(Council Bluffs, IA) The Iowa West Foundation Board of Directors recently approved nearly $6.5 million in grants and initiatives funding to 22 nonprofit organizations and government entities in southwest Iowa and eastern Nebraska. For the second year, the Foundation awarded $1.8 million in multi-year funding to seven nonprofit organizations in Pottawattamie County. The multi-year funding program is designed to provide essential general operating funds over a three-year period to organizations who fulfill the most critical roles in Pottawattamie County. The organizations include Boys and Girls Club of the Midlands, FAMILY, Inc., Green Hills AEA, Heartland Family Service, Justice For Our Neighbors, Lutheran Family Services and the MICAH House.

Pottawattamie Arts, Culture & Entertainment (PACE), a nonprofit dedicated to strengthening, developing and promoting art, cultural, and historical institutions and activities in Council Bluffs and Pottawattamie County, received an installment of $1.2 million in funding as part of the Foundation’s $7 million commitment to the initiative, for the proposed renovation of the historic Harvester II building in downtown Council Bluffs into an arts and culture center. PACE Executive Director Judy Davis said construction is expected to start early next year.

Also in the Foundation’s “placemaking” focus area, The Nature Conservancy received $400,000 to acquire more than 500 acres of the Loess Hills Natural Area near Council Bluffs, while the City of Council Bluffs received $175,000 for Loessfest 2017. The recently announced lineup for the Memorial Day weekend events can be found at http://loessfest.com/.

In addition to placemaking quality of life grants, the Foundation also awarded a placemaking infrastructure grant to the Pottawattamie County Board of Supervisors for the CITIES program. Collectively, the communities of Macedonia, Minden, Treynor and Walnut received $921,525 for projects including façade upgrades, streetscape enhancements and water main and well construction.

The Foundation also awarded nearly $30,000 to three Pottawattamie County fire departments as part of its ongoing commitment to rural southwest Iowa communities. The Lewis Township and Hancock Volunteer Fire Department received $10,000 and Carson Volunteer Fire Department received $9,852, all for equipment upgrades.

The Letter of Inquiry period for the Cycle 2 grant application process opened on March 1 and will close March 15. Applications are due April 17, due to the 15th falling on a weekend. Grant application and initiative decisions will be made in June. Please see the Grantmaking section of the Iowa West Foundation website for more information (http://www.iowawestfoundation.org/ )

The Iowa West Foundation is one of the largest private foundations in the Midwest. It has distributed more than $400 million to nonprofits and governmental agencies through southwest Iowa and eastern Nebraska since the inception of its grant program. Funding for the grants comes from investment earnings and the Iowa West Racing Association, which receives contractual fees from casino operators, Ameristar and Harrah’s.

DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) – An executive says Alliant Energy subsidiary Interstate Power & Light Co. will file next month for a rate increase that would raise the average residential customer’s bill by more than 10 percent.

Joel Schmidt is a vice president for Alliant, and he told the Dubuque Telegraph Herald that the proposed base rate increase would be the first sought since 2010 and wouldn’t take full effect until early next year. Higher rates also will be sought for commercial customers.

He says the filing to the Iowa Utilities Board is scheduled for April 3. Schmidt says Alliant is seeking the increase primarily to modernize and maintain its grid and provide money for investments in clean energy. Alliant serves 83 Iowa counties.

The Mills County Sheriff’s Office today (Tuesday), released a report on arrests that took place over the past week, including three people who were taken into custody on drug charges. On March 10th, 18-year old Amberdawn Skye Tarr, of Council Bluffs, was arrested for Possession of a Controlled Substance. On March 11th, 21-year old Jonathan James Hahn, of Glenwood, was arrested for Possession of a Controlled Substance, Possession of Contraband and Selling/giving/supplying alcohol to a person under the legal age. And, on Monday,19-year old Juan Diego Guillen, of Council Bluffs, was arrested for Possession of Drug Paraphernalia.

Others arrested include: 18-year old Montana Thomas Garbez, of Council Bluffs, on a warrant for Domestic Abuse Assault; 38-year old Wendy Lynn Meadows, of Glenwood, on a warrant out of Pottawattamie County, for Probation Violation; 32-year old Nicholas John Horgdal, of Henderson, for Driving While Barred.

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says he puts little faith in a new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office that bodes ill for the Republican replacement for Obamacare. The report says 14-million fewer Americans will have health care by next year under the replacement plan, with 24-million fewer covered in a decade versus staying with the current law. “It shouldn’t surprise anybody that when the Congressional Budget Office makes forecasts looking ten years into the future, they’re going to be wrong,” Grassley says.

The C-B-O doesn’t have a sterling record when trying to look a decade ahead, he says, especially with regards to health care. Grassley notes, 29-million people are still uninsured under Obamacare and the C-B-O predicted far more would be covered by this point in time. “In 2009 and ’10, when the Congressional Budget Office estimated what Obamacare would cost, it came in at about, for a ten-year figure, of $980-billion I believe,” Grassley says. “It’s come out hundreds of billions of dollars more.”

Under the Affordable Care Act, people who don’t have health insurance face stiff fines on their taxes, but Grassley says the Republican replacement wouldn’t contain that feature, so it’s natural the number of uninsured people would go up. Grassley says the A-C-A is deeply flawed and must be rewritten, though he says it’s still uncertain exactly how that will be accomplished. “The insurance companies are saying that it’s on a death spiral and even if Hillary Clinton had been elected president, there’d have to be big changes made in this program,” Grassley says. “That’s what we’ve been promising the people and I think we have to deliver on it.”

When a report comes out from the C-B-O, Grassley says it’s typically treated like it came from God, so this report may force House leaders to go back to the drawing board with their replacement plan. Tom Price, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, says the C-B-O report is “just not believable.”

(Radio Iowa)

More area and State news from KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) – The Sioux City school board is urging Congress to support immigrant students. The Sioux City Journal reports that the board voted Monday for a resolution that urged members of the U.S. House and Senate to adopt the Bridge Act. The measure would continue protections granted to young people under the program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which is aimed at helping young people who arrived in this country as children.

The Bridge Act would grant provisional protected-presence status and impose restrictions on the sharing of information for immigration enforcement. Last month the Des Moines school board decided the district will act as a sanctuary for students who entered the country without legal permission and will require that immigration inquiries go through the superintendent’s office and the district’s attorney.

The area’s top news at 7:06-a.m., w/KJAN News Director Ric Hanson

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Western Iowans who are looking forward to boating season should be able to get out onto the Missouri River in a few weeks. The U-S Army Corps of Engineers is preparing the basin’s reservoirs for run-off season. Joel Knofczynski, a hydraulic engineer in the Corps’ Omaha office, says almost all of the flood pool is available behind the six, mainstem dams. “On December 18th, the reservoir system storage reached 56.1-million acre feet, which is at the base of the annual flood control zone,” he says. “This means that all the stored 2016 flood waters have been evacuated from the system.”

Knofczynski says they will soon start releasing water from Gavins Point Dam for the downstream navigation season. “Releases from Gavins Point are currently 17,000 cubic feet per second,” he says. “Releases will be stepped up beginning at or around March 19th to provide flow support for the 2017 navigation season. The navigation season will open on April 1st at the mouth near St. Louis.”

Knofczynski says the Corps is anticipating a full, eight-month navigation season on the Missouri. “Flows for this level of service are designed to provide a nine-foot-deep navigation channel with Gavins Point releases expected to range from the upper 20,000 to the lower 30,000 cubic feet per second this summer, depending on downstream conditions” he says. “Those releases will be reduced in response to downstream flooding, if necessary.”

Corps officials have said -no- spring flooding is anticipated. Also, there will -not- be a spring “pulse” for endangered species habitat this year and run-off is expected to be about 115-percent of normal.

(Radio Iowa)

While the thoughts of most Iowans are on the good things that spring brings, poultry producers are on the lookout for potential problems with bird flu. Cases of the two types of avian influenza have been found in Tennessee and Wisconsin, and Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey says it’s another reminder to be alert. Iowa took a massive hit from the bird flu two years ago when millions of chickens and turkeys had to be destroyed.

“Our producers have invested large amounts of effort and dollars into biosecurity trying to keep the disease away from their farms. From truck washes to limited access onto the farms, to lots of ways to try and keep the disease out,” Northey says. “So that was done from sometimes before the last outbreak, to immediately after the last outbreak.”

He says the news of the case that is highly contagious in Tennessee probably led to some uneasiness in Iowans. “I’m sure everybody is checking their biosecurity plans again. There is no guarantee to prevent a disease from being able to be exposed. And it’s obviously in the Mississippi flyway now in some wild birds — whether it’s a few or a lot, nobody knows. Everybody’s concerned while they continue the plans they have had in place,” Northey says.

Northey says there’s no reason for consumers to be concerned. “It’s important to remind everybody that food safety is not a concern. Go ahead and eat your eggs and eat your turkey meat and chicken meat, that’s not a concern. Producers are concerned about the health of their birds and they are doing everything that they can to keep their birds healthy,” according to Northey.

Thousands of chickens were destroyed at the Tennessee farm after the “highly pathogenic” variety of the disease was found there. Another bird flu outbreak was reported at a Wisconsin turkey farm but it was not the highly-pathogenic variety.

(Radio Iowa)

The Adams County Sheriff’s Office says a traffic stop late Monday night resulted in the arrest of a Corning man. 40-year old Michael Alexander was taken into custody at around 9:47-p.m. for Driving While License Suspended. His bond was set at $300.