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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.8MB)

Subscribe: RSS

The thought that, some of the newness of setting off fireworks might wear off in the second year of their legal use, hasn’t seem to be the case in some of the state’s larger cities. A spokesman with the Des Moines police department says calls about fireworks nearly doubled this year — despite a ban on their use in the capital city. Calls went from 270 to 521 and there were no arrests or citations issued. The Davenport Police Department responded to 480 fireworks calls — which was a nearly 27 percent increase from the same period last year. Davenport police reported 11 arrests or citations from fireworks calls. Cedar Rapids banned the use of fireworks after there were 948 fireworks complaints last year. Cedar Rapids public safety spokesman Greg Buelow says the complaints they had this year did drop closer to the number recorded in 2016 before fireworks became legal.  “Our most problematic days were 63 complaints on July 1st, 80 on July second, 117 on July third, 216 on July Fourth,” Beulow says.

He says once all the numbers are tallied it will be around 600 or so complaints. He says there were some cases where there were several calls about one person. “That’s one of the issues that you are going to have — it doesn’t mean that a majority of the people didn’t follow the ban — it just means that those who didn’t obviously were problematic, disrespectful of their neighbors and thwarted the law,” according to Beulow. Police issued eight citations this year for illegal fireworks use in Cedar Rapids, and he says it can be tough because an officer often has to see the act taking place. Buelow says another issue is the law doesn’t allow for the ban on the sale of fireworks in cities that have banned the use of them. “The analogy that we’ve used several times with people is like taking your kid to the ice cream store, putting an ice cream cone in their hand and telling them them not to lick it,” Beulow says. “I mean, very difficult when they are being sold right in your community and it’s not illegal to possess.”

Cedar Rapids does have a nuisance ordinance where they can charge someone for the cost of sending police to their home multiple times for fireworks complaints. Beulow says the department will be looking at some other tools they can use next year. “Hopefully the issue will be involving more of a community awareness campaign. Again, we can’t reiterate enough that it’s problematic to have fireworks in a community. We hear this all the time ‘well teh state gave us this right.’ Well, the state was also wise enough to say local jurisdictions should have some control,” he says.

Beulow says his biggest disappointment is people who don’t have enough respect for their neighbors and will shoot off fireworks that send debris onto other homes and yards. And shooting them off without thinking about how the noise might impact neighbors. “That’s the problems that we’re having — and it’s caused a number of disturbances in our community — some confrontations even that officers have responded to,” Beulow says.  He says they know of at least six fires that started this year as a result of fireworks — including one where a car was destroyed in a garage.

(Radio Iowa)

BURLINGTON, Iowa (AP) — A Missouri man already given a life sentence for murder in Iowa has given 12 years for attacking two guards in the Des Moines County Jail in Burlington. Court records show 24-year-old Jorge Sanders-Galvez, of St. Louis, was sentenced Monday. He’d pleaded guilty to willful injury and to assault on a correctional officer. Sanders-Galvez was given a life sentence for his role in killing a gender-fluid Burlington teenager, Kedarie Johnson.

The two officers were attacked Dec. 10 by Sanders-Galvez and two other inmates. Court records say the two other inmates, Earl Booth-Harris and Bobby Morris, also pleaded guilty. Each also was given to 12 years.
Booth-Harris is serving a life sentence in a different slaying.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.8MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley says he has a “favorable” impression of President Trump’s nominee for the opening on the U.S. Supreme Court. “I’ve been following him on the D.C. Circuit Court and he’s been pretty much a person that believes in the Constitution as basic law and something to protect the people from their government,” Grassley said.  Grassley was at the White House last (Monday) night as Trump revealed Brett Kavanaugh was his pick for the opening on the nation’s highest court. Trump said he wants “swift confirmation” in the Senate for Kavanaugh. Grassley, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, will lead the confirmation hearings for Kavanaugh. “We’ll just be very expeditious, but we’re going to do it with certainty to do our constitutional job, so we can’t rush it just for the sake of rushing,” Grassley said. “We’re going to give due consideration, as you would expect us to do.”

Kavanaugh has been a federal appeals court judge for the past 12 years and has written more than 300 opinions. Grassley says his committee will hire additional staff to conduct a thorough review of Kavanaugh’s judicial record. During a speech on the senate floor Monday, Grassley criticized Democrats in the Senate who’ve been saying they could not support any of the 25 candidates Trump was considering for the court. “Just thought it was ridiculous. I think I used the word silliness,” Grassley told Radio Iowa last night.

Senator Joni Ernst, who was also at the White House for last (Monday) night’s announcement, issued a written statement. Ernst says Kavanaugh is “highly-qualified, well-respected” and someone who deserves “timely confirmation” to the Supreme Court. Groups in the “Why Courts Matter Iowa” coalition issued a far different assessment, calling Kavanaugh “as far from mainstream as you can get” and “handpicked” to overturn the 1973 court ruling that legalized abortion.

(Radio Iowa)

The superintendent of Algona Schools has resigned after being accused of bullying a female administrator. Marty Fonley had been superintendent of the Algona Community School District since 2007. In a resignation letter submitted on Friday, Fonley stated that “many negative insinuations” had been made over the past year about budget cuts in the district. Fonley said critics had attempted to “soil” his reputation. An Algona principal whose position within the district was eliminated in the budget cuts got a standing ovation at the school board’s June meeting when she publicly stated she had been targeted for elimination by the superintendent.

The Algona School Board met briefly Friday and accepted Fonley’s resignation. They’ve agreed to pay his salary and insurance benefits through June 30th of next year, even if he lands a new job. That package will continue the following year if he remains unemployed for the 2019-2020 school year. The Algona School Board met Monday night, to begin the search for a new superintendent.

(Radio Iowa)

Clean-up continues in northwest Iowa near Doon where 32 B-N-S-F railcars carrying oil derailed June 22. Fourteen of the 32 cars leaked approximately 230-thousand gallons of crude oil into flooded farm fields, some it making into the Little Rock River. The trains began running again in three days — but the D-N-R’s Environment Program Supervisor, Ken Hessenius, says there’s lots of clean up left to be done. “There’ll certainly be a period of weeks and months of cleanup of that oil and residue that has escaped into the river floodplain. There’ll be a lot of negative removal and there’ll be some soil removal undoubtedly,” Hessenius says.

Hessenius says the conditions around the accident site are making it tough to get right in. “Of course flooding has added to some of the headache here in that areas are not accessible to equipment to get in there to do some of the necessary cleanup,” he explains. Flooding is believe to have caused the cars to derail. Hessenius says he’s never had to deal with a spill of oil this large in his 30-year history in northwest Iowa. “There was a release — actually a derailment of ethanol cars — near Graetnger about a year-and-a-half ago that we worked with,” Hessenius “The only other thing that I can think of in my years here was the explosion at the Terra nitrogen blast down near Sergeant Bluff. And I believe that was 1994, and that was a release of anhydrous ammonia and other chemicals.”

At this point, the number of gallons spilled is still an estimate. Hessenius thinks it’s a fairly accurate assessment of the total and the railroad will eventually come up with final numbers.  Hessenius says he thinks the response went very well with good cooperation between the railroad, the city of Doon, and its residents.

(Radio Iowa)

Sheriff’s officials in Adams County report deputies were dispatched to the Riverview Apartments in Corning at around 12:25-a.m. today (Tuesday), for a report of an intoxicated man who was allegedly threatening to break windows out of vehicles. An investigation resulted in the arrest of Dalton Nicholson, of Corning, for Public Intoxication, and Disorderly Conduct. Nicholson was being held in the Adams County Jail on a $600 bond.

FOUNTAIN HILLS, Ariz. (AP) — An Arizona grand jury has indicted a man on manslaughter charges in the deaths of four pedestrians near Phoenix four months ago. Authorities say the SUV 27-year old Alex Bashaw was driving, jumped a curb and struck married couples from Iowa and Canada as they waited to cross a street in Fountain Hills about 32 miles northeast of Phoenix. Three people were killed in the collision and the fourth person died of his injuries months later. 72-year-old Robert Bonta and his 71-year-old wife Karen, of Wever, IA, died in the crash.

Maricopa County Sheriff’s officials say Bashaw, who showed no signs of impairment following the crash, moved to Ohio after the March 23 collision. They say he’s been arrested on the grand jury warrant and is awaiting extradition to Maricopa County.

While parts of central Iowa saw severe flash flooding and damage to hundreds of homes after recent rains, Missouri River levels are expected to stay high throughout summer and into fall. Hydrologist Kevin Stamm, with the U-S Army Corps of Engineers, says they’re revising up all estimates for the Missouri due to unusually high mountain snowpack run-off.  Stamm says, “The 2018 calendar year run-off forecast for the Upper Missouri basin above Sioux City, Iowa, is 39.8 million acre feet, which is 150% of average.”

June run-off into the system above Sioux City was about 300-percent of normal. Joel Knofczynski, a senior hydraulic engineer in the Corps’ Omaha office, says there’s still room in the reservoirs upriver to hold back very large quantities of water.”Reservoir system storage is currently 68.4 million acre feet, or 12.3 million acre feet into the 16.3 million acre feet of available flood storage,” Knofczynski says. “Approximately 25% of the flood storage is still available to capture run-off.”

Knofczynski says releases from Gavins Point Dam near Yankton are already strong and they’ll increase substantially over the next few days. “Currently, Gavins Point releases are 42,000 cubic feet per second and will be increased to 60,000 cubic feet per second and possibly higher as downstream tributary flows recede,” he says.

The Corps expects to maintain the high flows into the fall months to get the upstream reservoirs down to ideal winter levels.

(Radio Iowa)