(Radio Iowa) – A rally at the Iowa Capitol later this (Monday) morning is one of over a thousand “Workers Over Billionaires” events planned around the country. The head of the country’s largest teachers union will speak at the Des Moines rally. Joshua Brown, president of state teachers union, will, too. He says the 2017 Iowa law that scaled back collective bargaining rights for public sector unions was a set back for the Iowa State Education Association.

“But we’ve been starting to get back to stable and starting to see some growth,” Brown says. “and so we’re looking forward to continuing that growth and making our members excited about some of the things that we can do as a union.” The Iowa State Education Association represents 50-thousand educators — school nurses, counselors and office staff as well as teachers. Brown is concerned about a proposal floated by the governor’s efficiency task force that would tie teacher pay to student performance.

“It’s a scheme that winds up just hurting morale and hurting the ability for educators to trust one another, to work together,” Brown says “because you add that measure of competitiveness, people don’t want to share the best ideas with other people and people want to go to the easiest jobs and try to leave the places where we actually need the best teachers.” Several years ago, former Governor Terry Branstad talked about linking teacher pay to the results of their students’ test scores, but the proposal never became law.

Brown says in areas where the policy has been implemented, high-performing schools continue be high performing, but there isn’t that much of an increase in test scores among students in schools that have had chronically lower graduation rates. “I think the educators on the ground and the parents in our communities as well as the students should all be at a table and working on solutions, but it needs to be funded and there’s been over a decade of funding that hasn’t kept up with inflation in public schools,” Brown says. “If we really want to see improved student achievement, we need to invest in public schools and give educators autonomy and use their expertise to actually make a difference.”

Brown made his comments this weekend during an appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa P-B-S.

(Radio Iowa) – The mourning dove season in Iowa opens today (Monday). D-N-R wildlife biologist Todd Bogenschutz says the participation by hunters and number of birds have been steady. “Basically 14 to 15-thousand hunters, pretty stable there, and our harvest has bounced around between, 150 and 200-thousand doves over the last couple of years,” Bogenschutz says.
Bogenschutz says there are no changes in regulations for doves, and the D-N-R has plenty of information about where to find them.

“If you go to our website and and just search for morning doves, a lot of folks are asking about, you know we do do some managed food plots for doves and we have that listing on our website,” he says. Bogenschutz says dove are found across the state, but cooler weather recently may make the hunting better in southern Iowa. “Part of that might just be due to migrations probably already started. And so we’ve got those that probably left northern Iowa. But I mean we, you know, our hunters have good hunts from north to south. So definitely, I think southern Iowa does carry a little bit higher densities than northern Iowa at this time of the year,” he says.

Bogenschutz says dove hunting has a lot of positives that make it good for beginning hunters. “Obviously a very early season here, starting one of our earliest in September, so it’s relatively warm. Doves are very abundant, you don’t need a lot of gear to to dove hunt, basically a bucket to sit on and a shotgun and some shells and an area the doves are using, and you’re good to go,” be says. “So from that perspective it’s a it’s a great way for beginning folks into the the hunting realm.”

Bogenschutz says there’s a lot of opportunities to hunt on private land if you get permission, and there are also the public wildlife areas.

(Radio Iowa) – Labor Day marks what many Iowans consider the end of summer, but it’s not the end of our problems associated with ticks. The region has seen a rise in cases of Lyme disease and other ailments ticks carry, which one expert blames on warmer winters which allow millions of the tiny insects to survive and thrive.

“Tick season essentially now is moving year-round,” according to Megan Meller, an infection preventionist at Emplify Health by Gundersen. She says Iowans should do tick checks during every month of the year. There are more than a dozen species of ticks in Iowa. The three most common are deer ticks, dog ticks and lone star ticks. Meller says some are easier to spot than others.

“If we’re lucky, they’re large and we can find them right away but some of them are really tiny, the size of a dot at the end of a sentence, and if you overlook those, they can also cause an infection,” Meller says. “It’s really important to not just do a thorough tick check on yourself and on your pets and children, but to also take additional preventative measures.” Those measures include wearing long pants and long sleeves.

“Wearing bug spray when you’re outside that repels ticks. It’s closing up your sock line. That’s an easy way for ticks to get up, too. It’s wearing long socks over your pants,” she says. “It’s just being really mindful that there are also hidden dangers lurking out there.”

There’s another tick to be watchful for, especially if you raise livestock. The Asian longhorned tick was found in southeast Iowa in June. It apparently doesn’t have a taste for human blood, but can be quite harmful for animals, including cattle, horses, sheep and deer.

Emplify Health by Gundersen has clinics in Calmar, Decorah, Fayette, Lansing, Postville and Waukon, and a hospital in West Union.

(Radio Iowa) – Candidates from BOTH parties who’ve been campaigning for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat say Republican Joni Ernst would have faced backlash over her voting record if she had run for a third term in the senate. Josh Turek of Council Bluffs, a Democrat who’s currently a member of the Iowa House, says the “yes” vote Ernst cast for President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was a liability.

“There is no way she was going to be able to defend slashing and gutting health care to children and to disabled individuals and cutting food assistance just to give tax breaks to billionaires,” Turek says. Republican Jim Carlin of Sergeant Bluff, a former state legislator, has criticized Ernst for failing to IMMEDIATELY support Pete Hegseth when President Trump nominated him to be defense secretary.

“You know, in the last few years we’ve seen that President Trump does need some allies,” Carlin said. Ernst, a combat veteran, ultimately voted to confirm Hegseth, but she initially raised concerns about Hegseth’s comments that women should not serve in combat. Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Nathan Sage of Indianola, the former head of the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce, says having an incumbent exit the race makes Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat attainable for Democrats.

State Senator Zach Wahls of Coralville, one of the other Democrats running to the U-S Senate, says Ernst was a vulnerable incumbent. “Republicans in Iowa are now running scared,” Wahls said, “and we know that we have the chance to defeat whoever the Republicans nominate.” Des Moines School Board president Jackie Norris, a Democrat who entered the race a few weeks ago, says Iowans are ready for change and Ernst saw the writing on the wall.

Carlin — the Republican who announced in June he intended to challenge Ernst in the 2026 Primary Election — says Ernst’s decision NOT to run isn’t a surprise. “I talk to a lot of people and they were all kind of thinking, you know…’I don’t think she’s going to run,'” Carlin said. “I heard that over and over and over again.”

Carlin says Ernst should be credited for fulfilling a promise from her 2014 campaign — that she would serve no more than two terms in the U.S. Senate.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – The Red Oak Police Department reports a man was arrested early this (Sunday) morning on an OWI charge. Authorities say 24-year-old Felix Adan Martinez-Silva was arrested at around 1:30-a.m. in the 2200 block of Highway 34. Martinez-Silva was charged with OWI/1st offense. He was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $1,000 bond.

If you want to learn more about what your local government representatives do—or ask them questions directly – This is your chance! Expect to find representatives from City Council, the Mayor, the County Board of Supervisors, County Assessor, County Treasurer, County Recorder, Atlantic Parks Commission, County Conservation Board, Planning & Zoning, Board of Adjustments, County Local Food Policy Council, Atlantic School Board, and more!

Plus, don’t miss Local Government BINGO! Everyone who completes their BINGO card will be entered in a $50 Farmers Market gift card drawing (ages 18+ for the drawing, but we have a separate kids’ version of BINGO too!). Free YMCA Bounce House. Visiting community organizations and businesses include the Atlantic Public Library, Cass Health, Healthy Cass County, Cass County Tourism, and more.

Thanks to September Sponsors: Rush CPA, Gregg Young Chevrolet of Atlantic, City of Atlantic, 1st Whitney Bank, Cass Health, Cass County Tourism, Atlantic Area Chamber of Commerce, and Nishna Valley Family YMCA.

(Iowa Capital Dispatch) – Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial close of lake-recreation season, and the official end of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ weekly beach monitoring program for summer 2025. This summer, 28 state park beaches, out of 41 monitored, had at least one weekend where swimming was not recommended due to high levels of E. coli or microcystins, a toxin released by certain types of algae.

For the final week of monitoring, swimming is not recommended at 15 state park beaches. The majority of these beaches have excessive levels of E. coli present, and one beach has excessive levels of algal toxins, according to DNR’s beach monitoring database. The “swimming not recommended” advisories are not a beach closure, but rather a warning to recreators that the beach may carry a higher risk of causing things like diarrhea, nausea or other acute symptoms than can result from exposure to E. coli and microcystins.

A single water sample taken at the beach must exceed E. coli measurements of 235 colony forming units, or CFU, per 100 milliliters, for a swimming advisory to be issued. An advisory is also triggered if the mean of five samples over a 30-day period exceeds 126 CFU/100 mL. At these levels, an estimated 36 out of 1,000 swimmers will experience minor illnesses. Single samplings at some state park beaches this summer had E. coli concentrations as high as 24,000 most probable number, or MPN, per 100 mL. MPN is a statistical calculation of the number of colonies rather than a direct count.

Microcystins are toxins produced by certain green-blue algae that typically have a paint-like or oily appearance on the water. The blooms occur in nutrient dense water. This summer five state beaches had microystin levels in excess of 8 micrograms per L, which is the level that triggers an advisory.

There are 15 weeks between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend. Three state beaches, at Backbone State Park, Beeds Lake State Park and Pine Lake State Park, had swimming advisories for all but three of the weeks. 13 beaches had no swimming advisories this summer due to water quality, this number includes the beach at Lake Keomah State Park, which was not monitored this summer due to ongoing renovations.

This means more beaches had adverse water conditions this summer than last summer. Iowa Environmental Council follows the DNR beach monitoring data each week and found that in 2024, 16 state park beaches did not have an advisory in place all summer.

IEC reported in 2024 that Green Valley Lake, Honey Creek, and Lake Anita were the only monitored state beaches that had never had an E. coli related advisory. This statistic holds true after this summer’s beach monitoring season, though the beach at Green Valley Lake had one advisory for microsystins.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – Montgomery County Auditor Jill Ozuna has issued Public Notices with regard to the holiday weekend and early next week:

• In observance of Labor Day, the Montgomery County Courthouse will be closed on Monday September 01, 2025
• The Board of Supervisors Regular Meeting  is canceled for September 02, 2025.
• The next regular BOS meeting will resume on Tuesday September 9, 2025, at 9:00 a.m.