COUNCIL BLUFFS, IA — This (Wednesday) evening, May 4th, at 7pm, local residents and community leaders will gather at the Council Bluffs Public Library to discuss how Pottawattamie County should spend our next disbursement of American Rescue Plan COVID Recovery funds. Pottawattamie County is set to receive an additional $9 million in federal recovery funding from the American Rescue Plan Act. County residents are calling on the Board of Supervisors to survey the county to identify the most immediate needs of our community and to join in listening session Town Halls hosted by United Today, Stronger Tomorrow & Coalition members.

You’re invited to join members of your community in discussing the most responsive and responsible way to spend an additional $9 million in federal Covid recovery funding coming to Pottawattamie County, in May. The County Board of Supervisors – who tasked with spending these funds – have been invited to attend, as well as other local elected officials.

The goal is a friendly dialogue, and civil conversation. Refreshments will be provided.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Firefighters and other emergency personnel were dispatched at around 4:50-a.m. today (Wednesday), to a residential fire at 106 Cedar Street. Atlantic Fire Chief Tom Cappel says flames were showing when the first crews arrived on the scene.

Cappel said apparently, no one was in the residence.

Chief Cappel said an investigation into the cause of the blaze is underway, and will take some time. No injuries were reported. The house was considered a total loss. Atlantic Police, Cass County Sheriff’s Deputies and Cass County Emergency Management assisted at the scene.

(Radio Iowa) – Planners in Pella are anxiously awaiting the Thursday opening of this year’s Tulip Festival. Pella Historical Village spokesperson, Valerie Van Kooten, says they are prepping for lots of visitors during the three-day run. “We are expecting probably some of our largest crowds ever. If advanced ticket sales are any indication — the buses that are coming in — I think people are ready to get out,” she says. It will be the first time things are like they were before the pandemic. “We had, what we kind of called a tulip time light last year, where we didn’t have parades. We needed to control crowds in one area, so we had a lot of the events but we didn’t have parades to encourage people not to gather in one area,” Van Kooten explains. “So this year we’re back totally to where we were three years ago in 2019.

The cold weather has slowed the tulip growth a bit — but she says that is a good thing. “They’re just coming into their peak and I think they’ll be at their peak probably this weekend and into next week. So, it’s a rare year when they haven’t yet hit their peak by tulip time but this might be the year where they’re going to be good for another week or two,” she says. Different varieties of tulips are planted to try and ensure there’s always the color for the festival. “We plant early varieties, middle varieties and late varieties and the early varieties are coming up to be finished. The middle varieties are just blooming on full bloom and the late varieties are coming up and starting to show color,” according to Van Kooten. “So there’s always something blooming at Tulip Time, but they can’t all bloom at the same time because of the way they’re planted for early, middle or late.”

She says they learned from the changes they made in the scaled-back celebration. “It’s funny because as we meet and plan and everything, we all kind of have to think twice about how we did things, you know, three years ago and we learned a lot during the pandemic of things that work and things that don’t and some of the things we put in place during the pandemic will stay. So it wasn’t all bad. We learned a lot about our festival and about our visitors,” Van Kooten says.

You can find a full schedule of events at the website: pellahistorical.org.

(Radio Iowa) – Cold, wet weather is keeping many Iowans from mowing their lawns, but some are swearing off the chore for the entire month as a way to help out tiny yet vital pollinators. Cedar Falls Mayor Rob Green is leading by example through taking part in No Mow May as bees emerge from dormancy and need flowering plants as crucial foraging habitats — even though he was scared of getting stung as a kid. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to see just how critical they are to our food chain and for providing pollination for crops and being that linchpin of our food supply,” Green says. “So, as mayor, I’m really excited that I have this opportunity to educate other residents and hopefully get them excited about bees and butterflies and other pollinators.”

Cedar Falls residents are encouraged to limit or skip their lawn mowing during May, and the city council voted to not enforce the ordinance requiring eight-inch tall grass and weeds to be cut for the month. In his proclamation, Mayor Green calls No Mow May a “community science initiative.” “This gives us the opportunity to bring in schools and families and to help them build up a monitoring program in their own yards,” Green says, “and hopefully get kids excited about doing research. I would love to see kids out, counting the number of bees per square yard on a given day and reporting that out.”

Iowans who take pride in their landscaping may be slow to come around to the idea, and Green admits he was initially hesitant to get onboard. He says it took a mind shift. “I hate dandelions and so having been one who would have the yard herbicided and just make it as pristine as possible like a golf course,” Green says. “It’s just taken me some time to realize that that kind of approach to lawn care is damaging to the environment.”

City residents are encouraged to register their intent -not- to mow as well as the size of their yards. Some are posting signs to let neighbors know, they’re not being lazy, they’re helping promote pollinator-critical habitat.

(Harlan, Iowa) –  A traffic stop by a Shelby County Sheriff’s Deputy resulted in a pursuit that ended in a foot chase, in Harlan. The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office says the incident happened early this (Wednesday) morning, when a Deputy attempted to stop a vehicle just north of Harlan, on Highway 59. When the vehicle failed to yield, the Deputy and a Harlan Police officer began a pursuit in and around the area of Defiance.

The vehicle then went back south bound where another Shelby County Deputy did set stop sticks up on the road. The vehicle then traveled into Harlan and attempted to make a turn when it lost control. The suspect later identified as Spencer Hodges took off of foot. An alert was put out to citizens to stay in their residence and not to answer the door. With a Shelby County K9 unit, a Shelby County EMA drone, Crawford County Sheriff’s office deputies, and Harlan police officers assistance, the suspect was apprehended.

Hodges was was found to have an active arrest warrant out of Nebraska. The vehicle his was driving was allegedly stolen out of Nebraska. Once the suspect was in custody, the alert was cancelled.

A traffic stop a little after 11-p.m. Tuesday, in Red Oak, resulted in an arrest. 26-year-old Dylan Elwood Taylor, of Red Oak,was arrested for Driving While Barred. He was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $2,000 bond.

Firefighters and other emergency personnel were dispatched at around 4:52-a.m. today (Wednesday), to a residential fire at 106 Cedar Street. Dispatch reports said the home was unoccupied, because the utilities had been shut-off. Police, however, said a neighbor pulled a man from the structure. The home was said to be fully engulfed on the east side. The incident remains under investigation. No other information was immediately available.

Photos by Ric Hanson/KJAN News

Sheriff’s officials in Montgomery County report a woman from Villisca was arrested Tuesday, on an assault charge.  40-year-old Kyla Rae Smith was taken into custody for Domestic Abuse Assault/1st offense. She was being held without bond, in the Montgomery County Jail.

(Radio Iowa) – All three Republicans competing for the chance to run against Democratic Congresswoman Cindy Axne in the fall oppose abortion under any circumstance — but all three say it should be the states that regulate abortion, not the U.S. congress. Candidate Nicole Hasso of Johnston is an insurance executive. Hasso says there’s nothing more important than life itself.

“They put those Planned Parenthood places in the black communities to control the population,” she says. “Where’s the outrage in that? So I will be 100% standing for life, from conception to the grave.” Candidate Zach Nunn is a state senator from Bondurant. Nunn says if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade, Democrats will try to pass a federal law on abortion rights.

“They’re going so far as to say just today that they would tear down the filibuster so they could push through a congressional act,” Nunn says. “They’re going so far as to say they would pack the courts to ensure their liberal view of abortion on demand is something that they can have,” Nunn says. Candidate Gary Leffler of West Des Moines is a construction consultant. Leffler, who also opposes abortion in all circumstances, says it is absolutely critical that states decide abortion policy.

“We’re tired of Washington, D.C. and its dominance of what happens in Iowa,” Leffler says. “Let’s put Iowans back in control of this issue.” The candidates made their comments during a debate hosted by W-H-O T-V. Leffler said Governor Reynolds should return federal pandemic relief that hasn’t been spent. “We can’t sit there and say: ‘Hey, we want all this dollars from Washington, D.C. and continue this rapid spending.’ Can’t do it,” Leffler says. “Send a congressman to D.C. who’ll say: ‘No!'”

Governor Reynolds returned about 95 million dollars in federal pandemic aid to reopen Iowa schools, which Reynolds said were already open, and Hasso says that was the right decision. “If we’re not going to use that money and we’re just going to sit on it, it needs to go back,” Hasso said. Nunn disagreed with returning pandemic aid. “God knows where that money would have ended up if Iowa would have sent it back, but it wouldn’t have been helping our state,” Nunn says. “It would have ended up somewhere n a blue state.”

Nunn says the federal pandemic support helped pave the way for state tax cuts, which he supported. The group said those who invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6th should be prosecuted, but Hasso questioned whether January 6th defendants are being treated the same as those arrested in protests after George Floyd’s murder. “People burned down buildings, held communities hostage and took the livelihood of small businesses,” Hasso says, “and those people, they were arrested, but it was called ‘catch and release.'”

Leffler attended President Trump’s rally in Washington, D.C. on January 6th, but says he did not enter the Capitol. “There was a certain element that went there and they had an ulterior motive. That’s absolutely true,” Leffler said, “but for the million people plus that were there…to support American values, the support ‘We, the People, they were there for the right reasons.” Nunn says January 6th was a tragic day, but it was fueled Americans who feel frustrated by the election process.

“We in Iowa do it very well,” Nunn said. “…But Cindy Axne, the opponent in this race, has tried to pass HR1 which would nationalize all elections and bottle it up in a Washington, D.C. run form of election monitoring, implementation and verification.” All three candidates criticized Axne for failing to report stock trades, as required by House rules.