(Atlantic, Iowa) – The Cass County Board of Supervisors, Tuesday morning, received a presentation on ISICS (The Iowa Statewide Interoperable Communications System). During a nearly 2-hour Q&A session, ISICS Interoperability Coordinator Chris Maiers explained the difference between a VHF “legacy” system and a “trunked” radio communications system like ISICS. The latter utilizes the 700 megahertz, digital frequency, while the old system is analog.

VHF, he says, may have channels that are idle 90-percent of the time, while the trunked radio system can be configured to support the entire county. The problem is the County has signal “drop-out” zones, or “dead spots.” Cass County has bent over backwards over the years to prepare for communication upgrades, including purchasing a new console for the Cass County Communications Center, along with mobile radios, to name a few of the improvements. But the dead spots in signal reception remain, due to the county’s topography. Supervisor Steve Green said Cass and other Counties were caught between a rock and a hard space when ISICS came out.

Green said the County has been negotiating with Motorola for a tower and related enhancements for a tower site, to complete ISICS connectivity.

The latest proposal calls for the construction of a communications tower to handle ISICS. It’s estimated the cost will be approximately $3-million. Installing a pad for the tower, erecting the tower and other facets of the it, could take anywhere from nine-to 18-months.

Steve Green said before the County takes any action, he wants to see the City Council’s for each city in the county, to discuss with their citizens the advantages of the system, how much it would cost, and if bonding for the project is a viable option.

In other news, the Supervisors, Tuesday, approved a request for grant matching funds from the Cass County Fire Association which received a Department of Homeland Security grant for the purchase of mobile radios. The 5-percent local match totals $17,699.62. The Supervisors also approved the fiscal year 2020-2021 Urban Renewal Report.

(Radio Iowa) – Record numbers of Iowa families relied on food pantries during the pandemic, but with increased federal benefits through the SNAP program, some pantries are finally seeing a bit less traffic. Luke Elzinga, spokesman for the Des Moines Area Religious Council, says many people are getting a lot more money for food through pandemic emergency increases to SNAP. “When people have the money to spend at the grocery store on their food, they’re less likely to come to a food pantry,” Elzinga says.

Those emergency benefits are temporary, but starting in October, SNAP will see a historic, permanent increase to the amount of money a person gets each month. Even with the higher base-level benefits, Elzinga expects people will go back to the pantries once the pandemic allotment runs out. “They’re going to be needing to fill that gap somehow,” he says, “and a lot of them were previously using food pantries to do so and so we expect that they will return.”

Once the emergency assistance stops, he says people will get different amounts of money, sometimes less, despite the permanent increase to SNAP.

(By Katie Peikes, Iowa Public Radio)

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, Tuesday, said an Essex man, 38-year-old Blake Sandahl, was arrested at around 4:30-p.m. Thursday (Aug. 26), for Driving While Barred. Sandahl was transported to Montgomery County Corrections and held on a $2,000 cash bond.

(Radio Iowa) – Des Moines-based MidAmerican Energy is sending 120 workers to southern Louisiana to help with recovery from Hurricane Ida. MidAmerican Energy spokesperson Tina Potthoff isn’t sure how long the crews will be in the impacted area. She says that still hasn’t been determined, but they plan to leave Wednesday (Today) and arrive in the area on Thursday to get to work. Iowa saw crews from all over come in and help following last year’s derecho. Potthoff says it’s something that is common in the industry.

“We all can relate to the devastation of these storms and we really do stand together and do everything we can do to help each other out when one area is impacted over another,” Potthoff says. She says MidAmerican’s customers have benefited from having crews from around the country coming to help and she says they always feel like it is important to help neighbors in need. The hurricane left hundreds of thousands of people without power and it is not known how long it will take to restore the power lines and poles.

Locally, Jacob Matthews from FS in Audubon, was set to leave this (Wednesday) morning, to take fuel to victims of the hurricane.

(Radio Iowa) – Senator Joni Ernst says this weekend she confirmed that the few dozen Iowans who were in Afghanistan — and who had contacted her office for assistance — were evacuated. “Some of them may not have been back in the United States at that point, but they were out of Afghanistan, so we knew they were safe,” Ernst says. Ernst and her staff are still working on behalf of other Afghans who’ve received or applied for Special Immigrant Visas because they or a family member worked with the U.S. military or the U.S. government.

“Unfortunately, all of the additional SIVs, we were able to get a number of the interpreters’ families out. Those were always great when we received news about that, but we were not able to get all of them out,” Ernst says. People inside Afghanistan still trying to make their way to the U.S. must now clear their paperwork with a consulate in Doha (DOH-ha), which is about 24-hundred miles away.

“I think all of this is going to be exceptionally more difficult because we don’t have a presence in Afghanistan any longer,” Ernst says. “…Doha — it’s wonderful. I am glad that we are able to locate there right now, but unfortunately when you have people in Afghanistan, they may be impeded by the Taliban or other violent, extremist organizations. We really needed consular activities in Afghanistan and that collapsed.”

The Cass County Auditor’s Office reports one candidate filed nomination papers, Tuesday, to have their name on the ballot for the Nov. 2nd City Elections. The latest to file is Simon Jensen, who is running for one of three seats on the Anita City Council.  As of Tuesday (Aug. 31st), the following candidates have filed to run for offices in Cass County:

Mayor of Atlantic:

Pat McCurdy

Grace Garrett

Kathy Somers

Atlantic City Council, 5th Ward (Vote for 1):

Dick Casady (Incumbent)

Mayor of Anita (to fill a vacancy):

John Knutson (Appointed – term ends 11/2021)

Anita City Council (Vote for 3):

Simon Jensen (Incumbent)

Anita City Council (to fill a vacancy) – Vote for 1):

Mark Harris (Incumbent)

City of Atlantic Parks and Recreation Board (Vote for 1):

Shirley Jensen

Cumberland City Council (Vote for 3):

Mike Hill (Incumbent)

Darrin Hardisty (Incumbent)

Cumberland City Mayor

Nancy Virginia Coughlin (Incumbent)

Nomination papers may be filed with the Cass County Auditors Office until 5-p.m., Sept. 16th.

(Radio Iowa) – We could see an increase in prices at the gas pump in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. Triple-A Iowa spokesperson Meredith Mitts says the storm forced the oil industry to take action. “The rig workers were pulled off those rigs to make sure we keep everybody as safe as possible. And because of that, we did have to shut down some of those pipelines and rigs temporarily,” Mitts says. She says it is hoped this will be a temporary slowdown in the supply.

“This is a fairly standard and routine thing that happens, it happens every year during hurricane season,” according to Mitts. “So as soon as the power is back online and those rigs and pipelines can be inspected for any damage, and then the roadways are clear and things are returning to normal, we should be getting all of those operations back to normal.” Mitts says the resumption of normal operations is based on crews being able to get to work quickly.

“The only thing that could change that is if there was some major damage — which I haven’t heard of any yet. Or, it takes a really long time to restore power for some reason,” she says. Gas in Iowa right now is averaging three dollars for one gallon.

(Radio Iowa) – Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the third place finisher in the Iowa Republican Party’s 2016 Caucuses, is in Iowa helping local Republicans raise money. As for whether he’ll run for president again, Rubio says he doesn’t know what the future holds. “I imagine in 2024 I, like others, will have to view what the opportunities are and I’ve run for president before, so clearly it’s something that’s interested me, but it’s certainly not something that right now I’m either planning or not planning,” Rubio says. “I don’t know what my life, the world, the country or politics will look like in two years.”

Rubio says his focus right now is on winning reelection to his U.S. Senate seat in 2022. Rubio, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says there should be some accountability in the Biden Administration for its handling of withdrawal from Afghanistan. “It didn’t have to be this way,” Rubio says. “…Afghanistan now presents a vast, ungoverned space for not just al-Qaida to now return, but even elements like ISIS khorasan to come in and create a place where they can begin to recruit and plot against America and our allies.”

Earlier this month, President Biden said America has developed “over the horizon” capacity to deal with terrorist networks. Rubio, who is also the top Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sent Biden a letter last week, asking for details on how the U.S. will rebuild its counter terrorism activities in the Afghanistan and tribal regions of Pakistan. Rubio says the closest state department consulate to assist Americans and our allies still trying to get out of Afghanistan is nearly 24-hundred miles away in Doha. “At this point, unfortunately, we’re in the ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ situation. I mean we have to figure out which countries in the region are willing to assist us not just in housing refugees, but in the ability to process paperwork and so forth,” Rubio says. “…I would hope that more places would step forward and provide us the capability to do that, but all of this should have been done a long time ago. I mean, it really was just poorly planned.”

Rubio was the keynote at a Story County G-O-P breakfast fundraiser this (Tuesday) morning and then visited a business in Ankeny to discuss supply chain issues. A spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee says Rubio is in Iowa teasing another presidential run rather than addressing the spike in Covid hospitalizations in his home state of Florida.

(Radio Iowa) – It’s been more than a month since thousands of bicyclists on RAGBRAI pedaled through the northwestern Iowa town of Lytton, but the benefits are still rolling in. Scott Matter, who helped organize Lytton’s events during the annual ride, says about 30-thousand dollars was raised that one day, money that will be split between helping to offset the cost of a new fire station and another local project. “One that people really rallied around is helping pay for a new community sign or digital sign,” Matter says. “With Lytton not having its own newspaper anymore, it’s a great way to let people know about what’s happening in town, whether it be a Legion meeting, a church supper, somebody’s anniversary or whatever. We don’t really have that and that’s something people are hoping we can contribute to.”

Lytton Mayor Jeff Ellerbrock says a member of the fire department’s board of trustees approached him shortly after the cyclists went through town on July 26th. “He came in all smiles and said, ‘Guess what? The fire station’s paid for,'” Ellerbrock says, laughing. “It just floored me. It was fantastic. I was just thrilled.”  Lytton RAGBRAI collected more than 15-thousand dollars earmarked for the fire station. Ellerbrock says one of the cyclists who stopped there during the ride remembered the town’s fund drive when he got home. “The fella’s name is Aaron Thompson and he lives in Chesapeake, Virginia,” Ellerbrock says. “He’s retired Navy, he was a SEAL for 30 years. He heard that we got the fire station out of debt and he still wanted to donate so he sent us $2,000 for Emanuel St. John’s Church in Lytton.”

In addition to the money raised by local organizations, another 54-thousand dollars has come in for local organizations. Matter says it took the entire community, and then some, pulling together to make it happen. More than 300 volunteers were in Lytton during RAGBRAI, a town with a population of only around 275. People from across Iowa and as far away as Florida came in to help out.

A man from Pottawattamie County was arrested Monday in Mills County, for OWI/3rd offense, and on a warrant for two counts of Indecent Contact with a Child. The Mills County Sheriff’s Office reports 46-year-old Craig Raymond Janssen, of Council Bluffs, was taken into custody at around 2:15-p.m. His bond was set at $9,000.