are scams involving emails or pop-up browser messages, claiming to be from the IRS and demanding payment. Miller says the IRS does not contact taxpayers in such a fashion.

Miller says taxpayers can get many of their questions answered on the IRS website. The agency is also holding an event at the IRS office in Des Moines on Saturday for face-to-face help without an appointment.

The Sierra Club is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to take part in the investigation and any enforcement action against the co-op responsible for a massive fertilizer spill into a river in southwest Iowa.

On March 11, workers at New Co-op in Red Oak discovered a valve on a tank had been left open and released 265,000 gallons of liquid nitrogen. Most ended up in the East Nishnabotna River. The Iowa and Missouri DNR estimate every fish along a 60-mile stretch of the river died as a result. The spill may be the largest fish kill ever recorded in the state.

Pam Mackey-Taylor, director of the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club, says the size of the spill and its impact on wildlife is unprecedented in Iowa, but she’s not confident the state will do enough to hold New Co-Op accountable.

“I’m sure that the DNR officials that deal with fisheries and ensuring water quality are alarmed, but I don’t know what kind of political pressure they are under to downplay it.”

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources can administratively order fines of up to $10,000 for fish kills. Mackey-Taylor says the EPA can levy greater fines and conduct any possible criminal investigation.

The Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines announced its largest expansion in history Monday. CEO Anne Shimerdla says the expansion and renovation effort will include the “Wild Iowa” exhibit on Iowa’s endangered species.

“There are over 100 species listed as endangered or a special concern from the Iowa DNR, and that means that action is imperative that we do things in our own backyards and inspire everybody to take part in the conservation work.”

The renovation will include deepening the river otters’ pool at the zoo and expanding their space.

“We’ll also move up the path into a shallow stream area where we can view their native behaviors, and then up around on the other end into a viewing cabin, where we can view the otters and their grass spaces.”

She says that also includes a tunnel that will go into the otter pool so you can see the otters swim around. The viewing cabin will feature smaller reptiles and amphibians located in Iowa to help highlight the zoo’s conservation programs, including for the Blanding’s turtle.

The zoo also plans to remodel and expand the lion conservation area.

“Our indoor area for breeding will allow us to become leaders within the cat conservation programs on a global scale.”

Shimerdla says the zoo is two-thirds of the way to its “Expand the Impact” $18 million fundraising goal.

Gov. Kim Reynolds says Iowa women’s basketball coach Lisa Bluder has done a “phenomenal job” and her pay should reflect that.

“I think we need to recognize her. She’s done a great job. I think that should be reflected in the salaries. I always want to encourage recognizing excellence.”

Reynolds did not suggest what Bluder’s salary should be.

The Iowa men's basketball coach of 13 years, Fran McCaffrey, earned about $3.2 million this year, while Bluder, in her 24th season as the Iowa women’s coach, made $1.4 million salary this season, plus $310,000 worth of bonuses due to her team’s run in this year’s NCAA tournament.

Reynolds said the Hawkeye women have “changed the landscape of women’s sports,” capped by a championship game that was the most-watched basketball game since 2019 — surpassing college men’s basketball and NBA games over the past five seasons.

“That team has changed women’s sports forever. The number of people that watched, the number of people that were cheering them on.”

While speaking with reporters earlier today, Reynolds praised National Player of the Year Caitlin Clark and her Hawkeye teammates. 

“They really have just captured the hearts of the country and have done amazing things for women’s sports. All you have to do is look at the little girls that are not only standing in the audience with the signs, but are waiting to have a chance to shake her hand or have her sign something or to emulate what she’s done, so that should always be recognized.”

A notice of appeal has been filed in the case of the wife of a Woodbury County supervisor sentenced to prison for voter fraud.

On April 1, Kim Phoung Taylor of Sioux City received four months behind bars and four months of home confinement for her conviction on 52 counts.

During the trial in November, prosecutors said Taylor took part in a scheme to steal votes from other immigrants from the Vietnamese community for her husband’s elections in 2020. Her husband, Jeremy Taylor, is currently on the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors, but doesn’t plan to run for reelection.

Taylor’s court-appointed attorney, Guy Weinstein from Omaha, tells IPR News that he wanted to give her the option to appeal within the 14-day deadline. He says no official decision has been made and notes that he took over Taylor’s case just a couple of days ago.

Iowa City’s Domestic Violence Intervention Program (DVIP) will have to grow considerably to add the sexual assault support services once provided by the University of Iowa. The university is laying off 12 full-time workers as part of its transition.

Currently, DVIP runs an emergency shelter, a hotline, a mobile response program and advocates for victims in the hospital and in the judicial system. But before it can begin working with survivors of sexual assault, DVIP anticipates adding between ten and 15 staff for the new services.

DVIP Director of Community Engagement Alta Medea says they’re planning to take on new staff members, but hiring will depend on the competitive bidding process required for federal and state funding.

“It will be work. Writing any grant takes time. But we’re comfortable in that work. We’ve done it many times, we’ve been doing it the entire time that I’ve been here and much, much longer.”

Already, state and federal funds account for 54% of DVIP’s budget. Medea says funding sources will ultimately determine the staffing for sexual assault support services added as part of the transition.

Waterloo’s 1619 Freedom School always had a plan for the Willie Mae Wright Community Room within All-In Grocers: to create a space for neighborhood kids to learn Black history.

The plan came together in months thanks to wide community support of donated books, time and money.

Civil rights activist Willie Mae Wright, the namesake of the community room, was on hand for the opening. Now in her 90s, she says the reading room will help the neighborhood’s kids better understand their history.

“It’s something that’s needed for the kids in the neighborhood. They have a reading room, they can come and read about it. It’s quite an ordeal.”

The youth library is an extension of the 1619 Freedom School’s Liberation Library, a lending library for adults in the city.

Democrats in Pottawattamie County are calling on a member of the Board of Supervisors to resign after his arrest over the weekend.

Jeff Jorgensen was charged with OWI and failure to maintain control after he hit a parked vehicle on I-80 in Pottawattamie County on Saturday.

According to the criminal complaint, Jorgensen was more than twice the legal limit (0.168) and admitted to having too many drinks.

A news release issued by the chair of the Pottawattamie County Democrats says the community “deserves elected leadership that takes responsibility seriously and acts with integrity.”

Jorgensen did not publicly comment on the arrest during a supervisor's meeting in Council Bluffs on Tuesday. After the meeting, he told reporters he would not step down.

He previously told Omaha television station KETV that he attended a Republican event in Fort Dodge on Saturday and was self-medicating to grieve the death of his wife last year.

The University of Iowa is ending a program that works with victims of sexual violence. It says it's transitioning services to another community partner.

Details are still murky, but 12 full-time staff and other part-time workers are being laid off.

Olivia Brown was in the middle of class when they learned they were out of the job. In an email from the Division of Student Life, Brown learned the University of Iowa was dissolving the Rape Victim Advocacy Program, where they worked on the crisis line and accompanied rape victims to the hospital.

Brown says they were blindsided and claims the decisions were made behind closed doors.

“We were quite literally the last to know about it.”

Brown said it's unclear what the university will do with funds from major donors, including its endowment.

The UI says it is transitioning service to the Domestic Violence Intervention Program, which services a similar area. But it's unclear whether DVIP will have to compete for that funding with other providers.

The university did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Thousands of eclipse-chasers descended on southern Illinois and southeast Missouri, hoping for a chance to see Monday’s celestial spectacle.

A solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between the sun and Earth, temporarily blocking out its view.

Such a phenomenon happens every year or two, according to NASA. But having two of them intersect in one location is rare, said Travis Wohlrab, a public engagement officer with the Goddard Space Flight Center.

“The fact that this region is receiving two in a matter of seven years… the odds of that happening are about one in a billion.”

The Illinois Office of Tourism estimates the last total solar eclipse in 2017 brought 200,000 people to the southern part of the state. It says they had an economic impact of more than $15 million.

Eclipse viewers in southeast Missouri got more than four minutes of totality and pretty clear skies.

Jason Willis was one attendee who made a big change of plans because of cloudy conditions elsewhere. He flew from his home state of North Carolina to Texas, then drove for two days to Burfordville, Miss. He even slept one night in his car.

“I’m overjoyed because it was hit or miss all week whether we were going to make it here and be able to see something clearly.”

NOAA predicts the next total solar eclipse will be in August 2026. It will cover portions of the Arctic, eastern Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain.

Read the full story.

A coalition that supports Iowa’s long-standing “Bottle Bill” says 29 counties are now “redemption deserts,” where there is nowhere to take an empty beverage can or bottle and redeem the deposit fee.

Iowa lawmakers changed the Bottle Bill in 2022, which increased the per-container handling fee for redemption centers. Retailers that sell pop, beer and other beverages can opt out of the requirement to accept empties and pay deposits if there’s a redemption center nearby.

The Cleaner Iowa coalition, which surveyed hundreds of Iowa retailers that sell beverages and collect the nickel deposit, found only 18.4% of Iowa grocery stores that responded continue to accept empties and pay back the deposits.

Spokesperson R.G. Schwarm says most of the “redemption deserts” are in rural areas.

“The Bottle Bill works and it will continue to work as long as convenient redemption opportunities are available.”

Cleaner Iowa’s survey connected with 143 retailers that were not allowed by the new law to opt out, and just eight were still accepting empty containers. The 2022 law established a civil fine for retailers that failed to follow the law, but Schwarm says the Iowa Department of Natural Resources hasn’t set up a system to investigate complaints.

“I think a big part of this with the changes is education. I don’t think a lot of folks recognize where they can redeem and also how they can contact the Department of Natural Resources if they are non-compliant.”

Madeleine King

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IPR News

The view of Monday’s solar eclipse will range from excellent to so-so to lousy, depending on where you’re located in Iowa at midday.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Dylan Dodson says folks in the cloudy northern few tiers of counties may have to hop in the car and head south if they want to see the spectacle clearly.

While parts of the nation will see a total eclipse, the sun will be about 90% covered in southeast Iowa, and more like 75% in northwest Iowa. The moon will start covering the sun around 12:45 p.m. and peak around 2 p.m.

Robert Funk, an ophthalmologist with Gundersen Health System in Waukon, says those who plan to view the event will need a pair of ultra-dark eclipse glasses. Many stores are selling special glasses, but Funk says be sure to get some that are ISO-certified.

The South Carolina Gamecocks bested the Hawkeyes over the weekend, a heartbreaking end for the season and for Iowa star Caitlin Clark’s college career.

She announced in February that she was entering the 2024 WNBA draft.

Just after Sunday’s loss, UI graduate student Lani Brown said even in defeat, it’s a season she won’t forget.

“Even though obviously the season didn’t end the way we wanted it to, it was a really, really fun process and it really brought the entire city and state of Iowa together. It’s sad knowing that she won’t bring that black and yellow anymore but she is definitely going to continue to grow in the WNBA and bring the entire sport world together in one piece.”

Clark is a two-time national player of the year. She’s projected to be the number one pick in the WNBA Draft on April 15 in New York. The Indiana Fever have the first pick.

The final score was 87-75 South Carolina.

Waverly and five other communities have had a swim team at the city’s pool for almost 50 years, but due to a $1.8 million budget cut, the pool will not open this summer.

Legislative tax changes have affected recreation opportunities for several northeast Iowa communities due to budget cuts.

Anne Duncan is the head coach of the swim club. She says she’s concerned about the future safety of the kids who won’t have access to the pool — regardless if they're on the swim team.

"When those kids become teenagers, are we going to see an uptick in aquatic-related accidents? Especially for families that might have a financial barrier to private or group lessons and they never get that formal training, going to the pool is the only way they learn."

Waverly is considering building a new pool, which would displace the swim club and residents for at least two more years.

Studies from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics have shown that instances of violence in healthcare settings are five times more likely than other industries. One northeast Iowa clinic is taking a preventative step.

The Black Hawk-Grundy Mental Health Clinic has been around since 1950. In that time, it has seen two expansions and countless updates, but never security cameras. That could change soon, as the clinic has spent the last several years partnering with local and county law enforcement to reevaluate what a safe mental health space looks like.

Executive director of the clinic, Tom Eachus, says while he’s only seen one or two instances of violence in his 35 years on the job, the plan to implement cameras is a preventive measure designed to help everyone feel safe.

"We wanted to make sure that patients who come here for services and staff who provide those services, family members who come with patients and community representatives who visit regularly are in an environment they feel safe and secure in."

The clinic currently serves about 6,000 patients across the region.

The Iowa Hawkeye women’s basketball team will play the Connecticut Huskies at 8:30 p.m CT on Friday in an NCAA Final Four game in Cleveland. Cedar Rapids Gazette columnist Mike Hlas is covering the game, and says Iowa has come together as a team around star Caitlin Clark. He also says it took a team effort to beat LSU on Monday, and the Hawkeyes need to match that effort against UConn and their coach, Geno Auriemma.

“Here we are in the second game of the year in a five-day period. Once again, it’s gotta be all hands on deck. And because, look, Geno Auriemma is gonna have a plan for Clark. That doesn't mean they’re going to hold her down. It just means you try to focus on her and if the other four players beat you, so be it. You live with it.”

The Hawkeyes are a slight favorite in the game. The team that wins will take on the winner of the earlier game between North Carolina State and the so-far undefeated South Carolina.

Last year the National Future Farmers of America Organization (FFA) announced a new record membership – almost one million students. Yet the most recent agriculture census from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found the country lost 140,000 farms over a five-year-period, bringing the total number to just under two million farms.

Increased costs are cited as a major challenge for new farmers. Higher farmland prices, high priced farm equipment and the low-margin nature of the business are among the biggest barriers to entry.

According to the latest USDA ag census, the average age of farmers has increased to 58 years old, but the number of new and beginning farmers also is increasing. Now, one million of the 3.4 million farmers in the U.S. are “beginning” farmers, meaning they have 10 or fewer years of experience.

Cait Caughey, the senior beginning farmer and market associate at the Center for Rural Affairs, says she sees a lot of younger people coming into farming because they want to tackle real-world problems like racism, food sovereignty and climate change.

“You're seeing urban youth and rural youth who are interested, they might want there to be a path for them to be involved in agriculture, but we are up against enormous issues when it comes to accessing land."

You can read the full story from Harvest Public Media here.

A new study found that air pollution has caused 50,000 premature deaths and over 100,000 new cases of pediatric asthma in 2019. Iowa had more than 500 premature deaths and 550 new cases of pediatric asthma due to pollution. The study has also found that the racial and ethnic disparities in air pollution levels have widened.

Gaige Kerr, a researcher at George Washington University and the study’s lead author, says these disparities impact areas that already have health struggles.

“Even without air pollution, They're sicker because they have reduced access to nutritious food, or health care, etc.”

According to the study, the racial and ethnic disparities between the least and most white communities has widened by 16% for premature deaths related to soot, and 19% for pediatric asthma related to nitrogen dioxide.

It’s been seven years since a total solar eclipse darkened parts of the Midwest, and although Monday’s event won’t be a total eclipse in Iowa, it will still be significant.

Prof. Channon Visscher at Dordt University says the eclipse will be noticeable even for those not in the direct path of the event.

“Up in the northwest corner of Iowa here, we’re going to see about 75% coverage,” Visscher says. “If you go down to southeast Iowa, you’ll get up to about 90% of the sun’s just getting covered, but throughout most of the state we’re going to see about three-fourths of the sun get covered up by the moon.”

The eclipse will begin about 12:40 pm, but Visscher says the maximum coverage will occur around 2 pm.

Wear solar eclipse glasses for protection when viewing the eclipse.

A report finds four Fort Dodge police officers were justified in using deadly force in a March shooting that left one man dead.

Webster County Attorney Darren Driscoll released his findings, concluding that the officers used a level of force that a reasonable person would have deemed necessary to prevent injury or loss. The officers responded on March 16 to a report of a distress call. The caller reported that an individual within the residence was out of control and had injured a dog.

The officers entered the residence and found a male armed with two knives. The man, later identified as 25-year-old Tyler Stansberry, allegedly ran at the officers prompting one of the four officers to shoot him. Stansberry died as a result.

The police department’s focus is now on returning the officers to full duty status after the investigation.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources says a plan to reassign park rangers will not mean decreased law enforcement presence in state parks. Under the plan, park rangers will be reclassified as conservation officers and cover a larger geographic area.

Pete Hildreth, head of the DNR’s Conservation and Recreation Division, says Iowans visiting state parks won’t see a difference.

“An alignment will merge state park rangers and conservation officers into a single force that will ultimately increase our law enforcement coverage in our state parks in addition to our other public lands under DNR jurisdiction. So that way staff with similar functions will be working together under one bureau.”

Hildreth says state park managers and natural resource technicians will handle state park operations, allowing sworn officers to focus on law enforcement. He also says the DNR has consistently advised park-goers seeking law enforcement assistance to call 911.

The plan is part of Gov. Kim Reynolds’ mandate to streamline state departments.

Remains that were found in Missouri 46 years ago have been identified as a southeast Iowa girl. Wapello County Sheriff Detective Aaron McConnell is asking for the public’s help in the death of 15-year-old Helen Renee Grooms of Ottumwa, who went missing in 1977.

“Anybody that knew Helen back in 1977, 1978, or the family is encouraged to call us. Even if you think it’s nothing. It’d still be nice to put little pieces of the puzzle together.”

Grooms was dubbed “Lincoln County Jane Doe” since her body was found in the Mississippi River near Elsberry, Mo., in March 1978. Her body was exhumed last October.

“The Lincoln County Coroner’s Office made contact with us, gave us a brief synopsis of what they had done already,” McConnell says. “They advised that they had a possible DNA match to a possible brother.”

McConnell says a family DNA sample he collected matched the girl’s DNA and allowed investigators to identify Grooms. Her remains were returned to her family.

McConnell described meeting Grooms’ brother.

“You can just imagine, right? A brother not knowing where your sister was for 46-47 years,” McConnell says. “Every family deserves to know what happened to their loved ones that went missing no matter how long ago it was.”

The Wapello County Sheriff’s Office says there are approximately 585 cold cases in the state of Iowa.

Last year, it cost more to raise a hog than it brought in at sale. Producers lost, on average, $32 per head in 2023.

This year's pork production outlook is slightly better. Lee Schulz, an associate professor and extension economist at Iowa State University, predicts a 10% decrease in production costs in 2024. He said an increase in hog prices over the last 60-90 days is helping.

However, the industry still faces many headwinds. Input costs such as energy and labor remain high, the upcoming closure of a long-running facility in Perry is likely to impact output and California’s new Prop 12 rules will present new challenges for breeders.

Read the full story from Harvest Public Media.

Iowa Workforce Development has been running the ID.me system in test mode since January. It became standard practice this week.

Director of Iowa Workforce Development Beth Townsend says ID.me is used by 29 other states, and it’s been successful in preventing fraud and identity theft during the application process.

“It helps us ensure, using next-generation identity platforms, that you are who you say you are. And so, when we approve and pay a claim, you will receive the money, that it’s not someone else making a claim on your behalf, with or without your knowledge. And that the money is going to an account that you actually own.”

Townsend says initial registration for ID.me involves photographing and uploading certain documents and should take about five minutes. During testing, 96% of applicants could use the system without any problems.

“It’s not going to be a significant increase in the amount of time or complexity to get your unemployment claim filed.”

Townsend says the system has proven secure and doesn’t access personal data stored by IWD. Once registered, claimants must sign into their ID.me account each week.

Natalie Krebs

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Side Effects Public Media

Studies show that when older adults are hospitalized for an injury or illness, they're at risk for what some researchers call hospital-acquired disability. That's characterized by seniors leaving the hospital and increasingly struggling with daily living activities.

With a hospital-acquired disability, many seniors risk cycling back in and out of the emergency room, which could eventually lead them into pricey nursing home care involuntarily or even contribute to their death.

It's a growing concern as estimates show more than one in five Americans will be over the age of 65 by 2030.

Several programs in Iowa seek to assist seniors who have been recently hospitalized in order to combat that downward spiral before it begins and prevent seniors from going into institutionalized care when they may not need it.

Read the full story.

A new statewide project is looking for volunteers to help researchers track and monitor Iowa’s at-risk bumblebee population.

The Iowa Bumble Bee Atlas is a collaboration between organizations including Iowa State University and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

The aim is to understand native bumblebee distributions and habitat needs throughout the state. Matt O’Neal, an entomology professor at ISU, says they’ll train people to locate, count and identify different species of bees.

“It's not so much a number of volunteers, like I said we’ll take as many as we can get. What we’re looking for is a good coverage across the state. The atlas will divide the state up into some 40 different districts, and we want to make sure all of those districts have some volunteer that goes out and looks for bumblebees.”

Iowa is home to at least 14 species of bumblebees, which play an essential role in sustaining the health of the environment. Unfortunately, several bumblebee species native to Iowa face an uncertain future.

Supply chain experts say the bridge collapse that closed the Port of Baltimore won’t have a major impact on Midwestern manufactures.

In 2023, the port moved nearly $81 billion in foreign cargo value. Part of that came from major ag equipment manufacturers like CNH Industrial and John Deere.

Iowa State University’s Frank Montabon is a professor of supply chain management. He says farmers buying equipment could see some cost increases related to the trouble in the Port of Baltimore. But for the average consumer, the impact will be muted as firms adjust their supply chains.

“That again gets to the idea of resiliency. Can you deal with some sort of shock. Some companies are great at it and have figured it out very well. Some companies, for whatever reasons, they don’t want to take the time and energy to be ready for that,” he said.

The U.S. Coast Guard is working to reopen the port. Experts say the length of that closure will be key to curbing its impact.

On Monday, Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes bested defending NCAA women's basketball champions Louisiana State University 97-84 in the Elite Eight round of NCAA tournament. It's the hawk's second trip to the Final Four in as many years, marking the third trip to Final Four for the program overall.

This Friday, Iowa will face off against the University of Connecticut, while North Carolina State will battle South Carolina. The Final Four games will be broadcast back-to-back beginning at 6 p.m. CT Friday on ESPN. The championship game will broadcast live from Cleveland Sunday at 2 p.m. CT on ABC.

As spring approaches, the Iowa DNR is keeping an eye on Emmet County in far northwest Iowa. It’s the only county left in the state with no confirmed infestations of the emerald ash borer.

Mike Kintner, an entomologist with the Iowa Department of Agriculture, says the invasive, tree-killing insects can be hard to spot, and when you do find them, it’s likely too late for the tree.

“In the earlier days, they were marshalling yards where they would take the tree debris and chip it up, and quarantines came into place,” Kintner says. “We’ve just found out through the years that… the insect’s going to continue to move, unfortunately, no matter what we do as humans. We can slow it down, but we can’t stop it.”

The DNR says people are responsible for the spread of the emerald ash borer, which was first confirmed in Iowa in 2010, through the movement of infested firewood, ash nursery stock and other ash items. Many communities in Iowa have been systematically cutting down their ash trees, infected or not, and planting different species of trees in their place.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird released a statement Tuesday announcing a joint effort with attorneys general in 26 other states asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block an Illinois law banning AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles.

Bird calls the 2023 Illinois law banning the manufacture, importation, sale and ownership of assault weapons, including AR-15s and standard-capacity magazines “an outright assault on Americans’ Second Amendment rights.”

The AR-15 is the most popular rifle in the U.S., with a recent poll showing more than 24 million Americans own one, or a comparable firearm. A federal court upheld the ban and ruled that AR-15s and magazines aren't considered arms under the Second Amendment because they are militaristic.

U.S. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley says it’s important to find balance between protecting people and Second Amendment rights.

“States can, in 50 different ways, try to regulate guns, but it’s got to be within the Supreme Court decision,” Grassley says. “So, Illinois can pass what they want to pass, but sometimes it’s going to be checked by the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court’s going to make that determination of constitutionality.”

Shelia Brummer

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IPR

The wife of a Woodbury County supervisor convicted of 52 counts of voter fraud will spend time in prison.

Kim Phuong Taylor received a split sentence of four months behind bars and two years of supervised release, including four months of house arrest. She received the sentence Monday afternoon in a federal courtroom in Sioux City. Federal prosecutors had pushed for 18 to 24 months for the mother of six.

In November, a jury found Taylor guilty of illegally filling out forms and ballots for other members of the Vietnamese community to help her husband, Jeremy, in elections for Congress and county supervisor in 2020. Judge Leonard Strand said her lack of a criminal record and significant community support weighed into his decision. Taylor has 14 days to appeal.

The U.S. Attorney’s office declined to comment. Taylor’s attorney, F. Montgomery Brown, says he was pleased with the outcome.

Read the full story.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says he hopes Iowa officials reconsider the decision to turn down additional federal food assistance in the summer for about 240,000 Iowa children from low-income households.

“I’m hopeful that at some point in time the state of Iowa joins 37 other states that have made the decision to participate in the summer feeding program,” Vilsack says.

Under the program, families with children eligible for free or reduced-price meals at school may receive an Electronic Benefits Card that allows them to buy an extra $40 worth of food per child during the summer months when school is not in session.

In December, Gov. Kim Reynolds announced Iowa would not participate in the program because of administrative costs to the state and because it “did nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.” Republican governors in 13 other states announced similar decisions last year, but in February, Nebraska’s governor reversed course and announced Nebraska would accept $18 million in additional federal food assistance for Nebraska children this summer.

The USDA extended the deadline for states to sign up for the Summer Food Service Program to mid-February, but has indicated it will work with all states that are “operationally ready” to administer the program this summer.

According to the USDA, the parents of 21 million children across the country will get the extra food assistance this summer.

The Des Moines Music Coalition has announced the 80/35 Music Festival will take place July 12-13, 2024 at Water Works Park in Des Moines.

“We love that we can bring the festival to one of the most beautiful parks in the Midwest and create a fresh experience,” said Kuuku Saah, Board President of the Des Moines Music Coalition. “80/35 was built by music lovers who were willing to volunteer hundreds of hours to create one of the largest nonprofit festivals in the country. There are not a lot of communities that can sustain a music festival like this. We are fortunate to celebrate our 15th edition with a festival that will excite and challenge people’s music tastes.”

The theme for the 2024 festival is Some Call It Sorcery, We Call It Music. The full lineup will be announced on April 12, with early-bird tickets on sale now.

The report is part of an ongoing study of reproductive access in Iowa, Arizona, New Jersey and Wisconsin by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that supports reproductive rights.

The most recent study surveyed women of reproductive age before and after the 2022 Supreme Court Dobbs decision on their sexual activity and contraception access.

“Specifically in Iowa, we found that people reported more trouble or delays in trying to get their preferred contraception after the Dobbs decision, compared to before,” said Megan Kavanaugh of the Guttmacher Institute.

The report also found a decrease in quality of care, and while Iowans’ pregnancy desires didn’t change following the Dobbs decision, sexual activity did decrease.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has confirmed that avian flu has been reported in older dairy cattle in Texas and Kansas.

In her weekly press call Friday morning, Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District Rep. Ashley Hinson talked about her concerns regarding the spread of the disease.

Hinson says she’s been working closely with Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig to come up with a solution and is looking to bring in federal help as well.

“It’s going to take an all-government response to make sure we’re controlling the spread and mitigating the impact on our producers long-term.”

According to the USDA’s report, wild birds were the likely culprit of the spread. Federal officials are also investigating similar cases in New Mexico.

Courtesy of Iowa DNR

Gray foxes are one of the few canines in the world known to climb trees; their rotating forearms and semi-retractable claws help them scoot up trunks to hunt and escape predators. The unique canine can be found throughout nearly all of the U.S., north into the eastern edges of Canada and south through Central America and the northern part of South America.

Yet their numbers have steadily dropped in several Midwestern states. In Iowa, for instance, historic harvest data and wildlife observation surveys conducted by DNR staff and volunteers indicate a steady, downward trend over the last 25 years.

“It’s to the point now that it’s a pretty big concern because the population is so low that we’re at risk of losing this wildlife species out there,” said Vince Evelsizer, an Iowa DNR furbearer biologist. “And on top of that, there really isn’t very much research that has been done about the gray fox in the Midwest.”

Wildlife biologists from Illinois, Indiana and Ohio have noticed a similar decline and are looking for answers. Now researchers at state agencies in all four states are conducting studies, hoping to share what they learn to better understand regional trends.

Read the full story from Harvest Public Media and listen to Evelsizer discuss the research project to learn more about gray fox decline on IPR’s Talk of Iowa.

Gov. Kim Reynolds is sending a small group of Iowa law officers and dozens of Iowa National Guard soldiers to assist Texas authorities with border security.

This is the third time Reynolds has deployed Iowans to Texas. On Monday, 110 Iowa National Guard soldiers will start a month-long tour of duty with the Texas Military Department. Eight state troopers and two Iowa Department of Public Safety sergeants will also leave Iowa for a 28-day stint in Texas on Sunday.

“Texas faces nothing short of an invasion with historic levels of illegal immigrants,” Reynolds said in a written statement, adding that the Iowans she’s sending south will be “frontline” help for Texas.

All of the people the governor is deploying to Texas are volunteers and Reynolds said she will use federal pandemic relief money to cover their expenses.

Easter is this weekend, and Solstice Farm in Waverly has a head start on coloring eggs.

The farm has been around for just over five years and keeps between 180 to 200 chickens for their eggs.

Those birds are several different breeds, which means more than just different colored feathers: that makes each egg unique, as well.

Farm owner Mark Westbrock says that means his hens are taking care of his Easter prep.

“Blue eggs, green eggs, 364 days out of the year, they’re the most beautiful eggs out there, but you can’t really dye them, because they’re already colored.”

Westbrock adds that organic farming practices also help in bringing out the eggs’ richer colors.

The deadly collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge may have significant ripple effects in Iowa, as the port in Maryland is a vital link in the supply chain for getting Iowa’s commodities and a range of products to overseas markets.

Iowa U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley says he’s concerned that as long as that port is blocked by the wreckage and out of commission, the effects will be widespread.

“There’s a lot of heavy manufacturing and even some grain leaving Iowa through the Baltimore port, so it’s going to have a catastrophic impact on the economy.”

Grassley says it’s possible Iowa companies that need to ship their commodities or products overseas via the East coast can use another port, but most of them are farther away, which would likely mean higher costs.

Iowa lawmakers are gathering information about the $2 million Davenport paid to three former employees last fall.

In a state House oversight committee hearing, Rep. Brooke Boden, R-Indianola, called the situation “disgraceful.”

“I’m concerned about the waste of taxpayer dollars. With Davenport now entering into lawsuits with their own residents, with our state auditor’s office, we have $2 million that are unanswered for in what appears to be a complete lack of transparency. It’s perplexing to me.”

Davenport paid former City Administrator Corri Spiegel $600,000 for lost wages and $1 million for emotional pain and suffering, citing “harassment at the hands of a former city alderman.”

The Quad-City Times and area residents have asked the courts to mandate the release of documents explaining why the city agreed to these settlements behind closed doors.

The Iowa City Community School District is closing its smallest elementary school, citing continued budget shortfalls.

Over the last three years, the district has cut $24.8 million from its budget. Closing the school gets the district closer to meeting the $7.5 million in expenses it needs to cut over the next two years.

But school board President Ruthina Malone says an end still isn’t in sight. She says the state’s per-pupil funding isn’t sufficient to meet rising costs, citing rising insurance premiums, building costs and employee pay. Meanwhile, districts have been limited in the amount of money they can raise from property taxes.

“We have to make hard decisions to protect our programming for our students and our people.”

Budgetary pressure is forcing hard choices across the region. Last week, the Linn-Mar School District cut 50 people from its staff. The Highland Community School District in Riverside is considering transitioning to a four-day school week to cut costs and recruit talent.

The University of Iowa says it will continue to charge its graduate student workers student fees. This comes after the graduate students requested the UI drop these fees completely for workers. The union called on the public to boycott a fundraiser.

Like undergraduate students, graduate student workers pay mandatory fees that go toward a range of university costs like new construction projects and athletic facilities.

Hannah Zadeh, the president of UI graduate student union, said while fees appear to be a minor cost to the university, it’s not for workers.

“When you’re being paid as little as graduate workers are, paying hundreds of dollars in fees every semester is a really huge financial burden.”

Due to the state’s restrictions on collective bargaining, the union cannot bring up fees as part of contract negotiations with the Board of Regents.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the One Day for Iowa fundraiser had raised nearly $2 million.

The city of Waterloo is considering moving one of its rail yards to help make some of its lower income neighborhoods safer and more equitable.

Currently, one of the Canadian National lines cuts through Smokey Row, a predominantly Black neighborhood in the city.

The rail yard creates noise and air pollution, which has driven down property values for generations, and physically divides the neighborhood from the rest of the city. The average home in Smokey Row is priced at about $60,000, less than half of the rest of the city.

Community Planning Director Noel Anderson says a $750,000 study to move the yard could be the first step in fixing the problem.

“It’s a matter of looking at the larger impact on the whole neighborhood and how eliminating some of these problems could help the larger area.”

The railyard has been in the neighborhood for nearly a century.

Natalie Krebs

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IPR News

State Auditor Rob Sand says he’s concerned about the amount of time the Iowa attorney general’s office is taking to review its pause on paying for rape victims’ emergency contraception reimbursements.

State Attorney General Brenna Bird, a Republican, paused reimbursement for emergency contraception under the Crime Victim’s Compensation program when she took office in January 2023.

Her office says her policy, along with other crime victims programs, have been under review ever since. The office has declined so far to release any results of its ongoing internal investigation of the payments.

Sand, a Democrat, says Bird’s office has not asked his office to conduct an audit of the payments, and says he doesn’t understand why the payments were targeted for review. He expressed concern about the length of the review and Bird’s choice to call the investigation an “audit.”

“This is her decision on day one, to quit paying for emergency contraception for sexual assault survivors. And the word salad around that decision and around what is going on is nothing more than a way to reduce the clarity of that fact.”

In a statement, Bird’s office called Sand’s concerns “flat wrong” and said it is in the final stages of its audit.

Read the full story.

The Oskaloosa Community School District is planning to open the Oskaloosa Spirit Cafe on the downtown square in an effort to foster entrepreneurship and empower students with special needs.

High School special education teacher Sarah Deronde says the ultimate goal is to provide opportunities for all students to thrive and offer a meaningful contribution to society.

“It started off as kind of a dream for placement for my special education students, to give them the skills they need to get into our community, find jobs, get the skills that they need to be successful, create more sustainability in our community, those kinds of things, and it’s kind of just grown from there.”

Employment will be open to all students and adults in the community with special needs who want to learn skills, from basic jobs all the way up to management.

Deronde hopes to get culinary arts students involved in the cafe as well.

The walls of the cafe will showcase student art, and there will also be a “service wall” where students and others can advertise.

The cafe will have several soft openings in the months to come so students can get comfortable in their new roles. A grand opening is planned for sometime this summer.

Clear Lake High School is one of four school districts to receive a national award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for its efforts to improve the nutritional quality of meals for students.

Clear Lake reduced sodium in its lunch menu items by using spices, more fresh local foods and some low- or no-sodium products. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visited the district to deliver the award.

Vilsack credited Clear Lake for overcoming challenges to improve menu options.

”It’s difficult for schools with tight budgets. Oftentimes because of the pandemic, there were and continue to be supply chain challenges, so the nutrition folks at school do an amazing job.”

The USDA has provided billion of dollars of assistance over the last several years to help U.S. school districts improve the nutrition of school lunches. The department’s “Healthy Meals Incentives Recognition Awards” are designed to showcase schools that have made big gains with that support.

Clear Lake received an incentive grant last August, which it used to install a walk-in freezer, add a salad bar and purchase food processors.

An Iowa City man was sentenced to five years in prison for bringing a handgun to his child’s elementary school.

Brandon Jones, 32, walked into Grant Wood Elementary last November and demanded to speak with the principal, saying his child was wrongfully sent home. During an interaction, Jones unholstered a 9-millimeter handgun and handed it to someone he entered the school with, saying, “Hold my gun so I don’t do something stupid.”

Initially, Prairielands Freedom Fund posted bail for Jones. The bail fund said in a statement that the firearm was legal and when Jones realized he’d brought the handgun into the school he immediately asked his partner to remove it from the premises.

Johnson County Attorney Rachel Zimmermann Smith said the interaction created a “really scary situation” for school staff and students.

Jones will serve five years for one count of carrying weapons on school grounds and two counts of harassment in the first degree.

David Hilmers has been nominated for the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame.

Hilmers was a mission specialist on four shuttle missions, including the first after the Challenger disaster in 1986. The 74-year-old was born in Clinton and grew up in DeWitt.

Hilmers said he decided to join the Marines after finding a brochure on the ground during his junior year at Cornell College in Mount Vernon. He said joining the astronaut program was a similar experience.

“Here's a bulletin that comes across my desk. It says, ‘NASA is looking for astronauts’. It’s kind of reminiscent of that paper I picked up to go into the Marines, off the floor. It was something. I said, ‘Well, that seems like something that might be a good idea to try or at least put an application in.”

Hilmers had a PhD in Electrical Engineering, but always wanted to be a doctor. He earned his M.D. at age 45. Hilmers now lives in Australia with his wife, where the couple run a nonprofit dedicated to treating and preventing Hepatitis B.

In June, Hilmers will be formally inducted into the hall of fame at Kennedy Space Center in Houston.

Honeybees across the United States produced more honey last year than in previous years. The USDA says it’s the first time production has risen in three years.

Rainy, cool weather in some areas after years of drought likely drove 2023’s increase in production. Those conditions help plants grow, giving bees the nectar they need to make honey.

But Matt Lance, who manages about 350 honeybee colonies across Nebraska, points out that the latest boost is against a decades-long downward trend in honey production.

He calls the latest numbers “small potatoes” in the grand scheme of things.

“I would say, don’t look at the increase in honey yield as an industry thriving, it’s just a slight less headache than what it was before.”

Lance says factors like parasites and viruses, cheap, foreign honey and loss of flower-rich lands are challenging beekeepers across the country.

Read the full story from Harvest Public Media.

James Jordan

The late summer cicada buzz is starting a little earlier this year. The periodical cicada broods XIII and XIX (the Northern Illinois and Great Southern Broods, respectively) will emerge simultaneously from late April through June across much of the Midwest and South for the first time since 1803.

“It’s so infrequent that we’re able to observe something like this in nature,” said Zach Schumm, insect diagnostician at Iowa State University’s Plant and Insect Diagnostic Clinic. “The eastern half of the United States is the only location that has these periodical cicadas. So it’s a very unique sort of… ecological phenomenon.”

This co-emergence happens every 221 years, when Brood XIII’s 17-year cycle and Brood XIX’s 13-year cycle align. Brood XIX is the largest of all periodical cicada broods, and the last time Brood XIII emerged, Chicagoans had to get out their shovels to clear the carcasses.

Read the full story.

A Haitian-born University of Iowa professor who formerly worked in the country’s finance ministry is working to raise awareness about impending famine in the Caribbean nation.

Dimi Doresca worked for a time in Haiti’s finance ministry after graduating from Georgetown University, but left due to rampant corruption. He says two earthquakes, the COVID-19 pandemic and the assassination of Haitian President Jovanel Moise have left Haiti in the grips of criminal gangs who restrict the movement of food.

Speaking on IPR’s River to River on Friday, Doresca said his wife’s godmother tells them she can’t buy food at the market.

“Even if you have money in your hand — those who can afford to have money — you would go to the market to find…nothing, because products cannot come from outside Port Au Prince. There’s no transportation. Everybody is afraid.”

Doresca says Americans aren’t getting the entire story of what’s happening in Haiti, as international media can’t report from the gangs’ strongholds in and around the capital, Port-Au-Prince. He says it’s too dangerous for foreign journalists.

“You have to be a Haitian, to have people on the ground that you communicate with on a regular basis to hear stories like my wife was getting from her godmother in Haiti, to hear stories that I get from my former classmates that are on the ground in the country.”

Doresca is director of the UI’s Institute for International Business and an associate professor in the Tippie College of Business. He says the international community should involve Haitians living outside the country in the effort to broker peace and provide aid to the Caribbean nation.

Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District Rep. Ashley Hinson says she supports Congress’ $1.2 trillion federal spending package to prevent a government shutdown.

The package combines six annual spending bills into one package, with 70% of the money scheduled to go to defense.

Hinson says that’s one of the big reasons she’s supporting the package.

“I do believe defense is a key priority and program. When you look at what’s happening around the world right now, we need to make sure we’re providing a robust defense for our country. If we don’t have a safe and secure country, I don’t think we have anything.”

Hinson adds that part of that defense money will fund the largest basic military pay increase in over 20 years.

Keith Schneider

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Circle of Blue

Amid increasing scrutiny of a potential link between agricultural chemicals and cancer, a new report is generating controversy as it blames rising rates not on the toxins used widely throughout the state, but on something else entirely: binge alcohol consumption.

The Iowa Cancer Registry, a health research group housed at the University of Iowa, reported on Feb. 20 that Iowa has the second-highest and fastest-rising incidence of cancer among all states. An estimated 21,000 new cancer cases are expected to develop this year and 6,100 Iowans will die from cancer, said Mary Charlton, Iowa Cancer Registry director, in announcing the report.

Iowa, she said, has the highest rate of binge drinking in the Midwest, with 22% of residents reporting binge drinking, more than the national average of 17%.

Overall, Iowa has the fourth-highest incidence of alcohol-related cancers in the U.S., according to the report.

The assessment has drawn questions and sparked doubts, however, from state leaders and health and environment researchers who have been calling for a probe into how much the state’s agricultural industry may be contributing to the spread of disease.

Read the full story from Investigate Midwest.

The owner of a catering business and event venue in Sergeant Bluff is being named the Iowa Small Business Person of the Year by the Iowa district office of the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Cathy Bishop opened a restaurant called Aggies in the Sioux City suburb in 1994, but after several years, realized she had to shift to catering full-time to keep up with the demand.

In 2009, Bishop turned the restaurant into an event venue and immediately began hosting graduations, birthdays, retirements, weddings and funerals. Offering breakfast, lunch and dinner catering weekdays and multiple events on weekends, she’s continued adding members to her staff over the past 15 years.

“We have about ten that come every day. I have one that comes in at 4:30 every morning because that’s when she likes to get up, and then we have up to 50 people that we pull from for events, because if you have five parties, you have to have five different teams.”

A 1983 graduate of Texas A&M (where the mascot is the Aggies), Cathy worked for several years as a bank examiner, but her heart’s desire was to become an entrepreneur, which led her to the hospitality industry.

Bishop says her mottos and business practices are simple.

“I treat people the way I want to be treated. My dad was an entrepreneur and he taught me to do deals with a handshake and I’ve always done that. It’s always good to get involved in your community, supporting other people, helping other people get involved in starting new businesses. Small businesses are all in the same kind of boat and they need each other to help support each other.”

As the Iowa Small Business Person of the Year, Bishop will represent Iowa at National Small Business Week ceremonies in Washington D.C. in April, where she will compete for the National Small Business Person of the Year Award.

As the child care industry faces shortages across the state, the Waverly-Shell Rock School District is taking matters into its own hands.

Growth for the district over the past decade has meant more updated buildings, bigger classes and more kids. About 50 kids are expected in this coming fall’s preschool program, more than double last year’s enrollment.

Now, it’s looking to repurpose one of its old elementary school buildings to be a dedicated early education and preschool center, meaning no demolition or expensive construction.

District Superintendent Ed Klamfoth says the transformation makes perfect sense.

“Now, because of this vacancy, we’ve got an opportunity to expand preschool offerings for those that need it, so that’s what we’re looking at doing.”

That renovation comes just in time: preschool enrollment for the district is anticipated to more than double for the coming fall.

The commute could be dicey Friday morning across parts of northern Iowa, as forecasters say the region may get snow — starting Thursday night — along a coating of ice.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Craig Cogil says a Winter Weather Advisory is posted for cities including Mason City, Waterloo, Dubuque and Decorah, which could get anywhere from one to four inches of snow.

“The concern there is that some of the heaviest snow may be falling around the morning commute time. So, those folks that live across about the northern third of the state need to be aware of that as we head into work on Friday morning.”

Another, larger weather system is forecast to arrive on Sunday and could bring more precipitation to much of the state. Cogil says the second storm system is shaping up to be “vigorous.”

Some forecast models indicate the snowfall in segments of northern Iowa could be as much as six inches in that second storm, but Cogil says it’s not clear if the rain/snow line will be in Iowa or Minnesota.

“I would be prepared for winter driving conditions as you head into northern Iowa, particularly into Minnesota. It does look like the farther north you go, much worse conditions are going to be found.”

Central Iowa should see rain, with some thunderstorms possible Thursday night.

The long-range forecast calls for temperatures to climb back into the 50s by the middle of next week.

Iowa jails are not following state law in their collection of inmate money for medical services, according to an investigation by the Iowa Office of Ombudsman.

The investigation found some county jails, including those in Wapello, Scott and O’Brien counties, are taking money directly out of inmate commissary accounts before their conviction and without going through the courts.

Ombudsman Bernardo Granwehr says this practice violates an incarcerated person’s due process rights.

“We’re calling for the Department of Corrections to make a change. We had a constructive dialogue with the department and they understand what the problem is so we want to encourage them to take the step of amending the rule that is causing the confusion.”

Jails can charge adult inmates for medical services if they are convicted of a crime or sentenced for contempt of court for violating a domestic abuse order. But they still have to seek that money through the courts and cannot remove it directly from a commissary account.

Read the full story.

While many Iowans are excited about this week’s start of the college basketball tournaments, another tournament in a different sport will be held in Iowa starting Thursday.

Daryn Hamilton of Fairfield, vice president of the Women’s Professional Billiard Association’s board of directors, says the Fairfield Invitational is bringing 48 of the world’s most talented professional female billiard players to the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center.

“They’re literally coming from around the globe. Of the 48 players, maybe 30 of them are from here in the United States and different locations, but we have people coming from China. We have people coming from Europe, Bulgaria. We’ve got a gal coming from Germany.”

Spectators are expected from all over, too, as the best-of-the-best compete simultaneously on six tables.

The youngest competitors are just 12 and 14 years old. The tournament runs through Sunday and will feature some of the best women in the sport, including Kelly Fisher from England. Fisher, known as the “Duchess of Doom,” won the tournament the last time it was held in Fairfield in 2021.

While most of the college basketball world is focused on the NCAA tournaments this weekend, another — smaller — national contest kicks off Thursday in Sioux City.

The NAIA Women’s National Championship features 16 smaller colleges and universities. Tournament co-chair Corey Westra expects excitement surrounding Iowa star Caitlin Clark to attract more fans this year.

“It's just helped elevate the game for the women, and it's awesome. This Caitlin Clark effect is not necessarily new to us, but we're embracing it as well because we'll take new fans.”

Westra says he expects ticket sales to also increase due to two northwest Iowa teams taking part: Sioux City’s Briar Cliff and Dordt, which is located in Sioux Center.

Sioux City has hosted the tournament since 1998. On Friday night, the city will honor Grace Beyer, who broke the NAIA scoring record this season. The player for the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis scored almost 4,000 points during her career.

Americans can’t seem to find common ground on how to protect kids from mass shootings at school, according to the latest Grinnell College National Poll.

The poll laid out five ways that could best address the problem, including banning assault rifles and arming teachers. None of the five gained a majority of support among the 1,005 people surveyed.

Political Science associate professor Peter Hanson, director of the poll, says the lack of consensus on the issue is discouraging.

“As a society, despite the fact that people are horrified by this problem, they don’t know what to do. And the underlying politics seem calcified; no one’s moving, no one's persuading each other and in the meantime these shootings keep happening.”

Hanson spoke Wednesday on IPR’s River to River. According to data from the K-12 School Shooting Database, there have been 38 incidents of a school shooting so far this year. A bill to arm Iowa school staff is working its way through the Statehouse.

One rural healthcare clinic in northern Iowa is rethinking its care strategies post-COVID, but it’s waiting for some help from insurance providers.

The Belmond Healthcare Clinic is turning increasingly to forms of remote care to better serve its 3,000 patients, whether through video, over the phone or online.

However, some insurance providers aren’t yet recognizing telehealth as covered care. The clinic’s Business Development Coordinator Robyn Hardman says that leaves the nonprofit clinic fronting the cost.

“There are a lot of times where you’re trying to serve your patients and give them that remote access, and at times we’re having to cover the cost of that because the insurance payers haven’t caught up. We’re not getting paid for these services, but it’s patients who critically need it.”

Nearly 70% of the Belmond clinic’s patients utilize some form of remote health care.

John Pemble

A bill that could potentially ban TikTok, which passed the U.S. House last week, is now arriving in the Senate, where some observers say it faces a graveyard.

But Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley says he’d like to see restrictions placed on the popular social media app, and he believes the legislation will eventually pass in the Senate.

“I am not that pessimistic about it. I think it’s going to not move as quickly as it did in the House, but nothing moves quickly in the United States Senate. I think it’s going to have a hearing in the Commerce Committee before it gets out of committee.”

The House passed the bill last Wednesday (352-65). It would force ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, to sell the app or face being banned across the U.S.

Iowa 2nd District Rep. Ashley Hinson backed the bill, saying ByteDance is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. Grassley agrees that TikTok is a threat, and fears how potential data mining could be used to harm the U.S.

“We all know that China is a competitor to the United States, and a potential danger to the world.”

Given its wide user base, Hinson said she fears TikTok could even be used to manipulate elections.

West Liberty Foods is laying off more than quarter of its Iowa workforce in April.

The 260-person layoff was announced in February and mostly impacts the West Liberty facility’s turkey slicing lines.

West Liberty Foods was one of sandwich chain Subway’s top meat product vendors.Subway announced in 2022 that it was moving towards slicing its own meat in its more than 22,000 stores, which cut demand.

The company is working with laid off workers for reassignment opportunities elsewhere in the company and in the community.

West Liberty Foods employs 865 Iowans. It also runs facilities in Illinois and Utah.

Sheila Brummer/IPR News

A northwest Iowa school district is working to change extracurricular policies after a hazing controversy.

A full room of more than 75 people attended Monday night’s Hinton School Board meeting, where the board officiallyapproved the resignation of high school wrestling coach Casey Crawford. He will stay on as a math teacher.

Police investigated after a video on social media showed a wrestler from Hinton High School being held down and tasered. The incident took place at a hotel during a tournament in Coralville in early February. Parents say seven freshmen were targeted.

The district is now looking at providing more training for coaches and strengthening policies for student activities.

Holly Keegan told the board she wants to make sure a wrong is made right. She and other parents met with administrators to help develop new policies.

“There can be no more blame on the freshman parents. No more saying ‘we’re making a bigger deal than there is.’ There must be a mutual understanding.”

In addition to updating the handbook, the district is hiring a new high school principal and athletic director after both resigned earlier this month.

Superintendent Ken Slater said the district met with parents to come up with suggestions to improve the district’s handbook. He says the new changes will likely be finalized this summer.

A University of Iowa men’s basketball student manager has taken a plea deal in a sports gambling case.

Evan Schuster was originally charged with tampering with records involving sports betting, which included betting on his own team.

But according to a court filing, Schuster pled down the original charge to gambling under the age of 21 — the difference between a serious misdemeanor and a simple misdemeanor.

Schuster’s lawyer, Leon Spies, and the Johnson County Attorney’s Office were not immediately available for comment on the case.

The charges originated from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation’s probe into sports wagering at two state universities. Using the app FanDuel, Schuster placed nine bets on the Iowa team using his father’s name.

Schuster will pay a fine of $645.

A new report has found wages for Iowa certified nursing assistants and home health aides grew less than 5% from 2019 to 2022.

The report by Iowa Caregivers, which represents direct care workers, looked at state data, including surveys the organization did with Iowa Workforce Development.

It found that the median wage for certified nurse aids increased just 62 cents to $14.42 per hour.

Iowa Caregivers Executive Director Di Findley says stagnant wages directly contribute to the worker shortage.

“These individuals are grossly underpaid and they're not being paid a wage that's consistent with the importance of the work that they do.”

The report comes as many Iowa nursing homes are facing chronic staffing shortages of direct care workers.

A fertilizer spill in western Iowa has killed large numbers of fish and other species along a stretch of the East Nishnabotna River.

Some 265,000 gallons of liquid nitrogen leaked from a tank at New Cooperative in Red Oak just over a week ago, on March 9, after a valve was left open.

John Lorenzen, a fisheries management biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, says the DNR sampled from bridges along the river, from Red Oak 50 miles south to the state line.

“What we found was, obviously, multiple species and length of dead fish. We found dead mussels, frogs, a snake and some earthworms. Basically, anything aquatic had the potential to be impacted.”

Lorenzen says his counterparts in Missouri have also observed dead fish in the Nishnabotna River. He says some fish may have been able to seek refuge in tributaries, and many larger species are still overwintering in the Missouri River. He says the Nishnabotna will eventually repopulate, though there could be some setbacks depending on the weather.

Courtesy of Harrison County Sheriff's Department

This year, wildfires have already charred thousands of acres in the Great Plains. Wildfires caused evacuations in parts of Oklahoma, Nebraska and Texas, where the Smokehouse Creek Fire began on Feb. 26 and is the largest wildfire in the state’s history.

Some experts say they are seeing more intense fires. Ben Bohall, a Nebraska Forest Service public information officer, says his state used to have a bad wildfire season about once every five years, but since 2022, the season is longer and more extreme.

“We're not really having fire seasons anymore. We're just having fire years.”

Bohall says about 90% of the state’s wildfires are caused by humans. For instance, Nebraska’s recent 70,000 acre-fire sparked when a mower hit a rock.

Read the full story from Harvest Public Media.

Sheila Brummer/IPR News

Two new housing projects are underway in Sioux City to help ease a housing crunch. But more units are needed.

The city is helping developers finance two apartment building projects, including an old school. Neighborhood Services Supervisor Amy Keairns says that demand extends throughout the state.

“There will be 71 total units of affordable housing created, but there is such a need in our community for affordable housing.”

She says she wishes they could do more.

“We're limited on the dollars that we receive. And we're always seeking out other opportunities for additional funding and additional partnerships to try and try and do even more as far as new housing units and services as well.”

The two projects will also include a total of eight units for the unhoused, including outreach services.

Sioux City kicked in more than $1.2 million in federal COVID-19 relief money to help pay for the apartments that will be ready for people to move in next year.

The Iowa Finance Authority statewide estimates that by 2030, there will be a shortage of 55,000 rental homes for lower-income Iowans. Currently, more than 20% of the lowest earners spend more than half of their income on housing costs.

Read the full story.

Woodbury County’s new law enforcement center won’t be ready to open next month. Officials say another construction issue is to blame.

The new jail located in Sioux City did not pass a state inspection this week.

In a news release, the Woodbury County Law Enforcement Authority, the group overseeing the project, says additional mechanical work needs to be done and blames an engineering firm for the problem. The jail's new completion date is now planned for mid-May.

County officials declined any interviews due to potential litigation. However, Chief Deputy Tony Wingert says he is eager to make the move. He says some people are waiting more than a year to serve their sentences due to overcrowding at the old jail.

“We want to get in there because we know that it'll be a much safer place for our staff, for our inmates, for the public.”

Wingert says the new jail would have room for more than 500 beds — more than double the current size.

The jail was originally scheduled to open six months ago.

The Iowa House Ethics Committee has unanimously dismissed a complaint against Rep. Dean Fisher, R-Montour, alleging that he abused his power by voting for taxpayer-funded private school scholarships and then starting a new private school and serving as board president.

Barb Kalbach of Dexter filed the complaint on behalf of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement.

The committee voted 6-0 to dismiss the complaint, with Republicans and Democrats saying Fisher’s actions didn’t violate the House ethics code.

Kalbach says she believes this decision has opened the door to unethical behavior by lawmakers.

“Fisher’s actions are self-dealing and self-servicing. Some would say they’re corrupt. And the House Ethics Committee is letting him get away with it. And that’s shameful.”

In a statement, Fisher says the complaint was a politically-motivated attempt to smear him. He says it’s wrong to use the mechanisms of government to attack someone based on a policy disagreement.

Read the full story.

After nearly two decades in office, state Rep. Sharon Steckman, D-Mason City, will not seek reelection.

Steckman is a Democrat who represents District 59 in northern Iowa. She’s a retired teacher and has held the office for 16 years.

In that time, she says she’s become a staunch defender of the state’s public education system. She is the ranking member of the House Education Committee.

She says part of the reason she’s stepping down is the promise she sees in Iowa’s next generation of politicians.

“A lot of the new folks that came into our caucus are young, excited about Iowa. They’re passionate, they’re enthusiastic and I would love to see someone in north Iowa step up and fill those shoes up here.”

Steckman’s district includes roughly 32,000 Iowans, stretching from Plymouth at its northernmost to Thornton in the south, including Mason City.

Gov. Kim Reynolds unveiled a new mobile workforce office on Thursday that will travel around the state to help connect out-of-work Iowans with new jobs.

Reynolds says it’s part of her initiative to focus on “re-employment.” She says her bill passed in 2022 to limit unemployment benefits to 16 weeks maximum has reduced the average amount of time Iowans get benefits to just under ten weeks.

"That is the shortest amount of time in more than 50 years, and significantly better than the national average of more than 14 weeks.”

Reynolds says the mobile workforce office will help with the state’s ongoing efforts to alleviate the state’s workforce shortage. She says about 60,000 jobs are open, many in the health care field.

The 32-foot workforce bus cost nearly $500,000 and was paid for with a mix of COVID relief funds and other federal grants.

More than $500,000 in federal money has gone missing in Dubuque County.

The county was passing the money to the City of Dyersville for an American Rescue Plan-funded project. Dubuque County officials believe the Dyersville city email was compromised and used by a third party to transfer $524,000 outside the county.

County Auditor Kevin Dragotto says the Dubuque County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the incident.

“We will continue to release all the information and be completely transparent in the process so that the public and the taxpayers can have a clear picture of what transpired.”

In 2022, the FBI reported that phishing attempts netted $52 million.

A recent report from the Department of Energy has found Iowa churches are below national averages of renewable energy use. Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Decorah is helping to change that.

The church is one of just 17 houses of worship in Iowa that utilizes solar energy, according to the report.

In the past year, the church has devoted itself entirely to switching over to renewable energy. It replaced five furnaces with 102 solar panels and is now operating at net zero.

Jim Fritz, a member of the congregation for about 30 years, first proposed the idea after powering his home with solar energy. He says three of the church’s rooftop furnaces were failing, and all five were “ugly.”

“You either go back to what you’ve been doing for the last however long and continue to spew emissions, or you can do something creative and clean up an eyesore.”

The switch to solar will allow the church to offset an estimated 25 tons of carbon emissions per year.

A federal appeals court has officially ended a lawsuit brought by a group of Iowa parents against a state law passed in 2021 that banned schools from issuing mask mandates.

The families argued that schools must be allowed to require masking to protect their children who have disabilities that make them vulnerable to respiratory illnesses.

On Tuesday, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the families do not have legal standing to sue the state.

In a statement, Gov. Kim Reynolds said prohibiting school mask mandates was the right thing to do and she would do it again.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Hispanic maternal mortality rates in the U.S. are rising. The most recent data published in 2021 shows the rate at 28 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, compared to 11.8 in 2018.

In 2021, Iowa reported 13% of pregnancy-related deaths were self-reported as Hispanic but did not include race information.

One of the largest sources of federal funding for maternal-child health comes from Title V, a federal block grant program. Title V provides funding to all 50 states for the improvement of public health services and systems for mothers, children and families.

Title V is different from other grants. It’s a “block” of money from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) that is distributed among states. State Title V offices allocate their portion of the funding.

As part of the block grant agreement, all subcontractors list any health gaps in the community and what they are doing to address them. All states also must list their health priorities each year.

Each state is also required to show what percentage of its target population is being served by the Title V program. Iowa, as well as many other states, report serving 100% of pregnant people. However, this year, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri did not specifically state addressing racial or ethnic health disparities as a priority for pregnant women and maternal health.

Read the full story from the Midwest Newsroom.

The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that Republican lawmakers don’t have to disclose their emails as part of a lawsuit over sweeping changes to Iowa’s voting laws.

The League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa sued the State of Iowa challenging a law passed three years ago that gives Iowans less time to vote in person and by mail. The group asked a district court judge to compel several Republican lawmakers to provide their communications with others about the process of passing that legislation.

A Polk County District Court judge ordered the lawmakers to provide those documents to LULAC’s lawyers, which was appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court.

The court determined lawmakers’ communications about the legislative process and legislative intent can be shielded, and that the documents requested in the case aren’t relevant to LULAC’s claims that the voting law changes are unconstitutional.

When Koch Industries announced a $3.6 billion deal in December to buy OCI’s Iowa Fertilizer Co. in far southeast Iowa, Jason Sporrer said he was shocked.

The sales manager for a co-op that provides agricultural products and services in western Iowa said the facility had brought much-needed diversity.

While still pending review by the Federal Trade Commission, some agricultural leaders and lawmakers say a finalized sale could put pressure on an already volatile market, creating a monopoly and higher prices for farmers. In January, several agriculture groups sent the FTC and the Department of Justice a letter calling on both federal agencies to thoroughly investigate the sale.

Democratic lawmakers in Iowa also are raising concerns, pointing at more than $500 million in local, state and federal tax incentives that OCI received before opening the plant in 2017. At a press conference earlier this month, Rep. Megan Srinivas, D-Des Moines, said while taxpayers helped fund the facility, questions remained about what would happen to the plant’s 260 employees.

In an email to Harvest Public Media, a representative of Koch Fertilizer said the subsidiary is focused on completing the transaction and operating the plant in Wever.

“This acquisition is consistent with the significant investments we have made in our business to increase production, improve reliability and expand our customers’ access to the products and services they need,” the statement said.

Read the full story from Harvest Public Media.

The Iowa House Ethics Committee has unanimously voted to dismiss an ethics complaint against Rep. Jeff Shipley, R-Birmingham.

Sara Hayden Parris of Johnston filed the complaint last month. She alleged Shipley used social media to personally defame her. Parris wrote in her complaint that Shipley’s online comments constituted a violation of the House ethics code.

Rep. Anne Osmundson, R-Volga, who chairs the House Ethics Committee, says lawmakers disagree.

“It really seemed politically motivated, and he had not violated any of the House Code of Ethics rules so that’s why it was dismissed.”

Parris is president of a nonprofit that distributes free books with sexual content that Republican lawmakers have targeted with legislation. Shipley has accused her of giving out obscene materials and wrote on social media that Parris should be under criminal investigation.

Travel by planes and automobiles was up across Iowa in 2023. Iowa Department of Transportation spokesperson Stuart Anderson says airplane travel led the way.

“We did end 2023 setting a record for passenger counts at our eight commercial service airports with 4.6 million passengers, which was higher than 4.5 million, which was in 2019.”

Travel on the state roadways in the last year was also above the pre-pandemic level.

“We did end the year slightly below the 2019 December, but overall we are 1.7% higher in vehicle miles of travel than in calendar year ‘22, and one tenth of a percent higher than calendar year 2019.”

Anderson says there was also an increase in rail shipping of some products that had slowed during the pandemic.

“We did see motor vehicle and motor vehicle parts shipped on rail increased by 12.3% over the previous calendar year. Petroleum products on rail went up 11%.”

However, grain product shipment on rail fell almost 10% compared to 2022, largely due to less exports of grain overall.

Madeleine Charis King

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IPR

Sap season in northeast Iowa typically runs from the end of February to the end of March. With the past two weeks bringing warmer temperatures across the region, maple sap harvesters have had to start their harvests nearly three weeks early.

Floyd County Conservation Director Adam Sears is one of those harvesters. He says the season is the earliest start he’s seen in ten years.

"Normally, next week’s when we start thinking about tapping trees, not ten days ago. Everything’s just moved forward, but we’re hoping we get a little longer season this year, rather than just an earlier one."

Floyd County Conservation typically harvests close to 10,000 gallons of sap per season, which yields about 200 gallons of maple syrup.

Gov. Kim Reynolds has requested a Presidential Disaster Declaration for 18 Iowa counties following the snow storms in early January.

The governor is requesting funding under the FEMA’s Public Assistance Program for Adair, Black Hawk, Cedar, Clinton, Davis, Delaware, Dubuque, Jefferson, Johnson, Jones, Linn, Lucas, Montgomery, Polk, Scott, Story, Wapello and Washington counties after record-breaking snowfall from Jan. 8th-14th.

A joint federal, state and local damage assessment estimated the significant snowfall resulted in more than $8 million worth of damage. The program would help those counties recover costs related to snow removal, de-icing, salting and sanding of roads.

A 40-year-old Webster City man has been arrested and charged in connection with a fatal accident last fall.

Dustin Humlicek has been charged with homicide by vehicle operating while intoxicated, operating while under the influence and driving with a suspended license. The accident happened at about 3 a.m. on Sept. 2nd near Webster City.

Authorities say after Humlicek failed to stop at a stop sign, his pickup entered a ditch and came to rest in the yard of a home. Humlicek and a passenger, 48-year-old Kevin Beightol of Webster City, were taken to Webster City’s hospital for treatment, then transferred to hospitals in the Des Moines area.

Beightol, the passenger in the pickup, died later that same day. A preliminary hearing for Humlicek is scheduled for Feb. 20 in Hamilton County Magistrate Court.

Waverly’s property valuation increase over the past year was about $150 million, but due to one of the steepest rollbacks in two decades, the taxable total is only $14 million. The city will see about $1 million disappear from its budget in the coming fiscal year.

City administrator James Bronner says that could spell the end for one longstanding city department.

"We’ve had internal engineering for a long time, but that’s another one that we’re going to have to take a look at, possibly going outside to a firm to handle all day-to-day operations."

Bronner says Waverly may outsource its legal counsel as well. Cities across the state are facing a 10% drop in property tax income next fiscal year due to the rollbacks.

An investigation is underway after an incident involving wrestlers in a northwest Iowa school district.

Parents showed up during Monday night’s school board meeting in Hinton to speak for and against the suspension of head coach Casey Crawford.

This comes as Coralville police say they are investigating an assault involving students in the Hinton School District. Two parents say their sons were held down and tasered at a hotel in Coralville during the state dual wrestling tournament.

A woman named Holly is one of the parents.

“I hope none of you ever trust the way that I did because I wouldn't want any of your children to go through what mine went through, especially what this so-called wrestling family is.”

The parents who attended Monday night’s school board meeting said some of the wrestlers were also suspended, and all agreed what happened to the two students was horrible. The incident was recorded on a cell phone and shared on Snapchat.

The superintendent of the Hinton Community School District said he can’t comment on confidential student or personnel matters, but the district is committed to providing a safe and positive school environment.

The latest edition of the “Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll” from Iowa State University Extension finds a few shifts in thoughts about climate change.

J. Arbuckle oversees the poll and says they first asked the climate question in 2011, and added it again this past year.

“That climate change is due to human activities that was increased from ten percent to 15% over that time period. And then let’s see, the climate change is occurring, and equally due to natural human causes went from 35 to 40 percent."

The climate change question has been asked two other times and he says the number of people who believe it is an issue dropped in the recent poll.

“In 2013 and 2020, there are actually a greater proportion of farmers expressing belief that climate change is occurring, then did the same in 2023,” he says. ” So there’s been a kind of decline between 2020 and 2023, in that, in that metric, whether or not climate change is happening.”

The complete 2023 poll and past polls are available on the Iowa State University Extension website.

Iowa Congressman Zach Nunn says former President Trump’s suggestion that he might encourage Russia to attack European allies who don’t fulfill their NATO obligations is similar to President Biden’s decision to end sanctions against Iran.

“When we have a situation where we have a president, sitting or former, that doesn’t stand up to an adversary or threatens our allies, that we are doing a disservice to our own national security right here at home,” Nunn told reporters after a news conference in Des Moines on Monday.

Trump has long criticized NATO allies for relying on the U.S. and failing to spend enough on their own defense. This weekend, Trump said if a big European country were delinquent in its NATO obligations, he’d encourage Russia to do whatever it wishes because the U.S. would not protect a country that hadn’t paid its bills. Provoking Russia is “bad behavior,” according to Nunn.

“I think anyone who would threat [sic] our allies is doing a disservice to our country,” Nunn said. “…Anyone who’s going to, you know, stash intelligence material in their garage or in their compound — these are things that people need to be held accountable for. I don’t care if they’re the sitting president or the former president.”

Nunn, a Republican from Bondurant, has served 20 years in the various branches of the military and is currently in the Air Force Reserve.

Madeleine Charis King

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IPR

The Iowa Supreme Court has reversed a lower court ruling involving evidence obtained in a drunk driving case.

The district court sided with driver Colby Laub, who argued a Boone County deputy wrongfully obtained a search warrant to get him to give a breath test that proved he was driving drunk. Laub said the deputy should have used the state’s implied consent procedure.

Under implied consent, a driver can refuse to take a test, but will automatically have his or her driver’s license suspended.

The Iowa Supreme Court overturned the district court ruling, saying the use of a warrant did not violate Laub’s right to due process as the implied consent procedure is not the exclusive means of investigating OWI cases.

Lucius Pham

The latest voter registration data suggests thousands of Iowans switched their party registration to Republican so they could participate in last month’s Iowa caucuses.

Voter data from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office shows there were about 16,000 more registered Republicans in Iowa on Feb. 1 than there were on Jan. 2. The Iowa Republican Party Caucuses were held Jan. 15.

The data suggests about 5,500 Democrats and 6,000 independents switched their party registration to Republicans in order to participate in the caucuses that night.

City tax levies for libraries and museums across Iowa will shrink in the coming years. That could make expanding a Cedar Valley art museum more difficult.

Over the past 35 years, the Hearst Center for the Arts in Cedar Falls has grown: It currently houses 500 works of art in 600 square feet of storage space.

The museum has planned a 12,000-square-foot expansion, but will probably have to raise most of the money for the project privately due to expiring city tax levies.

Cory Hurless, the cultural programs supervisor at the center, says support for the expansion has been positive. Still, she worries about how many projects Cedar Falls residents are willing to fund.

“My question is: The community has supported some expensive quality-of-life things over the past few years, and would they be willing to support another one?”

The cost for the expansion would run about $6.3 million.

Immigrant rights group Escucha Mi Voz Iowa has been invited to address their concerns over a handful of immigration-related bills with the International Relations Committee Monday morning.

The goal of the committee is to foster international cooperation, trade and communication between lawmakers and foreign governments. Escucha Mi Voz President Guillermo Trevino said it’s the perfect forum for immigrants to share their stories.

“When we hear someone, we’re less likely to dislike and misunderstand that person and see why they came.”

Trevino says, if passed, the bills will have a negative impact on the state’s economy.

“We’re already struggling to keep people. Here in Iowa, one of the bad jokes is ‘behind the corn, our second biggest export is our young people.’ If this were to pass, we might lose the worker that we so desperately need.”

Guillermo says undocumented immigrants remain a big part of the state’s economy and says the Legislature should be finding ways to make it easier for them to contribute rather than excluding and criminalizing them.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This post has been updated to reflect that Escucha Mi Voz Iowa was invited to address their concerns Monday morning. The original post stated they had been invited to address their concerns Friday morning.

Natalie Krebs

/

IPR File

A new report by the ACLU of Nebraska has found the Federal Immigration Court in Omaha is routinely violating immigrants’ legal rights.

The report was based on the observation of more than 500 pretrial hearings at the court, which handles many cases of Iowa residents.

The report found concerns over the short length of the hearings, immigrants not being advised of their rights as well as inadequate interpretation and representation from immigration attorneys.

Dylan Severino, with the ACLU of Nebraska, says the findings show that the court is failing to universally provide due process.

“Immigration court judges make consequential decisions, often with life or death consequences, and it's critical that they provide immigrants full and fair participation in their own hearings.”

Brian Blackford, an immigration attorney based in Omaha, says the nation’s immigration court system is facing a large backlog of cases and shortage of judges.

“But that should be no excuse for not providing proper rights advisements to clients in removal proceedings, especially those who do not have the luxury of having an attorney at that point in time.”

The report recommends changes such as using telephone interpretation services and creating more government programs to support legal representation.

Read the full story.

Congressional lawmakers have introduced legislation that calls on the Secretary of Agriculture to conduct more research on the possible threats to farmers and vulnerabilities in supply chains.

Kim Cooper, the senior director of Government Affairs for the North American Millers' Association, says one of reasons her members support more focus on cybersecurity in food production is because mills operate 24/7, 365 days a year to make things like flour and everyday foods.

“To give you an idea in terms of volume, a regular mill can put out over a million pounds of flour daily."

Several lawmakers have said food security is national security. So far, the bills have received bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.

Katarina Sostaric/IPR News

Statehouse Democrats have some questions about a multi-billion-dollar acquisition of a Lee County fertilizer plant by a Koch Industries subsidiary.

Dutch company OCI Global announced the $3.5 billion sale in December. As the deal awaits regulatory approval, Rep. J.D. Scholten, D-Sioux City, and the rest of his caucus are asking regulators to investigate the impact consolidation could have on fertilizer prices.

Koch Ag & Energy Solutions already owns one fertilizer plant in Fort Dodge.

“When you go out and ask any farmer, they’re being squeezed on the input side and the market side. Ask any row crop farmer, and fertilizer is one of the number one costs they’ll bring up as an issue,” Scholten said. “We are exploiting our farmers having to pay record costs when it comes to fertilizer.”

In a letter, House Democrats question what the future is for the plant’s 260 employees and the $500 million in incentives used to locate the plant to Weaver in 2017.

Read the full story.

Northeastern Iowa’s biannual Point-in-Time homeless census concluded last week. Rural census-takers and shelters such as the Northern Lights Alliance of Shelters have a tall task each year to keep the count as accurate as possible due to sparse populations and the distance between them.

The executive director of the coalition of nearly 20 area shelters, Jesse Germundson, says during this January’s census, he counted nearly 50 people inside the shelter during the six-hour census, even while the outdoor tally was down.

Germundson attributes this, in part, to a reframing of shelter policy during the colder months.

“We have rules governing sobriety and compliance for how often someone can come to our shelters. But during the winter months, we lift a lot of those rules.”

The count is used by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department to help determine how to distribute resources.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety issued a statement Wednesday on the investigation into illegal sports betting by athletes at the University of Iowa and Iowa State.

The statement comes after a lawsuit by one of the athletes questioned the constitutionality of the use of electronic surveillance to track sports gambling apps on the campuses without a warrant.

The statement says DPS believes the evidence was obtained in a “constitutionally permissible manner” to conduct the surveillance required by state law.

DPS says they conferred with legal counsel to ensure lawful access to and use of the technology. It says two county attorney offices also reviewed all relevant investigative information before making the ultimate decision to file charges in the case.

The statement says the department traditionally does not comment on active investigations or litigation in an effort to ensure these matters are appropriately addressed in the justice system rather than the media.

A western Iowa man has been arrested and charged with kidnapping his son.

Police say Brandon Duong took his son Bryson from school in Jefferson Tuesday afternoon and led police on a high-speed chase and standoff that ended in northwest Iowa’s Plymouth County.

The Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation says Duong does not have legal custody of the boy.

An Amber Alert was issued after the boy’s disappearance. Duong turned himself in after negotiating with officers.

Planned Parenthood North Central States says it’s facing provider shortages and rising costs from charity care, plus challenges with low insurance reimbursement rates and the COVID-19 pandemic.

It plans to eliminate 27 open positions and nine current staff positions regionally, and consolidate clinics in Minnesota and Iowa.

Planned Parenthood says the Urbandale location will be consolidated into its central Des Moines clinic later this year as part of its plan to expand abortion access at that location.

Last year, Planned Parenthood announcedit was closing three of its facilities in Cedar Falls, Council Bluffs and the south side of Des Moines amid staffing and budget concerns. At the time it said it would expand services at many other regional locations.

The operator of Iowa City’s The Daily Iowan has purchased two area weekly newspapers from Dubuque’s Woodward Communications, which operates The Telegraph Herald. 

Student Publications Inc. is probably best known for its award-winning student newspaper. It has bought the Solon Economist and Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun for an undisclosed price.

Daily Iowan publisher Jason Brummond says the weeklies will put out their first copies under new management next week.

“This isn’t The Daily Iowan coming in and telling these papers what to publish or what to do. They’re still going to be in charge of their papers and their content and what we’re hoping is we can add a layer of resources behind them that they have not had.”

In addition to content sharing, Brummond says the University of Iowa’s journalism program is committing interns and even classes focused on telling stories in these communities.

Brummond says all employees — including both weeklies’ editors — have received raises as part of the transition. He says they’re keeping the Mt. Vernon paper’s brick-and-mortar location.

Student Publications Inc. is independent from the University of Iowa.

Former chief judge of the Iowa Court of Appeals and mayor of Fort Dodge Albert Habhab died over the weekend of natural causes at the age of 98.

His nephew William Habhab, a Fort Dodge attorney and magistrate in Webster County, says his uncle Albert may have retired many years ago, but still contributed to the community of Fort Dodge where he lived all his long life.

“If there was ever a cause that needed a voice, he was always available to lend it.”

Albert Habhab was born to Lebanese immigrants in 1925. During World War II, he rescued another soldier during the Battle of the Bulge. Habhab later opened a law office and served as mayor from 1960 to 1974.

After a time on the bench as a district court judge, former Gov. Terry Branstad appointed Habhab to the Iowa Court of Appeals in 1987. A decade later, he became chief judge, before retiring that same year.

A celebration of life will take place on Friday.

Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions is teaming up with one of the nation’s largest biofuel producers, Sioux Falls-based POET, in what is expected to be the largest carbon dioxide sequestration line in the country.

POET announced Monday they’re joining Summit's proposed Midwest Carbon Express project, a 2,000-mile, $5.5 billion pipeline system that would pull liquid carbon dioxide from bioethanol facilities in Iowa and five other Midwest states.

The CO2 would travel to a site in North Dakota for underground sequestration. According to the companies' joint announcement, POET's 12 Iowa bioprocessing plants and five plants in eastern South Dakota will join Summit Carbon's pipeline project. POET had previously partnered with Navigator CO2 Solutions, but that company scuttled their pipeline project in the face of regulatory hurdles.

Summit is waiting to hear from the Iowa Utilities Board on a construction permit for the pipeline and whether the company can use eminent domain on the pipeline route.

A few Johnson County officials are pressuring County Attorney Rachel Zimmermann Smith to drop charges against seven protesters charged with disorderly conduct for obstructing the street and for interfering with police.

Jon Green, a member of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors, which has budgetary authority over the county attorney’s office, says while the interfering may set a bad precedent, it’s a matter of conscience.

“It’s not that they necessarily shouldn’t be pressing charges. It’s that if you are going to charge people, you should charge everybody or nobody. You know, there were upwards of 100 protesters at the Cole event.”

Janet Lyness, who was the Johnson County Attorney for 16 years, didn’t take issue with elected officials expressing their opinions to the county attorney. But she drew the line at officials taking action against the county attorney for doing her job.

“The political views of the county attorney or recorder – they can certainly be supportive of actions taken by people – it doesn’t mean they can ignore their duties and their job. They still have to uphold the law, even if they disagree with it.”

Green has also called on the Johnson County Democrats to censure Zimmermann Smith for pursuing charges. They’ll vote on his resolution Thursday.

The charges stemmed from a protest opposing the appearance of a California activist who speaks against gender-affirming care for minors. Only one protester, Tara McGovern, rejected a plea deal and is going to court.

Iowa’s 1st Congressional District Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks faces a challenge from the right this year.

Republican challenger David Pautsch is the owner of an advertising agency and hosts the Quad Cities Prayer Breakfast.

He says Miller-Meeks didn’t support Rep. Jim Jordan’s bid for Speaker of the House, voted to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and supported a bill to protect the right to same-sex and interracial marriages in federal law. He also says Congress should ban abortions nationwide and believes Miller-Meeks has been too quiet on the subject.

Pautsch says her actions are incompatible with the future of the party.

“I will always vote on what absolute Judeo-Christian morals provide us. That’s what our country was founded on. And we need to return to that intentionally.”

Miller-Meeks has repeated her stance on abortion since the Dobbs decision: Abortions should be illegal with exceptions to protect the life of the mother or in instances of rape or incest.She has cosponsored a bill that would ban abortions nationally after 15 weeks. That would ban 94% of abortions, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control.

In 2021,Miller-Meeks cosponsored a bill that would ban abortion without exception. However,The New York Times reported this month that she did not sign on to a 2023 version.

Miller-Meeks beat a challenge from the right in a previous election. The incumbent comes into 2024 with $1.8 million in the bank.

Outside the Republican primary, Democrat Christina Bohannan is also running for the seat.

The Waterloo Community School District is considering merging its two biggest high schools into one. The plan has made some residents uneasy.

Waterloo East and Waterloo West’s buildings are a combined 160 years old. By the start of the 2028 school year, the district hopes to combine its nearly 2,000 high schoolers under one roof.

The plan also involves renovating both the old schools for lower grades, which raises some financial concerns for residents like Michael Chapman.

“I’d love to see a new building, that’d be great, but we’re not putting in a new building. We’re actually spending the same money twice, which is where my concern lies. No matter which way it was sugarcoated, it still seems like twice the amount of money’s going to be spent.”

Renovation costs for both high schools are comparable to the new facility. A combined school would make Waterloo’s the tenth largest high school in Iowa.

Zach Boyden-Holmes

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The Des Moines Register

This summer’s 51st running of the statewide bicycle ride RAGBRAI will take a southern route.

Organizers say it’ll be the hilliest RAGBRAI ever, with more than 18,000 feet of climb, including daily climbs for cyclists of at least 3,000 feet.

Perhaps to compensate, the ride will also be 434 miles, making it the eighth shortest route.

Running July 21 through July 27, RAGBRAI will start in Glenwood this year and end in Burlington, with overnight stops in Red Oak, Atlantic, Winterset, Knoxville, Ottumwa and Mount Pleasant.

Last year, ride organizers footed the bill for each overnight town’s musical performances, but this year, RAGBRAI will instead give each town $50,000 to spend, including to book their own entertainment.

A legislative forum in North Liberty Sunday was packed to discuss the governor’s proposed changes to Area Education Agencies.

AEAs provide special education, professional development and curriculum assessment to families, teachers and school districts.

There were a number of AEA employees present, like Teran Buettell, a behavior and autism specialist for the Great Prairie AEA. She says the AEA got her the services her son, a non-verbal child, needed.

“Unlike decisions made for one child, this decision will have long-lasting effects for tens of thousands of children.”

Parent Britney McDonald had a special education plan to work on her speech when she was a kid. Now, the local AEA is helping her 10-year-old daughter catch up on reading skills.

McDonald says she’s concerned about the impact changes to the AEA could have on the support that has helped her children.

“She works so hard on her sounds and practicing because the AEA was able to come into the school and have the evaluation for her and to get the resources she needs. It’s just amazing.”

Since its release, Gov. Kim Reynolds has walked back the scope of her original proposal to limit AEAs to providing special education services. Now, she would allow AEAs to continue providing general education services that request them, so long as the state approves.

Fruits and vegetables grown on urban farms and gardens have a carbon footprint that’s six times larger than conventionally-grown produce, according to a new study from the University of Michigan.

Infrastructure increases urban farms’ carbon footprint. It takes a lot of carbon to build the raised beds, compost bins and sheds that a city garden needs. Meanwhile, conventional farms are massive economies of scale and efficiency.

There are a couple bright spots: for example, urban tomatoes beat out conventional tomatoes, which are often raised in carbon-intensive greenhouses. But Jason Hawes, a lead author on the study, says conventional produce loses to urban growers when it travels by air.

“Asparagus is the one that we highlight as a case where things are flown in from, for example, Chile. That's a really big carbon investment that you could offset by using urban agriculture.”

Hawes says the research can help urban growers take steps to mitigate their carbon impacts.

“Urban agriculture is not inherently going to sort of save the planet. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't be designed in such a way that it's good for the climate. It just takes conscious intentionality.”

He added that urban farms have other benefits. Studies have found they improve mental health, food security and social networks in their communities.

The study suggests city farms preserve their infrastructure as long as possible and try to use recycled materials to build their raised beds and sheds.

State policies in Iowa should do more to promote the science of reading, according to a recent report comparing reading laws around the country.

The science of reading is another name for research that reveals how children learn to read.

The D.C.-based National Council for Teacher Quality recently found Iowa’s standards in that area are weaker than most other states.

Executive Director Heather Peske says it’s appropriate that Iowa lawmakers are now proposing changes.

She says one thing Iowa should do is list phonics and the other core components of the science of reading as part of education standards. And, she says, the state should publish a list of the best reading curriculum.

“It kind of serves almost like it’s a consumer protection device. Many districts don’t have the capacity to review curriculum materials themselves. Some of them might not even have much of an expertise in this.”

She says teaching candidates should have to pass a stronger exam to test their knowledge of how to put research on reading into practice.

“The stakes are very high for children, and we need to make sure that teachers have the knowledge and skills before they get into classrooms to be able to effectively teach them to read.”

Gov. Kim Reynolds has said she would like to make a test called Foundations of Reading a requirement for Iowa teacher preparation programs.

Peske says it’s one of the tests strongly aligned with the science of reading.

A bill in the Iowa Senate would list the components of the science of reading in education standards for kindergarten through third grade.

A liberal journalist who blogs about Iowa politics was granted press credentials for the Iowa House of Representatives Wednesday, days after she filed a lawsuit alleging the Republican-controlled House was denying her her First Amendment rights.

The result brings an end to a yearslong fight by Laura Belin, who operates the Bleeding Heartland blog, to gain access to the House floor as a member of the press. Belin called it a “victory for press freedom” and said she hoped it would make public officials “reluctant” to deny access to reporters.

The lawsuit was brought Friday in federal court by the Institute for Free Speech on her behalf against House Chief Clerk Meghan Nelson, though the rejection dates back to 2019 and Nelson’s predecessor, Carmine Boal.

Nelson declined to comment.

Belin has covered Iowa’s state government on the blog for more than a decade and now works as a reporter for a radio station based in Ames. She is open with her liberal views, often posting opinionated critiques that target Republican lawmakers and policies.

“This case underscores the First Amendment principle that public officials cannot manipulate press credential policies to play favorites or suppress critical coverage,” Courtney Corbello, an attorney with the Institute for Free Speech, said in a statement.

In 2019, the Iowa House and Senate adopted policies related to press access after scrutiny over the handling of Belin’s case. Those policies have been revised year after year, and the Senate has since reduced press access by denying reporters work space on the chamber floor in 2022.

A report released by Iowa Health and Human Services earlier this month proposes big changes to public health models. For some counties, that could hurt the quality of care.

One of the proposed changes would consolidate county public health offices into ten to 15 regions across Iowa, each serving at least 30,000 people.

That has some public health directors worried. It could mean local public health workers would become state employees.

Kaitlin Emrich, the public health director for Black Hawk County, worries that the quality of care could diminish the further it gets from the local level.

“It would have a significant impact on how we serve our communities. Obviously we’d lose some decision-making and potentially some workforce changes along with that as well.”

An Iowa Court of Appeals judge has upheld a lower court’s decision in favor of newspaper chain Lee Enterprises.

Former Davenport City Administrator Craig Malin alleged the newspaper libeled him in articles published in 2014 and 2015, which limited his employment opportunities.

While that case was working its way through court, a 2019 editorial was published by the chain referencing Malin’s “backroom wheeling and dealing” and saying the lawsuit threatened to chill aggressive journalism. Malin called for the court to issue a summary judgement.

The district court reviewed the cast and found no merits to his claim of defamation.

Lee Enterprises is one of the largest newspaper operators in the state, owning the Quad-City Times, Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier and the Sioux City Journal.

A new property tax law will soon start phasing out more than $100 million in tax levies. That change could hurt services such as libraries.

House File 718 was passed last year and will go into effect across the state this July. The bill will provide property tax relief and limit local government spending, and for cities like Waterloo, that means less money for the library.

David Eckert, the library’s director, uses the levy for staffing, which is a quarter of his budget. He says if he loses his staff, his library could lose programs and accreditation.

“We have an accreditation process that we go through every three years, and that would knock us down from a Tier 3 to a Tier 1 if I go below a certain number of hours that we have to be open.”

Tier 1 libraries are not considered accredited by the state. The Waterloo Public Library received about $640,000 from the levy last year.

The Iowa Legislature is looking to act on a plan that does away with about a quarter of the state’s more than 250 boards and commissions. Advocates for the homeless worry the move would impact funding for some of the most vulnerable.

The proposal to cut or merge boards is part of Gov. Kim Reynolds’ plan to reorganize state government passed by the Legislature last session.

Tim Wilson, the chair of the Iowa Council on Homelessness, one group on the list for elimination, said on IPR’s River to River that without advocates working together on the issue, there’s a risk that opportunities to apply for federal grants would come and go without someone taking action.

Some other boards that could be impacted are the Iowa Drug Policy Advisory Council, Local Food and Farm Program Council and the State Building Code Advisory Council.

There’s also a recommendation to remove a gender balance requirement for boards.

Gov. Kim Reynolds told Iowans gathered for an anti-abortion prayer rally Monday that she’ll “never back down” from banning abortion.

The governor also highlighted her proposals for helping pregnant women.

Last summer, Reynolds signed a fetal heartbeat law that bans most abortions as early as six weeks of pregnancy. It’s held up in the courts and can’t be enforced.

In the meantime, Reynolds is asking lawmakers to extend Medicaid health insurance for mothers to a year after giving birth instead of the current 60 days. But she would also tighten income requirements for pregnant women to qualify for Medicaid coverage. She told anti-abortion activists gathered at the Statehouse it will help build “a robust culture of life.”

She says her proposed state-run network that would connect people in need to nonprofits would also help people navigate unintended pregnancies.

Worries over foreign ownership of U.S. farmland don’t appear to have ebbed in the new year.

Across the Midwest, state lawmakers are proposing ways to prevent foreign companies and individuals from buying agricultural land. New bills have been filed in several states, including Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and Michigan.

In recent years the issue grabbed headlines and politicians' attention, after Chinese companies bought farmland near military properties in North Dakota and Texas. Last year saw a big uptick in legislation, with proposals introduced in more than 35 states and ten new states adding restrictions.

This year, many proposed laws are specifically targeting “foreign adversaries,” including countries like China and Iran. There are also multiple policy proposals related to farmland near military installations.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is also looking to increase enforcement. The state has some of the strongest foreign ownership laws in the country, but in her Condition of the State address early this month, she called for legislation to raise penalties and improve transparency around the issue.

While tightening restrictions on foreign ownership of land is a hot topic, others have seized the moment to bring a spotlight to corporate and investor ownership of farmland.

Rep. J.D. Scholten, D-Sioux City, is crafting a policy he hopes will increase transparency to address both foreign and corporate ownership. He said that’s especially important as a generation of older farmers retire and sell their farmland in the coming years.

The legislator said he’s working to find Republican colleagues to partner on a proposal this session.

Read the full story from Harvest Public Media.

Clay Masters

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IPR

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has become the second Republican to drop out of the race for the party’s presidential nomination following Monday night’s Iowa caucuses.

Hutchinson says his message of being a principled Republican and telling the truth about frontrunner Donald Trump did not sell in Iowa. Hutchinson finished sixth with support from just 0.2% of caucusgoers.

Fourth-place finisher Vivek Ramaswamy suspended his campaign Monday night.

Sheila Brummer

Turnout exceeded expectations at a caucus site in Sioux City, where organizers estimated more than 350 people showed up at Western Iowa Tech Community College.

That’s an increase of 25% from four years ago.

About a third of the crowd were first-time caucusgoers, including 19-year-old Aydin Cheht, who chose to caucus for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis after hearing the caucus captains speak.

“The supporter for him was really good at speaking clearly, and I just kind of supported a lot of what that was. There were quite a few candidates, though, that I was wrestling between. So, it was a hard choice.”

Cheht says even though he was a bit stressed about being around a big crowd, he felt the process moved along calmly and smoothly.

Sioux City is a deeply red part of the state, but former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley did attract a small number of Democrats, including Chandler Todd.

“It was kind of underwhelming, you know, she just flipped to second in the recent Des Moines Register poll, and it's kind of upsetting to see that she didn't have the biggest turnout tonight.”

Todd says he believes Haley is the candidate who can reach across the aisle, and if she isn’t the nominee, he’ll vote for a Democrat in November.

Haley came in third place at the Iowa caucuses with 19% of the vote. Former President Donald Trump easily won with 51%.

R. Doc Zortman, who served as caucus captain for Trump at a precinct location in Sioux City, says he’s not surprised the former president did so well.

“He understands how important law enforcement is in the military. And no one has been a better friend to the military or law enforcement than Donald Trump.”

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley closed caucus night in third place with 19% of the vote.

Speaking in West Des Moines, she opened her speech by congratulating former President Donald Trump for winning.

But she says if Trump and President Joe Biden are the eventual nominees, their rematch in the November election will be a nightmare.“Trump and Biden both lack a vision for our country's future, because both are consumed by the past, by investigations, by vendettas, by grievances,” she said. “America deserves better.”

In her speech, Haley did not acknowledge Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who came in ahead of Haley by about 2 percentage points.

Read the full story.

High profile endorsements were not enough to push Ron DeSantis to the front of the pack in the Iowa caucuses, but the Florida governor is claiming momentum in the GOP presidential race after a second place finish.

DeSantis landed 30 points behind former president Donald Trump in the caucus results, but managed to edge out former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley by 2% in the race for second.

DeSantis told supporters in West Des Moines Monday night that his campaign has new energy going into the New Hampshire primary.

“In spite of all of that that they threw at us, all of them against us, we’ve got our ticket punched out of Iowa.”

The DeSantis campaign was upset that multiple news outlets declared Trump winner of the caucuses so early in the night. They said some Republican voters saw the race was called for Trump while they were still in the process of voting.

Read the full story.

Lucius Pham

Former President Donald Trump won Iowa’s Republican caucuses Monday night. His record-breaking margin of victory matched the high expectations set by polling ahead of the caucuses.

Trump was declared the winner just half an hour after the caucuses started, before his supporters could even arrive at his caucus night watch party.

Later in the night, when it was clear he won about half the vote, Trump thanked his supporters in downtown Des Moines.

“This has been an incredible experience. The people have been -- this is the third time we’ve won. But this is the biggest win. They said well if you win by 12% that’s a big win that’s gonna be very hard to do. Well I think we’ve more than doubled that I guess, tripled it maybe.”

Trump won the first contest in the presidential nominating process as he faces 91 felony charges across four separate indictments, some related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

He says it’s time for the country to come together. He congratulated his primary opponents and called them smart and capable.

Read the full story.

As part of her Condition of the State address last week, Gov. Kim Reynolds called on legislators to tighten laws governing foreign ownership of farmland in Iowa. Among her proposals is requiring more extensive reporting by foreign entities, including ownership structure and a complete list of landholdings in the U.S. Reynolds also wants to hike penalties for failing to comply with these requirements and expand the state attorney general’s subpoena powers to investigate foreign landholders.

Bryan Whaley, CEO of the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association, says producers support closing any loopholes in the law.

“It really is a food security and national security issue. As well as the opportunity for our young producers to have the opportunity to own some of this land, or to use some of this land to get their operations started as we think about the next generation of farmers and ranchers here in the country.”

Jennifer Zwagerman, director of Drake University’s Agricultural Law Center, says Iowa already has some of the strictest laws in the nation governing foreign ownership of farmland. She says many states are tightening such laws with a focus on China and other countries deemed hostile to the U.S. However, she worries making laws too restrictive may deter multinational corporations from investing in Iowa.

Lucius Pham

Iowa Senate Minority Leader Pam Jochum has announced she’s not running for reelection this year. The Democrat from Dubuque has been in the Legislature for three decades.

In a statement this Friday morning, Jochum said it’s been an honor to serve and that she’s “excited to pass the torch to the next generation of leaders who will champion a brighter future for Iowa.”

Jochum says she will focus on fighting for Iowans during this legislative session and on getting more Democrats elected to the Iowa Senate this year.

Republicans hold a supermajority in the Iowa Senate after the 2022 elections. Last summer, Democrats ousted Sen. Zach Wahls over his staffing decisions and voted Jochum into the top spot.

Read the full story.

Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Register

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PDEM

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds gave her seventh Condition of the State Address on Tuesday evening, establishing her priorities for the 2024 legislative session. Here’s what she proposed:

• Deeper tax cuts. Under current law, Iowa’s income tax would drop to a flat 3.9% at the start of 2026. A new plan would bring Iowa’s top income tax rate of 5.7% for 2024 down to 3.65%, retroactive to the beginning of 2024. In 2025, that would drop to 3.5%. 
• Raising minimum teacher salaries to $50,000, up from $33,500. This would also set a minimum salary of $62,000 for teachers with at least 12 years of experience. She also proposed a $10 million merit-based grant program to reward high-performing teachers.
• Overhauling special education. The state’s Area Education Agencies would be opened to competition. Reynolds wants to cut teacher training and media services from Iowa’s AEAs so that special education would become their only focus. School districts could continue to use the same AEA to support special education, but they could also opt out and use a different AEA, or work with a private company.
• An $8.9 billion state budget. This would be a 4.3% increase from the current year, far below the state’s projected revenue, and her staff estimates there would still be a $970 million budget surplus with the proposed tax cuts.
• Reducing unemployment taxes. 
• Expanding Medicaid health insurance coverage for new moms. This would bump it up from the current 60 days post-birth to 12 months for people who make less than $42,000 per year.
• Allowing Iowans to get birth control over the counter.
• Four weeks of paid parental leave for state workers.
• Reducing the number of state boards and commissions by 43%. This also includes eliminating the requirement that boards have an equal number of men and women.

Grant Gerlock

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IPR

Iowa Republican Statehouse leaders say they’ll have discussions about how to prevent more school shootings after a deadly shooting at Perry High School last week, but they’re not committing to passing new gun control laws.

Hundreds of high school students came to the state capitol Monday to call on lawmakers to pass gun safety laws. House Speaker Pat Grassley says he’s willing to look at their proposals, but said expanding gun rights has been House Republicans’ driving principle.

Grassley says he wants to focus on enhancing school security and protecting children’s mental health.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver says he’s still gathering more information about the Perry shooting.

“I think you have to step back and take a look at what is the reason this happened in Iowa. What is the reason — we’ve now had a couple of school shootings over the last couple of years — and look at the reasons why it’s happening before you just rush to judgment on any bill we might pass or any policy change you might do.”

Whitver says he doesn’t know if the Senate will take up a House bill this year that would allow Iowans to have a gun in their car while driving on school property. The leaders made their comments on IPR’s River to River.

Read the full story.

The Administrative Rules Review Committee, a legislative state board that oversees state agency rulemaking, met on Monday to review rules related to Iowa’s new abortion law that passed last session.

The law bans abortion in Iowa as early as six weeks of pregnancy, and is currently not in effect as it’s been blocked by a legal challenge. The Iowa Supreme Court is expected to rule by June as to whether it can be enforceable.

Rep. Rick Olson, D-Des Moines, was one of two Democrats who commented. He told state officials the rules should better define the use of the word “prosecutable” in regards to how doctors determine if they can perform an abortion due to rape.

“Maybe we should define ‘prosecutable' by way of a definition that would encompass what you just indicated, that there would be sufficient facts, sufficient identities, things like that. Or do we just leave it up to the practicing physician to understand what that word means?”

Former President Donald Trump campaigned in Iowa over the weekend on the three-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump has continued to make false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him as he campaigns in Iowa ahead of the caucuses.

He also says, without evidence, that his supporters who broke into the US capitol and violently tried to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden as president were patriotic and peaceful.

Trump calls his supporters who have been convicted of crimes the “J6 hostages.”

“Nobody’s been treated ever in history so badly as those people. Nobody’s ever been treated in our country. But I think, you know they always show, I think it was 1,000 people coming down. Remember the words, ‘march peacefully and patriotically,’ right?”

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart says Trump is trying to rewrite history and deny his role in inciting a deadly insurrection.

Trump also told Iowans he’ll be caucusing with them on Jan. 15. But he’s not an Iowa resident, so he doesn’t meet the Republican Party’s requirements to caucus.

Read more on Trump's latest visit to the state ahead of the caucuses.

A Cedar Rapids commission has delayed deciding whether to allow the Cedar Rapids Community School District to build a higher-occupancy school where one of its elementary buildings sits.

For years, the school has planned to demolish Harrison Elementary and build a larger consolidated elementary school in its place. But demolition opponents would rather see a new addition on the existing building.

Cedar Rapids City Council’s Ashley Vanorny sat on a school district facilities committee. She says the school district is essential to future growth in the city, but putting the commission’s delay in context of contentious meetings in May and October, she says residents have been clear that their preference is to add onto the school, not demolish it and start from scratch.

“This is the third signal to the school board that this is not the direction the community supports or wants to go in,” she said.

The school’s director of operations Chad Schumacher says after November’s failed bond for middle and high school facilities, the district is reconsidering its plans for all facilities.

“We felt the school would be responsible in stopping or holding on moving forward with construction at Harrison until we could have a full picture of what that plan looked like for K-12 facilities,” he said.

Schumacher says whether the elementary is completely rebuilt or additions are added, the property will need to be rezoned.

For the third time in five years, agricultural trade in the United States will be at a deficit — when a country imports more than it exports.

As of November, the U.S. imported $20 billion more in agricultural products than it exported in 2023, which would set a record for biggest deficit in a calendar year in nearly a century if the trend continues through the last month of the year.

For some farmers, this year’s big deficit is a sign that trade has taken a hit and other countries may be out-trading the U.S. However, some economists argue there are logical explanations behind what has created such an eye-popping deficit — including rising imports, a strong American dollar and basic supply and demand.

Read more from Harvest Public Media about the U.S. agricultural trade deficit, and whether there’s cause for concern.

Four years after the last census, almost a dozen small communities in the Midwest are going to be counted again in hopes of getting a new grocery store or more state funding to build roads, fire stations and parks.

Eleven small cities in Illinois and Iowa are the only municipalities so far to have signed agreements with the U.S. Census Bureau for a second count of their residents in 2024 and 2025, in a repeat of what happened during the 2020 census. The first year in which the special censuses can be conducted is 2024.

With one exception, city officials don’t think the numbers from the original count were inaccurate. It’s just that their populations have grown so fast in three years that officials believe they are leaving state funding for roads and other items on the table by not adding the extra growth to their population totals. Some also believe that new results from a second count will open up their community to new businesses by showing they have crossed a population threshold.

The cities in Iowa paying for a Census Bureau-run second count — Altoona, Bondurant, Grimes, Johnston, Norwalk, Pleasant Hill and Waukee — are fast-growing suburbs of Des Moines. The reason special censuses are popular in Iowa is because the state uses the once-a-decade head count as the official population when it comes to funding based on population size, said Gary Krob, coordinator for the State Data Center at the State Library of Iowa.

Read more about how several Midwestern cities are going to be counted again like it’s 2020.

A leader of the fatal drive-by shooting at Des Moines East High School in 2022 has been sentenced to 70 years in prison.

The Polk County Attorney’s office says 18-year-old Octavio Lopez Sanchez Jr. pleaded guilty in August to second-degree murder and two counts of willful injury.

The shooting left East High student Jose Lopez dead and students Kemery Ortega and Jessica Lopez Torres critically injured. They were part of a group of teens outside the school when multiple gunshots were fired from three vehicles driving past. Prosecutors say Lopez Sanchez was driving the lead car.

Ten teens were charged in the incident. All have pleaded guilty. Two have not been sentenced yet.

Natalie Krebs

Authorities say a student was killed and five others were injured at a shooting at the high school in Perry Thursday morning. According to law enforcement authorities, the shooting happened just after 7:30 a.m.

Mitch Mortvedt with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said at a press conference Thursday afternoon that the shooter has been identified as 17-year-old Perry High School student Dylan Butler. Mortvedt says Butler was armed with a handgun and a pump action shotgun.

“Once inside, they located multiple individuals with gunshot wounds. Officers immediately attempted to locate the source of the threat, and quickly found what appeared to be the suspect, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. As additional officers responded, a systematic search of the school took place. Officers located, during the search of the school, an improvised explosive device.”

Mortvedt says the device was neutralized. He says a sixth grade student died from their injuries. One of the injured is a school administrator.

Read the full story and follow our liveblog for updates.

One of northeast Iowa’s most diverse neighborhoods has formed an action committee to bring its parks back to life.

There are nearly 15 languages spoken between the 1,300 residents in Waterloo’s Church Row neighborhood.

Over the past several months, those residents have formed a committee to express their concerns about park safety to city officials.

Stephanie Shavers, the neighborhood services coordinator for the city, says it’s the neighborhood’s parents who have been the most vocal.

“A lot of neighbors were like, ‘I don’t have any place to send my kids to play. If I send them out, it’s either too far from our house or the park isn’t safe.’ There’s trash, there’s glass, there’s all that stuff.”

Cleanup is already underway in a nearby park. The committee plans to raise money this spring for playground equipment, basketball hoops and shelters. Church Row has the highest concentration of children in the city.

The rebuilding of a Dubuque County landmark, the Centennial Cross, is scheduled to start soon.

Also known as the Blue Cross, it’s located in the town of Key West, about ten miles south of Dubuque.

Centennial Cross Inc. President Tim McCaffery said the cross has been part of the skyline in the Dubuque area since 1937, built in commemoration of the 100-year anniversary of the archdiocese.

Construction is expected to last four to six weeks. About $150,000 of the $350,000 needed to pay for construction and future maintenance of the cross has been raised.

The current cross is 75 feet tall and has been blocked from sight for a number of years by trees. The new cross will stand at 137-feet tall and will have LED lighting on both sides.