(Red Oak, Iowa) – The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office reports a man from Grant was arrested Thursday evening, following a traffic stop in the 1700 block of K Avenue. Authorities say 40-year-old Zachary Morrison, of Grant, was arrested for Driving Under Suspension. Morrison was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $491.25 bond.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – Officials with Hy-Vee have announced the company will close two stores in eastern Iowa next month. The store on First Avenue NE store in Cedar Rapids will close on June 23rd, opening up a large area of the city without easy access to a grocery store.
Hy-Vee managers told KCRG-TV9 the chain is closing two locations, the Cedar Rapids one and a Waterloo Hy-Vee store on Logan Avenue. Both stores are in areas listed as “High Poverty” according to U.S. Census data. In a statement, spokesperson Tina Pothoff said the two locations have not consistently the company’s financial expectations and sales goals over the past several years. She added, that the employees at those stores will be offered a position at another Hy-Vee store in the area, at the same rate of pay and will retain their existing benefits.
Hy-Vee pointed out that despite the closure, it offers its Aisles Online grocery delivery service to the area. Pothoff also said Hy-Vee plans to open up e-WIC payments to allow recipients of the Women, Infant and Children food assistance to buy groceries online.
The City of Cedar Rapids had given Hy-Vee incentives to build the First Avenue store in 2001 and keep a grocery store in the area, including a 20-year tax increment financing. The Gazette reported the head of Hy-Vee at the time made it clear that the store was not financially viable without the city’s tax incentives.
Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O’Donnel said in a statement regarding the closure:
“Hy-Vee’s decision to close their First Avenue store is incredibly disappointing. Generations of customers have relied on this store for their basic needs. It is unfortunate the company is leaving at a time when the nearby neighborhoods are seeing significant improvements and public investment. We anticipate this momentum will continue when combined with efforts like the upcoming First Avenue Micro Area Action Plan community planning process. We know that access to fresh, affordable food is crucial for our community’s wellbeing and we will work with local agencies to meet the needs of those impacted most by this closure.”
Today: Areas of fog this morning, otherwise partly cloudy to cloudy. High near 75. W/NW winds 10-20 mph.
Tonight: Mostly cloudy early, then gradually becoming clear. Low around 45. Northwest wind 5 to 10 mph.
Tomorrow: Sunny, with a high near 76. Northwest wind 5 to 10 mph.
Tom. Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 51.
Sunday: Partly sunny w/a 40% chance of afternoon showers and thunderstorms. High near 80
Sunday Night: A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Low around 53.
Monday: A 50% chance of showers and thunderstorms early & then again in the afternoon, otherwise partly sunny. High near 70.
Thursday’s High in Atlantic was 71. Our Low this morning was 42. Last year on this date, the High in Atlantic was 83 and the Low was 58. The Record High was 97 in 2011. The Record Low was 26 in 1966. Sunrise: 6:07. Sunset: 8:27.
(Radio Iowa) – The latest U-S Drought Monitor map of Iowa shows no red areas indicating extreme drought.
DNR Hydrologist Tim Hall says we’ve been seeing red for a long time. “The first time in almost two years that we’ve not had extreme drought somewhere in the state of Iowa,” Hall says. It is a big turnaround, but not all the color has washed out of the drought map. “We still have half the state are so impacted by drought conditions, but that area is shrinking all the time as we get these good rains,” he says.
Hall has continually said we need weekly rains every month to turn things around, and that’s the pattern we’re now in. “We’ve now had five out of the last seven months have had above normal precipitation and that’s exactly the recipe we wanted,” he says, “where you get month over month just above normal precipitation, and that’s what’s really helping us to get out of the drought,” Hall says.
He says depth of the drought is evident in the lack of any major flood issues. “Go back to this winter when we had all that snow in January that melted very quickly and we had no flooding. And we’ve now had a couple of above normal precipitation months, and yes, we got some flooding, but nothing even approaching a widespread or catastrophic flooding,” Hall Says. “So that really points to a couple of things, how dry the soil was, and the fact that the rain we have received has been fairly well spaced out.”
Half of the state’s annual rainfall usually comes in May through August, and Hall says if we are above normal in any of those months, we could go a long way toward pushing all the drought colors off the map.
(Radio Iowa) – Two scientists who played key roles in creating a world seed vault are the winners of the 2024 World Food Prize. World Food Prize Foundation president, Terry Branstad, Thursday, announced Geoffrey Hawtin of Great Britain and Cary Fowler of the United States as the winners.
“They focused their careers on preserving and protecting the world’s heritage of crop diversity and mobilizing this critical resource to defend against threats of global food security,” Branstad says. During the ceremony at the U-S State Department, Branstad says they conserved more than six-thousand varieties of crops and culturally important plants. “Sustaining storehouses of seeds that we need to breed tomorrow’s crops for more nutritious, and climate smart crops,” Branstad says. “They then went on to work to establish the famous Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.”
World Food Prize Foundation President Terry Branstad. (photo from World Food Prize Foundaiton)
The Norway facility is often referred to as the “Doomsday Vault,” and holds one-point-two-five million seed samples in an underground facility in the Arctic Circle. More than anyone else these laureates have together shaped the global system we now have for protecting, sharing, and utilizing crop diversity for the benefit of humanity,” Branstad says.
Hawtin is the founding director and executive board member at the Global Crop Diversity Trust. Fowler is currently the U-S Special Envoy for Global Food Security. The World Food Prize was created by Cresco, Iowa native Norman Borlaug, who received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his work that contributed to increases in agricultural outputs which was termed the Green Revolution.
The two will receive the World Food Prize at an event at the Iowa State Capitol building in October.
(Radio Iowa) – For decades, Iowa law has required the title and registration for a newly-purchased or leased vehicle to be filed in the county where the owner of the vehicle lives. A new law going into effect July 1st will let Iowa auto dealers file that paperwork in the county where the dealership is located. Bruce Anderson, president of the Iowa Automobile Dealers Association, says it’s an adjustment to the way people buy vehicles today.
“You used to go to your hometown local car dealer and that’s where you would shop, but with the advent of the internet online automotive shopping customers are shopping all over the state,” Anderson says. “With some brands, especially with higher luxury brands, there aren’t dealers in every county, so a single dealer might be working with upwards of 40 or 50 different county treasurers.” Anderson says this gives auto dealers a familiar, local point of entry to file the vehicle’s title, register a lien if the customer took out a loan to buy the vehicle and get license plates ordered.
“It should eliminate a lot of delay and make the titling and registration process quicker. Customers should get their plates quicker, their new registration quicker,” Anderson says. “It’s also a plus for law enforcement because instead of having to put this information in an envelope and sending it across the state, potentially have it come back if there’s a discrepancy on postage amounts or something like that. It’s getting the information into the database quicker.”
Anderson credits county treasurers and the Iowa D-O-T for working with automobile dealers to address bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the system for registering vehicle after they’re purchased or lease. The new law will raise various vehicle registration fees by 10 dollars on January 1st of next year. The fees — one of which is just a dollar — were set decades ago when the average price of a new vehicle was 10-thousand dollars.
(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Congressman Randy Feenstra is sponsoring a bill to require Medicare to cover over-the-phone tele-health services for another year. That coverage was set to expire on December 31st of this year. “Audio only services are a lifeline to rural communities across the country who still contend with severe lack of broadband access,” Feenstra says. During the pandemic, Medicare began covering patient appointments conducted via video link and over the phone.
Feenstra says many rural residents have no way to make a video connection. He cites a Federal Communications Commission report which found 45 million Americans cannot get broadband with high enough speeds capable of streaming video. “I believe this underscores the need for audio-only telehealth coverage to ensure access to health care for Americans in rural areas,” Feenstra says. “This provision is particularly vital to seniors who shouldn’t have to travel hundreds of miles to receive routine care.”
The U-S House Ways and Means Committee unanimously approved the bill yesterday (Wednesday). It allows federally qualified health centers and rural health clinics to bill Medicare for telehealth and delays the in-person visit requirement for mental health services for seniors.
(Radio Iowa) = Civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit seeking to block enforcement of an Iowa law that would let state officials arrest and deport immigrants who are in Iowa after previously being deported or denied entry to the country. The law is scheduled to take effect July 1st. Rita Bettis Austen is legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa.
“It is truly impossible to overstate how terrible this law is, how poorly written it is, how bizarre it is and how extreme it is,” Bettis Austen says. Iowa police do not have the ability to accurately determine a person’s current immigration status, according to Bettis Austen. “We’ve heard that from law enforcement across the state directly,” she says. Kate Melloy Goettel, legal director with the American Immigration Council, says the law is unconstitutional.
“The crux of this lawsuit is that it challenges the state’s ability to create its own immigration system,” she says, “flouting more than a century of law that leaves that authority to the federal government.” One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is a 68-year-old woman who has a green card and is living in Iowa today. “She was deported to Mexico in 2005 and waited 17 years to be able to come back to the United States lawfully where her family resides,” Melloy Goettel says. “She has five kids and many grandchildren, most of whom live here in Iowa and she is under great stress and anxiety not knowing if she’s going to be prosecuted under this law.”
Rita Betis Austen. (photo from ACLU news conference)
Melloy Goettel says the law has no exceptions for people who have legal authority to be in the U-S now, but had been removed in the past. Erica Johnson, executive director of the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, says the law is creating fear among immigrant communities. “I think we can all agree that our immigration system needs improvement, but this law is no solution,” she says. “…It doesn’t matter now if they have authorization to be here, they can still be put in prison or deported at the border, often thousands of miles away from their home country.”
Governor Kim Reynolds says President Biden refuses to enforce immigration laws and she has a responsibility to protect the citizens of Iowa. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird says states have to take matters into their own hands and she stands ready to defend the law in court.
The U-S Department of Justice announced late Thursday afternoon, that it also has sued the state to try to block the law from taking effect. A similar Texas law is on hold due to a federal lawsuit.
Authorities say a preliminary investigation shows that Koeppe was alone when he attempted to drive the excavator over a bridge on private property that spanned a body of water. When the bridge collapsed, the excavator rolled into the water trapping Koeppe below the surface. The accident was discovered at around 8:06-a.m.
Madison County S/O photo
The Atlantic Trojan boys track team finished in 3rd place with 187 points at the Class 3A State Qualifying meet in Atlantic on Thursday.
The following Trojan individuals qualified for the state meet: Senior Colton Rasmussen placed second in the long jump and sophomore Gavin McLaren placed second in the shot put.
The following Trojan teams that qualified for state: The Atlantic team placed first in the Sprint Medley, placed third in the 4×400 meter relay and placed second in the 4×800 meter relay.
Coach Abby Becker said she was surprised by the way her team performed.
Becker was proud of how her team supported each other.
Atlantic senior Bennett Whetstone will be going to state for the fourth year in a row.
Whetstone talked about the advantages of competing on his home track.
The Trojans will be participating in next week’s State Track Meet beginning Thursday May 16th at Drake Stadium in Des Moines.
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