(Atlantic, Iowa) – The City Council in Atlantic will meet 5:30-p.m. Wed., Sept. 4th, in their chambers at City Hall. On their agenda, is:

• An Order to approve an Engineering Agreement with Snyder and Associates, for the 2025 Street Improvements Project. City Administrator John Lund says the non-west 22nd St. projects for next Spring, Summer and Fall, are projected to cost more than $2.1-million. They include 66 street improvement projects, including overlays for the downtown area. 2025, Lund says, is the first year of the new cycle of street improvement projects in the City’s 10-year CIP (Capital Improvement Plan), and should be financed by the LOST (Local Option Sales Tax) Street revenues, which will not impact the Debt Service Levy, and not require property taxes service for the debt.
• The Council will act on passing the Second Reading of an ordinance “Vacating the 66′ wide Street Right-Of-Way (ROW), a parcel .7 of an acre. The First Reading was passed following a public hearing, on August 21st.
• The Atlantic City Council will act on approving a second pay application (for nearly $56,000) to Hydro-Klean, LLC, for the 2024 Sanitary Sewer Rehab project – Ultra Violet Cured In Place Pipe (CIIP) lining project. The total cost of the project was $91,500. The first payment of $30,975 was approved by the Council on August 21st.

The Council’s next meeting will take place on Monday, Sept 16th, instead of the regular Wednesday meeting on the 18th, due to the Annual Iowa League of Cities Conference.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa County Recorder’s Association plans to ask legislators to raise the fees they may charge for the documents they provide. Dickinson County Recorder Ann Ditsworth is the group’s vice president. “Since 1985, our fees have been the same,” Ditsworth says, “and so we have been studying the ways we could best advance that level.” Under current law, county recorders may charge seven dollars for the first page and five dollars for each additional page of a document. The association plans to ask legislators to raise the fee to 10 dollars per page.

“One of the things that we are most focused on for a fee increase is to be able to sustain the Iowa Land Record Repository, which we created in the early 2006 range and since then have continued to develop and maintain and add documents to,” she says. “…Every mortgage, every deed is going to this website that is one spot for all of the state of Iowa.” Ditsworth says the fees would be used to support the website and help county recorders update software.

“Since the time of computerization, naturally software has changed and so that is a part of how we preserve documents,” Ditsworth says. “Historic preservation is a large part of what we do because our documents are part of the American dream.”

County recorders also maintain copies of birth, death and marriage records and assists the state by registering boats and snowmobiles as well as all-terrain vehicles and off-road vehicles.

(Radio Iowa) – A University of Iowa clinic is offering free, short-term mental health counseling to rural Iowans who have limited or zero access to it, in addition to substance use prevention and treatment. U-I psychology professor Martin Kivlighan is co-director of the Telepsychology Training Clinic. He says they’re also providing a learning platform to teach the next generation of mental health professionals, who are in very short supply.

“It serves two purposes,” Kivlighan says. “It helps to train the future workforce within the state, while also providing really high quality services to folks who are in need of those.” Nearly 90-percent of Iowa counties are considered mental health care professional shortage areas by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which ranks Iowa 46th in the nation in the number of psychologists per capita.

Prof. Martin Kivlighan (UI photo)

“There’s a lot of different factors that are contributing to the workforce shortage,” Kivlighan says. “What we’re focusing on is training. That’s where we feel like we can make the biggest impact. So we’re just trying to increase access to training, increase the quality of training, and hopefully keep folks here in Iowa, where they’re coming from, to go back and serve their communities.” In a recent success story, Kivlighan says one of the clinic’s third-year doctoral students has announced she plans to return to her hometown in rural Kossuth County to open a counseling practice after graduating.

“She is just a wonderful advocate of rural mental health. As soon as she’s a licensed psychologist, she plans to go back there and take over the family farm as well as open up a practice to offer services to that community,” Kivlighan says. “So, it’s really rewarding, and it’s great to see this pipeline serving the purpose that we’re hoping that it continues to serve.” They’re encountering no one who’s averse to the technology, as he says the pandemic taught many of us how to use and be comfortable with video chats on our computers or phones.

“I think we all know we’re living in a really technological era right now, and 99% of folks own a smartphone, so it really is something that’s just become part of our everyday life,” Kivlighan says. “Where we do run into some issues is areas that might not have broadband internet.”

Rural Iowans who’d like to use the free service can find a contact phone number and email address at the website:
https://education.uiowa.edu/research/research-centers-and-research-initiatives/rural-psychology-collaborative

(Creston, Iowa) – Police in Creston had a busy start to the Labor Day weekend, with nine arrests being reported. Sunday night, 37-year-old Jeffrey Michael Donald Drake, of Creston, was arrested for Driving While Suspended, and OWI/1st offense. Drake was released from custody after posting a $1,300 bond. Sunday afternoon 28-year-old Carlos Ivan Cortez, of Creston, was arrested for Driving Under Suspension. He was released on his Own Recognizance.

Three people were arrested early Sunday morning: 31-year-old Geronimo Romeo Gonzalez-Hernandez, of Osceola, and 41-year-old Ryan Lee Woosley, of Creston, were arrested at the Casey’s Store on W. Taylor Street, in Creston. Hernandez was taken into custody at around 2:30-a.m. and charged with OWI/1st offense. Woosley was arrested at around 1:54-a.m., and charged with Driving While Barred. Both men later posted bonds of $2,000 and $1,000 respectively, before being released. At around 12:25-a.m. Sunday, Creston Police arrested 34-year-old Thomas Legrand Wiggins, of Greenfield, for Driving While Barred. He was later released on a $2,000 bond.

A little after 3-a.m. Saturday, Creston Police arrested 18-year-old Liliana Aguilar Preciado, of Mount Ayr, for Driving While Suspended. She was cited and released at the scene on a promise to appear in court. At around 1:30-a.m., Saturday, 46-year-old Brian Wayne Zimmerman, of Creston, was arrested for OWI/1st offense. He later posted a $1,000 bond, and was released.

Late Saturday night, 18-year-old Tanner Dale Horacek, of Blair, NE, was arrested for Minor in Possession of Alcohol. He was cited and released on a Promise to Appear. And, Saturday afternoon, 32-year-old William Alwynn Bell, of Creston, was arrested for Domestic Abuse Assault. He was late released on his Own Recognizance.

(Wiota, Iowa) – Crews from Anita Fire & Rescue and Wiota Fire responded this (Monday) morning, to a reported fire on a porch attached to the residence at 115 Allen Street, in Wiota. The call was dispatched at around 8:42-a.m.

‘Everyone evacuated the home safely, and the residents had managed to extinguish the flames prior to Anita Fire arriving on the scene.

Anita Fire continued to the scene to make sure the situation was under control. Wiota Fire crews were then advised to disregard while they were en-route.

No injuries were reported. Additional details, including the cause of the fire were not immediately available.

(Radio Iowa) – A University of Iowa study finds a significant number of homeowners who qualify for low-interest government loans to rebuild after a disaster choose not to apply, or they reject the loan after they’re approved. Finance Professor Cameron Ellis, in the U-I’s Tippie College of Business, says they’ve done extensive research on people’s post-disaster borrowing habits dating back nearly 20 years, and the loans are an excellent opportunity. “Oftentimes they’re lower than Treasury rates, the government can’t even borrow at these interest rates,” Ellis says. “And it’s not even just people who don’t apply. It’s people who do apply and go through the application process decline the loan after learning more about it. It’s very odd, because there’s not a private alternative that would even come close to being as good of a deal.”

The study looked at loan activity following every natural disaster between 2005 and 2018, including the 2008 Iowa floods, hurricanes like Katrina and Harvey, Superstorm Sandy, and numerous western wildfires. Ellis says some people just have an aversion to going into debt, especially when the federal government is involved. “Most people’s experience borrowing money from the government comes through student loans, which, student loans are famously survived through bankruptcy. You almost always will pay back your student loans unless you get a hardship exemption,” Ellis says. “These loans are not like that. People don’t realize that they’re just like a normal loan, like a mortgage you would get where, if you go bankrupt, it’s discharged. You’re not stuck with it forever.”

The administrator of the U-S Small Business Administration was in Iowa recently to visit the town of Greenfield, which was hit by a major tornado in May. Part of the trip was dedicated to educating people about the S-B-A’s loan programs to help businesses, homeowners and renters rebuild after a disaster. The U-I study found about 25-percent of people who qualified for such loans rejected them, or didn’t bother to apply. Ellis says some people get jumpy over interest rates, when they shouldn’t be. “When the interest rate goes up by, say, one percentage point, and the average interest rate in the program over our timeframe, going back to Katrina, is about two and a half percentage points. If it goes up by one percentage point, acceptance goes down by another 25%,” Ellis says. “Maybe it’s some debt aversion reasons why people would just decline at all. But it’s very odd that they’re so sensitive to interest rates, even though they’re a much better deal than you would get elsewhere.”

Ellis says more than one-million households -did- apply for loans during the period the U-I studied, and more than 12-billion dollars was dispersed to more than 285-thousand approved households. Ultimately, Ellis says fewer participants puts more financial pressure on homeowners, and slows the pace of disaster recovery for individuals and the community.