(Creston, IA) – Police in Creston report the arrest at around 2:20-a.m. today (Friday), of 19-year-old Gunner Michael Namanny. The Creston man was taken into custody in the parking lot at the Southwestern Community College, on charges that include: Possession of a Controlled Substance/Marijuana-1^st offense; OWI/2^nd offense, and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia.

Namanny was transported to the Union County Jail and held without bond.

CLARKE COUNTY, Iowa  — The Clarke County Sheriff’s Office has located the vehicle allegedly involved in a deadly hit-and-run crash that occurred at around 6-p.m. Wednesday, south of Murray. In a recent social media post, sheriff’s officials said “The vehicle in this case has been located. We are processing it for evidence. Law enforcement has been following every tip and lead given to us from the public. Your assistance is greatly appreciated. We are conducting interviews and working on this case, and will continue to investigate it until its conclusion.”

The crash claimed the life of 16-year-old Elmer Borntrager, of Murray. The teen was operating a horse-drawn buggy when the buggy was hit from behind by a vehicle. Borntrager was thrown from the buggy and died from his injuries, despite efforts from first responders to save him. Deputies initially said they were looking for a silver or gray Chevrolet or GM sedan with heavy damage on the front right side, and potential damage to the windshield/roof area of the vehicle.

The horse pulling the buggy was injured, but is expected to survive.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office at 641-342-2914.

(Red Oak, IA) – The driver of a passenger car was transported to the Montgomery County Memorial Hospital (MCMH) in Red Oak, Thursday morning, following a collision at the intersection of E. Summit and Highland Streets. The accident occurred at around 8:10-a.m.

Authorities say a Ford Focus driven by 28-year-old Tristain Blackburn, of Red Oak, stopped at the posted intersection as she was traveling northbound on Highland before proceeding to turn left onto Summit. In doing so, Blackburn failed to notice a Toyota Avalon that was traveling eastbound on Summit, and was driven by 29-year-old Alexis Bronner, of Red Oak. Police say Bronner was unable to stop in-time to avoid the collision. The front of her car struck the left rear side of the Ford, causing disabling damage to both vehicles.

Blackburn was transported by private vehicle to the hospital for what police said appeared to be minor injuries. She was cited for Failure to Yield upon Left Turn. Damage from the collision amounted to a police-estimated $11,000 altogether.

(Radio Iowa) – Penny for your thoughts? The U-S Treasury stopped making pennies this week, and Iowa collectors are puzzling over what to do with their bags of one-cent pieces, as some Iowa banks and businesses have already stopped using them. Owen McKee, who owns McKee Coin in Ottumwa, says it really doesn’t make much “sense” to be hanging onto the copper-colored coins. “A lot of people are hoarding the pre-1982 because they’re copper,” McKee says. “The later ones, they’ve made millions and millions of them, so my guess is they will still use what they have until they’re no longer in use, or been hoarded, and then they will round up the prices on all the other sales that they make.” In fact, some estimates say there are 250- to 300-billion pennies still in circulation nationwide, so it may be several years before they vanish from our pockets and purses.

For now, pennies are still legal tender and they’re worth one-one-hundred of a dollar. “I doubt if they devalue them, but if they do devalue them, it means that they would be just sold for scrap metal,” McKee says. “I’ve seen bus tokens used in different towns for transportation and when they devalued the bus token, they just sold them for scrap metal.” The Trump administration ordered the Treasury to stop making pennies, as it costs nearly four cents to mint a single penny, which of course, is only worth one cent. Even though they’re no longer in production, McKee says pennies are so plentiful that they’re not a coin he’d consider acquiring from a collector. “Oh, Lincoln cents are something I’m not really buying,” McKee says. “I don’t see any reason to hoard them unless they’re rarer dates. Pre-1959, they’re called ‘wheat cents’ and they do have a value of about four cents a piece.”

While coins are his business, McKee says he shed no tears upon learning of the penny’s demise. “Maybe somebody might want these for nostalgia purposes later,” he says, “but currently they’re not bringing anything more than a penny.” The last penny was minted Wednesday in Philadelphia after more than 230 years in production. The U-S Mint reportedly lost more than 85-million dollars making pennies last year.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – A company in Cedar Rapids is closing and will lay off 34 people next month, according to Iowa WARN. The company is listed as RELCO, a Wabtec Company, on 4200 Thomas Drive. The company will close on New Years’ Eve and lay off 34 employees. The workers were notified Tuesday. RELCO is a locomotive manufacturing and repair company and has an additional location in Cedar Rapids and Albia, which will remain open. Wabtec purchased the company in 2020.

Wabtec sent KCRG TV9 the following statement: “Wabtec has announced a difficult decision to close operations at its plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The plan is to close the plant located at 4200 Thomas Drive SW by the end of December 2025 and transfer the work to more cost competitive third-party providers and Wabtec sites in North America.

“Decisions like this are never easy, but this move will more efficiently serve our customers’ needs as well as better position Wabtec for success. The company remains fully committed to all customer commitments and providing impacted employees with resources and benefits to manage the transition.”

The Iowa Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) provides information on recent plant closings and mass layoffs.

(Des Moines, IA) – For the third time in five years, a Sioux City hospital’s status as a Level III Trauma Center has been placed on probation by state regulators due to an ongoing series of regulatory violations. The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports last month, UnityPoint Health’s St. Luke’s Hospital in Sioux City entered into a consent agreement with the Iowa Emergency Medical Services and Trauma Bureau, placing the hospital’s trauma center certification on probation for one year.

The hospital currently is certified as a Level III Trauma Center, which means it can stabilize and care for trauma patients and also has access to general surgery and orthopedic surgery. A downgrade to Level IV status would mean the hospital could provide basic life support and stabilization for trauma patients but would focus on transferring patients to higher-level trauma centers as soon as possible.

UnityPoint issued a written statement about the situation late Thursday, saying the hospital “remains dedicated to providing high quality, compassionate care” and is committed to working with the state on all necessary changes to ensure compliance with its trauma level designation. “This decision does not change the level or quality of care we provide to patients when they come to the emergency department,” the statement said. “Critically ill or injured patients will continue to be stabilized and treated. All other hospital services will continue uninterrupted.”

UnityPoint Health’s St. Luke’s Hospital in Sioux City, Iowa. (Photo via Google Earth)

The agreement requires the hospital to submit a new corrective action plan, along with “letters of commitment from all medical staff active in trauma resuscitation.” In addition, the hospital must now submit quarterly reports, to be approved by UnityPoint’s corporate office for accuracy, that will detail efforts to address systemic problems and care-provider issues, as well as proposed improvements to the care of injured patients.

The consent agreement between the hospital and the bureau states that if the hospital does not have the ability to fully resolve its deficiencies, it can apply for a downgraded Level IV status. If that happens, the hospital must notify ambulance services and the trauma coordinators at other hospitals so patients can be directed elsewhere if need be.

The agreement also stipulates that the department can revoke probation and require the hospital to seek Level IV certification at any time during the 2025-26 probation period.

(Radio Iowa) – Travel on the state’s roadways is up slightly this year. Stuart Anderson of the Iowa Department of Transportation briefed Transportation Commission members on Wednesday. “Year to date, we are up one tenth of a percent over last year,” he said, while the number of fatal traffic accidents has declined compared to this time a year ago.

Through Wednesday, 234 people had been killed in a wreck on an Iowa roadway. “Well below the five year average of 298,” Anderson said. “….It’s about 24% below…We still are on trend to have the lowest fatalities in a hundred years, so very good news from a safety perspective on of the state’s public road system.”

(Image from Iowa DOT’s camera along Interstate 235 in Des Moines)

The state saw 357 traffic deaths in 2024 and 379 in 2023.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s six regional food banks have received enough donations this month to trigger the one million dollars in state funding Governor Reynolds pledged to match that increase in contributions. The state’s largest food bank serves 55 counties and will get about 475-thousand dollars from the state. Food Bank of Iowa spokeswoman Annette Hacker says to put that in perspective, the organization spent well over half a million dollars just this week buying food.

“The Food Bank of Iowa has been responding to record and rising need for three and a half years,” Hacker says. “…The surge we’ve seen of truly historic proportions has only been in the last 14 days. It frankly feels like a lifetime.” Hacker says the managers of some of the food pantries served by the Des Moines-based Food Bank of Iowa estimate the number of people coming through their doors has doubled and in some cases tripled so far this month.

“The surge in need truly is unprecedented and that’s not a word we use lightly. We’ve never seen anything like it,” Hacker says. State officials announced yesterday (Thursday) that by sometime today ALL 130-thousand Iowa households that are signed up for SNAP benefits should have the money delivered to their electronic benefit cards. “We’re very grateful the government’s reopened and we’re thankful that Iowans who rely on SNAP will have those benefits they can use at the grocery store, but the effects of this are going to linger for a while.”

Chris Ackman is a spokesman for the HACAP Food Reservoir in Hiawatha that serves nine eastern Iowa counties. “I’m sure it will be a busy weekend at the grocery stores, but the need for food is still going to be very present,” Ackman says. Ackman says in just the past six weeks, the HACAP Food Bank spent nearly a third of their yearly food purchasing budget. “That just shows you how big of a need there was when the shutdown began, how much we’ve purchased in food to meet the need,” Ackman says, “and then all of this, timing wise, is all right before the Thanksgiving holidays which is usually one of our biggest times for getting even more food out.”

Hacker, the spokeswoman for the state’s largest food bank, says it’s clear challenging times are ahead. “But what we also know is the community has risen to the occasion once again and they’ve helped us to keep up, to try to fill this gap, to try to meet this demand,” Hacker said, “so whatever’s ahead we’ll meet it head on and we’ll meet it together.” Valerie Petersen, associate director of the Food Bank of Siouxland in northwest Iowa, says part of the spike in food demand is coming from older Iowans.

“They’ve planned for retirement,” Petersen said. “They’ve planned for their future, and yet, with the rising cost of things, they’re not able to make ends meet.” When SNAP benefits weren’t delivered earlier this month, the Food Bank of Siouxland in northwest Iowa saw local food pantry visits almost double — but at the same time Petersen says she saw more volunteers come in to help, companies hosted more food drives, and people increased their donations.

“It has been a very good reminder that we take care of each other in our community,” she says, “and hopefully the communities around Iowa are seeing that as well.” The other three food banks that distribute food in Iowa are the River Bend Food Bank in Davenport, Northeast Iowa Food Bank in Waterloo and Food Bank for the Heartland in Omaha.

If you want to check if your county is in the swath of 55 counties served by Food Bank of Iowa, see the map at https://foodbankiowa.org/about-us/

(Radio Iowa) – The library board in the northwest Iowa community of Alta is regrouping after 60 percent of voters rejected a one-and-of-a-quarter MILLION dollar ($1.25 million) bond measure to build a new library. Bruce Hinkeldey is chair of the Alta Library Board.

“We put in about two years worth of work trying to find a good location and we had it narrowed down to a new facility in the park area,” Hinkeldey says. “We thought it was a great plan, but, you know, the public voted.” For over 20 years, the public library and the school library in Alta operated in shared space to save money, but a state law passed in 2023 forced school libraries to remove books deemed not age appropriate.

The Alta Public Library is currently operating out of the city’s V-F-W hall, but nearly half of its books and other materials have been put in storage. The bonding plan called for building a new library in the city park, at a cost of 65-cents for every thousand dollars of taxable property valuation.

“If it were one general reason why people voted no, that would be a little bit easier to deal with,” he says. “but we’ve got several reasons.” Hinkeldey says some voters opposed the tax increase, others opposed the location and some voters want an existing building repurposed as the city’s library.

(Radio Iowa) – State officials are confirming full SNAP benefits for the month of November will likely be issued to all eligible Iowa households by tomorrow (Friday) now that the federal government shutdown is over. Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson reports.

Some SNAP recipients may be able to access that food assistance as soon as today (Thursday), but the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services recommends that SNAP recipients call the number on the back of their E-B-T card to check the balance before trying to buy food. There’s also a link on the agency’s website for recipients to check their accounts.

About 130-thousand households — with 270-thousand Iowans — are receiving SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps.