(Harlan, Iowa) – The Board of Supervisors in Shelby County, during their regular weekly meeting Tuesday morning, passed two resolutions. The first was to claim lost revenue from the ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds. Shelby County Auditor/Board Secretary Mark Maxwell reports the Board approved allocating $18,582  as lost revenue to spend on government services to residents. Along that same line, they passed a motion to claim unused sewer repair grant monies to the general fund and the conservation fund, to make repairs on a building at Manteno Park.

The Board discussed and passed a motion with regard to authorizing a grant to cover the costs associated with Medical Examiner training. Shelby County Jail Administrator Kyle Lindberg requested and received approval for, an expenditure of dollars from the Jail Room and Board Fund, to purchase a new camera system. Interim Shelby County EMS Director Jordon Sanders presented to the Board of Supervisors, a new wage scale for EMS employees for addition to the countywide handbook. The matter will be considered during the Board’s meeting on February 6th.

Shelby County Engineer Brandon Burmeister, Tuesday, presented his weekly report to the Supervisors, including fuel bid results for the rest of calendar year 2024. The Board accepted a low bid of Agriland FS in the amount of $637,979. The Board then considered and approved a five-year law enforcement contract with the City of Shelby.

And, they passed a Livestock Master Matrix Construction Evaluation Resolution, with regard to potential (new) livestock confinements in Shelby County. The State of Iowa says “only counties that have adopted a (Master Matrix) and submitted an adopted resolution, may contest the DNR’s decision regarding a specific application,” received from Feb. 1, 2024 through Jan. 1, 2025.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – The Iowa Court of Appeals upheld the conviction of a Grundy County man who shot and killed an Iowa State Trooper in 2021. Michael Lang is serving a life sentence. A jury convicted him of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and assault on an officer. Lang shot and killed Sergeant Jim Smith during a standoff. Smith was a 27-year veteran of the force.

Police say Lang led officers on a chase, assaulted an officer who pulled him over, then barricaded himself inside his home in Grundy Center. Officers then entered when Lang refused to surrender. That’s when Lang shot Smith.

Lang argued he should’ve been able to claim self-defense because officers used excessive force, but the Iowa Court of Appeals says he can’t make this argument since it was not made in district court.

(DENISON, Iowa) — Police in Denison, Wednesday evening, issued a statement with regard to an investigation into a bomb threat at the Denison High School earlier in the day, Wednesday.   According to a news release, at about 1:50 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 17, the school got a call from an unknown phone number. The caller allegedly said that they would “blow up the whole school” and was on the way there. They then hung up when asked who they were, the release states. Officers arrived at the school, and the entire building was put on lockdown, with all routes into the area blocked.

The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigations used location tracking and found out that the phone number had been used to call other Iowa schools that same day. When officers received information that this may have been a swatting call, they stayed at the high school for security purposes as students were dismissed. No threats were found when officers and administration staff did a full search of the building.

Read the entire press release below:

DES MOINES, Iowa [KETV] –  Iowa joined 37 other states in suing TikTok. Attorney General Brenna Bird said the Chinese-owned app deceives parents by exposing young children to graphic materials, including sexual content, self-harm and illegal drug use. “TikTok has kept parents in the dark,” said Attorney General Bird. “As a mom and prosecutor, I am committed to equipping parents with information to keep their kids safe and to holding TikTok accountable.”

The lawsuit claims there are workarounds for parental controls, so the app’s 12+ rating is inaccurate and therefore violates the App Store guidelines. TikTok maintains it has safeguards to protect children.

You can read the lawsuit here.

DES MOINES, Iowa —(KCCI) – Willie Nelson is coming back to Water Works Park in Des Moines. The country music legend announced this week that the Willie Nelson and Family tour will return to Lauridsen Amphitheater for a show on May 25, just about a month after he turns 91. Nelson and Family drew thousands to Water Works Park last summer, as well. Tickets go on sale Friday.

Rock band Cake is also playing at Lauridsen Amphitheater this year. Tickets are on sale now for their show on May 11.

(Shenandoah, Iowa) – Police in Shenandoah, Wednesday, issued a report providing some details on 10 arrests that occurred between Jan. 2nd and the 10th. According to the report:

There were two arrests January 10th: 27-year-old Zachary Aaron Thomas, of Shenandoah, was arrested on a valid Page County warrant issued on an original charge of Driving While Barred; And, 36-year-old Heather Autumn Shaw, of Farragut, was arrested for Unlawful Possession of Prescription Drugs, and for being a person Ineligible to Carry Weapons.

Three people were arrested January 9th in Shenandoah: 36-year-old Charles Franklin Liles the 4th, 35-year-old Tyler Buck Carnes, and 34-year-old Kayla Dawn Gardner, all of Shenandoah, were arrested on Disorderly Conduct charges.

On January 6th, 49-year-old Jason Lee O’Neil, of Shenandoah, was arrested for OWI/1st offense.

Shenandoah Police arrested 63-year-old Bobby Dean Franks, Jr., of Shenandoah, on Jan. 5th, for Violation of a No Contact Order.

Two people were arrested in Shenandoah on Jan. 4th: 36-year-old Sammantha Josephine Wheatley, of Shenandoah, was arrested for Attempted Murder and Willful Injury-Bodily Injury; And, 38-year-old Karl James Shade III, of Shenandoah, was arrested for Possession of Paraphernalia, Poss. of a Controlled Substance/2nd offense, and Unlawful Poss. of Prescription Drugs.

On Jan. 2nd, Shenandoah Police arrested 45-year-old Tammy Ann Livingston, of Shenandoah, for Theft in the 3rd Degree.

(Radio Iowa) – Officials with the Iowa Donor Network says they saw great numbers for 2023. Network spokeswoman Heather Butterfield says during the past year, 123 “donor heroes” in Iowa gifted a remarkable 350 organs for transplant. She says a record was also set last year with an “unprecedented” one-thousand-27 tissue donors, each of whom enhanced the lives of 50 to 300 people. Butterfield says they’ve seen a 40percent increase in organ donors since 2019 and a 21% increase in organs transplanted. She says it shows the incredible commitment that Iowans have to saving lives.

(Radio Iowa) – The spokesman for the state’s largest utility company says the heavy winds that accompanied the storms last week helped create an electric generation record. MidAmerican spokesman, Geoff Greenwood, says the company’s turbines did a lot of turning.”Those steady high winds that we had throughout the week really, really made wind energy fare really well,” he says. “We cranked out a lot of wind energy, and in fact on Friday we said a peak daytime record for wind energy output here in our state.”

Greenwood says the company’s turbines produced 158-thousand megawatt hours of wind energy, which he says is at least the amount of energy MidAmerican customers would use in a day. He says they can make adjustments on the turbines if the winds become too strong. “Depends on the equipment and the manufacturer. So each has a different tolerance. But if it does ever get to that point, we will turn the wind turbine blades to reduce the resistance against the wind and it causes them to slow down a little bit so we can control them if they get too high, but we didn’t get to that point,” he says.

Greenwood says icy conditions can be a problem for the turbines.”We’ve got sensors on our wind turbines if they do have an ice build up then we will shut them down or the system shuts itself down so that turbine will stop turning if it senses an imbalance due to ice,” Greenwood says. There were bitterly cold temperatures and Greenwood says their turbines have winter packages to deal with that. “Not to say that we don’t have an occasional problem with a wind turbine as you do with any piece of mechanical equipment but by and large last week our wind energy really really performed,” he says.

Greenwood says turbines are rated to work in temperatures down to 22 below zero, and could possibly work below that. Most Iowans heat with natural gas, and he says usage was up with the subzero temperatures. “Interestingly we didn’t set any natural gas records it was very cold but it was not a peak record that we set,” Greenwood says. He says customers may see a higher heating bill than normal for the month, but that depends on how the temperatures play out the rest of the month.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa dairy farmers planning to invest in new technology or expanded processing can now apply for state grants to finance part of their projects. Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig says the Dairy Innovation Grant Program is part of a broader effort to expand the amount of local food available to Iowa consumers.

“And, in the course of doing that, provide Iowa farmers with more market opportunities,” Naig says. The state is awarding a million dollars in grants to expand processing at meat lockers around the state this year. Now, Naig’s agency is accepting applications for part of the 750-thousand dollars lawmakers set aside for grants to dairy farms with fewer than 50 employees.

“To increase on-farm dairy processing opportunities like cheese, butter, yogurt, frozen yogurt — those type of things,” Naig says, “but also to allow those dairy farmers, especially the smaller farms, to also invest in some technology, some equipment that would help them drive down their labor costs as well.” Naig expects may of the grant applications to be from dairy farmers planning to buy robotic milking systems, but he says there’s a lot of new technology out there to enhance production.

“There are systems now that you can put around the cattle’s necks so you can track their eating and when they’re milking and what their productivity is and track their health,” Naig says. According to the Iowa State Dairy Association, there are nearly 800 dairy herds in Iowa — and over 200-thousand dairy cows. Naig says there are some large-scale dairy operations in the state, but this program is for smaller operations.

“Consumers are more interested than ever before in buying local and so if you can source milk or cheese, yogurts — those types of products from your own farm that’s certainly what consumers are looking for,” Naig says, “but it also gives those farms an opportunity control their own destiny, capture some margin, generate some value of the milk that’s coming off their farm by processing it there and selling it direct to consumers.”

The maximum cost-share grant will be 100-thousand dollars. The grants may not be used to cover start-up costs, advertising, salaries or to pay off debt. The deadline to apply is February 9th.

(Radio Iowa)  – Iowa Republican Party officials say just over 110-thousand Iowans participated in Monday night’s Caucuses. Party chairman Jeff Kaufmann says it happened when some areas of the state had a wind chill of negative 30 degrees. “We’ve shown the world we can have a personalized grassroots event and we can have absolute election integrity and we can do it all in wind chills that would probably send a whole lot of citizens in a whole lot of states under the covers,” Kaufmann says.

About 15 percent of registered Republicans voted — the lowest turn-out for the Iowa Caucuses in 24 years. “Before the 186,000 record that was set in 2016 on a, well, it would be a balmy evening compared to Monday, we were looking at numbers in 2012 and 2008 that were very similar to this,” Kaufmann says. About 120-thousand people voted in the 2008 Iowa Republican Party Caucuses. which Mike Huckabee won. In 2012, when Rick Santorum won, there were about 122-thousand participants.

Kaufmann says it was a breach of faith for major media outlets to announce Trump was the projected winner of THIS YEAR’S Caucuses before the vast majority of participants had cast their straw poll vote.  “We are certainly showing our displeasure. I’m certainly cautioning the Nevada chair because they’ve got a caucus coming and that’s something that should not occur,” Kaufmann says. “That’s something that should not happen again.”

The Iowa Caucuses are run by the party, not state or county government officials. Kaufmann and other Iowa G-O-P officials raised more than 800-thousand dollars for the operation of this year’s Caucuses.