(Atlantic, Iowa) – Cass County Auditor Kathy Somers reports the Cass County Board of Supervisors will attend an Economic Development and Community Planning meeting, Thursday morning. The meeting takes place at the Whitney Building (222 Chestnut Street), beginning at 10-a.m.

Somers says there may be a quorum of the Board present, but no deliberations among the Board members, or action, will be taken.

(Greenfield, Iowa) – The Board of Supervisors in Adair County, today (Wednesday), approved a request from Adair County Auditor Mandy Berg, for a wage increase, as it pertains to Maintenance Worker Scott Roberts. The increase brings his hourly wage to $20.67.

The Board also approved publishing of the Adair County FY 24 CASH Annual Financial Report. Auditor Mandy Berg…

The Supervisors authorized Board Chair Jerry Walker to sign the final pay voucher for the N-17 (Richland Township) Culvert Project, in the amount of $132,425.
And, they heard a weekly report from Adair County Engineer Nick Kauffman, who said a crew will be in the county the next couple days applying pavement markings on various highways.

The Adair County Engineer’s Office and Secondary Roads Department asks residents to be patient and give the road painting crews some space, and avoid passing the paint truck if possible to prevent paint transfer.

DES MOINES, Iowa – A Des Moines businessman pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation and attempted sexual exploitation of a child and possession of child pornography. Officials with the U-S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa, said today (Wednesday), that according to public court documents, 61-year-old Jeffrey Walter Gray created and possessed child sexual abuse material. Gray, from as early as approximately 2005 to at least approximately 2016, used minors to produce child sexual abuse material. Some of the material was created at the photography business Gray owned and operated in the Des Moines area—Wicked Imagery.

The material included images from hidden cameras placed in the changing rooms at Wicked Imagery to capture videos and/or images of minor children undressing. In November 2023, investigators recovered a hard drive which was later determined to contain child sexual abuse material, including at least fifteen minor victims, from Gray’s residence.

Gray is scheduled to be sentenced on January 8, 2025, and faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and maximum sentence of 30 years for the sexual exploitation charge. Gray also faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for the possession of child pornography charge. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the United States sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated the case with the assistance of the Des Moines Police Department. The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.

For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc. For information about internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the resources tab.

(Radio Iowa) – There’s big excitement over tiny turtles in central Iowa. A new program pairs the Iowa D-N-R, Iowa State University and Des Moines’ Blank Park Zoo to raise what are known as Blanding’s turtles, a species native to Iowa that’s classified as globally endangered. Chris Eckles, the zoo’s chief engagement officer, says trained I-S-U students have tagged several turtles with radio transmitters and any pregnant turtles the students find are brought to the zoo. “We’ll then do an x-ray on the turtles to see how many eggs there are, and then we will induce her and have her lay her eggs here at the zoo,” Eckles says. “As soon as she’s done with that, we give the female back to the Iowa State student to take back to where they found that turtle — that’s really important to go back to where they know is home.”

Blank Park Zoo photo

Four pregnant turtles were recently found and their eggs were incubated, which produced a crop of 57 baby turtles. They’re all being cared for at the zoo, for now. “They have little containers that they’re in, like a little setup of water and food and all that sort of stuff, and they are marked so we know who came from what mother, so that we know when we put them back in the wild, we know that we’re going to put them back in the area where the female was found,” Eckles says. “So they have little markers on them, so we can identify who goes where.” The dozens of turtles will be set free next spring in the spots where their mothers were discovered. The turtles were about the size of a quarter when they hatched, and they’ll be about three to four inches in diameter when released.

“It was very exciting when they hatched. I think we were all just very giddy. It just feels good that we can have some success, knowing that hopefully we can add population back to Iowa, and hopefully get them back into a rebound situation and bring the populations back up,” Eckles says. “There’s a lot of bad news out there some days, and then this is one of those days where you feel really good about what we do and why we do it, and it makes our mission really matter.”

Releasing 57 turtles from four mothers is a big deal, Eckles says, as adults in the wild typically will only be able to raise one or two hatchlings to adulthood. Some of them may live as long as 70 years.

(Creston, Iowa) – A man from Creston was arrested Tuesday evening at a residence on N. Division Street, in Creston. According to Creston Police, 55-year-old Charles Leon Harris, was charged with Failure to Appear for an Initial Appearance in court. Harris was brought to the Union County Jail and held, . Bail in the amount of $1000 cash or surety was posted.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Officials with Cass Health, in Atlantic, are welcoming Dr. Jill Pollpeter and Dr. Jeals Brines to the Family Medicine team.

Dr. Pollpeter, an Omaha native, is a board-certified family medicine physician who received her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Creighton University, and her Doctorate of Medicine from the Creighton University in May of 2021. She completed her Family Medicine Residency at Unity Point Health Iowa Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines in June. Dr. Pollpeter provides the full scope of family medicine care, and her special interests include women’s health, procedures, and preventative medicine, with her main goal being to treat each patient as an individual and provide the care that will help them reach their health-related goals.

Dr. Brines

Dr. Pollpeter

Dr. Brines is a board-certified family medicine physician who grew up in Leon, Iowa and received her Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from Northwest Missouri State University, and her Doctorate of Medicine from the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine in May of 2021. She completed her Family Medicine Residency at Unity Point Health Iowa Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines in June. Dr. Brines provides the full scope of family medicine care, and her special interests include women’s health, rural health, and nursing home & geriatric care.

Both Dr. Pollpeter and Dr. Brines will begin seeing patients in mid-September in Atlantic. To make an appointment, please call 712-243-2850.

(Iowa Capital Dispatch) – Two of Iowa’s state universities will not request any additional general education dollars for the next fiscal year, according to Iowa Board of Regents documentation. The University of Northern Iowa will request incremental general university funding of $2.5 million for fiscal year 2026, according to the state appropriations request the board of regents is set to discuss next week. The University of Iowa and Iowa State University will keep their general appropriations requests flat compared to their appropriation in fiscal year 2025. If approved by the regents, the UI will request about $223.5 million, ISU will request nearly $178.5 million and UNI will request about $104.4 million in general university appropriations, bringing the total to $506.3 million.

General education appropriations increased by 2.5% at each university for fiscal year 2025, coming out to $12.3 million compared to the $14.8 million requested. UNI would use these additional dollars to “support efforts to differentiate UNI tuition from that of research intensive universities,” the document stated. “State’s investment is critical to keeping a four-year degree within reach for Iowans,” the document stated.

Tying their requests together under the motto of “service to Iowans,” each of the universities are also seeking state appropriations to launch or expand special programs, from rural health care and economics initiatives to partnerships with community colleges.

The UI is requesting $10 million in fiscal year 2026, with more funding requests planned in future years for a total of $50 million, for its rural health care initiative. The university is also seeking economic development appropriations from the state for its John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center and nurse innovator program. With the remaining $50,000 split between the center’s venture school training program and Hawkeye Ventures Fund, $25,000 will go to expanding the school to two new locations and the rest will be put toward supporting a financial analyst, student interns and marketing efforts for the ventures fund.

ISU is seeking increased funding for its agricultural experiment station and its extension and outreach service with the goal of strengthening Iowa’s rural economy, according to the board of regents document. If approved, the university will request $3.75 million in incremental funding for the experiment station and an additional $1 million for the outreach service. The funds would support technological advances, workforce and entrepreneurship and economics and policy in the agriculture sector, according to the document. The university is also requesting $1 million in funding to create scholarships for its veterinary early acceptance program and $4 million to establish a manufacturing pipeline. The scholarships would provide in-state tuition for students entering the College of Veterinary Medicine through the ISU Production Animal – Veterinary Early Acceptance Program with the requirement of them working in rural Iowa after graduation for at least five years.

ISU is also asking for a $36,005 increase in economic development funding for its Biobased Products, Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, and Digital and Precision Agriculture bioscience platforms in order to have them funded at $3 million annually, a goal set in 2017. The university is also requesting economic development state appropriations of $250,000 to support staff and operations focused on entrepreneurship, according to the document. The only university to request increases in agricultural and natural resources appropriations, ISU is asking for an additional $1.5 million for its veterinary diagnostics lab and $250,000 more for livestock disease research.

With federal funding predicted to run out by the end of 2025 due to growth and need, UNI is seeking $1.63 million in state appropriations for its UNI@IACC program, which opens students who have received an associate’s degree from a partner community college to earn their bachelor’s degree from UNI remotely. UNI is also looking to establish a center for civic education, and is requesting $1 million for its launch. The university is also requesting $3 million in economic development dollars to offer students from states that share a border with Iowa the same tuition and fees as in-state students, as, according to the document, 40% of UNI graduates from border states stay in Iowa.

(Radio Iowa) – One week from this Patriot Day, dozens of Iowa veterans will be taken on the latest chartered Honor Flight to see the various memorials in Washington D-C. Russ Naden of Webster City is one of the organizers of the Brushy Creek Honor Flight, scheduled for next Wednesday, flying out of the Fort Dodge airport. “There’s around 125, maybe 130 veterans altogether,” Naden says. “I think there’s four or five Korean vets and a few that were in between wars, but primarily Vietnam vets.” Naden says they’ll make a trip to Arlington National Cemetery where the Iowa veterans will be taking part in a special event.

“We’ve been approved as a group to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,” Naden says. “It’s something we wanted to do, and you’ve got to get permission like a year ahead of time.” This will be the 26th Honor Flight from Fort Dodge. The flights have carried more than 35-hundred veterans to see the sights in the nation’s capitol.

Naden says the next flight is scheduled for May of 2025 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa D-O-T is putting the finishing touches on a change in the way road use tax funds are distributed to counties. The D-O-T’s Stuart Anderson says the change was necessitated by the legislature. “The legislature eliminated the Secondary Road Fund Distribution Committee from the Iowa code and empowered the Transportation Commission to determine the formulas for secondary road fund and Farm to Market Road Fund distribution amongst the counties,” Anderson says. Anderson says the Transportation Commission will still get county input.

“We feel like having the Secondary Road Fund Distribution Committee continue as an ad-hoc committee to the commission is vitally important to have that county engineer and county supervisor representation provide that important feedback,” he says. The former committee had members who were county supervisors and county engineers, and they made the rules for distributing the secondary road fund and the farm-to-market road funds in the state’s 99 counties. He says keeping the committee in a new capacity gives them a link to the counties when making decisions.

“And really retains the process that they put in place many years ago for how future changes to the methodology became can be considered, and then also defines what the existing methodology is as it moving forward as it exists today, for how those two funds are distributed,” Anderson says.

The Transportation Commission approved the rules for distributing the county funds at its meeting Tuesday.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – Sheriff’s officials in Montgomery County report the arrest at around 10:30-p.m. Tuesday, of 45-year-old Crystal Marie Mack, from Red Oak. She was taken into custody in the 1400 block of N. 7th Street in Red Oak, on an active warrant out of Clarke County, for Violation of Probation. Mack was being held without bond, in the Montgomery County Jail.