Members of the City of Atlantic’s Planning and Zoning Commission will meet 5:30-p.m. Tuesday (Aug. 13) to review a site plan for a proposed drive-thru coffee business. Dan Forslund, construction manager for Scooter’s Coffee will be on-hand during the meeting at City Hall, to discuss the development and address any issues the Commission may have.

East Atlantic Holdings, LLC., of Urbandale, owns the lot where the Verizon building is located, at 1508 E. 7th Street. City Administrator/Zoning Administrator John Lund reports the company has agreed to lease part of their property to Scooter’s Coffee, which is proposing a drive-thru coffee kiosk, only. It would situated in the grassy area in front of the Verizon Store, immediately east of Oinker’s, with a physical address of 1500 E. 7th.

The store would offer a variety of coffee and smoothies, along with breakfast food.

(Site plan photo’s) Typical Scooters drive-thru

(Update 8-a.m.) A power outage that struck Griswold and Lewis overnight is expected to last until late this (Saturday) afternoon. Cass County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Kennon says a utility pole fire was reported at around 11-p.m. Friday, with the power going out for most customers in Griswold and Lewis, at around 3-a.m.

About 300-to 400-MidAmerican Energy customers will be without power until at least 4-p.m., according to Kennon.

WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) — A Waterloo woman has pleaded guilty for her role in her 4-year-old daughter’s death and has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The Courier reports that 34-year-old Kristi Amber Buss pleaded guilty Friday to three felony charges: neglecting a dependent person, child neglect resulting in serious injury and involuntary manslaughter. She had originally been charged with child endangerment causing the death of her daughter, 4-year-old Gracie Buss, and had faced 50 years in prison.

Kristi Buss’ boyfriend, 35-year-old Chad Allen Little, was convicted in May of first-degree murder in the death and sentenced in June to life in prison.
Prosecutors say Little abused his Buss’ two children, and delivered a fatal head injury to Gracie in May 2015.

FORT DODGE, Iowa (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said Friday that President Donald Trump “seems to derive joy” from provoking some Americans to hateful speech and actions, and she says that goes to issues deeper than whether the president is a white supremacist.

“I’ve not said this out loud, but I think it and I feel it,” Harris told The Associated Press during an interview traveling across Iowa. “He seems to derive joy from the response he gets when he talks this way. It seems he derives some element of joy in inciting people around, around outrageous and hateful rhetoric.”

Trump’s recent series of racist remarks toward women of color in Congress, as well as the ties between his anti-immigrant rhetoric and the deadly mass shooting in El Paso, have sparked a debate in the 2020 Democratic field over whether the president is a white supremacist.

Harris, like former Vice President Joe Biden and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, has stopped short of using the label. Meanwhile, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg have said it applies.

Harris, on a weekend-long campaign trip to the early caucus state, said that debate misses the point. “It literally oversimplifies the issue, because it’s almost that the conversation begins and ends with that,” Harris said on her tour bus traveling across rural northwest Iowa. “The lens through which I think about it is so much broader than a label.”

Harris cited Trump’s 2017 ban on travelers from six largely Muslim countries, his 2018 order banning transgender individuals from serving in the armed forces except under limited circumstances, and his constant degradation of immigrants entering the U.S. from the Southern border. She said they are part of a pattern Trump has followed to feed his own psyche instead of encouraging acceptance at a time of increased hate crimes.

By ascribing personal motives to Trump’s rhetoric, Harris’ comments go further than most candidates, who have not shied from connecting Trump’s rhetoric and the El Paso shooting Saturday, when 22 people were killed by a man who admitted to police he had targeted Mexicans.