3 refrigerated pie crusts (from 2 boxes), at room temperature
2 1/2 lbs. Fuji apples
2 cups raspberries
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons heavy cream
2 tablespoons turbinado sugar
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly flour a surface. Unroll 2 pie crusts and stack on top of each other. Use a rolling pin to combine crusts into a 17″ x 12″ rectangle. Place in bottom of a rimmed 15″ x 10″ rectangle and cut into long strips. Place on another baking sheet. Refrigerate while preparing filling.
Peel and slice apples into 1/8″ thick slices. Carefully toss with next five ingredients. Remove pie crust from refrigerator and pour filling inside. Arrange strips in a lattice pattern, folding over any edges of bottom crust. Brush with heavy cream and sprinkle with turbinado sugar.
Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until crust is browned and filling is bubbling. Cool at least 45 minutes before slicing into squares.
Tomorrow: Cloudy to P/Cldy. High around 42. N @ 10-15.
Thanksgiving Day: P/Cldy to Cldy w/a chance of light rain developing late. High near 45.
Friday: P/Cldy. High 45.
Monday’s High in Atlantic was 47. The 24-hour Low was 24. We received .01″ (one one-hundredth of an inch) of rain this morning, between 6-and 7-am. Last year on this date, our High in Atlantic was 44 and the low was 23. The Record High in Atlantic on this date was 69 in 1966. The Record Low was -10 in 1937.
Iowa roadways have been a dangerous place this year. Patrick Hoye, chief of the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau, says traffic fatality numbers in Iowa had been declining, year-over-year, earlier this decade. Last year, 320 people were killed in traffic crashes in the state. “Unfortunately, we are already at 351 for this year with about a month-and-a-half to go,” Hoye said. “It’s scary, but we could be looking in the neighborhood of 380 to 390 fatalities if this trend would continue, which would be a sharp increase from a year ago.”
The Thanksgiving holiday weekend is one of the busiest times of the year on Iowa’s roadways. A campaign is underway and runs through Sunday involving an increased law enforcement presence on Iowa’s highways and interstates. “Obviously, the things we’ll be looking for are impaired drivers, speeding vehicles, and people who are not properly buckled,” Hoye said.
Officials have been studying why there’s been such a sharp increase in traffic fatalities this year. Hoye notes roughly half of the traffic deaths in Iowa involved people who weren’t wearing a seatbelt and 30-percent of the fatal crashes were alcohol-related. Another reason for the spike in fatal crashes could involve the low gas prices we’ve had this year. “People are traveling more and anytime you have more vehicles traveling, there is the (potential) for an increase in crashes,” Hoye said.
Over the 2015 Thanksgiving holiday, five people were killed on Iowa roads.
The Atlantic Parks and Recreation Department’s Board met Monday evening at City Hall, and heard an update from Parks and Rec Director Seth Staashelm, with regard to the campground pads at the Schildberg Recreation Area, and they approved a proposal to install a liner at Sunnyside Park, so a seasonal ice skating rink can be installed.
Staashelm told the board the trail around Lake #2 at the Schildberg Rec Area was paved Nov. 14th, despite some sprinkles in the air. Some final grading is being done, but Staashelm said the trail should be open soon. On a related note, he said Atlantic Municipal Utilities (AMU) has agreed to provide in-kind labor amounting to some 40-to 50-thousand dollars, to install electrical and water lines to the campground pads. He says they hope to wrap that up before the ground is in a hard, frozen condition.
In other news, Staashelm also presented a proposal before the Board, with regard a 90-by-120 foot ice skating rink where the basketball courts are currently located, at Sunnyside Park. Water would not cover the courts directly. Instead, they would be covered by a heavy duty liner to prevent damage. He says “logistically, I would not just fill it, or plug the drain and fill it.” He indicated the liner is from a company called “Nice Rink” (www.nicerink.com)
The 10-millimeter thick, plastic liner is rip resistant, and would cost almost $2,400, with a total investment of about $2,700, including the purchase and installation of rope lights, to delineate a boundary. Staashelm says he hopes the Community Promotion Commission (CPC) will be willing to cover at least part of the cost. Maintenance would be handled by Parks and Rec crews. Board member Charlene Beane was skeptical about installing an ice rink, and wanted to wait to see how the synthetic “skating rink” being set up for this weekend next to the Rock Island Depot, is used.
Beane1 :08 Q: “In Atlantic.”
City Council liaison Ashley Hayes said she’s had people ask her about an ice skating rink, for years.
(Hayes said she’s had around 40 people inquire about an ice rink for the City.)
The liner would be stored in the Parks and Rec shed when not in use for the season. The Parks and Rec Board gave Staashelm the go ahead to meet with the CPC December 1st. The Parks and Rec Board said it would be willing to cover at least some of the costs associated with the project.
Iowa’s governor expects the Republican-led congress and President-elect Donald Trump to quickly repeal the Affordable Care Act and Branstad says it’s unclear what may happen to the 145-thousand low-income Iowans who now are covered by Medicaid because of the law. “That remains to be seen,” Branstad says. “I think we’ve got to see how that works.”
However, Branstad says those 145-thousand Iowans who are on Medicaid due to “ObamaCare” are unlikely to completely LOSE coverage. “I don’t think they should be worried,” Branstad says. “I think they should recognize that the Republican congress recognizes that ObamaCare is unaffordable and unsustainable and it needs to be replaced with something that’s workable and affordable for the American population and that’s what we’re going to work together to do.”
The Affordable Care Act offered states additional federal funds if more low-income citizens were enrolled in government-paid Medicaid. In Iowa, Branstad and legislators created an “Iowa Health and Wellness Plan.” Iowans with an annual income up to 133 percent of the poverty level have been eligible to enroll under the “Medicaid expansion” that’s part of “ObamaCare.” “I have confidence that the new Trump Administration and the congress will indeed, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, replace it with something that’s more sustainable,” Branstad says.
Branstad suggests “more flexibility” for how states run the Medicaid program can yield cost savings.
Republicans at the statehouse may seek changes in union benefit packages for government workers in Iowa. Janet Phipps is director of the Iowa Department of Administrative Services and she’s the governor’s lead negotiator on union contracts.
“What we’re anticipating and what has been mentioned is there’s going to be some conversation about how the state is going to deliver group health care benefits to public employees,” she says.
Republican Terry Branstad has trying to get the state’s union workers to pay more of their health insurance premiums since he returned to the governor’s office in 2011. After election victories this month, Republicans will have sizable governing majorities in both the House and Senate in 2017. Branstad’s considering the idea of consolidating health insurance policies for union employees at ALL levels of government in Iowa.
“He has mentioned that in the past, that he would like to look at pooling resources, if you will, of all public entities, whether it’s schools or counties or municipalities,” Phipps says. “I think he envisions something big that could be explored and have a big master contract. He’d like to do that.”
State officials on Monday began contract talks with the union that represents 600 state law enforcement officers, including state troopers. There were NO insurance benefits included in management’s initial offer. AFSCME represents the largest percentage of state workers and negotiations with AFSCME begin Wednesday afternoon. By state law, contracts must be finalized by March 15th. If an arbitrator has to make the call, Phipps says that means management and the unions involved have to stake out their final positions by late February. “So it would be moving briskly along, certainly, if there were going to be discussions legislatively to do something different,” Phipps says.
On Monday, state officials made their initial offer to the State Police Officers Council. It’s the union that represents 600 employees in state government. The offer? A one percent raise in each of the next two years. The union’s initial request was for pay hikes in each year of three percent.
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) – An Iowa-based organization that supported a Washington state ballot measure to require labeling of genetically modified foods in 2013 has been fined nearly $320,000 over campaign finance violations. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said Thurston County Superior Court Judge Gary Tabor issued the fine Monday against Food Democracy Action. The group must also pay the state’s legal fees and trial costs.
Earlier this month, another Thurston County judge ordered the initiative’s opponents, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, to pay $18 million in civil fines for concealing the true sources of $11 million in contributions received from some of the nation’s biggest food and beverage companies.
Ferguson said Food Democracy Action collected almost $300,000 from its supporters and transferred $200,000 of that to support Initiative 522, but didn’t register its political action committee or identify its 3,100 donors until after the election. The initiative failed.
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