The Red Oak Police Department reports an arrest Wednesday afternoon. At 2:57 p.m. 60-year-old Tracy Lin Craven, Sr. of Red Oak was arrested in the 400 block of East Nuckols Street in Red Oak on a charge of Harassment 2nd Degree. Craven Sr. was transported to the Montgomery County Jail and held on $1,000 bond.

(Radio Iowa) – Nearly two-thousand meatpacking plant and farm workers in Columbus Junction, West Liberty and Washington will get 600-dollar pandemic relief checks from Catholic Charities U-S-A. The organization is giving one-point-two million dollars in federal relief dollars to Escucha Mi Voz to aid those workers in rural eastern Iowa. Father Guillermo Trevino says he witnessed a miracle Tuesday on the feast day of Saint Francis when the funding was announced.

“In a sense the meat plant workers were the heart and soul of the nation because they kept the nation going like so many. And I think people ought to appreciate them more, as well as the farmworkers because again we all have to eat. So a much deserved reward for them,” he says. The U-S. Department Agriculture’s Farm and Food Workers Relief Grants aim to help workers who incurred expenses during the pandemic. They hope to begin distributing the money to the Iowa workers in the new year.

(reporting by Zachary Oren Smith, Iowa Public Radio)

(Radio Iowa) – Iowans are steadily promising to devote their farmland, roadsides and even urban properties to habitat for monarch butterflies. A 20-year program which Iowa State University launched five years ago is reporting significant progress, with 430-thousand acres of land already set aside. Nicole Shimp is a program specialist with I-S-U’s Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium which is releasing its Monarch Conservation Effort Report.

“We are just a little bit over 50% of our way to our low-end goal of establishing habitat here in Iowa by 2038,” Shimp says. “So that is really exciting news and proves that Iowa is really helping out the monarchs.” Iowa and other Midwestern states provide a summer breeding ground for the butterflies and almost 40-percent of the overwintering monarchs in Mexico came through Iowa. Shimp says efforts in Iowa to preserve habitat may already be paying dividends.

“This last winter we counted the monarch population and it actually held steady,” Shimp says, “compared to last year where it had dropped off.” Studies over the past two decades show the global monarch population has dropped 80-percent. The goal of the I-S-U program is to establish 790-thousand habitat acres statewide in the next 25 years, which Shimp says is very attainable.

“There’s a lot of great programs out there to help people that are thinking about putting in habitat,” Shimp says, “and so I have high hopes.” One of the program’s biggest gains is in acres of farmland. She’s hoping more and more Iowans will make the commitment to set up monarch habitat and register with the program.

“We have this app that can help people let us know about it and it really helps us,” Shimp says. “It’s as easy as just putting some pins on a Google map and then just filling out a few other details and then that’s all we ask of you.” That free app is called HabiTally. The Monarch Conservation Effort Report is online and shows habitat establishment in all 99 Iowa counties.

(Radio Iowa) – The lawyer for a man who was recently awarded 12 million dollars after he spent six years in prison for a sex crime he did not commit, says his client has post-traumatic stress disorder that will follow him the rest of his life. Donald Clark was convicted in 2010 on charges he sexually molested a student at Helen Lemme Elementary School in Iowa City where Clark was a counselor.

A judge later ruled his defense attorney was ineffective and that the child in the case had admitted to lying under oath. Clark was released from prison in 2016. Attorney Mel Orchard told K-C-R-G T-V that Clark stood strong in the face of the false accusation. “I don’t have the strength he had, to endure what he had to endure in prison. Unbelievable,” Orchard says.

Orchard says Clark maintained his innocence throughout, even when there was the temptation to take a deal that he was offered before his trial.  “That if he would just admit it happened, he’d get a lesser crime, No way. Because I didn’t do it, and I’m not going to admit to something that’s a lie, even if it costs me a prison sentence,” Orchard says.

Orchard said issues around Clark’s identity as a gay man were brought up in the malpractice lawsuit against Clark’s first lawyer and the state of Iowa. He says Clark was looked at differently because he was gay, and that should have been brought out in the original trial.

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(Atlantic, Iowa) – Cass County Engineer Trent Wolken, today (Wednesday), said the bridge on West 6th Street in Atlantic over the Nishnabotna River, will be closing on Friday, October 7, 2022, for substructure repairs. Traffic will need to use Front St., Highway 83, and Sunnyside Lane, to get around the closure.

The project should be completed in 8-10 weeks, and is a joint effort between Cass County and the City of Atlantic.

Atlantic, IA— Cass Health officials today (Wednesday), announced that Dr. Elaine Berry will assume full-time responsibility for the role of Chief Medical Officer (CMO) this month. Dr. Berry has been serving in the role part-time while still managing an active medical practice over the last several months. By moving to full-time CMO, Dr. Berry will no longer offer appointments in clinic or provide nursing home rounds, a major shift for her and many patients.

“I want to express my appreciation to the community for the 34 years of support and caring. I am lucky to have a career that is truly my passion in life. Starting this new chapter, I hope to continue to add value to our health system and our patients’ lives,” said Dr. Berry.

As CMO, Dr. Berry will work in an administrative capacity focused on quality improvement processes, teaching, and mentoring. “This does not mean that I will not be involved in patient care, however. Behind the scenes, I will be teaching and consulting with providers. But my day-to-day work will focus more on how we provide care rather than actively providing patient care,” she said.

Dr. Elaine Berry (CCHS photo)

Cass Health CEO Brett Altman stated, “We are really blessed to have Dr. Berry in this role for our organization. Her expertise and leadership are the key ingredients we need at this time to continue our journey to be the best rural hospital in America.”

Dr. Berry’s current patients are encouraged to establish care with a new primary care provider at Atlantic Medical Center, RHC.

(Radio Iowa) – A group of scientists and researchers from 33 Iowa colleges and universities says trees can help Iowans deal with the higher temperatures and intense rainfall expected in the decades to come. University of Iowa professor Heather Sander says trees and woodlands absorb a huge volume of water. “That will reduce flooding,” she says. “Their roots will also hold soil in place, keeping it from washing away.” Sander’s research focuses on urban ecosystems and she says the cooling effect of trees helps reduce electric costs. “We mustn’t forget also that trees provide wildlife habitat, clean air, they enhance the beauty of our cities and landscapes,” Sander says. “They provide many benefits beyond climate adaptation and mitigation.”

Iowa State University professor Jan Thompson says the derecho storms of August of 2020 and December of last year destroyed many mature trees in Iowa — the trees she describes as the hardest workers at addressing climate issues like heat and flooding. “It is going to take time to replace especially the function of those large, older trees for sure,” Thompson says.

Thompson says Iowans need to pick up the pace of planting new trees. “An extreme event…gets everybody’s attention and gets, you know, a lot of excitement and enthusiasm around planting trees, so we definitely have stepped it up,” Thompson says, “but our rate of planting in general has not kept up with just, you know, typical mortality.”

This is the 12th year the group of professors from around the state has issued a Climate Statement. Before planting a tree, the group recommends searching a website called I-tree that the U-S-D-A’s Forest Service launched in 2005 to find out which species of trees are best to plant in Iowa.

(Des Moines, Iowa) – Officials with the Iowa League of Cities have announced Mayor Shawnna Silvius, of Red Oak, was elected to serve on the Iowa Mayors Association Executive Committee. Silvius became an executive committee member on September 28 during the Iowa Mayors Association Annual Business Meeting, held in conjunction with the League’s Annual Conference & Exhibit in Waterloo. Mayor Silvius was nominated by Mayor Matt Walsh of the City of Council Bluffs.

Mayor Walsh has served as the Southwest Iowa representative and as the Chair on the Executive Committee. Walsh and the Executive Committee identified Mayor Silvius as one they feel will provide strong future leadership, not only from her role as Red Oak’s Mayor but also based on her regional leadership and her professional experiences in her career as the Economic Development Planner with Metropolitan Area Planning Agency (MAPA).

Silvius says, “I am truly humbled to have been identified by Mayor Walsh and the Executive Committee. As a newly elected mayor with so many other extra-ordinary mayors in our region to choose from, I am absolutely honored. While I feel I have much to learn from all my mayor colleagues, I am eager to actively engage to further collaborate and share whatever skills, knowledge, network and voice I can to proudly represent Southwest Iowa and to further the advancement of our fellow mayors across the state.”

Red Oak Mayor Shawnna Silvius (Photo provided)

The Iowa League of Cities formed the Mayor’s Association several years ago in an effort to help Iowa’s mayors better understand the intricacies of their job responsibilities; doing so by fostering collaboration between mayoral colleagues while sharing their best practices. The Association is responsible for adopting policies to provide direction to the association, establishing membership fees and providing direction to the organization.

Mayor Silvius will be serving along with Mayors Mike Porsch of Storm Lake (pop 10,600), Dean Andrews of Charles City (pop 7,351), Courtney Clarke of Waukee (pop 23,940), Caleb Housh of Seymour (pop 634), Lorraine Borowski of Decorah (pop 8,127) and Louise From of University Heights (pop 1,228). The first meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, October 11.

The Iowa Mayors Association membership elects seven executive committee members to two-year terms.

(Radio Iowa) – A business magazine has ranked Iowa City among the 25 best cities in the country for people in their late thirties, forties and fifties to live and raise their families. Fortune magazine analyzed data from two-thousand American cities, focusing on things like education, financial health, general wellness of residents and resources for the elderly. The project focuses on the so-called “sandwich generation” — people who have aging parents and are raising kids or financially supporting their adult children. Iowa City ranked 18th in the country, cited for its public schools, senior care facilities, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics AND having the University of Iowa at its center.

Fortune also mentioned the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the city’s designation as a City of Literature by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The other cities in neighboring states to make the top 25 are Olathe, Kansas at number three; WEST Chicago at number nine; Woodbury, Minnesota at 14 and Maryland Heights, Missouri at 19.

(Radio Iowa) – A house explosion in southeast Iowa left a resident seriously hurt. The Wapello County Sheriff’s Office says it received a 911 call at noon on Tuesday concerning a residence in Chillicothe. Authorities were told that the house exploded and a man needed medical assistance. Deputies arrived at the scene and found the man in question. He was airlifted to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City. The injured man’s condition is unknown and his identity was not disclosed. The cause of the explosion is still under investigation.