(Radio Iowa) – The planned implosion of the Mississippi River Bridge at Lansing has been pushed back from this Thursday to Friday. D-O-T Engineer Clayton Burke says the schedule required a change.  “We had some coordination issues between some different stakeholders, so it just didn’t work out to get that Thursday, but Friday was a much better day for everybody,” he says. The plan is to use explosives to bring down the metal portions of the bridge now that the concrete deck has been removed. Burke says weather is a big issue, but there is a 90-95 percent chance the implosion will happen Friday.

“The only thing that would that would stop it is if that rain comes in Thursday night and it freezes hard on the electronics out on the bridge that are controlling the explosives. If if that becomes an issue, then they would delay it a day until they can get it figured out and get things unfrozen and ready for demolition,” Burke says. The wind can’t be too heavy for things to work as planned.”The last thing they do is they cut the wind bracing on the bottom of the bridge, which significantly reduces its capacity to resist wind. So they do that when they know it’s not going to be windy and then after they cut that they have to drop it as soon as they can,” he says. “So that’s a big concern is. As soon as they cut that wind bracing it’s got to happen within the next couple days.”

Burke says the car ferry service which transports vehicles across the river will be closed between Thursday night and Monday morning to allow for the implosion.

(Atlantic, IA) – The Cass County Board of Supervisors held their regular Board meeting this (Tuesday) morning, during which they held a public hearing, with regard to requested zoning changes for a property at 59708 Yankton Road from Suburban Residential to General Agricultural. Zoning Commissioner Mike Kennon said at the Cass County Planning and Zoning Commission hearings, no comments were received with regard to the proposed change. After the public hearing was closed, the Supervisors voted to approve the request as presented. A second request from the owner of a property on Boston Road, was withdrawn from consideration by the owner, prior to this (Tuesday) morning’s meeting.

The Supervisors discussed a report from the Cass EMS Advisory Council’s annual report, as it pertains to funding recommendations. Supervisor’s Board Chair Steve Baier…

During the Advisory’s Council’s recent meeting, it was noted there were no public comments on the proposed funding. Supervisor Steve Green..

Still frame image from the BOS meeting 12-16-25 via Zoom Workplace

After about four-months of discussion and exploration of the options, the Supervisors approved a two-year lease agreement with Zion Integrated Behavioral Health Services. Supervisor Mark O’Brien…

Chair Steve Baier asked Zion BHS CEO Billie Butler, how many clients would be served at the facility, at the onset.

The Board approved the lease as presented, with Supervisor Bernard Pettinger abstaining due to a conflict of interest. Zion Integrated Behavioral Health Services, Inc. is a nonprofit organization established in 1973 in southwest Iowa to provide substance use disorder treatment and related services in Adair, Cass, Dallas, Fremont, Montgomery, and Page counties.

In other business the Cass County Supervisors approved a Cass County [employees] Health Insurance Rates Policy, designating participation and non-participation rates for Jan. 1, 2027-through Dec. 31, 2027, based on wellness plan participation in 2026. The Board approved also, a Calendar Year 2026 ISAC Wellness Agreement. And, they received a regular report from Cass County Engineer Trent Wolken.

(Radio Iowa) – State officials should be done by next week with their analysis of a northwest Iowa city’s newly-combined request for FEMA funding to buy 150 homes hit by flooding 18 months ago. Tom Van Maanen, the city administrator in Rock Valley, says the lives of many residents remain on hold, waiting to learn if their property qualifies for a buyout. “The purpose of the end of the year update, where things are currently sitting, the program’s still moving forward,” Van Maanen says. “It’s been disappointingly slow.” State officials determined Rock Valley’s original project that included 122 properties would not score high enough on FEMA’s cost-benefit analysis to qualify for federal funding.

Twenty-eight other flooded homes in Rock Valley that were part of a separate buy-out request are being folded into one application to FEMA for a total of 150 properties. Van Maanen says FEMA requires layers of technical review of each property and once state officials determine the score for the overall project is high enough, Rock Valley will submit its updated request to FEMA. “When this project is finally handed back to us, we’re poised to hit the ground the running and move this thing along very fast and get the people the help they need,” Van Maanen said. The goal of FEMA’s buy-out program for flooded properties is to reduce future flooding risks.

Van Maanen says it’s been frustrating to navigate through a grant program that does not have deadlines. “Even if you give a person a date that seems too far out, at least it would be a date, but that is not how this process works with FEMA,” Van Maanen said. “It is at their schedule, but we know we’re close. We’re really at the final steps of it, but unfortunately that doesn’t translate into them giving us a hard date when we’ll know.”

If state officials determine the cost-benefit score for buying-out all 150 properties still would fall below FEMA’s requirements, Van Maanen says the state will work with Rock Valley officials to identify which properties may need to be removed from the application to ensure that the remaining properties can be approved.

(Radio Iowa) – In recent years, Iowans have dealt with deadly tornadoes and historic flooding, but the biggest disaster for the Iowa chapter of the American Red Cross during 2025 has been house fires. Josh Murray is spokesman for the agency in Iowa and says fires are breaking out somewhere in the state almost daily, sometimes two a day, and it only gets worse during the winter. “So far in 2025, we’ve responded to just about 600 home fires. That’s affecting more than 2,000 people,” Murray says. “We’re thankful to our volunteers who get out there and help those people, whether it’s finding them some temporary accommodations, giving them some blankets and snacks, something to take care of them, trying to help them as they sit there and sift through and figure out what their next steps are.”

Murray says Red Cross home fire responses spike nearly 20-percent nationwide during the holidays, when families face increased risks of fire. “That continues to be where we do see most of our time spent in the disaster response world, it’s those home fires that are happening every day, and not just single home fires, apartment fires happen, too,” Murray says. “This is that time of year when people are inside more, they’re cooking more, they’re using heating supplies more, they’re using space heaters or starting up their fireplaces more. That’s when we oftentimes see that pickup.” In an effort to prevent more home fires, the agency installed more than 16-hundred free smoke alarms in Iowa this year, and checked the batteries in hundreds of existing smoke alarms.

KJAN file photo

“People didn’t know they didn’t have them or, ‘I have them, they’re there,’ but then when we went and checked them, they didn’t work,” Murray says. “We want to make sure we are able to have those, that you have working smoke alarms. Those are really lifesavers — if they work. We want to make sure we have those available and anybody who needs it or wants us to check it, go to redcross.org, find out how you can have someone come out and help you with that.”

This holiday season, Murray urges Iowans to visit redcross-dot-org to make a financial donation — or to give back through volunteering.

(Griswold, IA) – The Griswold School Board continued discussion Monday evening (Dec. 15th), with the possibility of a four-day school week. Superintendent Dave Henrichs told KJAN News the Board heard from a committee selected to explore the proposal.

Henrichs said it was difficult for the committee to respond to all of the Board’s questions.

At the end of lengthy discussion, no action was taken, because the Board wants more, in-depth research and answers.

Until the stakeholders have more of a concrete idea on what the schedule of a four-day week would look like, it’s hard for them to say whether they would be in-favor of it or not. Dave Henrichs said what it comes down to, is that the likelihood of a four-day school week is becoming less and less of a possibility right now, and it would most likely not be in the picture for the 2026-27 school year.

In other business, the Griswold School Board elected new officers for the 2025-26 school year.

Superintendent Dave Henrichs said two members of the 2024-25 school board who chose not to run for re-election this past November.

The board welcomed two new members and a returning board member, during their meeting, Monday evening.

(Radio Iowa) – An Iowa-based author, folklorist and photographer is releasing a new book that chronicles life on the Mississippi River during the 20th century though the words of a commercial fisherman. Sherry Pardee, of Iowa City, says “Back Them Days – Reflections on a Life on the Mississippi River” tells the story of the late Clinton “Bus” Downs, who lived in the tiny river town of Meyer on the western-most tip of Illinois, and his life revolved around the river.

Pardee says, “Bus was one of those special people that you meet in life that you realize, this is an exemplary human being, and someone who’s just lived honorably, lived well, and just has done amazing things with their life in a way beyond what normal people do.” Bus was a third-generation fisherman, born in 1915. As a boy, he was nicknamed Buster, which was shortened to Bus, and that’s the name everyone knew him by. Pardee says she’s spoken with fishermen “way up north on the Mississippi” who know of Bus, respected him, and consider him a legend.

“He was almost like a Daniel Boone figure,” Pardee says. “He would trap and hunt with his father when they weren’t fishing. He and his father would trap and hunt from Canada all the way down to Mississippi, way beyond what the normal fisherman or hunter would do.” Pardee first met Bus in the summer of 1987, when the Illinois Arts Council hired her to survey traditions of commercial fishermen on the Upper Mississippi, and she repeatedly returned over the next four years to record his fascinating stories. “Back Them Days” is largely told in Bus’ own words. “Bus had a great sense of humor,” she says, “was very philosophical, tells great stories of big hauls of fish, game wardens, floods, people that were traveling up and down the river, stories of giant catfish.”

Pardee’s black-and-white photographs add a timeless element to the pages. In the 1930s, prior to the locks and dams on the Mississippi, Bus told how the river was about 100 feet deep, while often now it’s only about six feet deep. Over the decades, Bus witnessed the pollution caused by chemical runoff from farms, and how the fish population fell. He moved to Quincy, Illinois, after the flood of 1993 devastated Meyer, and died in the Quincy Veterans Home in 2008.

(Red Oak, IA) – A man from Mills County and a woman from Montgomery County were arrested Monday afternoon, in Red Oak. According to the Red Oak Police Department, 36-year-old Christopher Lee McDaniel, of Pacific Junction, was arrested for Violating a Protection Order, and, 28-year-old Priscilla Marie Cline, of Red Oak, was arrested for Aiding and Abetting the Violation of a Protection Order.

The pair were taken into custody a little after 3-p.m., Monday in the 100 block of N. 2nd Street. They were being held in the Montgomery County Jail on $300 bond, each.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa First District Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks joined the House Republican leadership as they introduced their version of a healthcare bill Monday. The Republican from Ottumwa says the bill includes provisions that would allow small businesses and self-employed workers to more easily purchase health care together.

“This bill puts patients and their doctors over the profits of insurance companies. The Democrat solution is to continue riding taxpayer funded blank checks to large insurance companies,” Miller-Meeks says. Miller-Meeks says there needs to be an alternative to extending the tax credits paid out under the Affordable Care Act. Democrats favor the extension.

“It hides the fact that premiums are going up by shifting who pays for those increase in premiums rather than getting to the root cause of actually lowering healthcare costs,” she says. “We want to make the, you know, all Americans, families and patients, the C-E-O’s of their own healthcare decisions.” Miller-Meeks says the Republican House plan would also require pharmacy benefit managers to share more data on the actual cost of prescription drugs.

“Just the transparency alone what the fees are, where the fees go, what the rebates are, what the list price of a drug…I think transparency is the first step in that, but it’s not the only step,” she says. Miller-Meeks is running for re-election. The

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Katie Smith released a statement that says “Mariannette Miller-Meeks has spent her entire year attacking Iowans’ health care, from voting for the largest Medicaid cuts in history that will decimate rural hospitals, to opposing plans to prevent Iowans’ health care costs from skyrocketing. Now, Miller-Meeks has made herself the face of Washington Republicans’ so-called ‘plan’ that does nothing to lower costs, and Iowans will hold her accountable for failing them next year.”

(Radio Iowa) – Members of the Iowa Farmers Union say they agree with Republicans who say something needs to be done about out-of-control health care costs, but the group’s executive director Matt Russell says letting thousands of Iowans lose the tax credits they’ve used to buy insurance — without having an alternative in place — doesn’t solve the affordability problem.

“What they have done is raised the costs for Iowans, including family farmers and rural entrepreneurs by thousands of dollars,” Russell said. According K-F-F — a health care research group, 27 percent of U-S farmers, ranchers and agribusiness managers have relied on subsidies to buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace. Seth Watkins raises cattle, sheep and bees in Page County. Watkins says insurance cost his family of four about 600-dollars-a month this year — and will nearly quadruple to 23-hundred dollars a month in 2026.

“I think a lot of people don’t realize that farmers and independent business people buy our own insurance,” he said. “I hear our politicians talk about us being the backbone of our economy and yet the people doing this that are making this have great benefits. I’d like them to put themselves in our shoes and understand what this is like.” Beth Hoffman, a Monroe County farmer, raises cattle and goats. She and her husband had been paying 300 dollars a month for insurance — and would have had to pay four times that much next year if they kept the same amount of coverage in 2026. They’ve opted for a bare bones plan with a seven-thousand dollar deductible.

“Here we are the United States of America (with) this great health care system, this place where we have some of the most wealth in the whole world,” she said, “…so it’s very disturbing on many levels.” Iowa Farmers Union President Aaron Lehman raises corn and hay in northern Polk County. “Our farmers right now are meeting with their lenders to try to find a plan just to get next year’s crop in the ground,” Lehman said. “The last thing we need right now is an increase in health care costs.”

The Affordable Care Act tax credits will still be available for households with an income under 400 percent of the federal poverty level, but the subsidies for households about that line that were extended in 2021 are scheduled to end December 31st.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Association of Realtors says homes are staying on the market longer and sales prices remain ahead of last year. The president of the Iowa Association of Realtors says data from November shows the median sales price of Iowa homes seems to have slowed down a bit and Iowa has a strong inventory of homes on the market. Homes that were sold in November had been on the market an average of 26 days. That’s over 18 percent longer than in October.

The median sales price for an Iowa home was nearly 245-thousand dollars in November. That’s slightly less than October — but nearly seven percent above what Iowa homes were selling for in November of last year.

The association’s report shows a surge of new listings in November compared to October, however in the year-to-year comparison, there were 57 more Iowa homes on the market in November compared to November of last year.