(Radio Iowa) – A new report finds the rate of Iowa children living below the federal poverty line fell significantly in the past quarter-century. The study by the non-profit Child Trends found child poverty rates in the state dropped from 19-percent in 1993 to just six-percent by 2019. Avenel Joseph, vice president for policy at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, says she’s encouraged by this trend, but is concerned it won’t last. “Because many of the additional economic supports that were offered during the pandemic has since expired, that is compounded by the significant rise in prices over the last year,” Joseph says. “We’re at risk of undoing the progress we’ve worked so hard over the last generation to achieve.”

Joseph says the expansion of economic assistance policies is a major factor in the drop of child poverty rates. “These are things like increased Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit, food assistance, heating assistance, housing assistance, which have all had various impacts on rising children out of poverty,” she says.

Nationwide, the report found child poverty fell an unprecedented 59-percent over the past 25 years.

See the full report at: https://www.childtrends.org/publications/state-level-data-for-understanding-child-poverty

(reporting by Natalie Krebs, Iowa Public Radio)

(Guthrie Center, Iowa) – Guthrie County ISU Extension & Outreach received a $2,000 matching grant from the Guthrie County Community Foundation, during the 2022 grant cycle. The funds will be used to assist in closing of the education gap, by providing the three daycare centers in Guthrie County with various educational STEM Kits to give youth a head-start on learning. The centers that received a kit are Little Panther Daycare and Preschool in Panora, Little Chargers Early Learning Center in Guthrie Center, and Exploration and Learning Station in Stuart. Each kit will have various directions for the teachers on how to use the kits with different age groups.

Officials say the goal of the project is to combine literacy with STEM education by encouraging reading books with hands on activities. Since COVID, the largest impacted areas in a youths learning are math and literacy. According to the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Students Progress test from 2021, less than half of the first graders were able to read at their respective grade level.

Mollie Clark, Youth Development Coordinator, & Brooke Ramsey, Asst. Dir. of Little Panther Daycare

Make-do Invent kit supplies

Science Kit supplies

Bee-Bot Coding Kit supplies

Mollie Clark, Youth Development Coordinator, & Sydney Henderson, Director of Little Chargers Early Learning Center. (All photos & information is courtesy the Guthrie County ISU Extension Office)

The kits can incorporate various materials to complement and grow the kit. Mollie Clark, Youth Development Coordinator, says “Each kit has multiple activities within it with ample supplies. We have also compiled an easy-to-use set of directions for the kits so anyone at the daycare should be able to pull out the kit, read through the directions, and implement the activities with the youth.”

The kits consist of a Coding Kit with bee bots and their accessories which are ideal for helping kids understand cause and effect, directional language and early programming. A Make Do Invent Kit with tools to help bring out the engineer in everyone, these are a simple to use, open-ended system of tools for creative cardboard construction. The last kit is a Science Experiment Kit with hands-on activities and projects that cover a wide host of topics, including art, astronomy, clay, geology, and math. Krista Downing, Guthrie County ISU Extension Program Coordinator, says “We want to thank the Guthrie County Community Foundation for awarding us these funds, this project would not have been possible without their support.”

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to the Guthrie County ISU Extension office at 641-747-2276.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Bulbs bring spring color! The shorter days and more moderate temperatures make this fall a great time for gardening projects, including planting spring flowering bulbs.  The Cass County Master Gardeners are again selling bulbs for fall planting!  Preorders are open for the annual bulb sale, featuring tulip and daffodil bulbs in 2022. You can place your pre-order now to reserve your bulbs before they run out. Pay just $5 for a variety assortment of 5 colorful bulbs for your garden, with delivery by the end of October, in plenty of time for fall planting. Order forms with additional details are available at the Cass County Extension office, or online at www.extension.iastate.edu/cass.

The bulbs will be freshly dug from the gardens of Van Engelen, Inc., in Connecticut, and shipped in bulk to the Cass County Master Gardeners.  The Master Gardeners have ordered 500 tulip and daffodil bulbs, which they hope to pre-sell by mid-October.  The bulbs are expected to arrive by the end of October, for packaging five bulbs to a bag, and each bag of tulip mixture or daffodil mixture will sell for only $5. Pre-payment is requested at the time of order to guarantee your bulbs.

The Master Gardeners carefully select mixtures each year that are unique to those sold in previous years.  The tulip mixture offered this year, A Rainbow of Triumph Tulips, will produce plant heights from 16 to 20 inches, flowering in late April, and includes:  Bastogne (blood-red), Don Quixote (deep rose), Michael (reddish-orange), Negrita (deep purple), Pays Bas (Meringue-white), and Strong Gold (Primrose-yellow).

The daffodil bulbs include a mixture of multi-flowering Fragrant Naturalizing Jonquilla Narcissi and Miniature Narcissus bulbs:  Baby Moon (canary yellow), Hillstar (lemon-yellow), Golden Echo (white with golden halo and cup), Sweet Love (ivory-white), Kokopelli (greenish-yellow), Minnow (white-to-ivory-to pale yellow), Sun Disc (ivory and yellow), Jetfire (golden-yellow), Tete-a-Tete (buttercup-yellow with dark yellow trumpet) and N. canaliculatus (white with yellow cup).  The daffodils should bloom from April to May, ranging from 6 to 16 inches in height.

The Master Gardeners will package your bulbs 5 bulbs to a bag, along with planting instructions. Please keep in mind we are unable to guarantee any specific color mix. Tulips and daffodils will be packaged separately. You will be notified when your bulbs are available for pickup at the Cass County Extension Office in mid-late October.

The goal of the Master Gardener program is to provide community service and education in horticulture.  The Cass County Master Gardeners utilize the funds raised from the bulb sale, along with their spring garden seminar, and annual spring and fall plant sales (held the second Saturdays of May and September) for local community horticultural projects. These projects include maintaining community garden spaces around the county, providing education programs to youth and adults, providing an annual scholarship, and making horticulture grants available to non-profit groups.

To order bulbs, or for more information about Master Gardener activities in Cass County, please call the Cass County Extension Office at 712-243-1132, email Cass County Extension Director and Master Gardener Coordinator Kate Olson at keolson@iastate.edu or visit www.extension.iastate.edu/cass.  You are also invited to follow the Cass County Master Gardeners Facebook page at www.facebook.com/CassCoMG to keep up with local events and tips for gardening!

(Harlan, Iowa) – The Board of Supervisors in Shelby County met Tuesday morning. According to the meeting minutes from Auditor Mark Maxwell, the Board set December 20^th as the date for an auction of the County Farm and Solid waste ground rental. The auction will tentatively take place at the Therkildsen Center, in Harlan.

Shelby County Sheriff Neil Gross reported to the Supervisors that K9 “Corty” was recovering from injuries he suffered injured during a call for service, as he was performing his duties. The dog had to undergo surgery to repair an ACL. He was released from the veterinary hospital on August 29^th and is undergoing therapy along with a well deserved rest. Sheriff Gross reported also, the SRO (School Resource Officer) has been very busy with his duties.

The Supervisors considered and subsequently passed a Resolution to become a Home Base Iowa Initiative County. The resolution explains the Home Base Iowa initiative is an effort to match military veterans with jobs available across Iowa. One of the requirements is that the Board of Supervisors adopt a resolution of support. Residents and businesses are encouraged to take whatever actions are necessary to become and continue to be a Home Base Iowa County and Home Base Iowa Business.

The Shelby County Supervisors approved a resolution fixing the dates for three public hearings on the proposition to amend various sections of the Shelby County Zoning Ordinance for the purpose of regulating and restricting the use of land for the transport of hazardous liquid through a hazardous liquid pipeline. The proposed amendment to the ordinance would establish a general requirement to obtain a conditional use permit for hazardous liquid pipelines that would apply county-wide and that would affect the use of land for such purposes in each zoning area or district in the county.

The Board will meet in the Therkildsen Center in Harlan Oct. 18^th and 25th at 10:00-a.m., and at that same time on November 1^st, to receive public comment on the proposed amendment. The November 1^st comment period will be followed by a vote on passing the proposed amendment as presented.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate and Polk County Elections Director John Chiodo are allowing the public to view the testing that’s done on voting machines. Pate says they want to be sure everyone knows how the process works. “Because there’s a lot of people who don’t know what happens — I mean literally — they’ll fill out paper ballot and then they stick it into the machine and they’re going, where did it go, what did they do?,” Pate says. “And with some of the misinformation and disinformation has been going out, we thought it’d be very well thought through at least to give you the facts.”

Chiodo says “This goes on for many weeks and months preparing for this, it’s just not like I was telling the gentleman earlier, it’s not like we wake up on Election Day and throw everything against a wall and hope it sticks. I mean, we test and test and test and test. So you have that comfort, waking up on election day that things are gonna go right. If you get the doors open, you’re in good shape.”

Polk County Elections Director John Chiodo

Pate says they’re testing different kinds of ballots, because each precinct might have a different ballot for the different offices that are up for election. “This machine is also designed to assist the voter because let’s say for example, they caught a double vote, they actually voted for two people for the same office, the machine will catch that, and we’ll push it back out and alert you there’s a problem. Well, this can be resolved, right while the voters there, we don’t want to spoil their ballot, we don’t want to, we want to make sure your vote gets counted,” Pate says.

Chiodo ran a number of different ballots through a machine as reporters watched.

Pate says the machines are all clean when voting begins on election day. “Meaning there’s no information in here, they have a designated stick that we put in those. They’re sealed so that again, they’re only used this time. And that’s how it works,” Pate says. “That is really a big part of this — because at the end of the night they’ll take the stick out and the ballots and they’re all sealed. And now we have two ways to audit you have stick and you have the physical ballots to go off of.”

Pate says his office will identify a precinct in all the 99 counties that has to be manually audited with a hand count of the ballots for the top office against what the machine’s tabulator says. He says they’ve been doing that for three election cycles and it’s checked out 100 percent in all 99 counties. Chiodo says the machines are not connected to the internet during voting. “The only time that it has any connection whatsoever is at the end of the night when we enable a modem to transfer the results from the point place to here (county election office). And it’s outgoing only. And that’s only live for when they close the machine out — and there safeguards on both ends as far as who can get in who can get out. And it’s only outgoing data,” Chiodo says.

Pate says those numbers are only unofficial results and the numbers reported by the machines are checked against the paper ballots.

(Corning, Iowa) – The Adams County Sheriff’s Office reports five arrests took place over the past couple of weeks. Most recently, on Monday (10/3/22), Deputies in Adams County conducted a traffic stop at Highway 34 and Vanilla Avenue, and upon further investigation, arrested 18-year-old Kiaraliz Rodriguez Rosario, of Creston, for Possession of a Controlled Substance (Marijuana), and Poss. of Drug Paraphernalia. Rosario was being held in the Adams County Jail on a $1,300 bond.

On Sept. 30th, Deputies in Adams County conducted a Welfare Check and subsequently arrested 38-year-old Mandy Simpson, of Corning, for Violation of a No Contact Order. She was being held on a $300 bond. During the same incident, 34-year-old Michael Simpson, of Coin, was arrested on the same charge, as well as for Possession of a weapon in a Correctional Facility. His bond was set at $10,300.

On the 24th of September, a traffic stop at Highway 34 and the Avenue of the Industries, west of Corning, resulted in the arrest of 50-year-old Robert Dennis Gard, of Corning, for OWI/2nd offense. His bond was set at $2,000. And, on the 23rd, 53-year-old Michael Newsome, of Woodbine, was arrested in Adams County for OWI/1st offense. His bond was set at $1,000.

(Radio Iowa) – Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and his Democratic opponent, Mike Franken, will meet in their only televised debate tonight (Thursday). The two have been debating from afar in comments this summer and fall. Grassley, who is seeking his eighth term in the U.S. Senate, has been telling audiences his opponent would be an ally of President Biden.

“What you’re seeing is a candidate that’s going to be a rubber stamp if he’s in the United Senate for everything this administration wants because it seems like he’s backed it to this point.” Franken, a retired Navy Admiral, often cites Grassley’s longevity in office. “We’ve got real problems, but fixable problems and it’s not too late,” Franken said. “It’s never too late. Why? Because Iowans are resilient. We deserve better than a senator for life who voted against our needs.”

Tonight’s debate between Grassley and Franken starts at 7 p.m. on Iowa P-B-S.  There’s a debate tonight (Thursday) between the candidates in Iowa’s third congressional district on K-C-C-I Channel 8, the C-B-S affiliate in Des Moines. Congresswoman Cindy Axne, a Democrat from West Des Moines, and Zach Nunn, a Republican from Bondurant, are scheduled to debate again Sunday at 6 p.m. on K-M-A Radio.

(St. Charles, Iowa) – A single-vehicle accident Wednesday evening in central Iowa’s Warren County has claimed the life of a man from Texas. According to the Iowa State Patrol, a 2016 Ford F-150 pickup driven by 57-year-old Russell George Menth, of Leonard, TX, was traveling north on I-35 at around 5:30-p.m., when the vehicle left the road near mile marker 53.5

The pickup entered the west ditch and struck several trees and an embankment. Russell died at the scene. He was not wearing seat belt. The crash remains under investigation.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – (Atlantic, Iowa) – At the tail end of Wednesday evening’s City Council meeting in Atlantic, Mayor Grace Garrett announced the City will be looking to fill the position of Parks and Rec Department Director.

She was referring to Bryant Rasmussen. Rasmussen – who was hired in November 2018 as Parks & Rec Foreman, was promoted to Interim Director in March, 2019, following the resignation of Seth Staashelm, who left to take a job in Marion. The Council made him Parks and Rec Director Full-time, in August, 2019.

In other business, the Atlantic City Council passed the Third and Final Readings of Amended Ordinances pertaining to Mowing of Properties, Removal of Solid Waste, and Removal of Snow & Ice Accumulations. Councilman H.Lee Sisco voted “Nay” of each of the three amendments. Sisco explained his No vote, with regard to the Mowing of Properties…

Earlier, he shared pictures of a narrow sidewalk path where there was grass overgrowth. The measure passed by a vote of 6-to 1. Sisco also voted no on the Solid Waste Ordinance, because “There is not enough teeth” in it, “to get repeat offenders to collectively do what they need to be doing.” The measure passed 6-1 in favor. Lee Sisco, along with Councilmen Jim Behrens and Pat McCurdy, voted against the amended Snow/Ice removal ordinance. Pat McCurdy…

Despite their contentions, the ordinance was approved on a 4-to 3 vote. The Atlantic City Council approved an Order to close selected streets for this Saturday evening’s Fireman’s Parade (see previous story), and orders referring the vacating of an alley and ROW (right-of way), to the City’s Planning and Zoning Commission for official recommendation to the Council, before voting to make the orders official.