RED OAK, Iowa – Every Wednesday Red Oak 4-6th graders engage in real world problem-solving activities during an afterschool STEM program at the Montgomery County Family YMCA. The STEM Program fosters curiosity for science, technology, engineering and math. Youth participate in hands-on activities that encourage discovery-based learning and develop problem-solving skills.

Students explore a STEM challenges and work in teams to solve problems and develop solutions. The second six weeks of STEM Club will be starting January 25th from 1:45-3:00PM at the Montgomery County YMCA Rec Room. The first six weeks of challenges included: strawberry DNA extracting, understanding buoyancy through sink/float activities, understanding how drones and remote sensing can be used to solve real-world problems, and learned about the components of rockets and force.

Please contact the Extension Office at 712-623-2592 to register, or you can register at the meeting! “The volunteers and leaders strive to create a safe, fun and supportive environment where youth explore STEM topics and develop the skills to become engaged community leaders, engineers and scientists,” states Chelsea Cousins, Program Coordinator at ISU Extension and Outreach Montgomery County. “At
our first meeting, one student expressed his hesitation and by the end of the program he raised his hands and shouted ‘THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER’. If the program ignites one youth’s passion for STEM – we’ve reached our goal.”

The afterschool program will run for six consecutive weeks. Youth do not have to be a member of the YMCA to participate. The afterschool STEM program is coordinated by ISU Extension and Outreach Montgomery County in partnership with Montgomery County Family YMCA, Anderson Conservation Center, Southwest Iowa STEM Hub and Johnson Controls, INC.

The program has been made possible through the Blue Skies Grant from Johnson Controls, Inc. and the collaborative efforts of each partner. For more information, please contact ISU Extension and Outreach Montgomery County at 712-623-2592 or 400 Bridge Street, Suite 2, Red Oak, IA.

Officials with the Cass County Landfill and Recycling Center report an auditing firm has released an audit report on the Cass County Environmental Control Agency (Landfill/Recycling Center). Gronewold, Bell, Kyhnn & Co. PC says the Agency had total revenues of $961,409 for the Fiscal Year that ended June 30th, 2016. The revenues include solid waste fees of $905,858 and recyclables fees of $44,567.

Agency expenses totaled just over $1-million ($1,009,898). Expenses included $70,522 for administration, $166,895 for recycling, and $170,407 for cover, compacting and scale expense, as well as $118, 700 for closure and post-closure costs. In addition, the Agency expended $28, 382 for the purchase of equipment and $186, 025 to service existing debt.

A copy of the audit report is available for review in the office of the Auditor of State, and the Cass County Environmental Control Agency.

More area and State news from KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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The Iowa DOT reports Highway 6 in Pottawattamie County is blocked due to numerous crashes, between County Road L52 (near McClelland) and US 59 (near Oakland). The road is blocked due to numerous crashes. Traffic is being detoured down Highway 59 from Oakland, south to Highway 92, and from L52 (Near Quick) to Highway 92.

The Iowa Department of Transportation reports Interstate 29 in Woodbury Coujnty, near Salix, is blocked this morning due to numerous accidents caused by icy roads. The incidents have occurred between Exit 127: IA 141; County Road K42 and Exit 134: County Road K25 (Salix).

The area’s top news at 7:06-a.m., w/KJAN News Director Ric Hanson

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The head of the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau says efforts to reduce fatal crashes in Iowa this year will range for a boost in public awareness campaigns to possible legislation. G-T-S-B chief Patrick Hoye says he was surprised by the 402 traffic deaths recorded in the state in 2016.

“We saw a significant jump from a year ago, about a 26-percent increase,” Hoye says, “2013, ’14, ’15 — we saw some very good progress and we thought Iowa was on the right path. Unfortunately, 2016 turned out to be just a horrific year for traffic safety.”

Two years ago, in 2015, traffic crashes claimed 316 lives, the lowest in 70 years. Hoye says bad weather wasn’t much of a factor in 2016, but the warmer-than-normal year may have had an impact.  “Preliminary numbers are showing there were 60 motorcycle fatalities, so the nice weather may have impacted motorcycle fatalities in our state,” Hoye says.

But, Hoye says the primary factors for the spike in traffic fatalities last year include alcohol, speeding, and drivers paying more attention to their cell phone than the road. “We’re looking at about 30-percent of the fatalities being impaired driving related,” Hoye says. “And although the data is tough to collect, we certainly believe that distracted driving is one of the causes driving the number of fatalities up.”

According to Hoye, over 40-percent of the people killed in Iowa traffic crashes last year were NOT wearing seat belts. The last time Iowa’s yearly highway traffic fatalities surpassed 400 was in 2008 (412 deaths).

(Radio Iowa)

Authorities in northwest Iowa are releasing more information now on the elderly woman who went missing last weekend and was later found dead. Ida County Sheriff Wade Harriman says 84-year-old Beverly Joy Annear went to visit a friend in an Ida Grove nursing home on Friday night and got lost.

“We have a wind farm here in the county and we’ve got these gravel easement roads that go quite a ways out to the fields where the turbines are at,” Sheriff Harriman says. “She got turned into one of those roads, and we believe, unfortunately, it was dark, she got confused and ended up driving into a bean field and got her vehicle hung up on a fence and succumbed to the elements out there.”

The sheriff says the last time Annear was seen alive was around 5:30 that night when she’d stopped to ask for directions.

(Radio Iowa)

Red Oak Police, Monday afternoon, arrested a Cass County woman on a Child Endangerment without injury, charge. 25-year old Morgan Barbara Dvorak, of Atlantic, was taken into custody at around 2:30-p.m. in the 200 block of W. Reed Street. No other details were provided. Dvorak was brought to the Montgomery County Jail and held on $2,000 bond.

One person died in an accident on Highway 30 in Boone County, Monday morning. The Iowa State Patrol reports a westbound 2008 Chevrolet Impala driven by 20-year-old Jacob Vreugdenhil, of Grand Junction, drifted over the center line and struck an eastbound 2016 Nissan van driven by 50-year-old Thomas Lee Hagar, of Jefferson. Hagar was killed in the head-on crash that happened just before 8-a.m.

Vreugdenhil and a passenger in the Hagar van, 57-year-old Lesa Llewellyn Hagar, of Jefferson, were transported to a hospital in Boone for treatment of their injuries.