(Atlantic, Iowa) – The City Council in Atlantic met for about an hour this (Wednesday) evening, and voted to give the Splashpad Fundraising Committee free-reign to pursue funding for the project, which is estimated to cost around $600,000. During the Parks and Rec Board meeting on March 20th, tempers flared when the suggestion was made to use the non-profit SHIFT ATL organization as a means to apply for and write grants for the project. Councilman Gerald Brink thought that should be left to new Parks and Rec Director Wyatt Adderton.

During that meeting, Adderton offered to be the Chairperson of the Fundraising Committee and an intermediary to foster communication between the Committee and City Hall. Since then Councilman Brink says he’s had conversations with many people, and it’s time to move on.

Brink said in the past, a group in town decided they wanted the Trojan Head painted on the water tower, and it got painted.

Brink asked “Why in the world are we creating such a fiasco.?”

Brink said it’s important to let those who want to take charge of the fundraising, to do with out interference from the City.

Councilpersons McCurdy and Hartkopf agreed. Brink then made the recommendation to turn the fundraising effort over to those who want to take on the task. Brink made the motion. The Council’s decision was met with a a round of applause.

On a related note, the Atlantic City Council approved an Order to have Snyder and Associates as the engineers for the Splashpad Project, at a cost of $85,000 (The Parks Board had previously endorsed the agreement), the funds of which will come from a Splashpad Project Fund City Administrator John Lund created last year with surplus LOST/Hotel-Motel tax funds. The Council also passed an Order to approve Snyder’s as the engineers for the Soccer Field Project.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office reports two men were arrested on separate charges today (Wednesday). 34-year-old Thomas Allen Daffer, of Red Oak, was arrested on a warrant for Assault. He was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on $1,000 bond. And, 29-year-old Aidan Sergey Olen Lowry, of Omaha, NE, was arrested at the Sarpy County, NE jail, on a warrant for Violation of Probation. His bond was set at $5,000.

(Radio Iowa) – A key senator says priority issues are included in an education bill House Republicans just expanded to include things like alternative pathways for teacher licensing and defining what would be considered age appropriate school library books. Senate Education Committee chairman Ken Rozenboom, a Republican from Oskaloosa, says rolling those other bills into one 40-page package is how the legislative process often works. Rozenboom’s optimistic House and Senate Republicans will settle on a final package soon. “Bottom line is we need to do something, I believe, for our parents with some of the battles we’re fighting around the state in different places,” Rozenboom says.

The bill in its initial form came from Governor Kim Reynolds and G-O-P Senators approved the bill two weeks ago after some tweaks. Rozenboom will be meeting with the governor’s staff to review the House changes AND additions. Representative Skyler Wheeler of Hull is chairman of the HOUSE Education Committee. Wheeler says Republicans intend to help parents assert their rights in schools.  “Parents send their children to school to learn reading, math and writing,” Wheeler says. “When they do this they are putting trust into the school and the staff there. Unfortunately some of that trust has been broken by schools pushing wokeism.”

The bill would require an administrator to notify a parent if a student asks to be known by a different name or pronoun at school. It also forbids instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through sixth grade classrooms. Democrats say the bill has a number of flaws. Representative Sharon Steckman, a Democrat from Mason City, is a retired teacher. Steckman says letting people become teachers after taking an online course should not be included in the package. “I believe there seems to be a trend here. We need a workforce, so let’s lower all the requirements,” Steckman said. “…I’d like to know what your vision for education is. Is it excellence, which we used to have, or is it mediocrity?”

Representative Sue Cahill, a Democrat from Marshalltown, objects to changes in the Board of Educational Examiners, so there’d be an equal number of parents and licensed educators on the board. “If you had plumbing problems in your house and the plumbing licensing board was called in to review the work and the issue and the license of the professional, this would be like having five plumbers, one plumbing store owner and five people who had flushed their toilet that morning decide on the quality of the work,” Cahill says.

The board is currently made up of nine teachers or school administrators and just two public members along with someone from the Iowa Department of Education.

(Radio Iowa)- The number of monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico dropped this year. Nicole Shimp with Iowa State’s Monarch Conservation Consortium says they can tell the population by the number of monarchs in the tree canopy. “The space that they occupied in Mexico in the forest in their wintering grounds decreased by about 22 percent,” she says. “Last year, we were around seven acres. This year, we’re a little under five and a half acres.” Shimp says “You always had a little sadness with it, because last year, we saw just, you know, the population kind of held steady, which we thought was a pretty good sign. And so we were hopeful this year that it would maybe hold steady again, or increase a little.”

She says scientists estimate there needs to be a long-term average of about 15 acres to sustain the monarch population. Shimp says the monarch populations have dropped because of a loss of habitat down in Mexico, and loss of habitat in the Midwest where they spend their summer. She says this report shows the urgency to create more habitat continues. “This means that we need to continue to reinforce that the monarchs still need our help, and they’re still around, we just need to help them out a little bit to get the population back up,” she says. Iowa has been part of the effort to restore habitat, including the milkweed, which is the plant the monarch caterpillars eat and lay their eggs on.

Shimp says the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium report shows good things are happening here. “It showed between 2018 and 2020, that Iowans added 430-thousand acres of habitat in the state. And we even have a dashboard that you can go to that can show you it by county to county to kind of break it down if it’s agriculture, urban. So we have it broken down by different areas, and just seeing how many of those acres have gone in,” she explains. Shimp encourages everyone to register their monarch habitat. “If you have already put in habitat, but to make sure that your habitat is being recorded. So you can do that by we have an app called Habi-Tally,” she says. You don’t even have to be in the state of Iowa. You can put in your habitat into there and it walks you through how to do it.”

You can find out how to create a monarch habitat at: monarch.ent.iastate.edu.

(Lewis, Iowa) – The Cass County Conservation Board is now taking Pre-orders for their Native Plant Sale! The order form and payment will be DUE April 28th 2023 at 4PM. Forms can be found online https://www.casscountyia.gov/county-departments/conservation-office/

Native Local Eco-type live Plants will be sold. Live plants from nursery will come as small plugs; cells are 5” deep x 2” wide at top or 4.5”deep x 2” Cone. 1 Specie of Native grass, and 11 Native Forbs including many that benefit Pollinators! New this year Sneezeweed and Prairie Coreopsis! All orders must be picked up during designated times at the CCCB offices in Lewis, unless prior arrangements are made. Designated pick up times will be: Thursday May 25th 8 AM-6 PM OR Friday May 26th 8AM-7PM. Plants not picked up will be donated with NO REFUND.

The Cass County Conservation Board is also holding a Wildflower Walk! The program will be held at the Pellett Memorial Woods outside of Atlantic IA on April 29th 2023 at 9 am. FREE! Oak Strollers Nature Club for Families are welcome to join at this event! The Board invites you to walk through the early spring wildflowers with our naturalist. Learn the names, uses and history of these Wildflowers.

Those in attendance will meet at Pellett Memorial Woods- located just outside of Atlantic, ½ mile north and ¾ mile east of the KJAN radio station (63066 Troublesome Creek Rd).

(Glenwood, Iowa) – The Glenwood Police Department reports the arrest on Tuesday, of 35-year-old Jeffrey Neppel, from Plattsmouth, NE. He was taken into custody on a Mills County warrant for Disorderly Conduct. Bond was set at $300 cash or surety.

You may have encountered a fake invoice if you are running a small business, or keeping books for one. Phony bills have long been a beloved and effective trick of scammers. Recently, BBB Scam Tracker has gotten multiple reports of a new version of this scam, where con artists pretend to be contacting you as part of the Geek Squad, which is owned by Best Buy or through PayPal.

How the scam works:

 After receiving an invoice from Geek Squad, it says you’ll be charged hundreds of dollars for an annual subscription that is about to auto-renew. The email may include a PDF version of the invoice and a number for you to call if you want to cancel the subscription. Panicked and sure you never authorized this subscription; you call the number. A ‘customer service agent’ answers and pretends to assist you with the cancellation. They may offer you a refund or ask you to confirm your bank account information so they can cancel the subscription.

If you give them that sensitive information, they’ll likely gain access to your account and can withdraw money without your consent. Aside from sham phone calls, downloading PDFs or clicking links in the email could download malware onto your computer and put you at risk of identity theft.

Fake Geek Squad invoices aren’t the only versions of this scam to keep an eye out for. A new iteration looks like a vendor requesting payment via PayPal. Similar to the Geek Squad version, the message urges you to call ‘customer service’ if your payment was not authorized, or you wish to cancel the charge.

How to avoid fake invoice scams:

•  Be wary of unsolicited emails, especially if you don’t remember doing business with the company they claim to come from. Even if you do business with a company, be careful if you receive an email you didn’t ask for or authorize. Scammers love to impersonate companies that are well-known and trusted by consumers.
• Know how invoices will be delivered. If you sign up for a service or subscription, ask how the company will deliver its invoices. That way, you won’t be fooled if scammers send you a copycat invoice through a different channel.

BBB Accredited Businesses promise to adhere to BBB’s Standards for Trust, so look for the BBB Accredited Business Seal. It’s the Sign of a Better Business. 

•  Train your staff to spot a fake invoice. As a small business owner, you may not personally look at every invoice from your accounts department. Ensure your employees know how to differentiate a real invoice from a scam.
• Don’t give in to scare tactics. Scammers will use a sense of urgency to get you to give up sensitive information or make payments without thinking. If someone says you’ll lose hundreds of dollars if you don’t act now, don’t be easily intimidated. Always do proper research before agreeing to any transactions– especially unexpected ones.
• Have questions about a Geek Squad message? Reach out to Best Buy.Customers can call 1-888-BESTBUY to confirm whether a suspicious email is real. Also, check out com/StopFraud for more resources to help spot cybercrime, fraud and tech support scams.

For more information:

Learn other ways to protect your business from scams and maintain a good reputation in your community by visiting BBB.org/smallbusiness and bbb.org/avoidscams. If you spot a scam, report it at BBB Scam Tracker. Your reports can help other small business owners learn more about common scam tactics. If you’re ready to take the leap, learn how to become a BBB Accredited Business.

(UPDATE: Authorities say both teens have been located and are safe)

(Carroll, Iowa) – The Police Department in Carroll is asking for assistance in locating two missing juveniles. Authorities says Aubrey Prichard is a 15-year-old female with blond hair and blue eyes. She is approximately 5’4″ tall weighing 105 pounds. Jordan Hilleshiem is a 15-year-old male with blonde hair and blue eyes. He is about 5’9″ tall weighing 160 pounds.

Jordan was last seen wearing shorts and a white sweatshirt. Both were last seen in Carroll on April 4, 2023, around 1:00 pm. Both juveniles are suspected to be together with an unknown direction of travel. If you know their location or see them, please call the police at 712-792-3536.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Gronewold, Bell, Kyhnn & Co. P.C. CPAs have released an audit report on Cass County, Iowa. The County had local tax revenue of $34,404,968 for the year ended June 30, 2022, which included $3,052,548 in tax credits from the state. The County forwarded $26,076,100 of the local tax revenue to the townships, school districts, cities and other taxing bodies in the County.

The County retained $8,328,868 of the local tax revenue to finance County operations, a .5 percent increase from the prior year. Other revenues included $5,475,111 from the state, including indirect federal funding of $1,067,258, charges for service of $372,870, tax increment financing of $693,994, local option sales tax of $991,382, and $133,539 for the use of money and property.

Expenditures for County operations totaled $16,473,994, an 11.5 percent increase from the prior year. Expenses included $5,679,596 for roads and transportation, $450,980 for mental health, $3,199,539 for public safety and legal services, $515,772 for county environment and education, $751,706 for debt service, $2,331,532 for capital projects, and $1,653,051 for administrative services.

A copy of the audit report is available for review in the office of the Auditor of State and the County Auditor’s office.

(Glenwood, Iowa) – The Mills County Sheriff’s Office reports two arrests: At around 1-a.m. today (Wednesday), 45-year-old Shannon Don Spangler, of Lincoln, NE., was arrested at the Lancaster County, NE. Jail, on a Mills County warrant for Failure to Appear. His bond was set at $10,000. And, Monday evening, 57-year-old David Duane Berry, of Council Bluffs, was arrested for OWI/2nd offense, following a traffic stop on I-29 at mile marker 31. ($2,000 bond)