(Radio Iowa) -Morningside University in Sioux City is welcoming more than 40 high school jazz bands to take part in their 49th annual jazz festival in Eppley Auditorium beginning today (Wednesday) and running through Friday. Erik Mahon is the university’s director of jazz studies. “Forty-eight bands total. There’s a number of schools that are bringing two bands — so not quite 48 schools. But, certainly, the most bands that we’ve had in a number of years, maybe ever,” Mahon says.

Photo via https://www.morningside.edu/news/

The high school students will not just compete, but also learn from a host of jazz clinicians from around the midwest: “My main priority is to make it an educational experience. Certainly, it is a competition and we’re awarding trophies and things like that — but the clinics and the comments are a priority for me. So we do have clinicians coming in from Topeka, Kansas, from Lincoln, Nebraska as well as our Siouxland region,” according to Mahon.

The festival is free to the public and includes opportunities to listen to some great music. “We are actually going to be doing three mini concerts each day right during, kind of the lunch hour, so on Wednesday and Thursday it’ll be just afternoon, and on Friday just after 12:30,” he says.

He says they will feature the guest clinicians and judges in the concerts. The high school bands begin competing at 8 a-m each day, wrapping up by late afternoon or early evening.

(Radio Iowa) – Marshalltown police have arrested four juveniles they say were involved in a recent vandalism spree. On January 13th, Marshalltown police began taking reports of vandalism throughout the community. The information from each incident was consistent and quickly believed to be linked together. A preliminary investigation by police revealed that several houses, businesses and other personal property had been shot at with BB guns, causing more than $10,000 in damage. On January 18th, the police identified and located the vehicle involved in the incidents. Upon further examination, officers located three juveniles inside the vehicle.

A search warrant was then obtained, which led to the discovery of a BB gun and a large quantity of BBs inside the vehicle. Upon further investigation, it was learned that four juvenile males had recently stolen multiple BB guns from a local business. It was later learned that the stolen BB guns had been used to inflict damage throughout Marshalltown.

The four juvenile males have each been charged with first degree criminal mischief and fifth degree theft. The case has been referred to juvenile court services.

(Creston, Iowa) – Police in Creston arrested a man on two warrants out of Cass County (IA). Authorities say 30-year-old Dalton James Cormeny, of Creston, was arrested at around 10:34-p.m. Tuesday at the Union County Jail, on the Cass County warrants for Failure to Appear on original charges that include: Driving While Barred; Possession of Controlled Substance/Meth – 1st offense; 2nd Degree Theft; Burglary in the 3rd Degree, and Criminal; Mischief in the 2nd Degree.

Cormeny was being held in the Union County until he’s finished serving his time. He will then be transferred to Cass County.

DES MOINES, Iowa – More than 300 Iowans are currently missing. The Iowa Department of Public Safety’s relaunch of the Missing Person Information Clearinghouse website – iowamissingpersons.com – provides an interactive design and advanced functions to make it easier to help identify and locate people.

Established in 1985 within the Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI), the Missing Person Information Clearinghouse compiles, coordinates and disseminates information in relation to missing persons and unidentified body/persons. Since 2005, the Clearinghouse has been sharing missing person information through a public-facing website that combines an individual’s identification data supplied from law enforcement agencies across the state with a photo provided by families.

Development of the new website enhances the display of persons currently missing, and provides more robust search capabilities to improve the user experience. Upgraded features include an advanced search function that allows users to select identifiable body details, date of birth, type of incident and originating law enforcement agency, among others. Users can also create a downloadable poster featuring a missing person and access a child fingerprint ID kit.

According to DCI Missing Person Information Clearinghouse Coordinator, Medina Rahmanovic, the mission of the new website is two-fold. The primary purpose is sharing missing person information. However, the site also serves as an educational hub housing resources to support the prevention of children and adult runaways, and abductions as well as general information about missing person issues.

“We have been working for many years toward our goal of generating awareness, prevention and cooperation, and updating the Missing Person Information Clearinghouse website to make it more user-friendly,” said Rahmanovic, who added that a key priority for the DCI is reducing the number of profiles without photos. More than 75% of the approximately 300 missing persons do not have photos available to display. “We need the public’s assistance, and we encourage loved ones to share a photo with us at mpicinfo@dps.state.ia.us.”

Iowa Department of Public Safety Commissioner Stephan Bayens said, “Locating missing persons is difficult work, and often takes collaboration from a wide network of people. We’re very pleased to give the public and our law enforcement partners more advanced tools to help locate and bring missing Iowans safely home.”

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Atlantic FFA Advisor Eric Miller says on Saturday January 8, 2022, FFA members Clarie Pellett, Chris Keegan, Roth DenBeste, Brock Henderson, DJ Shepperd, Brett Dreager, Mia Kloewer, Lola Comes and McKenna Sonntag, traveled to the FFA Enrichment Center in Ankeny, Iowa to attend the Ignite and Amplify FFA Leadership Conferences. Members from all over Iowa attended the conference, which taught them about leadership and student development.

left to right: Mia Kloewer, Lola Comes and McKenna Sonntag

IGNITE Conference focuses on the Endless Opportunities: Careers in Agriculture What’s Behind Door #1, discovering FFA Opportunities. The next workshop was Fuel Up! Managing Emotional Fuel Tanks. Common Ground workshop was learning Diversity & Similarity Among FFA Members. Next is Pay It Forward learning how Servant Leadership and Service Planning can help our community and finally, Follow the Leader: Leading with Integrity. “The Ignite Conference helped me continue to build my leadership skills. It also gave me the opportunity to meet new people that share agricultural interests with me.” said Comes.

Front Row Left to right
Clarie Pellett, Chris Keegan, Roth DenBeste, Brock Henderson, DJ Shepperd, Brett Dreager

AMPLIFY Conference focuses on student development. This year the conference focused on Purpose: Connect. Care. Create. Establishing a purpose as a daily practice and draft a leader purpose statement. Discovering how people are connected to purpose and identify their talents. Members also learned to discover what it means to live to serve as a leader and examine methods for serving others while pursuing purpose. All of this while Identifying the value in practicing practical self-care as a leader and discovering the difference between living with purpose and completing action items. To wrap up the conference, each member drafted a personal purpose team and identified how to live out a purpose plan at home. ““I learned a lot about different ways you can lead. There was so many different people from different backgrounds that were each leaders in their own way.”” said Pellett.

Eric Miller said, “These conferences are important to help develop the kind of leaders that we need in our school and community. I am glad the Iowa FFA provides us with the opportunity and the students are so willing to give their time to become better leaders.” The members that attended the conference enjoyed their time. Chris Keegan said “I learned new ways to meet people and met lots of new people at the conference.” Mia Kloewer also said “I really liked the stuff we learned about and I met so many people there.” All around everybody had a good time and would recommend going again. And, McKenna Sonntag said ‘I really recommend this FFA conference because it really helped me get out of my comfort zone and meet new people and learn how to be a better leader and FFA advocate..”

(Story & photos courtesy Eric Miller)

(Radio Iowa) – Bicycling advocates are urged to trade their spandex for suits and head for Des Moines this (Wednesday) morning as it’s Iowa Bicycling Day at the Capitol. Mark Wyatt, executive director of the Iowa Bicycle Coalition, says they’ll be lobbying state legislators on a range of cycling-related issues, with a headquarters set up in the Legislative Dining Room between 8 and 9 A-M. “If you’re not able to make it, that doesn’t mean you can’t participate,” Wyatt says. “We’re holding a virtual lobby day for bicycling. Go to our website, iowabicyclecoalition.org, sign in there and if you’ve never taken action before, this is the day to take action and let your legislators know what your priorities are.”

One key measure Wyatt says they’ll be pushing for is called I-WILL, for Iowa’s Water and Land Legacy, to further expand the state’s already-stellar bike trail system. “There’s a proposal in the Senate to enact IWILL, which is the Outdoor Recreation and Natural Resources Trust Fund,” Wyatt says. “This is what was approved (by voters) about 12 years ago so there’s a proposal right now to fund IWILL and that will produce probably nine-million dollars in trails.”

The legacy is to be funded with a sales tax increase under the Senate proposal. Another piece of legislation would require any cell phone use while driving to be done in hands-free or voice-activated mode. Wyatt says drivers who spend the greatest amount of their driving time interacting with a cell phone have the highest rates of near-crashes and crashes. “Distracted driving caused six deaths on Iowa roads last year and one of them was a bicyclist and possibly two,” Wyatt says. “We’re continuing to be concerned about distracted driving and anything we can do to reduce that is a good thing. Requiring the phone to be in a hands-free or voice-activated mode while you’re driving we think is a positive step forward.” The coalition also wants to see a standard set of penalties in fatal crashes. Under the current Iowa Code, fatal or serious bike crashes are not subject to the same enhanced penalties that apply to fatal or serious injury crashes involving motorists, motorcyclists or pedestrians.

(UPDATE 10-a.m.) The senator who is the floor manager of the education funding and parents’ bill of rights bills is ill and these bills will NOT be debated in the Senate today.

(Radio Iowa) – An array of education-related bills will be under consideration at the Iowa Capitol today (Wednesday). The Senate is tentatively scheduled to debate a bill that would increase per pupil spending on Iowa’s public schools by two-and-a-quarter of a percent, slightly less than Governor Reynolds recommended. Senator Jackie Smith, a Democrat from Sioux City, says it isn’t enough to address the workforce crisis in Iowa’s K-through-12 public schools. “School districts across Iowa have thousands of open positions,” Smith says. “…Districts need more money to attract, hire and retain more staff and pay more attractive wages.”

Smith says Iowa ranks 40th in per pupil spending. Senator Julian Garrett, a Republican from Indianola, says there are other ways to evaluate the state investment. “As a rule, when you take into account cost of living, Iowa’s more or less in the middle as far as education funding and teacher salaries,” Garrett says.

House Republicans are proposing a two-and-a-half percent increase in the state’s per pupil allocation to K-through-12 schools — the same as Governor Reynolds — and plan to debate it tomorrow. Republican Representative Cecil Dolecheck of Mount Ayr says Republicans have been careful not to over-promise. “That we can be guaranteed to school districts that we will provide every dollar to the education system that we have promised,” Dolecheck says, “never go back on those promises.”

The Senate’s also scheduled to debate a “parent’s bill of rights” today (Wednesday) that would require schools to get parental consent before a student could access content that could be considered obscene. There will be a subcommittee hearing in the HOUSE on a bill that would force Iowa schools to install cameras so every class could be live-streamed and monitored by parents. House Democratic Leader Jennifer Konfrst of Windsor Heights says Republicans are villainizing teachers.

“They are giving the impression that teachers need to be watched all the time, that teachers can’t be trusted, that teachers are enemies,” Konfrst says. “…Let’s thank teachers. They’ve been working their tails off the last two years and they’re burned out.”

Another bill to be discussed at the Capitol tomorrow (Wednesday) would require the Iowa and Iowa State football teams to play one another each year. It’s scheduled for initial review in a House subcommittee at noon.

(Radio Iowa) – The governor’s plan to require that most Iowa fueling stations sell gas with a 15 percent ethanol blend has cleared the Senate Ag Committee — without any debate. Republican Senator Dan Zumbach of Ryan was the only person to speak about the bill before a subcommittee AND the Senate Ag Committee voted to advance it. “Good bills come with questions. Good bills come with controversy. Good bills come with answers,” Zumbach says. “This bill answers a lot of questions. Does it create some? Absolutely, but this bill is about doing what Iowans do and that’s supporting Iowans.”

Last year, Governor Reynolds proposed an Iowa Renewable Fuels Standard, but the state’s fuel industry warned motorists would see higher pump prices as stations spent money upgrading equipment to handle higher blends of ethanol as well as biodiesel, which has a soybean-based additive. This year’s revised proposal includes waivers for smaller stations which can show they cannot afford to upgrade fuel handling systems to handle E-15, E-85 and B-20. “It’s about making corn and soybeans worth more,” he said, “and having great fuel access everywhere.”

The bill easily cleared the Iowa House last week and its next stop in the Senate is the Ways and Means Committee.

(Radio Iowa) – The four Iowans who serve in the U.S. House have voted in favor of a bill that directs the U.S. Postal Service to continue delivering the mail six days a week. The bipartisan bill also provides a significant financial boost by getting rid of a requirement that the Postal Service pre-fund health care benefits for current and retired employees for 75 years. That’s something no other government agency or business is required to do. Congresswomen Cindy Axne of West Des Moines, Ashley Hinson of Marion and Marinnette Miller-Meeks of Ottumwa all issued written statements.

They described the mail as a vital service, particularly in rural Iowa, and all three said the bill is a way to safeguard the future of the Postal Service. Congressman Randy Feenstra of Hull also voted for the legislation. A similar bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate.

The Postal Service hasn’t turned a profit in 14 years. Last March, the Postmaster General proposed reforms, including delayed delivery of first class mail.

(Radio Iowa) – The U.S. Department of Agriculture is investing one-billion-dollars in projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions on farms, ranches and forests. U-S Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack says the initiative will help farmers generate more profits and make America more competitive in markets abroad. “We need to get there first,” Vilsack says. “We need to be able to say to the world, ‘We have led in this effort,’ in order to maintain and expand those export markets.” The secretary says the funding will go toward projects such as cover crops and manure management.

Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, is asking for ideas on how to execute practices like no-till farming and nutrient management on a large scale.  “We’re trying to incentivize the creation of climate-smart commodities that hold higher value in the marketplace,” he says, “that farmers can generate additional profit from, and capture value for the farmer.” Local and state governments, nonprofits and small businesses can apply for the federal money.

The Biden administration is trying to slash greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture in half by 2030. Vilsack announced the program Monday at Lincoln University of Missouri in Jefferson City.

(Katie Peikes, Iowa Public Radio)