(Greenfield, Iowa) – The Adair County Board of Supervisors, today (Wednesday), held their regular weekly meeting in the Greenfield Courthouse Board Room. The Board acted to approve a handful of agenda items, including a Liquor license renewal. Board Chair Nathan Baier and Auditor Mandy Berg…

They approved also, an appointment to the Adair Tourism Council.

The Board approved a Grandstand concrete bid of $204,000 from Calibur Concrete Contractors, out of Adair. Nathan Baier explained…

In other business, the Adair County Supervisors authorized Board Chair Baier to sign three Right-Of-Way Contracts for the W9 (Lincoln Township) Culvert Project. County Engineer Nick Kauffman said the project will likley be sent out for bids in November, after the harvest wraps-up.

Kauffman also updated the Board on Secondary Roads Department Maintenance and activities.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – (**Updated w/1 item) Members of the Atlantic Community School District’s Board of Education will hold a Special Meeting this evening in the Washington Elementary School Lunchroom, beginning at 6:30-p.m., and following a Town Hall meeting in the same location that begins at 5:30-p.m. During the Town Hall meeting (One of a series of such informational gatherings), the public is invited to learn more about the proposed bond revenue measure that will be on the ballot for the Nov. 4th City/School Election. School officials have said if approved the voters, the bonds would be used to “improve our schools and provide students with more resources.” A presentation about the three measures on the November 4 ballot and the projects that are possible if each is approved by voters will be be provided, and time will be available for community members to ask questions.

**Prior to the Action items, the Board will receive a English Learner (EL) program presentation by the ELL staff.

During the Special Meeting, the Atlantic School Board will act on approving:

A. An Employee Handbook Change.

B. A Hot Well (equipment) Bid for [the] Nutrition Program from Wilson Restaurant Supply (in Cedar Falls).

C. An FFA Out of State, overnight trip.

Consent agenda items include:

• FCCLA Fundraising: Selling Jam from Nov. 1st thru Dec. 1st.
• The hiring of the following personnel:
  • Matt Jacobsen, Substitute Bus Driver
  • Marcella Peck, Preschool Bus Monitor
  • Felicity Swanson, Spec. Ed Para (replacing Lynnae Grandin)
  • Volunteer Coaches for Winter Sports.

And they will act on approving the resignation of Makenna Askeland, Middle School Softball Asst. Coach. Following the Special Board meeting, the Atlantic School Board will move into a Work Session, during which they will review the 2024-25 Fiscal Year.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The “Strong as Steele” Foundation is set to hold their 2nd Annual Night of Giving, Feb. 14, 2026 at the Atlantic Golf and Country Club. The night includes cocktails, dinner, a live auction and entertainment by a magician. The cost to attend is $100 per person, or $200 per couple.

Steele McLaren was in a horrible accident in October of 2020 and suffered a severe traumatic brain injury. Today Steele is working full-time, lives on his own, very independent and has now created the Strong as Steele Foundation. The Foundation would not have been possible, organizers say, without the help and support from the individuals and businesses in our own community and the surrounding communities nationwide. The support allowed Steele to heal and recover with non-traditional medical plans and procedures that were not covered by insurance and now has allowed him to give back.

The Strong As Steele Foundation a 501c3 organization, has been created to return favors we received. The Strong As Steele Foundation is dedicated to providing monetary donations to the communities that have supported us. In addition, our mission is to help relieve the burden of individuals facing similar medical and life challenges as our founder, Steele, by offering financial assistance and resources. In the year 2025, The Strong as Steele Foundations donated over $30,000 to several individuals who have had life altering circumstances such as accidents, cancer, illnesses and the foundation as has also donated to local and county wide fire departments.

The schedule of activities during the fundraising event on February 14th is as follows:

• 5:00pm Cocktail
• 5:30 Dinner
• 6:30 Live auction
• 7:30 Magician

If you have any questions about the event or if you would like to attend, please contact Dustin McLaren at 712-249-2567 or Jess Ellis 712-254-0708. If you cannot make the event you can donate through the Venmo account or send your donation to the Strong As Steele Foundation, 1301 Poplar Street, Atlantic, IA 50022.

The Strong As Steele Foundation board consists of 7 members and a key supporter:

Steele McLaren, Chairman
Tom McLaren, President
Garrett McLaren, Vice President
Stacey Pellett, Treasurer
Jess Ellis, Secretary
Dustin McLaren, Member
Sheryl Dusenberry, Member
Sharon Crane, Key Supporter

Those wanting to know more about the Strong As Steele Foundation, please visit the Strong As Steele Foundation Facebook or Tom McLaren at 712-249-7120. You can also check out our website at https://strongassteelefoundation.godaddysites.com/

DES MOINES, Iowa – As the 2025 City-School Election approaches, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate and members of Iowa’s election security team are reinforcing Iowa’s election security with voters. Thanks to numerous safeguards in place to protect the integrity of Iowa elections, Iowa remains a top-ranked state for election administration. Iowa has also received numerous awards in relation to election administration from the National Association of Secretaries of State and the Election Assistance Commission. Secretary Pate credits the success of Iowa’s election processes to the state’s layered approach to election security and robust partnerships at the local, state, and federal levels. In his press release, Pate said…

Secretary Pate and Iowa’s election security team meet on a regular basis to prepare for the upcoming election. The team includes the Iowa Department of Public Safety, Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Iowa Department of Management, Division of Information Technology, the Iowa National Guard, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Iowa’s 99 county auditors and thousands of local election officials and poll workers. Members of Iowa’s election security team are now reminding Iowans of their roles in securing Iowa elections.

“Iowa’s election process is designed to ensure that voters can participate with confidence in a system that is safe and secure. Our department is committed to our role in supporting the integrity and security of each election,” said John Benson, Director of the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. “Intelligence and law enforcement communities at all levels of government have been tasked with ensuring our elections are safe and secure,” Iowa Department of Public Safety Commissioner Stephan Bayens said. “Iowans respect and actively exercise their right to vote and do so with civility and integrity. We take our responsibility to protect this right seriously and will be aggressive in deterring any criminal effort to compromise our system of government.”

“In support of this year’s election, the Department of Management, Division of Information Technology will be monitoring cyberthreats. The State of Iowa Security Operations Center will provide 24-hour-a-day cyberthreat monitoring and heightened support during this year’s elections,” said Shane Dwyer, State of Iowa Chief Information Security Officer.

Iowa’s City-School Elections are Tuesday, November 4. Polls are open from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. For more information on finding your polling place or to vote early absentee, visit voterready.iowa.gov.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – An SUV was struck by a car early Tuesday afternoon in Red Oak, but neither driver was injured. According to Red Oak Police, a 2015 KIA driven by a 17-year-old female from Red Oak, was pulling-out from Maple Street onto North Broadway Street a little after 1-p.m., at the same time a 2020 Nissan Murano driven by 75-year-old Shirley DeWitt, of Red Oak, was traveling on N. Broadway. The car broadsided the SUV, causing a total of $8,000 damage. The SUV was disabled in the crash and was towed from the scene.

Red Oak Police cited the 17-year-old for Failure to Yield upon entering a through Highway.

(Clarinda, Iowa) – The office of Page County Attorney James L. Varley, Tuesday, released a report on the outcome of court cases prosecuted during the week of Sept. 29, 2025.

The report says 51-year-old Brian Keith Huseman, of Coin, Iowa, appeared with counsel and pled guilty to Count I: Possession with Intent to Deliver Methamphetamine and Count II: Possession with Intent to Deliver Marijuana. The Defendant was sentenced to 10 years of incarceration and fined $1,000 on Count I and 5 years of incarceration and a $1,025 fine for Count II. The terms of incarceration shall run concurrently with each other. Both terms of incarceration and the fines were suspended, and the Defendant was placed on probation for 3 years. As a condition of probation, the defendant was ordered to obtain a drug/alcohol evaluation and follow through with any recommendations, as well as reside at the Residential Correctional Facility until maximum benefits have been achieved. The Defendant was ordered to pay court costs, surcharges and court-appointed attorney fees.

49-year-old Jeremy Todd McAllister, Shenandoah, Iowa, appeared by counsel and pled guilty to Serious Assault. The defendant was granted a deferred judgment for a period of one year and placed on probation. The defendant was ordered to pay court costs, surcharges, victim restitution and court-appointed attorney fees.

Page County Courthouse

35-year-old Travis Christopher Tompkins, of Bedford, Iowa, appeared by counsel and pled guilty to Possession of a Controlled Substance, Cannabidiol- 1st Offense. The defendant was sentenced to 2 days of incarceration and fined $430. The defendant was ordered to pay court costs, surcharges and court-appointed attorney fees.

And, Varley says 20-year-old Mark K. Whitehill, of Shenandoah, appeared with counsel and pled guilty to Count I: Criminal Mischief-1st Degree; Count II: Operate Vehicle Without Owner’s Consent: and Count III: Operating While Under the Influence-1st Offense. The Defendant was granted a deferred judgment on counts I and III and placed on probation for 2 years. As a condition of probation, the defendant was ordered to obtain a drug/alcohol evaluation, attend and successfully complete the Drinking Driver’s School and pay all restitution ordered. With respect to Count II, the defendant was fined $855 which was suspended. The defendant was ordered to pay court costs, surcharges, victim restitution and court-appointed attorney fees.

(Radio Iowa) – State Auditor Rob Sand, a Democrat who’s running for governor, held a town hall meeting in his hometown of Decorah last (Tuesday) night. It was the 100th and final stop on a tour of the state he launched at the end of June. During a recent Radio Iowa interview, Sand said many of the Iowans he’s met during the tour are fed up with politics. “The primary problem that we have right now is partisanship by which I mean the idea that we would judge an idea based on who said it’s good or who said it’s bad. ‘Oh, they like that idea? Then it must be terrible,'” Sand said. “This is the kind of nonsense that I think is destroying our state. It’s destroying our country.”

Crowd at a Sand campaign stop in Decorah on Oct. 21, 2025. (Photo from his campaign Facebook page)

Sand says the tour has been invigorating. “When you feel like things aren’t going well, you roll up your sleeves and you get to work,” Sand said, “and that feels better.” Sand was first elected State Auditor in 2018 and reelected in 2022. He is the only Democrat currently serving in statewide elected office. Sand began this year with over eight MILLION dollars in his campaign account.

Republicans have criticized Sand for accepting four MILLION dollars in contributions from his inlaws, who own a major agribusiness and have previously donated to Republican Governors Terry Branstad and Kim Reynolds, who is not seeking reelection in 2026.

(Radio Iowa) – Studies show about one in eight Iowa women will get breast cancer during their lifetime, and while those numbers are holding steady, there’s a rise in breast cancer cases among young women who typically aren’t yet being screened. Dr. Hope Guzzo, a breast surgeon at Emplify Health by Gundersen, says that presents some unique challenges for women under 40. “It is scary,” Guzzo says. “Younger women can have more advanced cancers just because we aren’t screening them. So typically they are the ones that are coming in because they felt something, and by that time, it’s larger than someone that we would detect on screening.” Breast cancer screenings are recommended to start around age 40, while those who are considered at high risk should start mammograms even sooner. When found early, women have more treatment choices and a better chance of recovery.

“Rates aren’t going down, but we’re also getting better at detecting because our screening is getting better, which is a huge goal,” Guzzo says. “Our goal is to screen more women, and yes, by doing more screening, we will catch more cancers, but if we can catch them early, that’s the whole goal.” Younger women may be hesitant to seek a doctor’s counsel when they find a possible lump. “It’s easy to feel like they’re going to get blown off or feel like, ‘Well, because I’m 25, I couldn’t get breast cancer,’ but anytime you’re worried about something, I would rather you come to my clinic and I can do an exam, and if I’m worried about it, we can do imaging,” Guzzo says. “I would rather do more of those exams and find nothing, then have women sit at home and worry about something or be scared to come in.”

Roughly 27-hundred Iowa women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, and almost 400 die from it. It’s the number-two cancer killer of Iowa women behind only lung cancer.

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

(Radio Iowa) – A spokesman for the trade group called Fur Commission U-S-A reports someone illegally entered a mink farm in southwest Iowa near Woodbine Monday night. Spokesman Challis Hobbs says a farmer, his son and grandson raise more than one-thousand mink and found the perimeter fence torn down.  )”That’s what they woke up to, and they woke up to a lot of the pens had been opened and like the housing, so like the nest box like where it’s warm and stuff where the mink stay, the people who came in, they destroyed those,” he says. Hobbs says around half of the mink stayed around and they’ve been working to find the others as they are domesticated and don’t do well in the wild.

“What we see time and time again is like within 24 to 48 hours, if the farmer can’t recover them, the majority of them die. The ones that don’t, they kind of get loose and they’re desperate and they’re carnivorous. So they’re killing anything and everything they can to eat,” he says. Hobbs says they might survive for awhile eating any birds or chickens they can find, but they often die or are hit on the roadway and killed. Hobbs says there have been some recent attacks on fur farms in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and they are not just vandals. “Everyone who’s been caught doing this has been activists. It’s very organized, it’s organized crime really is,” Hobbs says. “Like for example the ones in Pennsylvania, they showed up and they had. They had a whole a whole pamphlet of like what to do, not to get caught. Like turn off your cell phone and what to do if you get caught. What to say and don’t turn on your other basically activist friends, extremist activist friends who are doing the same thing.”

He says local law enforcement and the F-B-I are investigating the Woodbine case. “These crimes do fall under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. Because the government does see this as domestic terrorism because they’re intentionally going on these farms and trying to basically shut them down and put these put these farming families out of business,” Hobbs says.

Hobbs says two people were caught in the Pennsylvania and they face multiple charges. Hobbs says the animals cost around 45 dollars each, but it can cost the farmer much more in losing animals for breeding.