(Atlantic, IA) – The Cass County Board of Supervisors, in a regular meeting Tuesday, are expected to act on approving the installation of a bench on the County’s portion of the (downtown) Atlantic City Park. The bench would be located west of the monument. In other business, the Supervisors are expected to pass a resolution appointing Deputy Auditor Hannah Richter, and consider (along with possibly approve), the Publication of a Notice to Bidders for the cash rent of County-owned farm land in the southwest portion of the NW 1/4 of Section 15, Grove Township.  Bids will be opened at 9-a.m., Tuesday, March 17th, in the Board Room of the Cass County Courthouse in Atlantic.

The Board will receive a monthly report from Cass/Guthrie County Environmental Health Exec. Director Jotham Arber, and a Quarterly report for Cass County VA Exec. Director Mitch Holmes, as well as a regular report from County Engineer Trent Wolken, and other reports, as available.

Their meeting begins at 9-a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17th, and can be viewed electronically through Zoom, at:

(Creston, IA) – Firefighters from Creston responded early Saturday morning to a report of hay bales on fire at the Creston Livestock Market. Upon arrival, firefighters discovered 11 round bales burning. A second page was made within one-half hour of the initial response (at 12:33 a.m.), requesting additional firefighters for a working fire.

The bales were located against the east side of the brick building, near the train tracks. An employee used a skid loader to move the bales away from the structure and separate them, aiding firefighters in gaining better access to extinguish the flames. Their assignment was completed in about two-hours, but later Saturday morning, firefighters returned to extinguish the bales that continued to smolder.

Still frame image from a video by Dillon Daughenbaugh/CFD, of Creston Tanker 4 single-operator fire suppression unit. (Creston FD Facebook page)

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

(Radio Iowa) – A coach who’s also a member of the Iowa House is proposing an expansion of the time coaches are not allowed to have contact with Iowa students who participate in high school sports. Representative Skyler Wheeler, a former baseball player at Northwestern College, is head coach of the baseball team at Unity Christian High School in Orange City.

“Currently right now in the summer when baseball and softball (seasons) finish, you have a week off where you can have no contact as coaches with athletes,” Wheeler said. “It’s basically in place to allow parents and student athletes to take a trip together. They’re not going to miss any practices or things like that.” That seven-day period starts on a Sunday in late July and Wheeler’s bill would extend it for three more days.

The bill also calls for a one-week “no contact” period in November, a no-contact period from December 25th to January 1st and a seven day “spring break” that would give students a break from all sports. “I think this would be very popular with parents,” Wheeler said. “It may not be super popular with some coaches or some sports, but I think as we move this conversation forward, we’ll be able to get to a good spot with it.”

The bill easily cleared the House Education Committee last week on a 20-to-three vote, but not after some push back from Representative Daniel Gosa. He’s a former Davenport School Board member who has coached his son’s Little League baseball team. “November would be a huge problem for miscellaneous programs as teams that make playoffs in football would overlap with wrestling and cause major conflicts,” Gosa said. “December, the middle of the wrestling season, that would be bad news for, you know, giving wrestlers seven days off with weight management and endurance would drop.”

The non-contact and no practice policies outlined in the bill would also apply to theater productions, cheerleading, show choir and band. Wheeler says if you were to poll the students, they’d probably say they’d like more free time between sports seasons. “One of my schools won the state football championship this last year. The very next week they were playing basketball,” Wheeler said. “They are a decent basketball team. They almost got knocked off by probably one of the worst teams in their class simply because there was no time off, they were exhausted and they went right into basketball.”

Wheeler says the bill may be altered to line up better with winter sports like basketball and wrestling, but Wheeler says the goal is to get a vote in the full House on a uniform time-off-from-sports policy that gives kids a break. “If I take a whole off of sports and my team is practicing…from a coach’s perspective, that kid’s going to sit,” Wheeler said. “They’re not going to play that kid for a while and he’s going to get rusty.”

A designated “family week” started in the summer of 2021 to give Iowa high school students, coaches and teachers a week away from practicing for sports or band.

DES MOINES, Iowa (KCRG) – Nathan Sage, a Democratic candidate for US Senate, announced Sunday he’s suspending his campaign. Sage, a Marine veteran from Indinanola, said in a statement in part, “This has been one of the hardest decisions of my life. I did not step into this race lightly, and I do not step away lightly.”

Sage said the campaign was “unable to raise the financial resources necessary to keep the campaign viable.” State legislators Zach Whals and Josh Turek are now the remaining two democrats looking to earn the nomination for their party.

Sage was the first Democrat to announce his campaign for the U.S. Senate.