BUFFALO, Iowa (AP) — The longtime fire chief in the Iowa town of Buffalo died over the weekend. The Quad-City Times reports that Terry Adams died Saturday morning at age 67. Longtime friend Buffalo Police Cpl. Rich Aleksiejczyk says Adams died of natural causes. Adams had been with the Buffalo Fire Department for 48 years and served a chief for 33 years.

Aleksiejczyk says Adams was a great community leader and was respected in town.
The fire department became a family affair for Adams. One of his sons retired from the fire department as a lieutenant and three of his grandsons are with the department now.

Cass County Democratic Party Chair Sherry Toelle reports Charlotte Hubbell, wife of gubernatorial candidate Fred Hubbell, spoke to 40 voters in Atlantic on Friday, September 28th. Mrs. Hubbell spoke about her husband’s top priorities for Iowa, which include: affordable health care coverage, increased funding for education, and developing good-paying jobs.

Charlotte Hubbell

Toelle says Hubbell has pledged to reverse the Iowa Legislature’s actions against worker’s compensation and collective bargaining. She said also, he is adamantly opposed to Iowa’s privatization of Medicaid and will take action on his first day in office to begin the transition to return privatized Medicaid back to the Iowa Department of Human Services. He also plans to place women’s health centers back into Iowa. Hubbell has also stated his intentions to recoup the more than $100 million in tax credits that are going to large corporations without proving Iowa with a return on those investments.

When asked what she would foresee happening in Iowa over the next few years if her husband were elected, Mrs. Hubbell remembered when the water and air were clean and when Iowa was among the top five states in education. Those restorations were part of her vision for Iowa. She drew spontaneous applause when she spoke of restoring collective bargaining rights to Iowa’s workforce and increasing family incomes. Environmental quality and support of veterans were also priorities for the Hubbell-Hart campaign.

(Press Release)

(Radio Iowa) — A group working to get more young voters to turn out for Democrats this year has bought more than 100-thousand dollars worth of ads on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter aimed at millennials and Generation Z in Iowa. Haley Hager is the state director for NextGen America, a group that’s spending 33 million dollars nationally on these kind of digital ads. “Eighteen to 35 years olds don’t watch a lot of cable,” Hager says. “They are on their phones, all the time.”

Unlike traditional campaign ads that run 30- and 60 seconds, these NextGen digital ads are short, 15 second messages. That’s designed to deliver the message before the viewer doesn’t click away. Hager says in Iowa, 18-to-24 year olds are the least active voting block. “Political ads don’t usually target 18 year olds,” Hager says. “We turn out at half the rate, which means that traditionally campaigns don’t talk to us.”

NextGen has nearly five dozen paid staff in Iowa as well, working to register young voters. NextGen is financed by a California billionaire who has held town hall meetings around the country and has run T-V ads calling for impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

(Radio Iowa) — Western Iowans are divided about the merits of industrial wind projects being planned in the region. Chicago-based Invenergy wants to build almost 170 wind turbines in Sac and Ida counties in the next year, enough to power 90-thousand homes. Mason Fleenor, an Ida County farmer, says he’s worried about the noise and the view of large turbines on the horizon.  “If you know anything about cattle, when it’s real windy, cattle don’t work real good in the wind. They can’t hear what’s going on around them,” Fleenor says. “I’m the same way, I don’t like to listen to these things every day.”

Invenergy developed another wind farm in the county that’s been operating for about two years. The county estimates it gains more than two-million dollars each year from industrial wind energy after taxes. Ida County Board of Supervisors Chairman Rhett Leonard says revenue from the turbine property values benefits road infrastructure projects. “The good thing about this is, we were to the point where our roads and infrastructures were deteriorating so quickly and it’s such a high priced item to replace and maintain,” Leonard says, ” we were getting to the point where we weren’t sure what we were going to do with these.”

After the first phase of Invenergy’s initial project in the area was complete, about 500 residents petitioned the county to have wind turbines be at least one mile away from a house. The county established a code saying they have to be at least 15-hundred feet away. In a statement, Invenergy said it builds projects where landowners have voluntarily signed easements or leases.

In Adair County, an amended ordinance setting a 2,000-foot setback from non-participating residences and an 800-foot setback for participating property owners associated with two Mid-American Energy wind farms, has a third its third and final reading set to take place at the next meeting of the Adair County Board of Supervisors. When complete, a total of nearly 500 turbines will be spread throughout the County. Construction began last summer, but the erection of turbines has been met with public push-back over noise, visual pollution and bird safety concerns.

(Thanks to Katie Peikes, Iowa Public Radio)

Police in Red arrested 26-year old Dustin James Danick, Saturday. Danick, from Red Oak, was arrested in the 300 block of E. Market Street, for Domestic Abuse Assault/2nd Offense. Danick was being held without bond at the Montgomery County Law Enforcement Center.

Police Officers in Council Bluffs were called to the 1800 block of Valley View Drive at around 2:25-a.m. today (Sunday), for a reported single vehicle rollover accident. The vehicle left the roadway while traveling West on Interstate 80 near mile marker 5, and ended up on its top on Valley View Drive. The driver, 21-year old Kevans Faustin, of Maryland, was extricated by the Fire Department and transported to a local hospital for non-life threatening injuries.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 4:39 a.m. CDT

BELVIDERE, Neb. (AP) — Headstones will be dedicated today (Sunday) at the southern Nebraska graves of three Union veterans of the Civil War. The Hastings Tribune reports that the group Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War will dedicate the new headstones at Belvidere Cemetery in Thayer County. The three served with infantry from Iowa, Illinois and Indiana.

MASON CITY, Iowa (AP) — Volunteer students will be helping plant trees in north-central Iowa’s Mason City next week. On Wednesday, fifth-grade students from Newman Catholic Schools will plant nearly 40 trees along Taft Avenue. On Thursday, students from Mason City Alternative High School will plant between 60 to 100 trees along streets a few blocks over.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health is promoting a new farm safety website. The “Telling the Story” site features firsthand accounts by farmers who have been injured or lost family members to agriculture-related incidents. Ellen Duysen with the Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health at the college is involved with the new site. She says research indicates farmers are more open to safety messages after reading about a traumatic farm incident.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A permanent memorial dedicated to fallen police officers will be built in Des Moines. The Register reports the memorial will be dedicated to the 24 officers who’ve died in the line of duty, including officers Susan Farrell and Carlos Puente-Morales, who were killed in March 2016 when a drunken wrong-way driver crashed into their patrol car on Interstate 80. On Monday, the City Council approved a $101,529 construction contract to build the structure outside the downtown police station.

w/ Chris Parks

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The driver of a motorcycle was injured in a collision with the back of an SUV on Friday evening in Council Bluffs. The Council Bluffs Police Department responded to the accident at 5:32pm at the intersection of 7th Street and Kanesville. Preliminary investigations show the SUV was stopped at a red traffic light when the motorcycle ran into the rear of it.

The motorcyle driver was taken to UNMC with serious injuries. He was not wearing a helmet at the time of the accident. The name of the injured man is being withheld pending notification of family of the accident.

The driver of the SUV was not injured and his vehicle was driven away from the scene.

The Union County Sheriff’s Office released more details on how a Creston man was apprehended on Thursday afternoon. 23-year-old Jameson Chase Cox of Creston was arrested after attempting to elude law enforcement. Cox was speeding away from officers in a 2001 Chrysler Sebring and attempted to make a turn at North Oak and West Townline Streets in Creston. Cox was traveling too fast to make the turn and lost control, running into a front brick pillar of a home at 303 West Townline Street.

Cox then attempted to flee on foot but was captured a short time later by a Union County Deputy. Nobody was injured as a result of the crash and damage to the brick on the home was estimated at $3,000. The vehicle sustained $2,500 disabling damage. Cox was arrested for Eluding and later charged by Creston PD for OWI 1st Offense.