WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) — An organization is planning to spend $70 million to gradually demolish and rebuild a retirement community in northeast Iowa. Friends of Faith Retirement Homes Inc. announced it’ll invest in reconstructing its independent living apartments and skilled nursing center. The senior housing nonprofit opened Waterloo’s Friendship Village in 1968, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported.

“There were a number of options that the leadership of Friendship Village looked at, and some involved moving away,” said Mike Young, attorney for Friends of Faith. “But they made the commitment to redevelop and reinvest in this neighborhood in these facilities where they’ve spent 50 years and are looking to spend 50 more years.”

The Waterloo Planning, Programming and Zoning Commission voted Tuesday to endorse a zoning request and special permit for the project expected to begin next year.

Friendship Village has stopped new admissions to prepare for the project, which will be developed in phases to avoid displacing existing residents during the process. The project involves replacing the about 100-unit independent living building with a new four-story, 73-unit building. It also includes replacing the existing 72-unit skilled nursing center on the campus.

“When it’s done, it will be a first-class facility that the neighborhood and the city and Cedar Valley can be very proud of,” Young said. The project does not affect other living facilities associated with Friends of Faith, including Village Place, Landmark Commons, Lakeview Lodge, Lakeview Landing or Rosewood Estate.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — A former youth counselor at Four Oaks juvenile facility in Davenport has been arrested after being accused of helping the escape of three juveniles offenders — one of which she was involved with romantically.

Television station KWQC reports that 19-year-old Hannah Rose Fitzpatrick, of Marion, Iowa, is charged with sexual misconduct with a youth offender in her custody. The charge is an aggravated misdemeanor under Iowa law that carries a prison sentence of up to two years.

Police say that on Feb. 2, Fitzpatrick helped three juveniles escape the facility by driving them to an address in Davenport. Police say she then engaged in a sex act with one of the offenders.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Seven companies have submitted 21 applications to operate medical cannabis dispensaries in Iowa. Des Moines television station KCCI reports that those were the applications that came in by Thursday’s deadline.
Earlier this year, the Iowa Department of Public Health requested proposals from companies, intending to award licenses for up to five medical cannabis dispensaries throughout the state.

Dispensaries are locations where patients and primary caregivers with valid medical registration cards can obtain the cannabis. A review panel will score the applications based on certain criteria. The health department plans to award the five licenses by April 1.

Democrats in the Iowa House staged something akin to a four-and-a-half hour filibuster Thursday to protest of the state’s new voter verification law. Representative Bruce Hunter of Des Moines authored half of the changes Democrats were seeking in the law. “Start creating laws in this state to make it easier to exercise your constitutional right to vote,” Hunter said. “…We’ve certainly done it with gun rights. It’s time to treat our voters at least as well as our gun owners.”

House Republicans rejected each one of the Democrats’ proposals. The debate came on what Republicans like Representative Michael Bergen of Dorchester described as a non-controversial measure to correct “technical errors” in state election laws. “There are a number of topics, discussion points that came up during our debate that, quite frankly, just are detracting from our bill,” Bergen said at the conclusion of the debate.

Bergen said the bill would make the state’s voting system “work better.” Democrats say the new law is causing confusion and Iowa’s secretary of state needs to do more to educate voters. One lawmaker said poll workers misinterpreted the new law when he and his wife went to vote in a municipal election this past week and initially tried to bar his wife from casting a ballot.

(Radio Iowa)

The experts are maintaining their prediction for slightly above-normal runoff into the Missouri River reservoir system this spring. Nicolle Shorney, an engineer with the U-S Army Corps of Engineers in Omaha, says little is changing in the latest forecast. “The 2018 calendar year runoff forecast for the Upper Missouri basin above Sioux City, Iowa, is 29-million acre feet which is 115% of average,” Shorney says.

The Corps of Engineers continues to watch the snow pack in the higher elevations of the Missouri River basin, but at this point, Shorney says they expect run off in the lower basin to be closer to average. “For the lower reaches, from Lake Oahe to Sioux City, we’re forecasting near-average runoff for the March through July period based on plains snowpack, soil moisture conditions, precipitation outlooks and current runoff trends.”

Corps officials said they have 16-million-acre feet of flood storage space available above the main stem dams.

(Radio Iowa)

Officials say the state-run database tracking available hospital beds for psychiatric patients soon will be “closer to accurate” with twice-daily updates. Theresa Armstrong is with the Department of Human Services — the state agency that created the database after two of the state’s four Mental Health Institutes were closed in 2015. “The software we use is called ‘Care Match’ and it tracks the available inpatient psychiatric beds at the MHIs as well as the 26 hospitals that have psychiatric services,” Armstrong says.

Those 26 hospitals and the Mental Health Institutes in Cherokee and Independence have been reporting openings. However, there was no state rule for how often the updates were to be made. A new state regulation will require the facilities to update their list of openings for patients who need in-patient psychiatric care twice a day. “It would assure that the information in the system would be closer to accurate,” she says. “Folks, on average, probably stay in a bed for about two days, maybe three days, so there is a lot of turnover and we do see if from morning to afternoon.”

Armstrong says “most” Iowa hospitals with in-patient psychiatric care have been updating the list regularly. “At least, probably, 90 to 95 percent of the hospitals on a daily basis are updating it,” Armstrong says.

The state database is being used by hospital staff as well as local officials helping police and sheriffs’ departments find in-patient care for someone suffering from an acute mental health crisis. Critics have complained the database hasn’t been offering “real time” information about available hospital beds for psychiatric patients. A bill passed by the Iowa legislature LAST YEAR called for twice-a-day updates to this database. A rule implementing that requirement was approved Friday, by a legislative review panel.

(Radio Iowa)

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — It’s time to spring forward again, as the country makes the switch to daylight-saving time. Like those in almost all other states, residents in Nebraska and Iowa will trade an hour of sleep starting Sunday morning for an extra hour of sunlight in the evening. The government expanded daylight-saving time in 2007 in an effort to save energy. It now begins on the second Sunday in March and continues until the first Sunday in November.

The official change occurs at 2 a.m. Sunday, local time, although people often change their clocks before going to bed Saturday night. Daylight-saving time ends Nov. 4.