With the forecast of upcoming snow, the City of Harlan is asking its citizens for assistance in clearing of the streets. Public Works crews, depending on the timing of the snowfall, will be out Friday and Saturday to get all streets accessible for travel. Please have vehicles off the streets until they are plowed all the way to the curbs. For those citizens that live above the uptown square, please use the city parking lots until streets are cleared. The City of Harlan appreciates your help in this matter, as it makes the streets in better shape for citizens, Fire, Ambulances, and Law Enforcement. This will also reduce the number of parking tickets issued.

Members of the Griswold School Board and Lewis City Council held a joint meeting Wednesday evening, with regard to the sale of the Lewis Elementary Building. Griswold Superintendent Dave Henrichs told KJAN News the Board, Council, and about 10-members of the public listened to two, hour-long presentations for use of the facility by prospective buyers Chris Jahnke, with 3HO, LLC in Atlantic, and Alan Kennedy, also of Atlantic. The first proposal was from Alan Kennedy.

The second proposal, from Chris Jahnke, garnered a more favorable response.

Kennedy estimated he would be able to pay the school about $85,000 for the property, whereas Jahnke would pay $40,000. But the offers weren’t the only thing to be considered.

The Board and Council selected Jahnke’s proposal to move forward with the sale process.

Henrichs said both proposals were well received, but the funding issue was the overriding factor in selecting his proposal. There are still some negotiations to proceed forward with before a public hearing is held on the sale. He said also, everyone’s goal for the building is the same, to repurpose it for the long-term, to make sure it’s not an eyesore or detriment to the community.

ELDRIDGE, Iowa (AP) — A judge has reversed his decision barring news media from naming or photographing a 12-year-old boy accused of trying to shoot a teacher in an eastern Iowa school. The Quad-City Times reports that Judge Patrick McElyea also said Wednesday that minors who could testify at the boy’s trial may also be named or photographed. Court records say the boy’s pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and related crimes. Police say the boy’s gun jammed when he tried to shoot the teacher at North Scott Junior High in Eldridge on Aug. 31.

Press freedom and public records complaints were raised after McElyea first barred use of the boy’s name. State law says a criminal complaint that alleges a child 10 or older has committed that would be a forcible felony if committed by an adult is a public record and shall not be confidential.

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

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SERGEANT BLUFF, Iowa (AP) — A former building inspector says in his lawsuit that he was fired for reporting code violations that the mayor and other officials in Sergeant Bluff told him to ignore. David Christensen says in his lawsuit that Mayor Jon Winkel and others conspired to fire him for reporting code violations that endangered public safety. He is seeking a jury trial and an award of damages for back pay, loss of salary and benefits and additional punitive damages. The lawsuit was filed last week in Woodbury County District Court.

Winkel told the Sioux City Journal that the city does not comment on pending litigation, but he did say, “Our story will be quite a bit different from what you’ve heard from the other side.”

The Creston Police Department today (Thursday), reports two arrests recently. At around 3:25-a.m. today (Thursday), 29-year old Derek Jason Noble, of Raymore, MO., was arrested in the 100 block of N. Elm Street, for Public Intoxication. His bond was set at $300. And, at around 10:55-p.m. Wednesday, 31-year old Jeffrey Michael Donald Drake, of Creston, was arrested at his home on a Union County warrant for Domestic Abuse Assault. Drake was being held without bond in the Union County Jail, pending an appearance before the magistrate.

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

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SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — A former state of Iowa worker who’d used the words “In Christ” in his work emails has lost his lawsuit against the state. The Sioux City Journal reports that a federal jury in Sioux City found Wednesday that the state Department of Human Services did not fail to accommodate Michael Mial’s religious practices. Mial sued the department and several individuals at the sex offender unit in Cherokee in January 2017, saying his firing violated his rights to free speech and religion.

The lawsuit said Mial, a psychiatric security specialist, was fired in April 2016 after a performance review in which supervisors told him his religious faith was beneficial to patients at the sex offender unit. But they asked him to keep his religion separate from his work because he’d been using “In Christ” in the personalized signature block that appeared in internal emails sent to other employees.

(Radio Iowa) — Nine Area Education Agencies cover the state of Iowa and their administrators are hoping lawmakers will help plug a 15 million dollar budget shortfall to address pressing needs. One area the agencies want to work on is special education programs. Another, according to Central Rivers Area Education Agency spokesperson Beth Strike, is to help school districts with mental health support. “Every school district we work with is telling us that they have more and more students with mental health needs. And often times, communities may or may not have the resources to help in that case — depending on whether its in rural Iowa and so on. We all know we’ve got more work to do to provide those supports,” Strike says.

Strike says a third area is to help special needs students better transition from high school to the next steps in their lives. “So, we want to increase that likelihood that when those kiddos leave the K-12 system, they are fully prepared to make a positive contribution in their community, and also in their workforce,” Strike says. “And we think we have quite a bit of help we can be providing in that area.”

Strike says the A-E-A’s cannot take any more budget hits. “We’re not filling positions often times, we’re trying to reduce through attrition. That’s been going on for several years,” according to Strike. “And just like local schools — you can only do that for so long before it begins to be a situation where you feel like you’re just not at the highest level you could be. We do feel ware are at the point where it just can’t get any lower.”

Area Education Agencies have been in Iowa since 1974.

(Radio Iowa, w/thanks for Karla James in Omaha) — An alternative farmer in western Iowa who tends an apple orchard and raises peacocks and bees is appealing to state leaders to enact tighter restrictions on crop dusters who he claims destroyed much of his four-acre farm. Dennis Fett, of rural Minden, says the problem with drifting chemicals has been going on for decades but last year was the worst. Fett says, “We’ve been on our property since 1987 and starting in 1992, we’ve been pretty much violated by drifting of unwanted farm pesticides, fungicides, insecticides and herbicides.”

Fett says he built a tall fence, which kept out most of the ground-sprayed chemicals, but then neighboring farmers started hiring crop dusters. In July of 2018, he says his property was oversprayed three times. “It pretty well destroyed all our fruit in our fruit orchard, it destroyed our chemical-free garden, and one of them violated the Bee Rule, spraying insecticides within a mile of a registered bee hive — which ours are,” Fett says, “and it also caused neurological problems and death of some of our baby peacocks.”

Fett says he’s appealing to Iowa’s secretary of agriculture as well as to members of the legislature to look at the rules regulating crop dusters and overspraying. Fett says, “If they look at increasing the fine structure, if they’re given a civil penalty from $500 to $1,000 or maybe even $5,000 or more, that might discourage these crop dusters who come from out of state and are here six weeks or so and leave — and leave their dangerous chemical on off-target places, such as my place.”  Fett says the state pesticide bureau has reported a 50-percent increase in overspraying cases during 2018. He says it’s baffling why more farmers aren’t raising a fuss about the problem. “The farmers are spending thousands of dollars to get their crops sprayed either for herbicides or insecticides, but when they’re drifting off target, like they have on my property, they’re not getting their money’s worth,” Fett says. “I’m proposing the farmers ask these people who overspray to give them all of their money back when they violate the law.”

Fett says he’s very concerned about the coming spring and the potential spraying around his acreage of the chemical dicamba, which may kill anything left on his farm.