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Governor gets bill targeting Iowa bars that are a public safety nuisance

News

April 15th, 2022 by Ric Hanson

(Radio Iowa) – The legislature has sent the governor a bill that gives local officials a shot at getting a temporary court order to immediately shut down bars that are the site of frequent fights and gunfire. The bill would let city and county attorneys sue a bar for creating a public safety nuisance and get a temporary injunction that would close the bar until after the conclusion of a trial. Representative Cindy Winckler, of Davenport, says the current process of revoking the state liquor license to get the bar closed takes too much time.  “Local control is important,” Winckler says.

Representative Ross Paustian, of Walcott, says over a two-year period, police were frequently called to a bar in downtown Davenport.  “I think it’s unconscionable to allow a business with more than 2000 calls for service to remain open,” Paustian says. “House File 2340 will help cities deal with this public safety problem.”

Davenport officials made four unsuccessful attempts to get state officials to yank the liquor license for Shenanigans Irish Pub in downtown Davenport. The bar closed at the end of 2019 after the landlord terminated the lease. If the governor approves the bill, cities and counties could seek to a temporary court order to shut down bars where there’s been an assault, illegal use of guns or at least three riots over the course of a year.

Field of Dreams developer says iconic site won’t be lost

News

April 15th, 2022 by Ric Hanson

(Radio Iowa) – The chief operating officer of the group which now owns the Field of Dreams movie site says the plans they have announced for development there will not take away from the past and future memories. The Thursday announcement of an 80 million dollar investment by “Go the Distance Baseball” has generated a lot of comments. C-O-O Dan Evans says they plan to build nine new ballfields, dormitories for teams, a hotel, and other phased-in improvements. “The Field of Dreams is a great place. And people have had some grand plans through the years and for whatever reason, it just didn’t come to fruition,” he says. “We wanted to make sure we were in a place where we could make an announcement knowing that this was going to move not only to the finish line but in a situation where it would be I think the greatest baseball softball destination in North America.”

He says they waited to make the announcement until they had all the design, engineering studies, renditions with the architects, and the financing questions answered. “We wanted to make sure the property looks and acts the same. So whoever wants to come to see the Field of Dreams movie site is not going to see a movie site that is compromised,” he says. The site came back into the national spotlight after Major League baseball held a game at a field built near the site. Evans says the landscape allows them to build there without impacting the image that fans already know.

“If you’re on the Field of Dreams movie site if you had been in the Major League stadium this year for the game, or in August, upcoming, you would not be able to see the build,” according to Evans. “And that was absolutely an urgent thing for us. We didn’t want to do anything that altered the pristine image of the Field of Dreams. And we believe we’ve accomplished that.” Evans says they want to eventually have the field become the home of high school state championship games. “We would love to we would love to be the site of the finals for both the baseball and the softball, high school tournaments here in Iowa. We want to be Iowa’s epicenter of baseball and softball,” he says.

Evans says that fits in with what they want to accomplish. “You know, we’re pushing our cards, our chips into the middle of the table, simply because we think what is there, is there a better venue than ours will be in the future. We’d love to share our facility with the youth of Iowa. And we can’t think of a better venue than that one,” Evans says. He says all the fields will be surrounded by corn to bring the feeling from to the original field to them. “We want to make baseball and softball a vehicle for kids to improve their character, learn agriculture experience, rural Iowa, but also perhaps see the game as a way to progress through a university education,” he says. “And then what we have is we have a better society, we have better kids that are able to contribute more.”

He says nine baseball-softball fields to the north end of the property will be ready for play in the summer of 2023.

Adair County Sheriff’s report, 4/15/22

News

April 15th, 2022 by Ric Hanson

(Greenfield, Iowa) – Adair County Sheriff Jeff Vandewater, Friday (Today), reported on three arrests that took place this week. There were two arrests on Monday:

  • At around 12-a.m., 42-year-old James Bernard Block, of Cumberland, was arrested in Adair on an Adair County warrant for Failure to Appear on a Theft in the 4th Degree charge (a Serious Misdemeanor). He was released Tuesday afternoon on a $1,000 cash or surety bond. Also arrested at the same time in Adair, was 42-year-old Brandon James Wilson, of Council Bluffs. He was wanted on an Adair County Felony warrant charging him with three counts of Burglary in the 3rd Degree. Wilson remains in the Adair County Jail on a $10,000 cash or surety bond.

At around 12-a.m. Tuesday, 30-year-old Bryan Dean Schultz, of Greenfield, was arrested in rural Greenfield on an Adair County warrant for Domestic Abuse Assault/2nd offense (an Aggravated Misdemeanor). He was later released on a $2,000 cash or surety bond.

Unemployment rate drops

News

April 15th, 2022 by Ric Hanson

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Workforce Development says the labor force increased in March and the unemployment rate went down. The unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a percent in March to three-point-three percent. I-W-D says the labor force increased by that same amount in March compared to February. The number of Iowans with a job was up by 10-thousand, which is more than 39-thousand more than one year ago. I-W-D says despite those positive numbers a different seasonally adjusted survey sent to employers shows 15-hundred jobs lost in March. The agency says this decline marked the first drop since August 2021 and was due to cutbacks in private service industries

State using federal pandemic rent assistance to cover housing costs for Afghan refugees

News

April 15th, 2022 by Ric Hanson

(Radio Iowa) – The director of the Iowa Department of Human Services says state officials have visited with some Afghan families directly to confirm they are getting essential services like housing and food assistance. Kelly Garcia’s statement comes after a Des Moines Register investigation found some families living in extended-stay hotels in central Iowa were running out of food and could not contact their caseworkers. Garcia says her department is working directly with resettlement agencies. “We, I think, have broken open all of the challenges that they’re experiencing,” Garcia says, “and have…reestablished that connection of a direct line to us, so that we can problem solve for them.”

Governor Kim Reynolds says resettlement agencies, not the state, are directly responsible. “If they don’t share any information with us, we don’t know,” Reynolds says, “so that’s why my team proactively met with all the refugee resettlement agencies prior to one, very few, coming into the state so that we could say: ‘You have the information. You make the decisions, but we want to help.'” Reynolds says part of that help has come as state officials redirected emergency rent assistance from the 2020 pandemic relief package.

“We actually called the federal government and got the O.K. from them. There’s only one other state that has done that,” Reynolds says. “It’s working in Cedar Rapids. It’s working in Le Mars. We’ve had great outcomes with them working with the state.” About 900 Afghan refugees have been resettled in Iowa so far.

(UPDATE 4/15/22) Temporary closure of Iowa 83 between Iowa 173 and U.S. 6 in Atlantic now begins on Thursday, April 21

News

April 15th, 2022 by Ric Hanson

Atlantic, Iowa – In an update to our previous report, the Iowa Department of Transportation’s Creston Construction Office today (Friday), said repairs to the Iowa 83 bridge over the East Nishnabotna River 1.1 miles west of the junction with U.S. 6 in Atlantic requires closing Iowa 83 between Iowa 173 and U.S. 6 from 8 a.m. Thursday, April 21 until 5 p.m. on Thursday, June 16, weather permitting.

During the project, traffic will be detoured around the work zone using Glacier Road, Echo Road, 620th Street/Olive Street, U.S. 6, and Iowa 83. Permitted oversize loads are prohibited. A 12-foot lane-width limit will be in effect.

NE man sentenced in Iowa to 13-1/2 years for Meth distribution

News

April 15th, 2022 by Ric Hanson

COUNCIL BLUFFS, IA – The U-S Attorney’s Officer for the Southern District of Iowa reports a man from Omaha, Nebraska, 22-year-old Humberto Felipe Mancinas, was sentenced today (Friday) in Council Bluffs federal court to 162 months (13-1/2 years) in prison, for Possession with Intent to Distribute Methamphetamine. His term of imprisonment will be followed by five years of supervised release. According to court documents, Mancinas pleaded guilty to the charge on October 22, 2021.

On March 12, 2021, Mancinas was stopped by law enforcement while driving in Fremont County, Iowa. During the traffic stop, a K-9 was deployed and indicated narcotics were in the vehicle. A search located approximately ten pounds of methamphetamine. Law enforcement then conducted a second search of a residence outside of Sidney, owned by a relative of Mancinas and where Mancinas had left just prior to the traffic stop, and located an additional seventeen pounds of methamphetamine.

United States Attorney Richard D. Westphal of the Southern District of Iowa made the announcement. The Fremont County Sheriff’s Office, Mills County Sheriff’s Office, Omaha Police Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations Transnational Organized Crime Task Force investigated the case. This case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.

Mills County Sheriff’s report, 4/15/22

News

April 15th, 2022 by Ric Hanson

(Glenwood, Iowa) – The Mills County Sheriff’s Office reports two recent arrests. At around 11:35-p.m. Tuesday (April 12), 23-year-old David Glen Combs, of Council Bluffs, was arrested at Highways 34 and  59, for Driving While Barred (Bond: $2,000). And, a little after 9-a.m. on Wednesday, 21-year-old DeSean Maurice McVay, of Waverly, NE., was arrested at the Mills County Sheriff’s Office, on a warrant for Domestic Abuse Assault. He was being held without bond in the Mills County Jail.

Kanawha cleans up after storm

News, Weather

April 15th, 2022 by Ric Hanson

(Radio Iowa) – Residents in Kanawha have returned back to a somewhat normal life after a tornado moved through the area. The Tuesday tornado damaged trees roofs and garages in the city and surrounding area. Police Chief D. J. Martinez says that the cleanup has gone well. Most of the damage was tree limbs that littered the area.  “We had a bunch of volunteers come in yesterday and help with everything. We loaded everything up and hauled it out to the north end of town to the trucking location, just to get everything out of the way,” he says. Forecasters at the National Weather Service continually updated the track of the storm and issued warnings once trained spotters assessed the situation. Martinez says that was extremely helpful.

“I think everybody was pretty well informed the night of and they did a good job with everything on Facebook, radio stations, and everything, keeping people aware of what was coming,” Martinez says. “Obviously, we thought it was gonna miss us but it ended up coming back. So I thought everything else went pretty well and afterward everybody was ready to be helpful. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s a little too helpful right at the time of the incident, but the next day it went awesome.”

Martinez says Kanawha residents got help picking up the pieces after the storm from several neighboring communities.

Monday is the federal tax filing deadline

News

April 15th, 2022 by Ric Hanson

(Radio Iowa) – Monday is the deadline to file your 2021 federal tax returns to avoid penalties and interest. I-R-S spokesman, Christopher Miller, says electronic filing remains the best option. “It’s even more important this year to file electronically because of some of the backlogs due to the pandemic and so we definitely want to encourage people not to file on paper if they can all avoid it,” Miller says. Miller says e-filing returns are more accurate. “If there are no issues with an E-filed return you can generally expect to get a refund in less than 21 days if you choose direct deposit. So that’s something we want people to be aware of,” he says. Miller has a couple of last minute tips.

“The biggest thing to remember this year is to keep the letters that the I-R-S sent you that show how much you received for that third stimulus payment or those advanced child tax credit payments,” Miller says. “Make sure you keep those letters handy because you’re going to need those to file an accurate return.” He says a majority of people now file electronically. “Paper returns will be delayed in processing and in issuing a refund so try to avoid sending in paper returns if at all possible so you can avoid delays in getting your refund,” Miller says.

April 15th is normally the federal tax filing deadline, but the deadline was moved back to Monday the 18th due to a holiday in the District of Columbia.