(Atlantic, Iowa) – The Cass County Board of Supervisors, Thursday (today), received a request for ARPA (Covid relief) funds to purchase a new pickup for the Dive Team, which has eight certified members. Eric Steffensen appeared before the board to make the request for $50,000. He said their current truck is 20-years old. Their current one-ton, 4 wheel-drive truck is used to respond to water incidents in southwest and western Iowa, as well as for training dives. Because the County’s first-half ARPA funds are already spoken for, the Board agreed they would take action on passing a Resolution for the Dive Team when the second-round/second-half funding is received. That could take six-months or more.

Board Chair Steve Baier….

The Board did approve a request for $10,000 in ARPA funds from the Cass County Emergency Management Agency, for two portable radios. Baier explained why this request was approved and the Dive Team’s request, was not.

In other business, the Cass County Supervisors approved a 2022 ISAC HIPPA contract. Cass County Treasurer Tracey J. Marshall requested the Board approved of a person for the potential position of driver’s license examiner or some other purpose that was not made clear, at a rate of $20 per hour, since the candidate is making $40 per hour in her current position. The Board was adamant that the person should be hired at $18/hour. Supervisor Mark O’Brien…

Marshall told Baier and Board they are responsible for her office being short-handed and forced to close to train new staff.

The Supervisors approved a rate of $18/hour for the candidate, with the required 90-day probationary period and the other requirements. Cass County Engineer Trent Wolken reported a low bid for a box-culvert construction project from Gus Construction of Casey, was $443,631.64. The culvert will installed on Boston Road, about one-half mile east of Olive Street. The Board passed a Resolution authorizing awarding of the project. They tabled action on the Natural Resources Conservation Service request for a pipe replacement project on Crooked Creek, due to the fact their was only one bidder that met the deadline, but the total bid was much higher than the engineer’s estimate. Labor alone in the bid came in at nearly $22,500. The piping was an additional $23,000.

The Supervisors approved a three-year employment contract for Engineer Wolken. And, they approved a contract for a Secondary Roads Department employee.

(Radio Iowa) – The Sioux County Sheriff’s Office will be hosting a National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) Basic School Resource Officer training course this summer. Sioux County School Resource Officer Waylon Pollema is part of the Iowa S-R-O Association and he looks forward to the training. “They have an advanced course, they have an adolescent mental health class they’ve got a supervisor one. They just they offer a ton of school resource officer training the best in the nation,” according to Pollema. Sioux Center is considering adding an S-R-O and Pollema says that’s another reason he thought it would be good to have the training in the area. The course is a forty-hour block of instruction designed for law enforcement officers and school safety professionals working with school administrators. Pollema says role of an SRO has three directives.

“You’d have a uniformed officer with a marked vehicle in front of the school, you’re helping the safety and security crisis planning and policy and stuff like that helping the school administration,” Pollema says. The second is teacher & law related education which Pollema says is when officers come into the classroom and help in the class with whatever the teacher wants. Pollema says the third part of the triad is the most important, and his personal favorite, counseling students. With school shootings in the news recently, Pollema says S-R-Os play a role, but the majority of planning for serious situations like that start at the local level.

“Obviously, school resource officers are involved in the planning and stuff like that in the school building center there’s a component to that but that’s a whole other thing where you can probably have a whole other week’s training to train an officer to do that,” he says. Pollema says NASRO provides top-notch training in all three of those concepts. The training course will be held August 8th-12th at the new Sioux Center Community High School.

ANKENY, Iowa – June 30, 2022 – The Iowa Department of Transportation has received many questions about a law passed in the 2022 Legislative Session related to overweight loads moving on Iowa roadways. The new provision will allow motor carriers who need to haul loads over the legal weight limit to apply for a new annual overweight permit applying to many roads in the state beginning Jan. 1, 2023.

To clarify a few common misconceptions:

• All loads that exceed the current legal weight limit need a permit; currently, overweight permits are issued for specific routes.
• The new statewide permits will not be available until Jan. 1, 2023.
• This new law does not impact other existing overweight or oversize permit types.

The permit will be valid on all state and U.S highways. It is not valid on the interstate. According to the law, cities and counties have until 2025 to determine what roads in their jurisdiction will allow permitted overweight loads.

There has been some confusion between the new permit and the emergency proclamation typically signed during harvest by the governor. This new permit is different from the emergency proclamation. The new annual overweight permit is an annual permit and is not limited to agricultural commodities, as is the case with the emergency overweight proclamation during harvest.

More details on the specifics of the statewide overweight permit will be coming in the next few months.

(Creston, Iowa) – Officials with the Creston Police Department say a woman residing in the 1000 block of S. Sumner Street reported Wednesday, that someone had broken into her 2007 Kia Spectra. The victim said $25 in cash and her debit card was missing. The loss was estimated at $25, as of the latest report.

(8-a.m. News)