The Atlantic City Council will meet this Wednesday (October 1st) at 5:30-pm, in the Council Chambers at City Hall. On the agenda is an order to approve a resignation and severance agreement between the City of Atlantic and the City Administrator Doug Harris.  An option is also included on the agenda to enter into executive session upon the written request of the City Administrator to discuss the resignation and severance package. The Mayor and Personnel/Finance Committee reviewed and recommended the agreement be approved last week

Harris and the council have been at odds over recent tax abatement plans and he was asked to resign. An order to appoint his assistant John Lund as the Interim City Administrator is on the agenda as well that would be effective October 4, 2014.

Other agenda items include: Approving a change order on improvements on 17th street project;  Addressing an EPA request to move forward with the nomination of the former dry cleaner site as a National Priorities List Site; A Public hearing on, and order for the disposal of, 1200 Birch Street and 1106 Poplar Street; and, an Order to authorize the Mayor to enter into an agreement with FOX Engineering related to the potential industrial discharge of MAHLE Engine Components to the city’s wastewater system.

The Cass County Board of Supervisors will meet on Tuesday, September 30th at 8:30am in the Board room at the Cass County Courthouse.

The agenda includes a report from the Cass County Attorney.  Atlantic Park and Rec Director Roger Herring will report on a bike rack at the Courthouse. The Cass County Engineer will provide a secondary roads update. The final scheduled report is from the Cass County Mental Health and General Assistance for the month of August.

There will also be an open time for comments and approval of claims.

Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds will make a stop in Atlantic on Thursday, October 2nd to tour Echo Concrete.  The event is set for 4:00pm at Echo Concrete at 50748 650th Street in Atlantic.

The Cass County Democratic Party has announced that its headquarters is now open at 511 Chestnut in Atlantic. Open seven days a week, the office has candidate information and yard signs available. Residents of Iowa can also register or re-register to vote in addition to signing absentee voter request forms.

Several candidates have already visited the headquarters—Steve Roe who is running for the Iowa House in District 20, Tim Ennis who is running for Iowa House District 21, and Sherrie Taha, candidate for the Secretary of Agriculture. A grand opening is planned for later in the election year.

w/ Chris Parks

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A fight on Thursday, September 25th at Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln High School ended with a 17-year-old student being sent to the hospital in critical condition. The Council Bluffs Police Department reports that a Council Bluffs School Resource Officer responded to a fight between two students at the school at approximately 7:45am Thursday.  During the course of the fight that occurred in a common area just outside the cafeteria, 17-year-old Dakota Escritt fell to the ground, striking his head on the tiled floor, which rendered him unconscious.  Staff intervened in the fight and rendered aid and upon arrival the officer requested ambulance assistance due to the serious nature of the injuries.

Escritt was transported to Mercy Hospital in Council Bluffs and later transferred to Children’s Hospital in Omaha, where he remains in Critical condition at the time of this report Friday evening.

The other student involved in the fight was identified as 16-year-old Gregary Teer whom was arrested after the incident.  Teer was charged with Assault Causing Serious Injury, a class D felony and was later released into the custody of his guardian.

Detectives are still working with school officials on the case and anyone with information regarding the incident are asked to contact the Council Bluffs Police Department, Criminal Investigation Division at 712-328-4765.

The Red Oak Police Department responded to a fight that occurred at the South Casey’s Store on Broadway Street in Red Oak around 5:00pm Friday (9/26) afternoon.  After investigation officers arrested 23-year-old Michael Eugene Sickels of Red Oak for Serious Assault which is a Serious Misdemeanor.  Sickels was taken to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility and is being held on $1,000 bond.

An Iowa State University research team is using a 400 thousand dollar ($400,000) federal grant to improve a physical activity tracking program for kids. ISU Professor of Kinesiology Greg Welk says the online tool provides a more accurate picture of how much exercise kids actually get each day. “Schools might say, ‘well, we provide PE and recess, and so therefore we’ve given kids 30 minutes a day.’ But, the reality is kids might not actually be getting that much physical activity, those are just opportunities they have,” Welk says. Youth Activity Profile is the online system that tracks a child’s time spent exercising or at play. Welk says the measurement tool focuses student’s patterns of physical exertion to encourage them to get up and moving. “Most schools measure fitness in children and kids are used to doing fitness assessments and those provide a lot of value. But, a key need in physical education is a way to help kids to learn about their physical activity habits because physical activity is how you eventually change your fitness,” Welk says. The online tracker is filled out once a semester by students. The students report whether they walk or bike to school and answer other questions about their amount of physical activity. Then, the researchers pair that information with data collected from physical fitness monitors worn by a sample group of students. Health and fitness experts generally recommend children get at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day.

Senator Tom Harkin says it’s time to focus on building better “public health infrastructure” on the African continent, to help local officials more quickly deal with health threats like the current Ebola epidemic. “So when an outbreak happens like this, they don’t have the labs, they don’t have the technicians, they don’t have the public health personnel that are culturally sensitive to people to go out and out and stop this as soon as it starts,” Harkin says. Since 1976 there have been 17 outbreaks of Ebola in Africa, but the current outbreak is the largest in history. The United Nations held a meeting in New York City yesterday (Thursdsay) to discuss the outbreak and the president of “Doctors without Borders” said the global response to the crisis is “moving at the speed of a turtle.” Harkin says while U.S. health care workers did get to Africa early on to try to contain the spread of the disease, they met resistance. “And if they weren’t denied access, they were threatened by local people who thought they were coming in to do something to them,” Harkin says. “I mean, you’ve got to think when you’re in a rural village and you don’t even have the basics and some people show up in a truck and they’ve got these space suits on, that can be pretty frightening and so what happened is that local customs like washing the dead like they do and everything — it just spread that virus.” Harkin is chairman of a senate committee that drafts the budget for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and he is encouraged by last week’s vote in congress to approve 88 million dollars for C-D-C efforts to fight the Ebola outbreak. “We’re going to get on top of it,” Harkin says. “I don’t think we should be unduly alarmed in this country right now, but we’ve got to get on top of this in a hurry before it starts getting into more and more cities.” According to Harkin, the outbreak has been exacerbated because many Ebola victims in rural parts of Africa went to get help from relatives in urban centers. “That’s the place you want someone who’s tested positive for the Ebola virus to be,” Harkin says, “then it just started spreading like mad.” Harkin visited Africa last year to see for himself how health officials were responding to the AIDS epidemic on the continent. Harkin helped set aside six-million dollars in federal funds last year to start building facilities in Africa that are similar to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and later this fall the first two locations will be announced. I told my colleagues: ‘I’m leaving the Senate, but don’t drop the ball on this one,'” Harkin says. “We’ve got to build these laboratories and these institutions in these countries, so as soon as something break out, they’ve got the right personnel. It’s not me from America, it’s their people. They know how to test. They can do the laboratory work. They can do all that stuff right there.” The Ebola epidemic was first detected this winter in Guinea. It has spread to five West African nations and killed more than two-thousand people so far. Four medical missionaries who contracted the virus in Africa were flown back to the U.S. for treatment.

Radio Iowa

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press
WEST BRANCH, Iowa (AP) – A Tipton man is accused of looting his father’s bank account while his dad was being treated for rectal cancer. Court records say Timothy Gingerich is charged with theft, identity theft and 28 counts of forgery. Authorities say the 26-year-old wrote himself nearly $8,000 in checks from his father’s bank account.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) – Crews have installed what Cedar Rapids officials say are Iowa’s first permanent green bike lanes. The work yesterday follows a June test on Third Avenue Southeast. City spokeswoman Emily Muhlbach says that after yielding to bicyclists, motor vehicles may enter the green lane when making turns, pulling into driveways or maneuvering to park.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) – Officials say a rare Grant Wood sketchbook from 1929 is back in Davenport after it went missing from a museum about 50 years ago. The 100-page sketchbook signed by the painter of “American Gothic” is again in the possession of the Figge Art Museum. Collections and exhibitions manager Andrew Wallace says the small book was likely stolen during an open house in 1966.