(Atlantic, IA) – During a regular meeting of the Cass County Board of Supervisors in Atlantic, Tuesday morning, the Board received presentations from Darren Welsh, with the auditing firm of Gronewold Bell, Khynn & Company, pertaining to the Annual (2024) Cass County Audit report a copy of which can be found here: https://www.auditor.iowa.gov/reports/file/83032.pdf The Board encouraged Welsh to try and get more recent/timely data, when available.

Cass County BOS mtg via Zoom on 1-20-26

They also received an Annual Report (FY2025) from West Central Community Action Executive Director Wendy Mueller, and a Monthly report from Cass/Guthrie County Environmental Health Executive Director Jotham Arber. In her report, Wendy Mueller broke down the data with regard to their services to the County. Here are the demographics…

WCCA Exec. Director Wendy Mueller (from Cass Co BOS Zoom session)

She also mentioned West Central is not asking for any change in funding over last year’s budgeted amount, and, that despite initial efforts to chop funding for Head Start operations around the country during the DOGE sweep, Head Start is actually getting slightly more funding from the government than they were expecting.

Head Start promotes school readiness in ages three-to five in low income families.

The bottom line, according to Mueller was that West Central Community Action delivered over $1.4-million in services to the residents of Cass County.

Jotham Arbor said most of what his department employees are currently doing, consists of water/well testing.

In other business, the Cass County Supervisors passed resolutions appointing Krista Young as Commissioner of the Southern Iowa Regional Housing Authority (SIRHA), representing Cass County, and Supervisor Bernard Pettinger as County Representative to the Golden Hills Resouce-Conservation and Development Board (RC&D), for the term ending 12/31/2026.