Three out of the five members of the Atlantic Parks and Recreation Department’s Board of Directors were present Monday evening for their monthly meeting. During the session, Parks & Rec Director Seth Staashelm said the pieces of the west playground for the Schildberg Recreation Area have arrived, and are being kept in storage until they can be installed next Spring.

The west restroom at Schildberg has been ordered and will arrive in mid-December. Staashelm said a four-foot hole for a vault restroom vault (tank) will be dug within the next couple of weeks, and the 17-by 8-foot blue metal roof building will be lowered over the pit on the level surface. There is no concrete pad.

In other business, Staashelm proposed, and the Board approved, a staggered four-year term for Parks Board members, who currently serve a six-year term. A recommendation for the proposed change will be submitted to the full City Council for their approval. Staashelm said in his opinion, the six-year term is too long, because members tend to lose interest and become out of touch with what’s needed or desired. He said also, by rotating the terms, more citizens might be encouraged to serve, and it would hopefully keep board members more engaged. Board Chair Stuart Dusenberry agreed. He said many boards are on a two-or three-year term, and a six-year term is a lot of commit to.

Staashelm also reported to the Board the Sunnyside Park Ice Rink liner will be installed the first week of December, but it won’t be open until sometime around Christmas, because of the fluctuating weather patterns. A second cold snap is needed for the surface to freeze. Once it’s open, the hours will be posted at the site and on the Parks’ Facebook page.

He said also, the Schildberg Campground is slated to close Nov. 26th, and the City’s parks restrooms are closed for the season, but the parks remain open for winter activities. The streets to Sunnyside Park are still open he said, but there will be a time soon, when they will have to be closed. That doesn’t mean you can’t use the park, it’s just that vehicle traffic won’t be allowed for safety reasons.

(Radio Iowa) — An apple a day may not keep the doctor away, but University of Iowa researchers are testing how massive doses of vitamin C could help fight three of the deadliest forms of cancer. Doctor Joe Cullen, a U-I professor of surgery, is helping head up the study. He says they’re launching a new round of clinical trials in cancer patients using I-Vs of vitamin C along with chemotherapy and radiation.

“Vitamin C acts as an antioxidant but we give very large doses and we give it intravenously and at those large doses, you get very, very high levels,” Dr. Cullen says. “So, we’ve increased the levels a hundred-fold and when you do that, it actually kills cancer cells.” If you take vitamin C tablets that you buy at the drug store by mouth, Cullen says they have a limited usefulness.

“If you take too much vitamin C orally, you don’t absorb as much and your kidneys just excrete it,” Cullen says. “We bypass all of those mechanisms when we give it intravenously. We give it at such a high dose that the kidneys can’t remove it that quickly and you get very high doses.” The U-I has already been conducting trials using vitamin C to treat pancreatic cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and an aggressive type of brain cancer known as G-B-M. So far, Cullen says the results are very encouraging, especially with a trial that just finished for locally-advanced pancreatic cancer.

“We increased the overall survival from 11 months to 21 months,” Cullen says. “We have two long-term survivals that are almost out four years, which is kind of unheard of for pancreatic cancer. In one of our earlier trials, looking at patients with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer where the survival is about six months, we increased the survival to about 16 months.”

Researchers at U-I’s Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center have just received a five-year, $9.7 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to continue the trials of high-dose vitamin C. Cullen says it promises to be a safe, simple, cost-effective approach to improving treatment for many kinds of cancer.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A woman has filed an ethics complaint against Iowa legislator Nate Boulton, detailing allegations she initially made in May that led the lawmaker to drop his campaign for governor. The Des Moines Register reported Monday the woman filed the complaint Saturday with the Iowa Senate. The complaint alleges that one night at a bar in November 2015, Boulton repeatedly grabbed her buttocks.

The Register had previously reported the woman’s allegations as well as allegations from two other women regarding incidents more than a decade ago. After the stories were published, Boulton dropped his bid for the Democratic nomination for governor. Despite calls that he resign, Boulton opted to remain in the Senate.

Boulton couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. The chairman of the Senate ethics committee also wasn’t available.

BURLINGTON, Iowa (AP) — A judge has sentenced a second man to life in prison for the 2016 killing of a gender-fluid Iowa teenager. The Des Moines Register reports a judge Monday sentenced 26-year-old Jaron Purham to life in prison, which was mandatory because of his October conviction of first-degree murder.

Another man, Jorge Sanders-Galvez, already is serving a life term for the March 2, 2016, fatal shooting of 16-year-old Kedarie Johnson of Burlington. Johnson’s relatives say he identified as both male and female.

Prosecutors said Sanders-Galvez and Purham saw Johnson at a store and followed him in their car before taking the teen to a Burlington home. Police say Johnson was sexually assaulted and tortured before being shot to death in an alley.

With the Thanksgiving Holiday approaching, city leaders in Atlantic have decided to hold the City Council meeting Tuesday evening, this week, instead of the normal, Wednesday. The Council will gather at City Hall for their meeting that begins at 5:30-p.m.

On their short agenda, is recognition by the Mayor and Council, of the Atlantic High School Girls Swim Team. The honor is an ongoing effort by the Mayor to bring attention to the positive achievements of young people in the community. For the fifth-year in a row, the Atlantic Girls Swim Team made it to the State Competition this year, and finished strong, ranking 12th out of 40 teams.

In other business, the Council will act on approving the Fiscal Year 2018 Urban Renewal Report. City Administrator John Lund says every year, cities in Iowa are required to submit the report to the Iowa Department of Management. The report, he says, details everything relating to the City’s Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts and projects. Approval of the report is routine, and a formality, and reflects the projects and numbers already approved by the Council, through the Urban Renewal Plans, Development Agreements and the Annual Budget.