Des Moines, Iowa – Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, Thursday (Today) signed an extension to the proclamation relating to the weight limits and transportation of grain.  The proclamation is effective immediately and continues through January 29, 2022. It allows vehicles transporting corn, soybeans, hay, straw, silage and stover to be overweight (not exceeding 90,000 pounds gross weight) without a permit for the duration of this proclamation.

The proclamation applies to loads transported on all highways within Iowa (excluding the interstate system) and those which do not exceed a maximum of 90,000 pounds gross weight, do not exceed the maximum axle weight limit determined under the non-primary highway maximum gross weight table in section 321.463 (6)(b) of the Iowa Code by more than 12.5 percent, do not exceed the legal maximum axle weight limit of 20,000 pounds, and comply with posted limits on roads and bridges.

See the proclamation in its entirety, here.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – A public hearing was held this (Thursday) morning in Atlantic, with regard to proposed re-precincting (that is, setting the election precinct boundaries), based on the results of the 2020 Census. Setting the boundaries did not include any changes to where the polling places are, at this time. That is likely to happen later, and should only affect two rural areas. The reprecincting hearing occurred during a regular weekly meeting of the Cass County Board of Supervisors. Following the hearing, the three member Redistricting Commission approved their plan and the Supervisors followed suit.

Cass County Auditor Dale Sunderman…

Sunderman said there were only minor changes to the precinct map.

A hearing will be held to officially establish the election precincts on January 7^th.

The maps are available on the Cass County website Auditor’s page, under “Voting Information,” and as shown below.

Proposed Supervisor Districts

Atlantic Election Wards

Proposed precinct map

Election precinct information

If the Supervisors had failed to set the precincts, it would have been up to the Iowa Legislative Services Agency (LSA) to draw the lines.

In other business, the Cass County Supervisors approved a Class-C Beer Permit for Hansen Valley Oil (rural Atlantic), and acted on adopting the Cass County Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan resolution. In his report to the Board, Cass County Engineer Trent Wolken said bridge number 208 over Indian Creek is now open with the installation completed on a box-culvert project.

The Board also passed a Resolution Authorizing the County to Enter into Settlement Agreements with McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health, Inc., AmerisourceBergen Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Janssen Pharmaceuitca, Inc., with regard to the Terms of the Iowa Opioid Allocation Memorandum of Understanding, and entry Into that Memorandum of Understanding.

And, the Board approved the Cass County Master Matrix Scoring and Recommendation for A-to-Z Feeders’ proposed cattle confinement barn, prior to hearing a monthly report from Cass County Mental Health/General Relief Coordinator Deb Schuler.

(Radio Iowa) – Travel in and out of the state has continued to recover from the pandemic shutdowns. Iowa D-O-T spokesperson, Stuart Anderson, recently told the Transportation Commission that air travel is still getting back to normal. “We are seeing passenger counts at our eight commercial service airports continuing at about that 85 percent level compared to 2019 levels,” Anderson says.

Anderson says it is uncertain what impact the latest COVID variants might have on those airline traffic levels. He says travel on the state roadways has bounced back and held. “We’ve been very steady right around that pre-pandemic level comparing our average traffic daily figures compared to 2019 levels to try to get to the pre-pandemic levels. Overall, we are really right at those pre-pandemic levels,” he says.

Anderson says the volume on the county system is a little above the pre-pandemic levels — while the traffic in cities is a little below those levels.

The 8:06-a.m. News from Ric Hanson.

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Area News from Ric Hanson.

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(Radio Iowa) – Weather observers are still trying to get a perspective on the intense storm system that blasted across Iowa earlier this month, the second derecho to hit us in as many years — which spun off a record number of tornadoes. State climatologist Justin Glisan says the storm was historic in many ways, like how the “moderate area risk” was issued for Iowa. “Moderate” may sound tame but that’s a Level Four warning out of five. “This was the first ‘moderate area’ put out by the Storm Prediction Center in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin during the month of December in history,” Glisan says. “This tells you how unstable the environment was. We had wind shear available, we had instability available, we had ample low level moisture, and all of the ingredients came together for a large-scale straight line wind and tornadic event.”

About half of the state was declared a disaster by the governor, and Glisan says damage was widespread from the multitude of tornadoes, the severe thunderstorms and the straight line winds, some of which had gusts that reached 80 to 90 miles an hour.  “We’d also had multiple reports of 70 mile-per-hour winds based on non-thunderstorm winds,” he says. “These are winds that are produced by the tight pressure gradient that the low pressure system was able to produce, given its proximity to a blocking high pressure system that was able to amp up our temperatures during the day, overnight on the 14th and into the 15th.”

Iowa cities from Sioux City all the way to Burlington reported record high temperatures during the day, most of them springlike upper 60s and lower 70s — unheard of for mid-December. Those temps quickly fell when the storm hit, dropping 30 to 40 degrees, helping to fuel the violent weather. A total of 43 tornadoes were reported in Iowa during this storm, and one death was attributed to the winds — a truck driver whose big rig was flipped into a Benton County ditch. Those 43 twisters set a single-day record for Iowa. At least seven tornadoes were also reported in Nebraska during the storm, and there was an exceptionally rare twister to our north. “We had the first tornado in Minnesota history in December,” Glisan says. “Given the large-scale nature of this outbreak, while one fatality is too much, it is good news that we were able to get the proper warnings up.”

More than 150-thousand Iowa homes lost power during the storm and it took several days to get them all back online. Like the first derecho that hit Iowa back on August 10th of 2020, Glisan says they’ll long be studying this second derecho from December 15th of 2021.

(Radio Iowa) – Items sitting on a work table in the vault at the State Historical Museum may help future generations learn about the pandemic.

The State Historical Museum collects all stories of Iowa history, knowing from our experience that this is a historic time that we’ve been in over the last two years and thinking back to other times that Iowa has been challenged with a health crisis,” museum curator Leo Landis says.

According to Landis, museum staff who put together a World War II in 2016 realized at the start of the pandemic they needed to start a collection. That’s because more than 700 soldiers at Camp Dodge died of the Spanish Flu in 2018, but there’s little in vault to visually illustrate what happened.

“Just thought to ourselves: ‘Wouldn’t it have been great to have a mask from 1918, from the flu pandemic?’ We don’t have that, so as we were moving through the Covid pandemic, we knew we needed to collect.”

The Humboldt County Hospital has donated materials, including personal protective equipment, and the University of Iowa has provided a vial of each of the three vaccines. Landis says that was a priority, because the museum vault does not have a vial of the groundbreaking polio vaccine.

“The promise of a vaccine was so big and, in fact, Sioux City is one of the first communities to get one of the first trials of vaccines as they had an outbreak in the 1950s,” Landis says, “so there’s an Iowa story connected to the national polio vaccine efforts.”

The Covid vaccine vials sitting in the museum’s vault may, in the future, help illustrate the story of the University of Iowa’s participation in the large scale, international clinical trial of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine.

(Radio Iowa) – Surveys on college campuses around the country — and in Iowa – indicate anxiety and depression rates among students continue to rise. The University of Iowa is in the process of hiring three coordinators to guide students to the level of counseling or assistance they may need. Sara Hansen is vice president for student life at the University of Iowa.
“One of the things our students would tell us, I think, across all three campuses is how happy they are to be back on campus,” Hansen says, “but that doesn’t erase kind of the challenges and the fatigue that have built up over the last year, year and a half.”

Nearly nine out of 10 University of Iowa undergrads who answered a recent survey said they had experienced more stress due to the pandemic. Michael Newton, head of Iowa State University’s public safety department, says staff as well as students are struggling and his officers have undergone training in how to respond to someone experiencing a mental health crisis. “The mental health issues and problems that we’re seeing really were exacerbated by the pandemic,” Newton says.

Toyia Younger is senior vice president for student affairs at Iowa State University. She says a relatively new self-help program for I-S-U students meets them where they are — online. “Ironically, we started this before the pandemic and little did we know that almost a year later we would find ourselves in need of significant online therapy opportunities for our students, so we are really pleased with that,” Younger says, “and that’s one of the things that we’ll continuing providing services with.”

Helen Haire is director of the University of Northern Iowa’s department of public safety. She says students are sometimes using drugs and alcohol to self-medicate and deal with their stress or mental health issues. During calendar year 2020, there was a little bit of a decrease in alcohol-related arrests on the Cedar Falls campus, but a slight uptick in drug referrals.
“Some of our neighboring states have legalized marijuana and, because of that, a lot of our students may be a little bit more complacent or a little bit more willing to use the marijuana in our (residence) halls, particularly,” she says. “That’s where most of our referrals come from.”

Another U-N-I administrator says fellow students and faculty are often the first to notice a student is in distress — and many of the students who arrive at the campus counseling center for the first time are accompanied by a professor or by another student.

(Creston, Iowa) – The driver of a 2005 Nissan Maxima complained of leg pain following a rollover accident south of Creston, Tuesday night. According to the Union County Sheriff’s Office, Deputies received a call at around 8:40-p.m. about a vehicle on its side in the ditch, in the area of 205th & Cherry Streets in rural Union County.

Deputies arrived on the scene to find no one around. They eventually made contact with the driver, 45-year-old Selena Joann Lee, of Afton, at her residence. Lee told authorities she was traveling north on Cherry Street when her vehicle went out of control and hit the west side ditch before it flipped around facing south and landed on its passenger side.

Lee was transported from her home to the hospital by ambulance She was cited for Failure to provide proof of insurance, Leaving the scene of an accident, and Failure to Maintain Control. Her vehicle sustained $4,000 damage. The report mentioned she was driving too fast for conditions when she lost control.

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa (Dec. 29, 2021) — Officials with West Des Moines-based Hy-Vee Food Stores said Wednesday, that “As part of its ongoing efforts to ensure the health and safety of both its customers and employees, Hy-Vee is introducing its new Hy-Vee Retail Security team to retail stores across its eight-state region.” According to company president and COO Jeremy Gosch, Hy-Vee Retail Security officers will be present in Hy-Vee stores during operating hours.

These officers, many of whom come from a law enforcement background, are specially trained to defuse situations and equipped to protect the safety of both Hy-Vee customers and employees. The officers have been through training designed by Hy-Vee retail security leaders alongside law enforcement partners. Gosch says “Hy-Vee has a strong history of doing anything for our customers, and these officers will be held to that same standard.”

He added “These officers will help provide another layer of safety and security for our customers, and will work alongside our store employees to deliver the same helpful smiles and outstanding service everyone expects at their local store.”

Officers are in several stores now, and more officers are completing the Hy-Vee Retail Security Training program so they can begin serving in other Hy-Vee stores across the company’s eight-state region in the near future. Hy-Vee is actively recruiting for officers to join the new Hy-Vee Retail Security team.

Interested applicants can connect with the Retail Security team at RetailSecurity@hy-vee.com.