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Keep up-to-date with Fox News Radio, Radio Iowa, Brownfield & the Iowa Agribusiness Networks!
(Greenfield, Iowa) – The Adair County Board of Supervisors held a brief, Special Session this (Thursday) morning. During their meeting, the Board held a Public Hearing on the Proposed FY 26 Adair County Property Tax Levy. Residents of the County recently received their property tax statements showing the proposed tax asking per entity, such as the school district. Auditor Mandy Berg broke down the levy components.
Several Adair County residents were on-hand for the meeting. Berg explained the letters residents received with regard to the levy was “Hypothetical” example, not the actual valuation.
Supervisor Jodie Hoadley said the property tax figures are what they derived from a State formula and the Governor’s office.
The final outcome of the levies depends on action taken by the Iowa legislature and signed into law by Governor Reynolds. No action was taken following the hearing, as it was just to receive questions and comments from the public. Following the Public Hearing, the Adair County Board set April 9th at 9:15-a.m. as the date and time for a Public Hearing on the FY26 Adair County Budget.
(Lewis, Iowa) – Firefighters from Lewis, Atlantic and Griswold were paged out to a large structure fire on the southeast side of Lewis, at around 6:33-a.m. today (Thursday). Lewis Fire Chief Terry Erickson told KJAN News when the first crews arrived on the scene moments later, they found a barn at 701 E. South Street fully engulfed in flames. Erickson said “We immediately started to extinguish the fire. Atlantic and Griswold [firefighters] were enroute for manpower and tankers for water, due to its location.”
Chief Erickson said “there [were] goats and peacocks housed in the barn [that] perished.” He said while they were working the blaze, one firefighter passed out due to possible smoke inhalation. They were transported from the scene to Cass Health. The number of goats lost amounted to 10, along with some of their babies, and four peacocks, according to Erickson.
The cause of the fire remained under investigation.
(Radio Iowa) – Iowans who parked outside during Wednesday’s heavy thunderstorms (and for that matter, storms that occurred the week before) are finding their vehicles now look like they’ve been dunked in mud. National Weather Service meteorologist Alexis Jimenez says those brown smudges and polka-dots have far-away origins, thanks to the winds of the massive storm, which topped off above 70 miles an hour.
“With it being so powerful, it pulls up a lot of air from the south,” Jimenez says, “and usually we think about moisture coming from the south, but also it brought in some of the dust and dirt from places like New Mexico and Texas all the way up into the Midwest.” There’s plenty of grit and sand in the gunk, too, which she says came from the deserts of the southwestern U-S. “Truly, it is just how powerful the winds were with that system,” Jimenez says. “The moisture in the air just moved this way from the south and that dirt just continued to get lofted higher up. And as you go higher up in the air, the winds get faster, so it can travel a lot farther, and then once the rain started to form, it’s sort of just taking all that dirt out of the sky.”
The effects of a “Mud rain”
With sunny skies and highs back in the 40s and 50s, Iowa car washes should likely brace for a business boost.
SAC CITY, Iowa [KCCI-TV] – A group of travelers from Minnesota was greeted with some Iowa Nice when they found themselves stranded during Wednesday’s severe winter weather. The group from Cleveland, Minnesota, included 45 kids and was headed to Florida on Wednesday when their bus got stuck in the snow in Auburn. The Sac County Sheriff’s Office and an East Sac school bus driver took them to the community center in Sac City and helped set up a place for them to stay. Local businesses donated snacks and drinks.
Sac County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page photo
Sac City Police Dept. photos from Facebook
Sac City Police Dept. photos from Facebook
(Creston, Iowa) – A man from Creston faces possible charges – pending the results of lab tests – following an accident Wednesday afternoon. According to Creston Police, 51-year-old Aaron Eugene Porter, of Creston, was driving a 2024 Chevy pickup “in a reckless manor,” when the vehicle crossed the center of the road on Highway 25 (S. Sumner Street), and struck a legally parked & unoccupied 2011 Ford pickup truck, registered to Terry Danielson, of Creston. The collision occurred at around 4:15-p.m. The impact caused damage to both vehicles, amounting to a police-estimated $5,000. No injuries were reported.
Creston Police say Porter “showed significant signs of impairment.” A urine specimen was obtained and sent to a lab to be tested for possible impairment.
(Creston, Iowa) – Police in Creston, Wednesday afternoon, arrested a man on a drug charge. 51-year-old Aaron Eugene Porter, of Creston,was arrested near the intersection of Russell and Sumner at around 4:15-p.m. He was charged with Possession of a Controlled Substance/Marijuana-1st Offense. Creston Police cited Porter and then released him from the scene on a Promise to Appear in court.
(Des Moines, Iowa/Iowa Capital Dispatch) – For the third time in four months, the State of Iowa has fined the state-run Woodward Resource Center for deficiencies in resident care. According to the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing, the Woodward Resource Center for people with intellectual disabilities was fined $4,250 on March 5 for failing to provide residents with their prescribed diets. That violation was tied to a finding that the Woodward staff provided food that not been cut into small, bite-size portions to a female resident who was known to be at risk of choking. The resident was served a sandwich and whole meatballs on Christmas Eve last year. After the resident began to choke, a worker performed the Heimlich maneuver. After 10 abdominal thrusts, the resident’s airway was cleared.
Because the state did not appeal the state-imposed fine of $4,250, it was reduced 35% to $2,762. The sanctions follow a $10,000 fine that stemmed from a January finding by DIAL that Woodward had placed residents in immediate jeopardy of harm by failing to provide adequate supervision for residents and failing to provide emergency medical responses. According to inspectors, a 22-year-old resident of the home was found dead in the facility shortly before 5 a.m. on Sept. 9, 2024. The young man had been assigned “general supervision” status, meaning the staff was to check on him every 15 or 30 minutes. A review of video footage showed one worker exiting the resident’s room at around 7:32 p.m. the night before, and not reentering the room again throughout the night. Another worker was seen entering the room five times between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., but with no additional checks made between 2 a.m. and 4:58 a.m.
When the resident was found unresponsive at 4:58 a.m., three residential treatment workers were on the scene but did not initiate CPR per Woodward policy. Eventually, a nurse arrived and attempted CPR. EMTs were summoned, and at 5:43 a.m., the resident was pronounced dead. The cause of death was later ruled to be toxic levels of clozapine – a drug that is commonly used to treat schizophrenia — although no violations related to a drug overdose were cited. According to a report from the Woodward staff, two of the residential treatment workers were fired after the death, and two were disciplined in some fashion. Because the state did not appeal the state-imposed fine of $10,250, it was reduced 35% to $6,500.
A few weeks earlier, in December 2024, Woodward was fined $500 for failing to have reported resident abuse. According to inspectors, surveillance video showed an 18-year-old client seated and rocking in a living room recliner when a worker crossed the room, stepped behind the recliner and tried to push it forward. As the resident clutched the armrests and braced himself, the worker gave the back of the recliner a hard shove toward the floor, and the resident “somersaulted out backwards,” inspectors reported. Because the state did not appeal the state-imposed fine of $500 for abuse, the penalty was reduced 35% to $325.
(Radio Iowa) – Thousands of people lost power as the blizzard swept into the state, Wednesday. MidAmerican Energy spokesman Geoff Greenwood says the extremely high sustained winds and wind gusts pummeled overhead lines. The winds also took down trees and tree debris knocked down overhead lines. On top of that, blocked roads made it hard, if not impossible for crews to get to where they needed to go. Most of the damage was in northwest Iowa. There was less snow as the storm moved to the east, but Greenwood says ice has been an issue in other areas. He says the ice builds up on an overhead line, and changes the airflow on that line, causing it to bounce. Greenwood says that led to some situations where there was a cascading effect with pole after pole after pole taken down.
As of 5:30-a.m. today, PowerOutage.us reported there were 8,400 customers without power in Iowa, with MidAmerican Energy indicating there were more than 5,500 customers without electricity. The Western Iowa Power Cooperative listed more than 1,160 customers were without power early this morning.
https://poweroutage.us/area/state/iowa
(Radio Iowa) – Protests are planned outside main post offices in four Iowa communities late this (Thursday) morning to rally against what the head of the Iowa Postal Workers Union calls a looming “hostile takeover” by the federal government. Kimberly Karol, of La Porte City, is president of the union representing about a thousand Iowa postal workers. She says what’s proposed by President Trump and advisor Elon Musk is illegal and would cause significant harm, especially in rural Iowa. “The Postal Service belongs to the people,” Karol says. “We get to decide how it continues to operate, but that means that we have to speak up and take action, and that’s what the demonstrations are — to educate the public, give them an opportunity to raise their voices and protect the post office as a public institution.”
Karol says the Trump administration has proposed taking over the independent, public U-S Postal Service and transferring it to the U-S Department of Commerce, breaking it up, or selling it off. “The problem with becoming private is that there is no guarantee that the small communities will continue to get services,” Karol says. “People who live in Sheffield or Fairbanks, small communities across the state may no longer get delivery. They may have to go somewhere to pick up their mail.” She says that would create hardship on the elderly, people with medical conditions, people who don’t drive, and many others who’d be in jeopardy of losing their services. Privatizing the post office would have a terrible impact on rural Iowans who depend on the Postal Service, which she says is a vital component for the economic stability of Iowa’s communities.
“The Postal Service has always been designed as a service — to serve the public no matter where you live,” Karol says. “It’s never been designed as a business for profit, and right now, people who are making decisions are treating us like an unprofitable business that needs to be dealt with.” Privatization would lead to closing local post offices and raising rates, she says, and only Congress is authorized to change the structure of the postal service. Karol adds, the U-S-P-S is largely self-funded by the sale of stamps or charges for packages and services — not taxes. She says rural residents, especially, should be outraged. “Their delivery services depends on the Postal Service remaining public, because we deliver everywhere, regardless of where you’re at, regardless of whether or not it’s profitable,” she says. “We set a price point that allows the delivery services across the country to remain affordable.”
Simultaneous rallies are planned at 11 A-M outside the main post offices in Cedar Rapids, Ottumwa, Perry and Waterloo. Nationwide, similar demonstrations are planned in more than 150 locations. The Iowa union is a branch of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents 200,000 USPS employees and is affiliated with the AFL-CIO.
www.apwu.org
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