(Atlantic, IA) – The Cass County Board of Supervisors will hold their regular and separate, Compensation Board meetings Tuesday morning, in their Cass County Courthouse meeting room. During their regular meeting that begins at 9-a.m., the Supervisors will hold public hearings (Beginning at 9:05-a.m.), with regard to requested zoning changes for properties at 59708 Yankton Road and 54148 Boston Road. The latter pertains to a change from General Agricultural to Light Industrial. The former is for a change from Suburban Residential to General Agricultural. Following each hearing, the Board will act on approving the zoning changes as requested.

The Supervisors are also expected to receive public comments with regard to a report from the Cass EMS Advisory Council’s annual report, as it pertains to funding recommendations. They are also scheduled to receive a Monthly report from Cass/Guthrie Environmental Health Director Jotham Arber, and, discuss/and-or take possible action on, a lease agreement for the Willow Heights building. In other business, and prior to holding the Compensation Board Meeting, the Cass County Supervisors will discuss and/or approve a Cass County (employee) Health Insurance Rates Policy, designating participation and non-participation rates for Jan. 1, 2027-through Dec. 31, 2027, based on wellness plan participation in 2026.

At 10:30-a.m., the Cass County Supervisors, acting as the Compensation Board as allowed under the Code of Iowa, will review health insurance renewal options, and set the employee/employer premium rates for4 FY27. They will then compare the compensation rates for the auditor, treasurer, recorder, sheriff, attorney and supervisors, to comparable officers in other counties of the State, other states, private enterprise and the federal government, in accordance with the Code of Iowa, and act on setting the FY27 compensation scheduled for those elected officials.

The Compensation Board’s final order of business, is to discuss general compensation rate changes for clerks, assistants and others, and to establish recommended parameters for use by department heads in budget planning.

(Radio Iowa) –  The former owner of Holzhauer Motors in northwest Iowa has been arrested on fraud related charges. Sixty-four-year-old Daniel Winchell was arrested December 8th, in Cherokee, and charged with two counts of first-degree theft and ongoing criminal conduct. Winchell allegedly kept fees customers paid for vehicle titles and registrations and the customers would then have to also pay the county treasurer to get them. He allegedly sold 63 vehicles out of trust, with money collected but not paid to lenders in exceeding ten-thousand dollars.

A preliminary hearing for Winchell is scheduled for December 19th.

(Radio Iowa) – The State Historical Society of Iowa is renewing its partnership with Ancestry-dot-com that will broaden public access to millions of archival documents at no cost to the state’s taxpayers. Tony Jahn, the state archivist and the historical society’s library and archives bureau chief, says it will offer Iowans — and researchers everywhere — unprecedented insights into the state’s past. “Well, it’s a very big deal,” Jahn says. “We’ve been working very closely with Ancestry.com since 2012, preserving through digitizing primarily government records that we have — birth, death, marriage, divorce, other records of interest to family history researchers, commonly known as genealogists, and it’s in the millions.”

The agreement between the historical society and Ancestry-dot-com will integrate a wide range of documents from the state archives into the website’s searchable database. “Since we last did our last batch of a few million a few years ago, time has passed and there’s entire categories of records that are now available,” Jahn says, “and we’re excited to be able to digitize, over the next 12 to 18 months, just short of a million records.” Just scanning the individual pages of documents doesn’t take terribly long, but Jahn says it can be very time-consuming to create the metadata, all of the things that make that information more easily searchable. “They can type in a name and they’ll be able to find it, or type in dates, type in where they lived, counties they reside in,” Jahn says, “and be able to then cross-compare that with other information that’s already been digitized and available online and get more thorough search results so they can discover more about their families, their background, their parents, their grandparents.”

In addition to the vital records, this project will see the digitizing of state-level military files including Iowa National Guard enlistment records, World War One and Two casualty files, even records from the prison system, police records and mug shots. Jahn says the records are of significant genealogical value, not just to Iowans but to people worldwide who can trace their family history back to the state.  “It’s an incredible tool. In the olden days, you’d have to spend weeks and weeks and weeks, and today a lot of this is available at your fingertips,” Jahn says. “The more information that’s available out there, the more you can discover about your family’s past. You can discover about who you are, where you came from, the people that have long since departed.”

Iowans will be able to access the records by using the State Historical Society of Iowa’s complimentary institutional account at the Research Center or through a paid subscription to Ancestry.com.

(Radio Iowa) – The Ankeny-based Casey’s convenience store chain announced recently that their second quarter income was up 14 percent from last year. President and C-E-O Darren Rebelez said during a conference call for investors that they have done research on the impact of the economy on the business. “There’s sentiment out there among consumers, and then there’s how they behave. And I think broadly speaking, if you look at different income cohorts, the middle and upper income cohorts are feeling good about, about the economy,” he says. He says the lower income customers are under more economic pressure. “But they also say that they intend to maintain their visit frequency to convenience stores. So that’s encouraging for us,” Rebelez says. He says the quarterly numbers show their actual behavior in the stores is that they’re still coming as frequently as they were.

Rebelez says they may take more advantage of coupons or special offers. “They are being more discerning about where they spend the money and how they spend it,” he says. Gas prices have come down, but Rebelez doesn’t think that is the biggest reason that sales in the stores have held up. “We think that people are really picking and choosing where they’re going to spend their money and where the best intersection of quality and value come together is where people are really spending their money,” he says. “Low fuel prices certainly help, and I think a more robust in store offer and getting that value equation right is probably the bigger driver of the results inside the store.”

Rebelez says less than two percent of their sales are SNAP eligible, so the government shutdown and the delay of SNAP benefits didn’t have much of an impact their business.

(An IOWA CAPITAL DISPATCH report) – Nearly two dozen U.S. senators urged the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in a letter, to “prioritize” a vaccine strategy for the highly pathogenic avian influenza. The virus has impacted more than 184 million commercial and backyard poultry birds and more than 1,000 head of dairy cattle since February 2022.

The letter comes as detections of the bird flu have increased over the winter months in states across the country, according to reporting from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.  A case of bird flu was detected in Iowa Dec. 2, in a Hamilton County commercial turkey flock, and as recently as Tuesday in flocks in Indiana, North Dakota, Minnesota and Washington.

The bipartisan letter, which included Iowa Republicans Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley, said a “thoughtful and comprehensive vaccine strategy” would “strengthen” the nation’s ability to fight the bird flu, as it prepares for a “resurgence.” U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins launched a $1 billion plan in February to combat the ongoing outbreak of the H5N1 virus. Part of that plan included $100 million for research into a bird flu vaccine and other potential treatments.

The letter said USDA has a “draft proposal of an avian flu vaccine strategy for poultry” that is “currently under review” and the signed senators urged the department to advance the process with “speed and diligence.”  A draft proposal for a bird flu vaccine strategy had not been filed in the Federal Register as of Friday. In June, Reuters reported USDA was “considering” a plan to vaccinate poultry for HPAI and expected the plan would be completed in July.

Members of the Congressional Chicken Caucus, representing the interests of poultry producing states, submitted a letter to Rollins in February, noting they were wary of a vaccine, as it might interrupt export markets.  While the December letter from senators urged the advancement of the vaccine process, it also asked for “proactive consultation with affected stakeholders.”  Senators said the vaccine strategy should also address “all impacted species” of poultry and that the department should then prioritize a vaccine strategy for dairy cattle.

The letter was addressed to Rollins and dated Dec. 11. Signees included: Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota; Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota; Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; Sen. John Thune R-South Dakota; Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona; Sen. James Justice, R-West Virginia; Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Michigan; Sen. Michael Lee, R-Utah; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York; Sen. Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California; Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa; Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia; Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio; Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minnesota; Sen. Ted Budd, R-North Carolina; Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia; Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa; Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colorado; Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana; Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico; Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio; Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-New Mexico.

(Adair, IA) – An Annual Meeting of the Adair-Casey CSD’s Board of Education will take place beginning at 7-p.m. Monday, Dec. 15th, in the AC/GC Junior High Media Center. During their Annual Meeting, the Board will take care of what can be called “housekeeping” measures, including action on approving: Board Meeting Minutes; Monthly Bills, and the Abstract of Votes for the 11/4/25 School Election.

That portion of the meeting will lead into an Organizational Meeting of the New A-C Board of Education, and the administering the Oath of Office to newly elected Board Members, along with the election of a Board President & Vice President for the 2025-2026 School Year. Other business for the reorganized Board, includes setting the dates/times/place for regular meetings, and other administrative matters.

Action items on their agenda include (but are not limited to):

• Personnel matters (any resignations and/or recommendations to hire)
• SBRC Open Enrollment-Out MSA Application
• SBRC EL Beyond 5-years MSA Application
• District Developed Special Education Service Delivery Plan
• and an AC/GC At-Risk/Dropout Prevention Plan.

Discussion items for the Board to consider, include: Board Member Committees; A Comprehensive Financial Projection Model; and a Denovo Study.

(Griswold, IA) – The current Griswold School District Board of Education will hold their annual and final meeting, Monday evening (Dec. 15th), prior to convening the new school board for the 2025-2026 school year. According to their agenda, unfinished business for the retiring Board includes: Consider approving Activity Fund Transfers; Closing-out the FY 25 Financial Book, and, an Official Canvass of the Nov. 4th School Election results.

The New Griswold CSD Board will begin their meeting by acknowledging the retiring Board, an administering the Oath of Office to new Board Members, followed by the election of a Board President & Vice President, and the setting of future Board meeting dates and times.

New Business for the incoming Board includes:

• A presentation and discussion, with regard to 4-day school week data, including a Q&A session.
• Determining the next steps (following the informational presentation mentioned above), in establishing a 4-day school week.
• Consideration and approval of Middle School & High School Handbook changes, and,
• Considering the establishment of a Board Work Session.

The Griswold School Board meeting takes place in Conference Room at the High School, beginning at 5:30-p.m., Monday.

MESKWAKI, Iowa (KCRG) – One of the two Iowa National Guard soldiers killed in a Syria ambush Saturday has been identified as the son of Meskwaki Nation Police Chief, Jeffrey Bunn. Chief Bunn shared the information in a post to the department’s Facebook page: “Our son Nate was one of the Soldiers that paid the ultimate sacrifice for all of us, to keep us all safer,” Chief Bunn wrote.

In a post on social media for the public to share, Chief Bunn said, “My wife Misty and I had that visit from Army Commanders you never want to have. Our son Nate was one of the Soldiers that paid the ultimate sacrifice for all of us, to keep us all safer. He loved what he was doing and would be the first in and last out, no one left behind. Please pray for our Soldiers all around this cruel world. We will see you again son, until then we have if from here.”

Another soldier from Iowa was killed in the attack – several other soldiers were injured. No other names have been released at this time.

Sgt. William “Nate” Howard (Photo posted for public info. by his father, Meskwaki Nation Police Chief Jeffrey Bunn)

The Iowa National Guard is in the Middle East working on a broad counter-terrorism operation.

(Deloit, IA) – A collision between two pickup trucks in Crawford County, Saturday afternoon, claimed the life of a 73-year-old man from Vail. The Iowa State Patrol reports a pickup driven by a 15-year-old male from Schleswig, was traveling southbound on Boyer Boulevard, and a pickup driven by Richard Healy, of Vail, was traveling northbound on Boyer Blvd.

The first pickup was traveling behind a vehicle not involved in the crash, and because the teen driver had poor visibility from snow and gravel kicked-up by the non-accident vehicle, his pickup and the pickup driven by Richard Healy collided in an offset, driver’s side to driver’s side fashion. State Patrol’s report says evidence indicated that the teen’s pickup was left of center when the crash happened northeast of Deloit at around 1:15-p.m.

The pickup driven by the unidentified teen came to rest on the roadway. The second pickup driven by Richard Healy, came to rest in the east ditch. The man was not wearing a seat belt and died at the scene.