(Avoca) – Students and staff at the AHSTW School in Avoca have the day off due to an incident that took place Tuesday night. According to Superintendent Darin Jones, he received a call at around 9-p.m, indicating the fire alarms were going-off and school staff saw smoke in the Pre-TK-and Kindergarten pod.

Personnel from the Avoca, Walnut and Harlan Fire Departments were paged to the scene. They determined the smoke was coming from an overheated air handling unit on the roof. Heat from the unit ignited filters in the unit, causing smoke to filter in to the early childhood pod. The smoke left soot on tables, chairs and other items in several classrooms. There was no structural or other damage to the building and classrooms.

A cleaning service specializing in disaster and emergency clean-up, was called on to clean and air-out the affected areas. Classes were cancelled to allow the clean-up to take place. Afternoon activities were not affected.

Superintendent Jones was hopeful classes would resume as normal on Thursday.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Iowa Department of Transportation District 4 Planner, Scott Suhr, reports several projects have already started, and some are finishing-up from last Fall. Others will be underway in the weeks to come.

Locally, one of the projects affects traffic on Highway 6 over the East Nishnabotna River, 2.6-miles east of Highway 48. .

Suhr said the Highway 92 project will probably take about three-to-four months to complete. It’s located over Seven Mile Creek 1.7-miles west of Highway 71. A pair of projects are set to kick-off beginning April 3^rd. One is in Guthrie County.

Scott Suhr says another project is on Highway 44, near Portsmouth.

In District 4’s southwest Iowa 17 county area, there are at least 50 projects going on, not including maintenance projects (sealing/patching), railroad crossing replacement and so on, that utilize federal funds on the state and highway interstate system. One of the projects is on I-80 in Cass County.

Another is on Highway 148 from the West Nodaway River, 0.9-miles south of Highway 92 is another bridge project. There are several projects in Adair and Pottawattamie Counties, as well. Suhr recommends before you head out on your commute or trip, go to www.511ia.org, or call 511 to learn the latest news on projects underway or planned to begin soon.

(Creston, Iowa) – A collision between a car and an SUV in Creston, Tuesday evening, resulted in minor injuries. According to Creston Police, a 2023 Chevy Malibu driven by 28-year-old Harry Metzger, of Ottumwa, was traveling west on Highway 34 near Pine Street, at around 5:20-p.m. A 2013 Ford Explorer driven by 53-year-old Jeffrey Conklin, of Bridgewater, was traveling eastbound. Police say Metzger attempted to turn left onto Pine Street. He didn’t see the approaching SUV.

The vehicles collided, sustaining disabling damage. A woman in the SUV was transported to the Greater Regional Medical Center, in Creston, for treatment of minor, non-life threatening injuries. Her name was not released. Damage to the vehicles amounted to $7,000. Police cited Metzger for Failure to Yield Upon Left Turn.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The Cass County Assessor’s Office will be closed Friday, March 31. Assessor Mary Anstey reports the office will be closed from 8-a.m. until 7-p.m., so her staff may attend training.

(Radio Iowa) – An Iowa State University study shows inflation is hitting rural residents harder that those in urban areas. Professor David Peters, a rural sociologist for I-S-U Extension and Outreach, says inflation took a bigger bite of rural household budgets throughout much of last year, but its effects were similar in rural and urban areas by year’s end. “Over the past 10 years, inflation costs that we’re all familiar with, gas and food and everything else, has cut rural discretionary incomes by over a third,” Peters says. “What’s the discretionary income? Well, the discretionary income is essentially the money you have leftover at the end of the year after you pay your taxes and pay all your expenses.”

That discretionary income is critical, he says, for handling unexpected or emergency expenses. In the past two years, Peters says inflation has cost the average rural household a total of more than eight-thousand dollars.  “And that just means rural households have less money for unexpected health care costs,” Peters says. “A lot of rural people have their own health insurance, less money for unexpected home repairs, the furnace goes out, you need a new roof, unexpected car repairs, or even just for rural people to save for their own retirement or their kids’ future education.”

Peters says he doesn’t foresee inflation letting up anytime soon. “I would say likely not in the next two to three years,” Peters says. “I would say that the price increases we’ve seen are going to stay. They might not be increasing as much as they have been in the last two years, but all indications would be those inflation rates are here to stay.” The Federal Reserve recently raised interest rates in an effort to stave off further inflation, which Peters says raises the risk of the economy falling into a recession. “People grumble about inflation and people grumble about paying more for the groceries and their gas,” Peters says, “but that’s a far less major problem than a recession where people would lose their jobs and lose their businesses.”

Peters says rural households paid an extra 300-dollars per month because of inflation in 2021, but the urban-rural gap in additional expenses was modest, around 15-dollars a month. When transportation costs shot up in early 2022, largely due to higher gas prices, he says rural households felt it more. For the first two-thirds of the year, inflation cost rural households at least an extra 450-dollars per month, which is 60-to-90 dollars more than urban households.

See the full report online:
https://smalltowns.soc.iastate.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/163/2023/02/SOC-3106.pdf