(Atlantic, Iowa) – Atlantic Rising and volunteers could be seen out delivering food boxes on Thursday, December 15th in the evening. The organization began collecting donations and nominations in early November and completed another successful program. Atlantic Rising Social Chair, Kelsey Beschorner said “We anticipated to see a continued increase in nominations due to the sustained challenges of COVID-19. We were over-joyed to see the constant support of our community in both donations and volunteers.”

This year, Atlantic Rising was able to provide a holiday meal to over 180 individuals and families all throughout Cass County. The donations received from the community totaled over $6,200, which allowed each box to contain more items and each nomination to be fulfilled. Atlantic Rising teamed up with the Washington G.E.M, a local 4-H group, who helped assemble, pack, and load the vehicles with the Christmas boxes which made the process run smoothly.

Photo & info. courtesy Kelsey Beschorner

“Atlantic Rising is proud to carry on and continue to grow this tradition of the Christmas Box program. We are so thankful for our volunteers and the ability to partner with Hy-Vee who makes this big project a huge success,” Beschorner added.

If you are interested in joining Atlantic Rising and finding out what they are involved in throughout the year, you can contact Kelsey at 712-243-3017 or kelsey@atlanticiowa.com. The membership application can also be found at www.atlanticiowa.com.

(Des Moines, Iowa) – The Iowa Insurance Division’s Fraud Bureau reports a Washington, Iowa man, 46-year-old Thomas Stephanie, received a deferred judgment on December 19, 2022 and was placed on probation for five years following a guilty plea on October 26, 2022, to one count of Presenting False Information, a class “D” Felony, following an investigation by the Iowa Insurance Division’s Fraud Bureau. Stephanie was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $3,181.60 and a civil penalty in the amount of $1,025.

The charges against Stephanie stem from an investigation which began in June 2022. According to criminal complaints filed by the Iowa Insurance Division’s Fraud Bureau, Stephanie provided false statements to an insurer in connection with a workers’ compensation insurance claim. Stephanie received insurance benefits due to these false statements. Stephanie was arrested on August 10, 2022.

Thomas Stephanie. Photo courtesy of the Jefferson County Jail.

Iowans with information about insurance fraud are encouraged to contact the Iowa Insurance Division’s Fraud Bureau at 515-654-6556.

DES MOINES, IA – A Judge has sentenced a man from Des Moines to serve 20-years in prison, on drug and weapon charges. The sentence was handed down Monday, against 34-year-old Michael Joseph Wilson, for his role in crimes that include: conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, heroin, and MDMA; possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime; attempt to possess contraband in prison; and violation of supervised release.

In May 2021, law enforcement executed a search warrant at Wilson’s Des Moines residence. Officers found methamphetamine, heroin, MDMA, and a loaded revolver. At the time, Wilson was on federal supervised release for an Indiana firearm conviction. While in the Polk County Jail awaiting sentencing, Wilson worked with others in an attempt to get contraband, specifically K2, into the jail by imitating legal mail.

At sentencing, the Court sentenced Wilson to: 120 months for conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, 60 months (5-years) for possessing a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking, 12 months for attempting to possess contraband in prison, and 48 months (2-years) for violating his supervised release. Each sentence must be served consecutively, for a total of term of 240 months in prison.

The investigation was conducted by the Des Moines Police Department, United States Marshals Service, and Polk County Sheriff’s Office. It was prosecuted by the U-S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.

(Radio Iowa) – With a winter storm moving into the state, officials at the Des Moines International Airport are advising travelers to keep a close watch on flight delays and cancellations. Airport spokeswoman Kayla Kovarna says ground crews will be taking time to prevent ice buildup on planes and that’s what often causes delays.  “Aircraft have to be pushed back to a special area on the ramp so that we can collect that chemical,” Kovarna says. “So they get pushed back, then the aircraft is de-iced, and then it has to be cleared by air traffic control to take off.”

Kovarna says the quickest way to get news of delays and cancellations is through a specific airline’s mobile app. The airport expects to see an uptick in passengers this holiday season with up to 70-thousand people departing from Des Moines over the last two weeks of December.

LED Display – Airport flight status board

Kovarna says travelers can expect to wait longer getting on and off their flights as ground crews clear ice from the planes. “Ground crews, they are responsible for both that de-icing and de-planing,” she says, “so, give them some grace, pack that ‘Iowa nice’ and just be patient because it might take you a little bit longer to get to the gate and de-planed.”

Kovarna says airport staff are in charge of clearing snow from runways, but it’s the airlines that make the call to delay or cancel flights. She says the Des Moines airport has never closed completely for weather since the Airport Authority took over management in 2011.

(reporting by Grant Gerlock, Iowa Public Radio)

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Officials with Atlantic Municipal Utilities are offering some tips on helping your home fight the extreme frigid temperatures and wind chills over the next few days. They say that our homes’ heating systems are NOT designed for -20 to -30-degree temperatures with wind chills into -40 and up to -50+. Newer homes will struggle to maintain temperature and older homes will NOT maintain temperature and the temperature WILL drop while the heating system is working at full capacity. They suggest the following:

1. Raise the temperature in your home on Wednesday morning, 2 to 4 degrees above your normal setting.

2. Take all programmable thermostats out of setback mode and set on a permanent HOLD.

3. If you have a furnace; replace the filter.

4. Keep garage doors closed.

5. Limit opening exterior doors.

6. Make sure air vents and radiators are not blocked or obstructed.

7. If you have a 90%+ furnace and boiler: You must keep the intake and exhaust clear of ice and snow. During these cold temperatures, ice can build up. A 90%+ furnace and boiler have 2 white PVC pipes; an exhaust pipe and an intake pipe that are generally on the side or back of your home. In some instances, they are on your roof, do NOT go on your roof to clear the pipe.

• If the temperature in your home is dropping and your radiators are HOT with boiler systems or you have HOT air coming out of your vents with furnaces DO NOT PANIC. Please make sure that your heating system continues to operate.
• If the temperatures drop in your home, it will not be able to recover until temperatures rise and the windchill diminishes. Our heating systems cannot overcome temperatures -20 to -30 with wind chill up to -50+. They are sized to operate at 0 degrees outdoor. Put your thermostat on hold 70 degrees or higher.
• To help minimize temperature loss you can boil water, make soup, or stews; they help introduce humidity and warmer temperatures into your home.

DO NOT USE YOUR OVEN or a GRILL TO HEAT YOUR HOME.

• Please check on neighbors and elderly residents during these extreme temperatures. Stay warm and safe this week.

(Audubon, Iowa) – Audubon Community School District Superintendent Eric Trager reported to the School Board, Monday, an update on the District’s Building Project. Mr. Trager said the news there was “pretty much all positive.”

He said they still have the whole downstairs area to work on, however, so there might be some surprises in-store…but hopefully not.

In other business, the Audubon School Board approved a request to SBRC for MSA-Dropout Prevention. And, they discussed their Board goals.

The Audubon School District will be on Winter Break from Dec. 22nd through Jan. 2, 2023.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The City Council will meet this evening during a regularly scheduled session. On their agenda, is action on passing two resolutions. The first is for the Final Plat associated with the Prairie Hills Development Subdivision, in Atlantic. During their meeting on Nov. 16th, the Council adopted the preliminary plat for the project. The final plat was reviewed by the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission on Dec. 13th. It was unanimously adopted and sent to the City Council with a recommendation for final approval. The final plat retains the lot layouts of the preliminary plat, but only formalizes lots 1 through 17. Those lots are the target for Phase 1 of the housing development project.

The second Resolution is to Amend the City of Atlantic’s Personnel Policy, “By repealing and replacing Series 100 and Series 200 Codes through 206, with New Codes numbered as the same.” City Administrator John Lund says he and Mayor Grace Garrett spent a considerable amount of time the past Spring, Summer and Early Fall, going through the City’s Personnel Policy, and the Personnel and Finance Committee met in September and reviewed the proposed changes. The Committee has endorsed the proposed amendments as written.

In his report to the Council, John Lund will discuss and/or present the City’s Department Head reports.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Workforce Development Director, Beth Townsend says one of the accomplishments of her agency this year has been to help people who lose their job get a new one faster. “We started the year in January with the new re-employment case management system. And that was a process where we started contacting individuals who filed for unemployment, the very first week that they that they filed. So we’ve helped almost 30-thousand Iowans,” she says. Towsend says they can’t point to specific numbers yet, but believe it has helped the state recover from the post-pandemic workforce crisis

“It’s too early to tell you know what impact that’s had on on the number of weeks that people stay on unemployment,” Townsend says. “But we know anecdotally we’ve heard over and over again about how this has really helped people kind of expand their horizons in terms of their work search.” Unemployment did inch up slightly in the last four months — but Townsend says there’s an indicator that people are finding new jobs.

“What we’ve seen in 2022, is people are not staying on unemployment as long as they previously had — which which is reflected in the low amount of unemployment benefits that we’ve paid, even though the unemployment rate itself or I mean, the unemployment benefit itself goes up every year to keep up with inflation. The amount, the total amount is less so fewer people were drying it for shorter periods of time,” according to Townsend. She says the cut in the number of weeks people can draw unemployment benefits that started in July does not figure into the equation yet. Townsend says it looks like it looks by the end the year the state will pay about 260 million dollars in benefits, when that is about 400 million dollars.

“That’s a really good indication that we’re helping people get back to work faster, that they’re taking advantage of all the opportunities that had been available during this time where we’ve had, you know, high number of job openings and fewer people available to fill those jobs,” Townsend says. She says they will continue working in 2023 to get those who haven’t returned to work after dropping out of the job market during the pandemic back into jobs.

(Radio Iowa) – Strong winds, heavy snow and sub-zero temperatures are expected to start hitting Iowa later today (Wednesday) and it’s coming as the Iowa Department of Transportation is still clearing last week’s snow. Craig Bargfrede, the D-O-T’s winter operations administrator, says the forecast wind gusts of up to 50 miles per hour will make it even harder to clear the roads. “With the amount of snow that they’re talking and the wind that they’re talking, it’s very possible that we could see some road closures,” Bargfrede says, “especially up in the northern part of the state and northeastern part of the state.” He says they’ll work with state patrol staff on whether to make road closures.

(File photo) I 80 W Mile Marker 70. IA DOT Snowplow View 5:14-pm 2/1/15

He advises holiday travelers to watch the weather forecast closely. Bargfrede says given the cold, they’ve lost one important snow-fighting tool. “A lot of times ahead of a storm, we’ll go out and we’ll put down brine, so we have material out on the pavement or ahead of the storm so that when the storm starts, it can get activated and start doing its job,” he says. “With the temperatures the way they are, that’s not going to be a viable solution for us.” Bargfrede says strong winds will also create visibility issues.

(reporting by Kendall Crawford, Iowa Public Radio)

(Radio Iowa) – The head of the Food Bank of Iowa says donations from grocery stores and other retailers have decreased and, in the first nine months of the year, her organization’s budget for BUYING food soared 650 percent. Michelle Book is president and C-E-O of the Food Bank of Iowa. “As we go out to procure food, we’re seeing increased prices, a lack of what we need in the marketplace, but then also we have to contract for people to get it to us,” Book says, “so freight costs have also risen extraordinarily.”

The Food Bank of Iowa is BUYING more food because the major food retailers and food processors that typically donate food are donating less because their inventory is down. “People have gotten more comfortable with shelves being cleaned off at the end of the day, there’s just less food to rescue to get back into our food pantry network.” A retired Arizona businessman who volunteered at a soup kitchen came up with the food bank concept after a homeless woman told him she found edible food in the garbage behind a grocery store, but had nowhere to store it. Book says the concept is called food rescue.

“Keeping food out of landfills, working with food retailers to take that food that’s not sellable, but edible and putting it back into the system and so we so that via our smaller, frontline partners — our food pantries,” Book says. The Food Bank of Iowa supplies food pantries in 55 Iowa counties. Book made her comments during a recent appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa P-B-S.