(Ottumwa, Iowa) – Officials with John Deere say they are moving more of their manufacturing operations out of Iowa. The company says over the next 18 months, it will shift its current production at its Ottumwa facility to Monterrey, Mexico, and revitalize the location for the future. The company announced a similar move at its Waterloo plant last month. Company officials could not specify how many employees at the Ottumwa plant will be affected by the move.

(Stuart, Iowa) – Officials with the Stuart Police Department report their K9 “Ally” has received a bullet and stab protective vest, thanks to a charitable donation from non-profit organization Vested Interest in K9s, Inc. K9 Ally’s vest was sponsored by Lauren Brandt of Marion, IA and embroidered with the sentiment “This gift of protection provided by Vested Interest in K9s, Inc.”.

Vested Interest in K9s, Inc., established in 2009, is a 501(c)(3) charity whose mission is to provide bullet and stab protective vests and other assistance to dogs of law enforcement and related agencies throughout the United States. This potentially lifesaving body armor for four-legged K9 officers is U.S. made, custom fitted, and NIJ certified. Since its inception, Vested Interest in K9s, Inc. has provided over 4,714 vests to K9s in all 50 states at a value of $6.9 million, made possible by both private and corporate donations.

Stuart PD K9 Ally (Photo via Stuart PD Facebook page)

The program is open to U.S. dogs that are at least 20 months old and actively employed and certified with law enforcement or related agencies. K9s with expired vests are also eligible to participate. There are an estimated 30,000 law enforcement K9s throughout the United States.

Vested Interest in K9s, Inc. accepts tax-deductible contributions in any amount, while a single donation of $960 will sponsor one vest. Each vest has a value of $1,744-$2,283, weighs an average of 4-5 lb., and comes with a five-year warranty. For more information, or to learn about volunteer opportunities, please call 508-824-6978. Vested Interest in K9s, Inc. provides information, lists events, and accepts donations at www.vik9s.org, or you may mail your contribution to P.O. Box 9, East Taunton, MA 02718.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller says the rapid increase in fentanyl-related deaths needs to be addressed with the legalization of fentanyl test strips  “They’re strips of paper that can tell people whether fentanyl is in a product or not. This is a harm reduction program. A harm reduction measure that really makes sense,” according to Miller. “Recently, two states Wisconsin and Georgia, a blue state and a red state have both enacted this. This should not be a partisan issue.”

Miller is a Democrat and says there should also be expanded use of naloxone — which can reverse an opioid overdose. Miller was joined by fellow Democrat and Story County Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald says fentanyl test strips detect the presence of the drug and can help save lives. “This will allow the user to be able to either test the batch they have and if fentanyl … is present during them, they can at that time choose a different batch. They can use less of what they have. They can have the option to have others there when they use it or have Narcan available,” Fitzgerald says.

Iowa AG Tom MIller (Left), & Story County Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald.

Miller also urges people to seek treatment for their drug addiction. Miller says he talked with a few legislative leaders this past session about making the fentanyl test strips legal. “Got a, got a sort of a mixed reaction or at least an openness. So, you know, it’s something we’ll explore as we go out the rest of the year and into next year,” Miller says.

Miller is running for re-election and says he hopes this will be a bipartisan issue. Republican Governor Kim Reynolds hosted a news conference about two weeks ago with the head of the Department of Public Safety and others to talk about the dangers of fentanyl-lace pills. Reynolds did not talk about any specific legislation to address the issue — but was critical of the Biden Administration’s border policy– saying it is part of the reason the dangerous pills have become so prevalent in the U-S.

(Radio Iowa) – Governor Reynolds is awarding three more projects with federal pandemic relief money from the Destination Iowa program she launched this spring. A three-and-a-half million dollar grant is going to Black Hawk County Conservation and Linn County Conservation, to pave 16 miles of the Cedar Valley Nature Trail. That will complete a 52 mile route that will run between the Cedar Rapids and Waterloo/Cedar Falls metros.

The City of Maquoketa and Jackson County Conservation are getting 750-thousand dollars to install a whitewater paddling course on the Maquoketa River as well as a disc golf course and hiking trails that meet Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines. The third award, of 400-thousand dollars, is going to Colfax to support construction of an R-V campground near Interstate 80.

The first round of grants from the 100-million dollar Destination Iowa account were awarded near the end of June. It included xix million dollars to Universal Television for the Field of Dreams T-V Series. Days later the production was looking for a new broadcast home. Governor Reynolds has indicated the grants are to cover expenses of the projects, so the money for Universal Television will be awarded if and when the production happens.

(Radio Iowa) – The State Historical Society’s mobile museum is touring several cities in Iowa this summer and currently is parked in Sibley. Michael Morain of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs says it brings artifacts to Iowans who can’t make the trip to the State Historical Museum in Des Moines.  “We really think it’s important to take artifacts out and about to Iowans,” Morain says. “After all, the collection belongs to all of us.”

The first tour for the agency’s mobile museum started in 2017. This second touring exhibit is focused on the people and places of Iowa. It includes some artifacts from the earliest inhabitants of Iowa and one of the flight suits astronaut Peggy Whitson, a native of Beaconsfield, Iowa, wore in space. Morain says the team that put the exhibit together chose sturdy artifacts.

The State Historical Society of Iowa’s “History on the Move” mobile museum will visit Audubon Sept. 15 during Fallapalooza. The public is invited to take free self-guided tours of the museum on wheels, which holds a 300-square-foot exhibition called “Iowa History 101.”

“We also made sure that they built some ingenious displays for them so that they could be secure and not rattle around,” Morain says. “We did some test drives over railroad tracks and things like that because many of these artifacts are valuable, maybe not monetarily, but for the state of Iowa they are priceless.” One of the items on display is the pen Iowa Governor William Harding used in July of 1919 to sign Iowa’s ratification of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote.

The mobile museum’s tour with its current collection hit the road this summer, making stops in Sac City and Adair, along with eight other communities across the state, with the goal of stopping in each of Iowa’s 99 counties by the end of 2023. It’s next stops are in Dyersville on August 11th and 12th and in Dubuque on August 20th.

(Radio Iowa) – Employees who work at 28 Planned Parenthood clinics five states, including Iowa, have voted to form a union. According to the National Labor Relations Board, over 90 percent of workers who voted supported the move. Ashley Schmidt who works Planned Parenthood facilities in Nebraska and western Iowa. “As we move forward into what will be a very challenging time, having a union will make sure all of our voices are heard,” she said. “We will start pushing right away to get our first contract.”

There are about 435 frontline employees at Planned Parenthood of North Central States facilities in Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and the Dakotas. They are joining the Service Employees International Union, which has about two million members nationwide, many of whom work in health care. April Clark has worked for Planned Parenthood in Iowa for a decade. Clark says negotiations will make sure there are adequate staffing levels.

“We’ve been working on unionization for a long time, but the work is just beginning,” she says. “Now we begin the process of bargaining for a contract: for a seat at the table for front line workers, for fair wages, better benefits.” The union contract will cover nurses, pharmacists and other staff who work at clinics in the five states. Union organizing has increased during the pandemic. The number of petitions with the National Labor Board seeking a vote on union membership has jumped 58 percent over the last nine months.

Clinton, IOWA – Special Agents with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) and Officers of the Clinton Police Department conducted a preliminary investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of 35-year-old Zachary Tyler McDivitt. Authorities have ruled the death a homicide. 17-year-old Kyler Jay Andresen, of Clinton, was arrested in connection with the incident, and is charged with Homicide in the First Degree, a Class A Felony.

On July 20, 2022, at 10:39 p.m., the Clinton Police Department responded to a shooting call in the 100 block of North 5th Street. When officers arrived, they found an adult male (Zachary McDivitt) shot, and laying on a sidewalk. The man was transported to MercyOne, where he was pronounced deceased.

Officials say an investigation into the incident is ongoing, and no additional information will be released at this time. Law enforcement does not believe there is an ongoing risk to the public.

A criminal charge is only an accusation, and criminal defendants are innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. 

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig says the last quarantine associated with a bird flu outbreak at a commercial flock has been lifted.  “This is good news,” Naig says. “It’s a milestone day.” Quarantines were issued to bar poultry and eggs from being shipped from 15 commercial sites where avian influenza had been confirmed. The last restriction — on a turkey operation in Bremer County — has been lifted after it met all cleaning, disinfection and testing testing requirements. Naig says it doesn’t mean the risk is gone.

“But what is does do is allow all of those affected sites to get back into normal production,” Naig says, “and it also allows us, with the response, to start to now look back and say: ‘What went well and what are some lessons we need to apply to a future response?'” Iowa’s first case of bird flu was confirmed in February in a backyard flock of chickens and ducks in Council Bluffs. That site and three others where Iowans were raising birds in their backyards that were sickened with bird flu are to remain empty for the rest of the summer.

“You really can’t clean those kind of sites,” Naig says, “but you can go in and disinfection and test commercial sites and that’s why this is an important day and we make a distinction between a commercial site and a backyard flock.” Two commercial facilities each had five million birds that were killed to prevent the virus from spreading. A total of 13-point-three million birds were euthanized in Iowa due to this year’s outbreak.

“And that represented 40% or so of the total number of birds that were impacted nationwide,” Naig says. The 2015 bird flu outbreak impacted 77 commercial poultry and egg laying sites in Iowa — compared to 15 this year. Naig says it does not appear there was farm-to-farm movement of the virus due to better biosecurity measures. “Our producers have learned a lot about how to keep the virus out their buildings and off of their farms and really track the movement of people and equipment,” Naig says. “…I think the second component of that was just a more effective, faster response on the part of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and the USDA. Those two things together made this a different outbreak.”

The executive director of the North Central Poultry Association says the lifting of the final quarantine is cause to celebrate the collective efforts from all involved. Avian influenza is highly contagious and while wild birds carry the virus without appearing to be ill, it is nearly always fatal to domesticated birds.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Workforce Development says the unemployment rate dropped to two-point-six percent in June — down one-tenth of a percent from May. I-W-D director Beth Townsend says that number is another milestone. “Two-six is where we were in February of 2020, before the pandemic impacted the rate at all,” Townsend says. She says the leisure and hospitality industries saw the largest job gains.

“Not surprising given, that we’re into the summer months, people are traveling and eating out doing things like that, that in those industries gained two-thousand jobs in May in June. We’re seeing increases in manufacturing for seven straight months. They gained 700 jobs in June…..that’s always a good sign,” Townsend says. Townsend says there are still 43-thousand Iowans who are looking for work. Townsend says one of the big issues facing employers is workers taking a job and then quitting after a short time.

“The quit rate has been up for a period of time, and so people are willing to job shop and move jobs, you know, much more than we’ve seen prior to the pandemic,” Townsend says. “So I think, part of it just is, you know, trying to keep them engaged and interested and motivated to stay for more than just a few weeks.” Townsend says businesses already had been making adjustments to deal with the pandemic — and are continuing to do so to try to hold onto workers.

“And so you have seen a lot of improvements in benefits and increase in wages, flexibility when it comes to teleworking opportunities — trying to create shifts that work around someone’s schedule,” she says. “You know, we’ve seen we know from past experience that a lot of moms want to work mom hours during the school year. So I think you see more employers willing to accommodate that which is good.”

Townsend says that’s created a lot of situations where someone can start a job at one place and if they don’t like it — there are a lot of other options available at other places and they quit and go somewhere else. Townsend says there’s still a lot of work to do — but the trend has been in a good direction. “We are definitely seeing consisting sustained improvement and that’s a good sign. We clearly have a ways to go to get back to the labor force participation rate that we were at pre-pandemic,” according to Townsend.

“So now that our (unemployment) rate is back, what we really need to be focused on is how do we get the participation rate back to 70 percent, which is about what it was at its peak.” Iowa’s Labor Force Participation Rate increased to 67-point-eight percent from 67-point-six percent last month.

(Griswold, Iowa) – Members of the Griswold School Board held their regular monthly meeting Monday evening. Superintendent Dave Henrichs says the Board approved the hiring of Bonnie Orfield as a night custodian beginning August 1st. The Board approved the Girl’s Wrestling Sharing Agreement between Griswold, CAM, Nodaway Valley, and Atlantic.

The Griswold School Board also approved the District’s Return-to-Learn plan, which is unchanged from last year.

In other business, some familiar faces will remain in-place, with regard to the Business Manager/Treasurer (Dan Rold), and Board Secretary (Hannah Bierbaum). Both were reappointed Monday night. The Board elected to secure Matt Hanson with Wilson, Hanson and Associates P.C., from Lenox, as the District’s Attorney. As far as the various bids are concerned, since they only had one bidder, the supplies of bakery goods, trash removal services, dairy, snow removal and warewash, are unchanged from last year.

Superintendent Henrichs said he shared in his report to the Board, they’re still looking for a Middle School English Teacher, a MS Volleyball and MS Football Coach. And he said the District is still waiting to hear back from the Department of Education, with regard to a “Safety Grant.”