The Atlantic City Council, Wednesday evening, heard from Lucas Mosier, Board President of the Atlantic Golf and County Club, with regard to stormwater management issues affecting the business and surrounding area. He said the water has caused the course to be closed for more than three weeks this year, which means lost revenue. Mosier said they hope a culvert will alleviate the problems with stormwater run-off.

AGCC Board President Lucas Mosier

He says a culvert would free-up their tile line and help to prevent water from being backed-up to Country Club Circle. He said a culvert near Country Club Circle across the 16th fairway connecting to Palm Street, would be the best case scenario. Mosier said the business pays $3,000 per year in stormwater fees, while neighbors in the area pay the standard stormwater fee of slightly more $17 per billing cycle, so the City should help resolve the issue in a timely, cost-effective manner.

He said a similar course of action helped the Nishna Hills Golf Club deal with some of their run-off issues. Mayor Dave Jones said before the City can do anything, there needs to be an engineering study and cost estimate. The matter will be sent to the Community Development Committee for further review.

(Radio Iowa) — As many as 15-thousand Iowans who work in some 350 hotels and motels statewide are being issued employee safety devices, or E-S-Ds, as part of a program designed to help keep them safe while on the job. Chip Rogers, president and C-E-O of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, says his organization is supplying guides to the handheld E-S-Ds so each hotel can buy the type of device that’s the best fit for that property.

“A very small resort hotel, let’s say a beachside resort where there’s only ten or 12 rooms, that employee may only need a safety device that makes a very loud sound because everybody’s very close and they can hear it,” Rogers says. “If you’re in a large convention center hotel, when an employee may be as far as a quarter mile away, they may need a device that includes GPS tracking.”

The goal of the Five Star Promise effort is to help prevent sexual assault and harassment of lodging industry employees. It follows recent efforts to ensure all hotel workers are trained to spot and report signs of human trafficking. As for the E-S-Ds, Rogers says not every hotel employee would be issued one.

“If you’re working simply as a person in the accounting department and you’re not having any interactions with guests, you may not need a safety device. You’ll still get the training and you’ll still be subject to the policies, but you may not need the device,” Rogers says. “Those who are working with guests, working in the rooms, those particular employees are most likely to have the devices.”

There are 735 hotels in Iowa with about 38-thousand employees. Rogers says almost half have already issued the devices. Even before the campaign was launched, Rogers says the number of reports of lodging industry employees being assaulted was very low and the number has fallen since the program began. “As far as assault on employees, it’s extremely rare, but even if it’s extremely rare, one is too many,” Rogers says. “We want to make sure, as an industry, that we are protecting both our guests and our employees, and we want to do that in a leadership way so other industries can look at us and follow suit.”

The association targets a broad nationwide implementation of ESDs by 2020. Rogers says 56 companies with 20-thousand hotels and one-point-two million employees nationwide are already committed.
(More at www.ahla.com)

(Radio Iowa) — Some state roadways in western Iowa were covered more than once after flood waters went down and came back up. Iowa Department of Transportation planner, Scott Suhr, says they’ve been lucky that repairs held up on roadways like Interstate 29, which was recently flooded once again. He says I-680 had water over it as well and it performed well. Suhr says they put what’s called flex-o-mat on the south end of the roadway and they are pleased with the way it held up.  Suhr says they are continuing to make flood repairs on some roadways.
“We do have segments of 333 down near Hamburg that we’re still working on. Outside of that we’ve got another project on Iowa 2 where we are actually building overflow bridges to help remove a pinch point along the Missouri River which would give us more time in the event that we have flooding again,” Suhr says. “That’s on the eastbound lanes, and traffic is currently head-to-head on the westbound lanes.”

He says you don’t always know what is going to happen when a road that was repaired after flooding gets flooded again. “There’s always a concern when water is over the roadway — but we were pretty pleased to see with this last event we didn’t incur any damage,” according to Suhr. He says we seem to be moving out of the time when the roadways could be flooded again. “Right now the river is fairly full. We are watching it, we are communicating with the Corps of Engineers and the National Weather Service,” Suhr says. “A lot of it just kind of depends on Mother Nature. If we get an unusually large amount of rain, we’ll have to monitor it a little bit more closely. Typically this time of year we are not in flood season — so we will just wait and see what happens.”

Both directions of I-29 from Crescent to Loveland in Pottawattamie County were closed and later re-opened last week after the flood waters came back up and covered parts of the roadway.

Red Oak Police report the arrest at around 1-a.m. today (Thursday), of 19-year old Tyler Blaine Baucom, from Red Oak. Baucom was taken into custody in the 100 block of Nuckols Street, for Public Intoxication and Interference with Official Acts. He was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $300 bond.

The Adams County Sheriff’s Office reports an arrest was made at around 11:30-p.m. Sunday, following an investigation into a disturbance in Corning. Authorities say Denny Moore was arrested for Domestic Assault, a serious misdemeanor. No other details were provided.

Police in Council Bluffs were dispatched at around 11:50-p.m. Wednesday, to 313 N 17th St for a stabbing. When officers arrived they located a man suffering from a stab wound to the chest. A suspect was located and detained. The suspect and witnesses were taken to Police Headquarters and interviewed. The victim was transported to a local hospital by Council Bluffs Fire and Rescue, for treatment. At this time authorities say they are not releasing any names as the incident remains under investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact Council Bluffs Police Criminal Investigations Division at 712-328-4728 or Crime Stoppers 712-328-7867(STOP)

KJAN News has learned Cass County Verizon customers without service, poor service, dropped calls, or those who are not able to hear incoming calls, should call Verizon and report the problems. Law enforcement says multiple customers in the Cass County area, including law enforcement agencies, are experiencing difficulties, having received little or no phone service overnight. The issues have also affected computers that rely on Verizon services.

Verizon has informed local authorities that the problems would need to be reported individually, by calling 908-559-4899.

DES MOINES, Iowa, Oct. 17, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — The LCS Foundation, a Des Moines based not-for-profit organization, established a $100,000 endowment at Georgetown University to support the university’s recently inaugurated concentration in senior living administration, within the Master of Science in Aging and Health degree program. The Foundation supports the education and professional development of students pursuing careers in the field of senior living. The Georgetown University curriculum represents the only known graduate concentration dedicated exclusively to preparing the next generation of leaders for careers in the rapidly growing senior living industry.

The goal for the curriculum is to attract professionals with high levels of both education and experience, who can move more quickly into executive positions. The university’s inaugural class of students is completing a course in Senior Living Management & Operations during the Fall 2019 semester. The degree and concentration offer additional coursework in topics including aging populations, policy and research, health economics, and senior living sales and marketing, followed by a capstone practicum or community-based internship.

The senior living industry, including 55+ Active Adult, Independent Living, Assisted Living, Memory Care, and Life Plan Communities has grown exponentially in the past 30 years, to an estimated 40,000 communities housing more than 2 million seniors nationwide. As the Boomer population ages, the industry is expected to as much as double in size by 2050.

(More information can be found at lcsfoundationLCS.org.)