The Adair County Board of Supervisors are set to meet 9-a.m. Wednesday, March 31st, in an electronic session. The meeting will be conducted via teleconference (see dial-in number & access code at the end of this story). During the session, the Board will hear from Chris Whitaker, Local Assistance Director with the Region 12 COG (Council of Governments). He will speak with regard to floodplain information.

Adair County Engineer Nick Kauffman will talk about a New Hire (followed by Board action on approving the hire), as well as wage rate progressions for two Secondary Roads Dept. employees. At around 9:35-a.m. Wednesday, Conservation Director Dominic Johnson was talk about the Mormon Trail shower house and have an update on Conservation Dept. Activity.

The meeting wraps up with Adair County Attorney Melissa Larson discussing a Solar Panel Ordinance. The subject of Solar Farms in Adair County has been discussed in previous meetings the past couple of months, with some rural residents voicing their concerns and objections over proposed plans by MidAmerican Energy to take more land out of production, in favor of large solar farms.

(Dial-in number: 605-313-6157,    Access Code: 526272# )

(Radio Iowa) – An eastern Iowa man will spend more than five years in federal prison for selling drugs that nearly killed a woman. Twenty-seven-year-old Michael Jerome Greenwood of Dubuque admitted in his guilty plea to distributing heroin near a playground that heroin he sold in August of 2018 caused a woman to lose consciousness. Family members of the woman took her to the hospital where she was revived with a Narcan.

Greenwood also admitted to sometimes requesting sexual favors from his customers in exchange for heroin. He was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison.

(Radio Iowa) – Former Iowa Secretary of State Elaine Baxter of Burlington has died at the age of 88. In 1973, Elaine Baxter became the first woman ever elected to the Burlington City Council in 1973. In 1982, she was elected to the Iowa House of Representatives, where she served three terms. In 1986, Baxter won a statewide race to serve as Iowa Secretary of State and served two terms as Iowa’s top election official. In 1992, Baxter ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House against Republican Congressman Jim Ross Lightfoot.

Elaine_Baxter (via Wikipedia)

After leaving elected office, Baxter served on a variety of state boards and commissions, including the Terrace Hill Society and the Iowa Lottery Board. In 2006, Baxter was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and she died Friday after a brief illness according to an online obituary.

(Radio Iowa) – A broken water meter at the home of a clerk for the City of Missouri Valley has led to a special investigation by the state auditor’s office — and advice to quit storing cash in the city’s safe for weeks at a time. State Auditor Rob Sand says auditors reviewed a 50 month period and identified about 42-thousand dollars in utility payments from Missouri Valley residents that weren’t immediately deposited until about a thousand dollars in cash had accumulated in a safe.

“That isn’t what you want to do,” Sand says. “You want to get the money in and then you want to put it in the bank as quickly as possible.” Auditors determined the 42-thousand dollars was eventually deposited. “But you just don’t want to have that money laying around, even if it’s in a safe,” Sand says. “You want to be making deposits as soon as the money comes in.”

In October of 2019, Missouri Valley’s city administrator discovered the water meter at Brenda Osborn’s home was broken and she had adjusted her monthly bill from zero to about 50 dollars for 20 consecutive months. Osborn, the city’s water billing clerk, was in charge of getting meters fixed. Osborn was placed on leave and then resigned in late 2019. Sand says once the meter at Osborn’s home was fixed, her monthly bill wound up to be about 30 bucks.

The investigation by the state auditor’s office identified about 12-hundred dollars worth of checks written to the city apparently converted to cash. However, auditors weren’t able to match any of the amounts written on the checks to bills that were due. “We’ve got a little bit of missing money here and that’s always important,” Sand says, “but the other issue is how to people get the opportunity for that money to go missing and that is not following best practices.”

Sand says that means accurate daily recording of receipts and prompt deposits of any money paid to the city. Missouri Valley’s mayor and city council asked for the investigation and the report has been forwarded to law enforcement.

A copy of the report is available for review HERE.

Auditor of State Rob Sand, Tuesday, released an agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Griswold, for the period July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2020. Sand reported ten findings related to the receipt and disbursement of taxpayer funds. The findings address issues such as a lack of segregation of duties, the Fire Department bank account held outside of the City’s control, Fire Department questionable disbursement and moneys provided to non-profit corporations in violation of Article III, Section 31 of the Constitution of Iowa. Sand provided the City with recommendations to address each of the findings.

Six of the ten findings discussed above are repeated from the prior year. Sand says the City Council has a fiduciary responsibility to provide oversight of the City’s operations and financial transactions. Oversight is typically defined as the “watchful and responsible care” a governing body exercises in its fiduciary capacity.

A copy of the agreed-upon procedures report is available here.

Cass County Auditor Dale Sunderman said Tuesday (today), Gronewald, Bell, Kyhnn & Co. P.C. CPAs have released an audit report on Cass County, Iowa for fiscal year ended June 30, 2020. The report shows the County had local tax revenue of $33,556,439 for the year ended June 30, 2020, which included $3,127,334 in tax credits from the state. The County forwarded $24,819,145 of the local tax revenue to the townships, school districts, county hospital, cities and other taxing entities in the County.

The County retained $8,737,294 of the local tax revenue to finance County operations, a .2 percent increase from the prior year. Other revenues included $4,150,486 from the State of Iowa, including indirect federal funding of $124,498, charges for service of $355,933, and $342,253 for the use of money and property.

Expenditures for County operations totaled $12,862,581, a 6.3 percent decrease from the prior year. Expenses included $5,891,070 for roads and transportation, $371,860 for mental health services, $2,940,209 for public safety and legal services, $552,773 for county environment and education, $288,816 for debt service, $202,289 for capital projects, and $1,560,948 for administrative services.

A copy of the audit report is available for review in the office of the Auditor of State and the Cass County Auditor’s office.

(Radio Iowa) – Marshall County residents noticed the smell of smoke as they awoke this (Tuesday) morning. The culprit was multiple grass fires. While the entire state was under a Red Flag Warning, it was after that warning expired that grass fires began popping up in the northwest portion of Marshall County. The blazes first reported around 9:00 Monday night and firefighters from all over the county spent over four hours quenching the fires. The grass fires, extending over roughly 400 acres, were mainly between the Marshalltown city limits to the northwest towards Albion.

No structures were burned, nor were any injuries reported. While the wind has backed off from yesterday’s 40-plus mile per hour gusts, they are still in the 15 to 25 mph range. Combined with low humidity, there remains an elevated chance of grass fires.

Our broadcast report at 8:05-a.m., w/Ric Hanson.

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Police in Creston say a man residing in the 600 block of N. Birch reported Monday afternoon, that sometime between 11-p.m. Sunday and 2:45-a.m. Monday, someone stole his 2005 Honda Shadow 750cc motorcycle that was parked on the north side of his residence, as well as numerous keys from a vehicle also parked at the residence. The loss was estimated at $4,525.