Audubon county hard surface roads and gravel have several inches of slushy snow on them this morning (March 15), and the hard surface roads are slick under the snow. Plows will be out at  to clear hard surface roads. Give yourself extra travel time and stopping distance this morning. Gravel roads will be soft under the snow in areas after the amount of rain we received over the weekend. Drive safe.

A Public Hearing will be held electronically Tuesday morning, in Atlantic, on the FY 2022 Cass County Budget. The hearing begins at 9:05-a.m. during a meeting of the Cass County Board of Supervisors, and is accessible via ZOOM (see related data for the meeting below). Following the hearing, the Board will reconvene their regular session, and review County Compensation Board recommendations for elected officers’ FY2022 compensation, and act on those recommendations.

The Board will also take action on adopting the FY2022 Cass County Secondary Roads, and Cass County, Budgets. They are then expected to receive an update from Secondary Roads Dept. Engineer Trent Wolken, followed by the appointment of a Sheriff’s Deputy, and Lincoln Township Clerk (the latter of which is for the remainder of a term ending 12/31/2024).

[ZOOM Meeting info.: Meeting ID: 138 870 131              Password: 012064 ]

Red Oak Police, Sunday afternoon, arrested 37-year old Kyle Anthony Zeigler, of Red Oak, for Driving While Barred. Zeigler was being held in the Montgomery County Jail, on $2,000 bond.

(Radio Iowa) – There’s debate among economists about how the American economy will respond to the injection of one-point-nine trillion dollars from the new pandemic relief package. Creighton University’s Ernie Goss predicts it will spur inflation. “It’s the wrong package at the wrong time,” Goss says. Iowa State University’s David Swenson disagrees. “This bill was important and it’s needed,” Swenson says.

Swenson and Goss debated the so-called American Rescue Plan during a joint appearance on this weekend’s “Iowa Press” program on Iowa P-B-S. Goss says sending more federal money to state and local governments is a mistake. “I’ll use a good economic term: crazy,” Goss says. “It’s allocated according to the unemployment rate at the end of the year. Now, could that make sense to anyone other than a state that’s been in lockdown, making bad decisions?”

Swenson says there should have been a formula that took into account several factors, not just unemployment rates, for distributing that 350 BILLION dollars to states and local governments. Swenson says the package, overall, covers a wide range of categories that weren’t adequately addressed in the first two pandemic-relief packages. “Businesses that are stressed — restaurants, dining and drinking establishments especially – (get) another big chunk of money,” Swenson says, “…A lot assistance has also been…targeted especially for back rent.”

The plan did NOT include an increase in the minimum wage. Swenson says the minimum wage should be much above the current 7-dollars-and-25 cents per hour and future increases should be tied to the inflation rate, to get the politics out of it. “We create a lot of either misery or underperformance with regard to the labor force as a consequence of an artificially low minimum wage,” Swenson says. “Yes, we have businesses out there that the market wage is higher, but we still have a substantial fraction of people that have to work at that minimum wage.”

Goss agrees the minimum wage is too low, but he says raising the wage at this time would hammer the hospitality industry. “For businesses, manufacturers and the small businesses that we survey, the big issue is finding highly qualified workers,” Goss says, “so they’re bidding up the wage right now, well above the minimum wage for manufacturers.”

There is 10-point-four billion for agriculture in the pandemic relief package President Biden approved last week. Both economists say with expanding exports and rising commodity prices, there won’t be a need to match the extra 46 BILLION in payments the Trump Administration sent farmers in 2020.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:30 a.m. CDT

WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) — Tyson says about a third of workers at its Waterloo, Iowa have received the COVID-19 vaccine. The Quad-City Times on Sunday reported the vaccination rate at the plant, where the virus has already sickened about a third of the site’s nearly 3,000 employees. Waterloo Tyson is linked to at least six worker deaths from the coronavirus. The company hosted vaccination clinics this month for Waterloo workers. The virus has ravaged the meatpacking industry across the U.S.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — More than 1 million doses of coronavirus vaccine have been administered in Iowa, even as residents who qualify struggle to make appointments for a shot. The Iowa Department of Public Health said Friday that Iowa has administered 1.03 million doses. The milestone reflects significant increases in vaccine supplies but it’s unclear how the state will handle surging demand as more adults become eligible in the coming months. Iowa has no centralized system for people to secure a vaccine appointment.

Iowa City (AP) — As virus cases plummeted, Iowa quietly extended a $3.9 million contact tracing contract with a company owned by a major Republican Party donor and supporter of Gov. Kim Reynolds. The Iowa Department of Public Health hired MCI, an Iowa City telemarketing firm, in November to trace the contacts of Iowa residents infected with COVID-19 after a one-day emergency bidding process. The two-month, $2.3 million contract came during an explosion of cases that filled up hospitals with patients and after counties had for months complained of a shortage of contact tracing workers. Four days before MCI’s contract was to expire on Jan. 31, Iowa’s state epidemiologist signed a three-month contract extension with MCI that is worth another $1.6 million.

MASON CITY, Iowa (AP) — Police in northern Iowa are investigating the discovery of what appear to be human bones. Mason City police said in a news release that a resident found the bones, along with clothing, on Thursday on the shore of the Winnebago River. Officers searched the area and found additional bones. Everything that was collected was transported to the Iowa Office of the State Medical Examiner for examination.