WASHINGTON, Iowa (AP) — A former bricklayer made a deal with an eastern Iowa retirement home when he became a resident to allow him to put up a display of model trains. Jim Bennett of Washington says the holiday season is his favorite time for the past 10 years because he gets to display his enthusiasm being a train engineer.

KCRG-TV reports that his train display is in the United Presbyterian Home’s lobby in the town of 7,400 people about 50 miles south of Cedar Rapids. He’s posted hours of operation for Monday, Wednesday and Friday and is likely leave the display up through February.

The Adair County Board of Supervisors will meet 9-a.m. Thursday in the Boardroom at the Courthouse in Greenfield. On their agenda, is a report from County Engineer Nick Kauffman, with regard to approval of a Plan of Operations for the “Force Account” (EWP – Emergency Watershed Protection – Projects), along with his regular maintenance & activities report. The Board will then hear from Conservation Director Dominic Johnson, with regard to a FY 2021 Budget Request.

Discussion will cover Taxable Mileage, and IMWCA recommendation responses.

More State and area news from KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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The National Weather Service in Johnston says record to near record highs are likely for this Christmas Day across much of central and southern Iowa, with highs in the 50’s to near 60. Temperatures will be a bit cooler over northern Iowa. A cold front will move through tonight and will drop highs into the 30’s and 40’s for Thursday and Friday.

(Click to enlarge the map)

A storm system will arrive this weekend with mainly rain Friday night and Saturday followed by a transition to snow Saturday night and Sunday. Some snow accumulations are possible, especially across northern Iowa. A large amount of variability remains for this system therefore, any snowfall predictions remain low confidence. Stay tuned for future updates regarding the weekend storm system.

The area’s latest and/or top news stories at 7:06-a.m. From KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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DES MOINES – The holiday season is a time for spending with family and friends and giving and receiving gifts. This is also the most waste-generated time of the year. According to Standford University, Americans throw away 25% more trash from Thanksgiving to New Years, which adds an additional 1 million pounds of waste going to the landfill per week. If every family reused just two feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the planet. If every family wrapped three of the gifts they give in reusable materials like using the newspaper comics pages, magazines, etc., it would save enough paper to cover approximately 45,000 football fields.

According to the 2017 Iowa Statewide Waste Characterization Study, overall, cardboard was the fifth most landfilled material out of the 62 sort categories. The total amount of cardboard landfilled in Iowa was approximately 84,200 tons. Based on a current market value of $51 per ton of cardboard, that adds up to $4.3 million dollars.

The Iowa DNR asks you to consider these holiday savings tips from the EPA and others:

• Consider the source.Choose recycled or sustainable sourced materials. Shop local to support area shops, makers, and artisans while reducing shipping costs and impacts.
• Rethink the wrap. Reuse maps, comics, newsprint, kid art, or posters as gift wrap. Wrap gifts in recycled paper or a reusable bag. Or skip the gift wrap, hide the gifts, and leave clues or trails for kids to follow. Believe it or not, despite Christmas paper being typically made of paper, most of the time you can’t actually recycle it. Forget the foil and glittery paper this Christmas and opt for a more subtle style.
• Keep it simple.For larger gatherings, choose recyclable or compostable service items. All food-soiled paper products are commercially compostable, unless plastic- or foil-coated.
• Reuse packing and shipping materials. Save ribbons, bows, boxes, bags, and décor for the next holiday.
• Recycle old electronics and batteries.
• Compost your food scraps.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources wishes you and your family a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources is reminding snowmobile and off-highway vehicle owners and users, to renew their registrations before January 1st, 2020. Registrations for snowmobiles and OHVs purchased during the 2019 registration cycle will expire on December 31, 2019. Any decal displayed on a machine with a “19” printed on it will no longer be valid for machines to be used on snowmobile trails, public ice, or the OHV parks. Any registration that is not renewed prior to January 1, 2020 will have a late penalty of $5.00 applied to the registration cost.

All permits, which include resident snowmobiles and nonresident snowmobiles and OHVs, also expire on December 31, 2019. There is no late penalty for a permit purchased after January 1 as they are issued for a calendar year. User permits are required for nonresident and resident snowmobiles used on public land or ice. Nonresident off road vehicles registered in their home state must display a user permit. Residents operating an off-highway vehicle do not need a user permit.

Red Oak Police early this (Wednesday) morning, arrested a man on a warrant out of Missouri. 62-year old Thomas Raymond Wells, II, of Red Oak, was taken into custody a little after 12-a.m., on the warrant for Possession of Dangerous Drugs. Wells was transported to the Montgomery County Jail and held without bond, pending transport to Missouri.

(Radio Iowa) — The end of the 20-teens is just days away and the tally isn’t yet final, but the state has gained population in the last decade — and at a slightly stronger pace than some neighbors.

Iowa is in the midst of its longest period of population growth according to Gary Krob. He’s the coordinator of the State Data Center in the State Library of Iowa. “We’ve seen consistent growth every year since the mid-80s,” Krob says. “Generally, it’s more of what I like to call slow and steady growth, but there is growth.”

The U.S. Census Bureau is likely to release a 2019 estimate soon, but the agency estimated more then three-point-one MILLION people were living in the state by July of 2018. That’s three-point-six percent population growth since the beginning of the decade. “If you look at the neighboring states around us, we actually grew at a faster rate than Wisconsin. Illinois has population loss currently. We grew than Missouri. We grew faster than Kansas,” Krob says. “Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota grew faster than we did, but the rest of the states around us actually did not grow at the same rate that we did.” In addition, Iowa no longer ranks among the top five oldest states. At the beginning of the decade, Iowa ranked fifth in the percentage of residents who were over the age of 65 and only two other states had more residents above the age of 85.

“In both those cases we rank now 17th for 65-and-over and sixth for 85-and-over, so those populations are increasing in our state, but there are other states that are seeing larger increases in the elderly population,” Krob says. “That’s something that I think sometimes people assume Iowa is aging at a faster rate than other states and that’s really just not the case.”

Nearly 22-thousand people have moved out of Iowa this decade — but the state’s population was able to grow steadily because Krob says more than twice that many people from other countries moved into Iowa. The state’s minority populations are growing, too.  “The African American population has increased by about 36 percent in the last eight years,” Krob says. “The Hispanic population has increased by about 28 percent.”

The biggest jump was in the Asian population. The number of Iowa residents of Asian descent grew 58 percent from 2010 to 2018. Krob reminds Iowans the 2020 Census begins just a few weeks into the next decade. “And there will be forms and postcards and a way to fill out the Census online,” Krob says. “and all that will start hitting mailboxes in late February and it’s really important for our state that we make sure everyone gets counted and in the right spot so that we can make sure that the funding and the resources that are needed are properly allocated.”

(Radio Iowa) — Iowa is working with five other states to study the availability of alternative fuel along Interstate 80. A federal grant will help determine where electric vehicles can be charged and where compressed natural gas is available. Stu Anderson, the Iowa D-O-T’s director of the planning, says the range of the current “early generation” electric vehicles depends on the temperature and wind.

“We have some charging infrastructure which is called Level 2 which charge at a slower rate and take longer to charge,” Anderson says, “but what we really need on these corridors for long-distance travel are the DC fast charging stations, direct current fast charging stations, which do a really high charge in a short period of time.”

Drivers of these vehicles often suffer from something called “range anxiety,” as there are long stretches of road where there are no charging or fill stations. For now, Iowa only has three of the DC-3, or fast charge stations, in Council Bluffs, Des Moines, and Coralville, while Tesla has some stations for its own vehicles.

Anderson says, “So what this planning effort will do is try to really identify the ideal location to fill in gaps and also help identify partnerships to get those facilities developed.”  Of those three fast charge sites in Iowa, two are located at gas stations, while the third is in the parking lot of a Walmart. The difference between Level 2 and the D-C-3 charging stations is four to six hours versus 20 to 30 minutes. Anderson says the cost of filling in those gaps with the appropriate electrical service to fast-charge electric vehicles can be very expensive.

“Of course, it’s more than just the charging infrastructure,” he says. “These sites also need to have amenities for the public — some sort of shelter, rest room facilities, adequate lighting, and ideally there’s some kind of restaurant or food availability. So that all comes into the discussion as well.”

From coast to coast, Interstate 80 is 29-hundred miles long. The eastern half, known as the Mid-America Corridor, goes from New Jersey, through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, to the western border of Iowa. That includes 306 miles of interstate in Iowa.

(Thanks to Herb Trix, WVIK, Rock Island)