(Red Oak, Iowa) – The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office reports a man from Pottawattamie County was arrested early this (Saturday) morning, following a traffic stop. 39-year-old Michael Anthony Hollinger, of Council Bluffs, was taken into custody at around 1:44-a.m. near Highway 34 and Boxelder Avenue. Hollinger was charged with Driving Under Suspension. He was being held in the Montgomery County Jail, where his bond was set at $491.25.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (KCRG) — A Johnson County Sheriff’s Office deputy was in for a big surprise this past week. KCRG reports that wWhile on a route early Monday morning (Sept. 9th), the deputy happened upon an elk running down Shannon Drive near West High School in Iowa City. In a Facebook post, the sheriff’s office says the elk has been spotted at other locations in Iowa City.

Screenshot from Johnson County S/O in-car video of an Elk

According to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, elk were native to Iowa but left as the state was settled. DNR officials estimate less than 10 are in the state. Elk is also a protected species in Iowa and cannot be hunted.

(Griswold, Iowa) – The Griswold School District’s Board of Education will meet Monday evening (Sept. 16, 2024) in the Conference Room at the High School/Middle School/Elementary Building. Their monthly session begins at 5:30-p.m., and includes the following (tentative) agenda items:

• Call Meeting to Order

• Reading of Mission Statement

• Approval of Agenda (D.R.)

• Public Input

• Superintendent’s Report:

Thank You Card(s) (I)
The Month in Review – Administration (I)
Board Learning Opportunities (I)

– Honor August Recipients

– Select September Recipient(s)

• Consent Agenda (D.R.)

Approval of Minutes

Approval of Financial Statements

Approval of Bills

A) Personnel

B) Gifts, Memorials, Bequests

Old Business:

1. Board Policies – Second Reading (D.R.) – 904.1, 904.2, 905.1, 905.1R1, 905.1R2, 905.1E1, 905.1E2, 905.2, 906
2. Approval Of Facility Bids (D.R.)
3. Approval Of Safety Grant Bids (D.R.)

New Business during the Griswold School Board meeting is as follows:

1. Approval Of Request For Allowable Growth And Supplemental Aid For 2023- 2024 Special Education Deficit (D.R.)
2. Consider Approval Of 2024-25 School Improvement Advisory Committee (D.R.)
3. Open Enrollment Report (I)
4. Board Policies – First Reading (I) – 101, 102, 102.E1, 102.E2, 102.E3, 102.E4, 102.E5, 102.E6, 102.R1, 505.05, 907, 907.R1

[D.R]= Decision Required

[I]= Informational only

The final agenda will be posted in the Central Office no less than 24-hours before the meeting.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – [NOTE: Meeting begins at 4:45-p.m.]  The Atlantic City Council will meet Monday evening in the Council’s Chambers at City Hall. The meeting would normally be held on Wednesday this week, but was moved to Sept 16th due to the Iowa League of Cities Conference. September 16, 2024 City Council Agenda Packet-compressed

On the agenda for the Council’s session that begins at 4:45-p.m., is action on a Resolution appointing Laura McLean as the Atlantic City Clerk, and setting her compensation for FY 2025. Assuming the Council passes the Resolution, McLean will be Sworn-in near the end of the meeting.

McLean currently serves as a member of the Atlantic School Board. If approved, she would succeed acting City Clerk Rich Tupper, who was appointed as City Clerk following the resignation on March 6th, of former City Clerk Barb Barrick.

The Council will also act on:

• Orders to reappoint Shawn Shouse and Melissa Ihnen to the Board of Adjustment.
• An Order to close Indian Trail Drive on Sept. 29th from 4-until 9-p.m., for Church Worship Night.
• The 3rd and final reading of an Ordinance “Vacating the 66-foot wide Street Right-Of-Way on W. 4th Street, in Atlantic,” as previously described in the two previous readings that were passed by the Council.

The Atlantic City Council will also act to review and act on a recommendation/request from the Parks Commission, for the addition of trees to the “Do Not Plant” list. And, they are scheduled to receive a presentation from officials with SHIFT ATL with regard to the property at 201 W. 14th Street, which the non-profit organization remodeled over the past year, and recently sold. It was the second remodeled home that Shift ATL sold since they began efforts to find and fix-up and flip. Shift Atl’s representative(s) are expected to talk about reimbursing the City’s Housing Development Fund.

(Creston, Iowa)  – Officials with the Creston Fire Department report firefighters were dispatched at around 3:48-a.m. Friday (today) to a structure fire at The barndominium and greenhouse, in rural Union County. When crews arrived at the scene off 240th Street, the structures were engulfed in flames. Occupants of the residence were able to safely evacuate prior to firefighters’ arrival. (Photos by Chuck Spindler, Creston Fire Dept. – from Facebook)

Creston Fire received mutual aid from the Afton Volunteer Fire Department, Lenox Fire Department, Prescott Fire & Rescue, and Corning Fire Departments.

Additionally, all five fire departments made multiple shuttles with their tanker trucks to provide water to two portable dump tanks and a pumper, keeping firefighters supplied with a constant source of water to fight the fire. Officials say Creston and other departments conducted a rural fire fighting, live burn exercise last December in which they trained for the type of water shuttling operation put into use Friday morning.

JEWELL, Iowa [KCCI] –  The South Hamilton Community School District is raising money for a new scholarship in memory of recent graduate Owen Renaud and his uncle, Jesse Ostheimer. The two men were among four Iowans killed last week in an Indiana airplane crash.

Authorities say their single-engine Piper PA-46 plane left the Fort Dodge Regional Airport around 6:30 a.m. Sept. 6 and crashed around 9 a.m. near a small airport in Anderson, Indiana, northeast of Indianapolis.

Renaud, 19, and Ostheimer, 41, were killed along with 68-year-old Joseph Scallon and 36-year-old Braden Hicks. The plane was owned by a LCC registered to Scallon, and Indiana authorities have said he was piloting the craft at the time of the crash.

KCCI reports South Hamilton announced that tonight’s (Friday night’s) home football game against Roland-Story will be a white-out. White T-shirts with Renaud’s name and football number (6) will be available during the game for a free-will donation. Online shirt orders can be placed here.

Money raised from the shirt sale will go toward a new Flying High Scholarship Fund created in honor of Renaud and Ostheimer.

(Radio Iowa) – The Sierra Club’s Iowa Chapter has filed a lawsuit that seeks to overturn state approval of a permit for the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline.

In late June the Iowa Utilities Commission issued a permit for construction of the initial route for the carbon pipeline, giving Summit eminent domain authority to seize property from landowners who have not voluntarily agreed to let the pipeline run through their property. The Sierra Club’s Jess Mazour said people who objected to the pipeline did not get a fair hearing before the Iowa Utilities Commission.

“Our evidence was not given the weight that it should have and there’s some serious due process violations,” Mazour said, “but we really have a strong case and we finally get to take our case to court and have an unbiased decision maker.” Wally Taylor, an attorney for the Sierra Club, said the commission incorrectly ruled Summit’s pipeline had a public benefit as a so-called common carrier that may be granted eminent domain authority.

“It’s like when Walmart has their own semis pick up products from various vendors, put in on the semi and take it to a Walmart store, once it gets in that Walmart truck, it’s Walmart’s property,” Taylor said. “That Walmart truck is not a common carrier.”

Jess Mazour has been the Sierra Club Iowa Chapter’s conservation program coordinator for the past four years.

Taylor said the lawsuit cites other “misstatements of fact and faulty legal conclusions.” Mazour said the commission’s decision was not unexpected after Governor Reynolds replaced the commission’s chairwoman and appointed another commission member in the spring of 2023. “From that minute on, the process was sped up,” Mazour said. “They moved deadlines sooner than what we had been told by the former board.”

The Sierra Club is arguing the Iowa Utilities Commission showed a pattern of favoritism to Summit and contempt for pipeline opponents during the public hearing about the project that stretched over 25 days last fall. “We were expected to go through security and we couldn’t bring in water to the hearing or food, but yet Summit could go in the back door and had their lunch catered in and had coffee,” Mazour said. “It’s just little things like that throughout the whole process that it’s very obvious this new board had their mind made up.”

Five Iowa counties, landowners who object to the pipeline and nearly 40 Republican legislators have filed separate appeals. Summit Carbon Solutions issued a statement earlier this week, saying the company is confident in the Iowa Utilities Commission’s thorough review process. Summit, ethanol producers and Iowa Corn Growers have argued the carbon pipeline will help grow markets for ethanol in the U.S. and abroad and benefit farmers.

After plans were pulled for a separate Navigator CO2 pipeline, Summit has begun the process of seeking another state permit to extend its pipeline to ethanol plants that initially signed on to join the proposed Navigator pipeline.

(Radio Iowa) – Some Iowa farmers are already firing up their combines to start harvesting crops. Angie Rieck Hinz, a field agronomist for Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, says it’s a bit early, but “There are a few farmers who are taking out some corn and even some beans in a few places here in central Iowa.”

While Iowa came completely out of a four-year drought this spring with steady rains, it’s been much drier lately and about two-thirds of the state is now considered “abnormally dry” on the drought monitor map. Rieck Hinz says that can be an advantage at this time of year.

“The heat, coupled with those dry conditions, is going to push that maturity on those crops a little bit faster,” she says. “We still need to wait for crops to dry down in some cases, but it’s been relatively dry for the last month compared to how we started off the growing season.”

Combine harvesting corn. (ISU Extension photo)

There’s a very dry patch in north-central Iowa, from roughly the Webster City area to Iowa Falls, where Rieck Hinz says they’re more than three inches below average on rainfall for the past 40 days or so. “Dry weather is always great conditions for harvest,” she says. “We can get big machinery in and out of those fields. We don’t have to worry about soil compaction. We’re not fighting mud. Let’s hope it stays that way. So the weather can both hurt us and help us at the same time when we get to harvest.”

Forecasters say there’s a chance for some rain over the weekend in parts of the state, and again in the middle of next week.

• On Sept. 2nd: 25-year-old Guillermo Hernandez, of Harlan, was arrested on charges that include: Eluding; Driving While Suspended; Driving While Barred, and Possession of Stolen Property. The charges stem from a chase that began around the intersection of Highway 71 and Highway 44. Hernandez appeared before the magistrate and was held until he posted bond on September 9th.
• On Sept. 1st: 32-year-old Christi Carpenter, was arrested on a Harassment 1st charge. The charge stems from an incident in the 300-400 block of W Washington in Exira on August 30th. Carpenter appeared before the magistrate and was held until she later posted bond;Christi Carpenter was also charged with Child Endangerment, Possession of Marijuana 1st, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia and Keeping a Premises for Controlled Substances. These charges stem from the unrelated arrested on September 3rd. She posted bond on all the charges and was released; 39-year-old Brentley Gross, of Exira, was summoned into court September 1st, on charges of Possession of Controlled Substance-marijuana 1st and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia. He appeared before the magistrate on a later date.
• 40-yearold Rose Brabham, of Exira, was summoned into court on a Theft 3rd charge on August 13th, 2024. The charge stems from an incident in the 200 block of Kilworth on August 12th. She appeared before the magistrate on a later date.

(Radio Iowa) – A fixture on the Iowa State University campus in Ames that started out as a memorial has become an enduring symbol of the school as it celebrates 125 years. Music professor Michael Golemo says the bells for I-S-U’s campanile were a gift from Edgar Stanton to remember his wife Margaret McDonald Stanton who died in 1895. “Edgar Stanton wanted to fund putting a small bell tower in that facility, but that but the facility that building wouldn’t sustain the tower, and so instead they they ended up building the freestanding Campanile tower,” he says. Edgar Stanton was part of I-S-U’s first graduating class and served in several roles at the school, including four stints as acting president over 50 years. Margaret Stanton was the first dean of women at the school and was there 25 years before she died.

Golemo says the bells have been upgraded through the years and the song the “Bells of Iowa State” added to their stature and importance.  “I like to think about the idea that faculty are maybe on campus for a couple of decades, and students a couple of years, and and we as administrators are are mere caretakers of this incredible institution. But the bells of Iowa State are forever, and generation after generation the bells chime and really ring out the sound and the soul of what it means to be an Iowa State Cyclone,” Golemo says. He is the director of bands at I-S-U ans says the position of the Campanile gives it a different sound.

“Most carillons are built in town squares, and so when they are played, they are so often played with the hustle and bustle of a of an urban community in their surroundings,” he says. I-S-U’s bell tower is right in the middle of campus in an open space that allows the sound of the bells to travel. “The fact that our Campanile is in the midst of this palatial lawn at the heart of Central Campus, it actually has even a greater musical and oral impact because of its really unique location,” Golemo says. The Campanile has also become the subject of some folklore. One story suggest a woman is not a true coed until she has been kissed under the Campanile (Campaniling) at the stroke of midnight.

“Whether it is the romance of Campaniling beneath the tower, or laying on the lawn and doing your homework or hammocking and resting between classes, or going out and playing Frisbee in the shadow of the Campanile. I think that that tower, and what it means is is always kind of at at the heart of of the the experience of of being here,” Golemo says. It is believed to be one of the most photographed places on campus.

The 125th celebration is this Sunday (Sept. 15) at 2 p-m north of the Campanile.