More State and area news from KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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Police in Creston, Wednesday, arrested a woman on a Theft charge. 33-year old Christina Marie Savage-Doolittle, of Creston, was arrested at around 12:45-p.m. at the Union County Law Enforcement Center, for Theft in the 4th Degree. She was later released on a $1,000 bond. And, at around 9:40-a.m., Wednesday, 27-year old Brandon James Case, of Afton, was arrested in Creston for Driving While Suspended. He was later released on a $300 bond.

The area’s latest and/or top news stories at 7:06-a.m. From KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A 64-year-old man has been convicted of shooting to death a Des Moines resident in 2015. Polk County District Court records say Alf Clark Sr. was found guilty Wednesday of first-degree murder. Prosecutors say he killed 36-year-old Tacono Conner at a Des Moines apartment complex on Dec. 27, 2015. A woman at the apartment also was shot.

The Des Moines Register reports that Clark lived in the apartment where the shooting took place. He was on supervised release then after serving prison time on a federal drug charge but disappeared shortly after the slaying. He was found in Tucson, Arizona, on June 8 last year. Clark is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 12 to life in prison without possibility of parole.

(Radio Iowa) — About 900 people crowded into a building on the Iowa State campus in Ames last (Wednesday) night to see Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.  “Politics isn’t about the big show that’s going on in Washington. It’s not about who had the best debate zingers, although I’d like to think my debate performance was pretty good,” Buttigieg said, to cheers.

Buttigieg and 11 other candidates participated in a three-hour-long televised debate Tuesday evening. Margaret Liston of Ogden watched. “I feel that Pete really understands what the country is wanting for change,” Liston said. Liston was in the front row in Ames last night, alongside Tammy Wirtz of Ogden. Wirtz says Buttigieg has proved he would hold his own in a debate against Trump.  “When he talked about being a soldier, I think that’s huge,” Wirtz says. “…He has knowledge that Trump does not have for what he’s got us into now.”

During Tuesday’s debate, Buttigieg sharply criticized President Trump’s decision to abandon Kurdish allies in the region — and he discussed that moment during an interview with Radio Iowa last (Wednesday) night.
“It’s probably a good thing that people know I can and do get fired up about things and not to mistake kindness for weakness,” Buttigieg told Radio Iowa. “The idea of respect is extremely important to me. It’s also important to be firm and clear about what we stand for.”

Buttigieg told Radio Iowa the American operation in Syria that’s been dismantled was working. “A very small number of special operators were keeping the peace,” he told Radio Iowa. “It was actually a good example of that doctrine of the lightest possible footprint to have the biggest possible impact because literally a few dozen U.S. military members stood between us and ISIS and the beginning of a possible genocide. You take that out and it’s like taking control rods out of a nuclear reactor.”

Two other presidential candidates campaigned in eastern Iowa on Wednesday. Former Vice President Joe Biden told a crowd of about 150 in Davenport the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria has wide-ranging repercussions. “It’s more insidious than the betrayal of brave Kurdish partners. It’s more dangerous than taking our boot off the neck of ISIS,” Biden said. “Trump is demolishing the moral authority of the United States of America.”

California Senator Kamala Harris visited a cancer center in Dubuque to highlight breast cancer awareness month and she held a town hall meeting in Dubuque last (Wednesday) night. Harris will campaign in Tipton and Davenport today (Thursday).

The Atlantic City Council, Wednesday evening, heard from Lucas Mosier, Board President of the Atlantic Golf and County Club, with regard to stormwater management issues affecting the business and surrounding area. He said the water has caused the course to be closed for more than three weeks this year, which means lost revenue. Mosier said they hope a culvert will alleviate the problems with stormwater run-off.

AGCC Board President Lucas Mosier

He says a culvert would free-up their tile line and help to prevent water from being backed-up to Country Club Circle. He said a culvert near Country Club Circle across the 16th fairway connecting to Palm Street, would be the best case scenario. Mosier said the business pays $3,000 per year in stormwater fees, while neighbors in the area pay the standard stormwater fee of slightly more $17 per billing cycle, so the City should help resolve the issue in a timely, cost-effective manner.

He said a similar course of action helped the Nishna Hills Golf Club deal with some of their run-off issues. Mayor Dave Jones said before the City can do anything, there needs to be an engineering study and cost estimate. The matter will be sent to the Community Development Committee for further review.

(Radio Iowa) — As many as 15-thousand Iowans who work in some 350 hotels and motels statewide are being issued employee safety devices, or E-S-Ds, as part of a program designed to help keep them safe while on the job. Chip Rogers, president and C-E-O of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, says his organization is supplying guides to the handheld E-S-Ds so each hotel can buy the type of device that’s the best fit for that property.

“A very small resort hotel, let’s say a beachside resort where there’s only ten or 12 rooms, that employee may only need a safety device that makes a very loud sound because everybody’s very close and they can hear it,” Rogers says. “If you’re in a large convention center hotel, when an employee may be as far as a quarter mile away, they may need a device that includes GPS tracking.”

The goal of the Five Star Promise effort is to help prevent sexual assault and harassment of lodging industry employees. It follows recent efforts to ensure all hotel workers are trained to spot and report signs of human trafficking. As for the E-S-Ds, Rogers says not every hotel employee would be issued one.

“If you’re working simply as a person in the accounting department and you’re not having any interactions with guests, you may not need a safety device. You’ll still get the training and you’ll still be subject to the policies, but you may not need the device,” Rogers says. “Those who are working with guests, working in the rooms, those particular employees are most likely to have the devices.”

There are 735 hotels in Iowa with about 38-thousand employees. Rogers says almost half have already issued the devices. Even before the campaign was launched, Rogers says the number of reports of lodging industry employees being assaulted was very low and the number has fallen since the program began. “As far as assault on employees, it’s extremely rare, but even if it’s extremely rare, one is too many,” Rogers says. “We want to make sure, as an industry, that we are protecting both our guests and our employees, and we want to do that in a leadership way so other industries can look at us and follow suit.”

The association targets a broad nationwide implementation of ESDs by 2020. Rogers says 56 companies with 20-thousand hotels and one-point-two million employees nationwide are already committed.
(More at www.ahla.com)

(Radio Iowa) — Some state roadways in western Iowa were covered more than once after flood waters went down and came back up. Iowa Department of Transportation planner, Scott Suhr, says they’ve been lucky that repairs held up on roadways like Interstate 29, which was recently flooded once again. He says I-680 had water over it as well and it performed well. Suhr says they put what’s called flex-o-mat on the south end of the roadway and they are pleased with the way it held up.  Suhr says they are continuing to make flood repairs on some roadways.
“We do have segments of 333 down near Hamburg that we’re still working on. Outside of that we’ve got another project on Iowa 2 where we are actually building overflow bridges to help remove a pinch point along the Missouri River which would give us more time in the event that we have flooding again,” Suhr says. “That’s on the eastbound lanes, and traffic is currently head-to-head on the westbound lanes.”

He says you don’t always know what is going to happen when a road that was repaired after flooding gets flooded again. “There’s always a concern when water is over the roadway — but we were pretty pleased to see with this last event we didn’t incur any damage,” according to Suhr. He says we seem to be moving out of the time when the roadways could be flooded again. “Right now the river is fairly full. We are watching it, we are communicating with the Corps of Engineers and the National Weather Service,” Suhr says. “A lot of it just kind of depends on Mother Nature. If we get an unusually large amount of rain, we’ll have to monitor it a little bit more closely. Typically this time of year we are not in flood season — so we will just wait and see what happens.”

Both directions of I-29 from Crescent to Loveland in Pottawattamie County were closed and later re-opened last week after the flood waters came back up and covered parts of the roadway.

Red Oak Police report the arrest at around 1-a.m. today (Thursday), of 19-year old Tyler Blaine Baucom, from Red Oak. Baucom was taken into custody in the 100 block of Nuckols Street, for Public Intoxication and Interference with Official Acts. He was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $300 bond.

The Adams County Sheriff’s Office reports an arrest was made at around 11:30-p.m. Sunday, following an investigation into a disturbance in Corning. Authorities say Denny Moore was arrested for Domestic Assault, a serious misdemeanor. No other details were provided.