(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s unemployment rate dropped a tenth of a percent in March. Last month’s two-point-eight percent unemployment rate is half a percent lower than it was a year ago. The percentage of working age Iowans who have a job or are actively looking for one increased to 68-point-two percent. Iowa Workforce Development director Beth Townsend says it’s a sign people who quit a job or retired during the pandemic are returning to the labor market. “Even though it’s a positive sign the unemployment rate is dropping we really are focused on getting more Iowans back in the workforce,” Townsend says. “We were at about 69.5% before the pandemic and so we want to get back that number or even higher.”

The retirement rate was higher than projected during the pandemic and Townsend says there are a combination of factors prompting those people to return to the workforce. “Whether it’s due to inflation impacting their retirement savings and if they’re on a fixed income, it’s not going as far as they planned…and older workers who may have retired earlier than they had planned wanting to come and because we have so many open jobs they can be more selective,” Townsend says. “Obviously the higher wage has gone up significantly across all industries, so there’s greater opportunity to earn more money in today’s job market.”

Government records indicate 27-hundred workers started new jobs in March. Nursing and residential care facilities were responsible for most of the thousand or so jobs added in the health care sector.  “Nursing has always been the highest demand occupation,” Townsend says. Over the past three months, Iowa’s manufacturing sector has bounced back from what Townsend describes as a weak fourth quarter. “We’re doing well in manufacturing. We’ve added 700 jobs in March. We’ve added almost 2000 jobs in the last three months in manufacturing. We’re up 3900 jobs in manufacturing since last March. We’re up 3800 jobs in construction since last March,” Townsend says. “Manufacturing and construction are trending in the right direction in Iowa.”

There were about a thousand job losses in Iowa’s transportation, warehousing and utility industries. Townsend says that may be due to supply chain issues. The leisure and hospitality industries in Iowa have added more than 51-hundred jobs since last March as the sector continues to bounce back from pandemic closures.

(Adel, Iowa) – Sheriff’s officials in Dallas County report a man died during a single-vehicle accident today (Thursday), south of Dawson. Dallas County Deputies and Dallas County EMS were dispatched at around 12:40-a.m. scene in the 12000 block of 160th Street. When Deputies arrived, they located a truck, on it’s top, in the north ditch of 160th Street.

Deputies located a single occupant inside of the vehicle who was deceased. The occupant was identified as Kurtis Gustaveson, 29 years old, of Perry, Iowa.

The cause of the accident remains under investigation. The Perry Police Department and the Perry Fire Department assisted in this investigation.

(Radio Iowa) – Damage assessment teams from the National Weather Service are being dispatched to multiple locations in western Iowa after severe thunderstorms last (Wednesday) night spun off at least three suspected tornadoes. Meteorologist Dylan Dodson, at the weather service office in metro Des Moines, says they don’t have any reports of significant tornado damage, at least not yet. “There were a couple of tornadoes. We don’t have an exact number yet,” Dodson says. “Obviously, there’s going to be surveys that go out for those, but yes, there were a few tornadoes out in western Iowa that were reported.”

Tornadoes are believed to have touched down near Macedonia, Sidney and Thurman, while a funnel cloud was also spotted in the skies near Kiron, though it may not have reached the ground. There are scattered hail reports from Sioux City all the way across Iowa to Dubuque, while baseball-sized hail dinged roofs, shattered windows, destroyed siding and wrecked vehicles in Crawford County. “Most of our hail remained fairly low-end, but there were some bigger sizes out in the west, especially,” Dodson says. “We saw some three-inch hail out there, and then over kind of more in central Iowa, we saw a few reports of inch hail, so about quarter- to maybe half dollar-size.”

North English reported getting more than two inches of rain during the cloudburst, while winds in central Iowa peaked at 62 miles an hour. “The strongest report that we’ve seen so far was at the Des Moines Airport. That was the strongest recorded that we had,” Dodson says. “There were others that were a little bit lower than that, around that 50-mile per hour, maybe 55-mile per hour range.”

Spring arrived on the 20th of March, exactly a month ago, yet Dodson says there’s still snow in the forecast on Friday for parts of northwest and north-central Iowa.

(Creston, Iowa) – The Creston Police Department reports a man was arrested at his home Wednesday afternoon. 40-year-old Mark Anthony Weems, Jr., of Creston, was taken into custody on two Union County warrants charging him with 2-counts of Theft in the 1st Degree, Theft in the 3rd Degree and Theft in the 4th Degree. The second warrant was 2-counts of Theft in the 5th Degree. Additional details were not provided.

Weems, Jr., was being held in the Union County Jail on $23,600 bond.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The Atlantic City Council, Wednesday, passed resolutions on two separate bids for two separate properties. Both bids were One-dollar, for properties located at 1014/1016 E. 3^rd Street Place, the other at 1310 Chestnut Street. The latter was sold to Jay and Kelsi Eden, who, as previously mentioned, will begin the process of gutting a decaying, unsafe for occupation, home. The couple intend to “flip” the house, once extensive work is completed. The Council chose to allow them one-year for construction. Councilman Pat McCurdy..

Dexter Dodson, with Atlantic High School, placed a bid for 1014/1016 3^rd Street Place. He intends to build a single family home on this lot using the students in the building trades program. McCurdy said he thinks it’s a wonderful idea.

Councilperson Elaine Otte, agreed, and said the project should benefit the school district’s Building Trades program.

The Council issued a recommendation to have City Administrator John Lund to proceed with making a request by City Attorney Dave Wiederstein to work with the Atlantic Community School District on the sale of the properties on E. 3^rd Street Place.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The City Council in Atlantic, Wednesday, approved the Fiscal Year 2024 Budget. Their approval followed a public hearing, during which there were no comments received.

City Administrator John Lund has said the proposed budget for FY 2024 totals $14,794,803, an increase of 4.36% – or $618,676 – over the City’s FY 2023 budget. He noted however, that the budget “Should be considered [to be] a tentative budget that may receive a total amendment shortly after it begins in July, 2023.” That’s because, he says, of the legislature’s failure to send a final budget with an overhaul to the property tax system in Iowa. Lun

Lund says “While this may seem like a modest change in budget, however, the one-time American Rescue Plan funding of $488,970 and unusually high local option sales tax dollars of $1,337,372 in the FY 2023 budget, which are not present in the FY 2024 budget, disguise several new structural revenues, new structural revenue losses, and new structural expenditures.”

Under the City’s budget, the combined property tax levy will increase from $16.56 to $16.79, in order “to favorably position the City if the Iowa State Senate’s version of property tax reform is implemented.” Lund says “The overall budget accomplishes key priorities of the Mayor and Council in funding for community beautification, housing economic development, and code enforcement support.” A seven percent increase in compensation to all City employees is included, along with MOU (Memorandum Of Understanding) “allowing unionized employees to see this benefit.” The Council also approved the FY24 Ten Year Capital Improvement Plan following a public hearing in which there were also no comments. In other business, the Atlantic City resolutions adopting wages for seasonal parks and recreation and pool employees, and, setting salaries for appointed officers and employees of the City of Atlantic.

At the end of the meeting, the Council surprised City Administrator John Lund, by presenting him with a Gold Star Award plaque, thanking him for all of his hard work. Councilman Dana Halder….

Lund thanked the Council, shook hands with Halder, and hugged the Mayor.

(Radio Iowa) – The University of Iowa received approval from the Board of Regents facilities committee to move ahead with work on two prominent buildings on campus. U-I Vice President, Rod Lehnertz, says they plan to remodel the seventh floor of the Van Allen building, which was built in the 1960s. Lehnertz says the space science and spaceflight hardware work done in the building is renowned nationwide. He says NASA expectations are high for research space and they need to keep up.

The other project involves expanding the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Stead Family Children’s Hospital into the empty seventh floor of the hospital. He says it would be a 40 to 49 million dollar proejct — with the actual cost pinned down through the construction. The Children’s Hospital has gotten nationwide attention for “The Wave,” where fans and players in nearby Kinnick Stadium turn and wave to the patients following the end of the first quarter of Hawkeye football games.

The full Board of Regents is expected to approve the proposals today (Thursday).

(Multiple area counties) – Large hail and heavy rain pummeled parts of western and southwest Iowa, Wednesday evening through late Wednesday night. Some areas also saw street flooding as the result of heavy rain. There was photographic evidence of funnel clouds spinning their way downward. Some reached the ground, officially becoming a tornado.

National Weather Service reports and posts on social media showed the extent of the hail damage, which was most severe in Mills, Crawford and Sac Counties, where hail ranging in size from quarters to tennis balls and baseballs, fell and caused heavy damage to vehicles, siding and other property. Widespread hail damage reports came in from Ricketts, Kiron, Schleswig and Charter Oak, inc Crawford County, while just pea-size hail was observed a little after 7:30-p.m., in Atlantic.

Street flooding was reported at some locations in Mills and Pottawattamie Counties. KETV in Omaha says the Classic Café in Malvern had its roof pounded by hail the size of golf balls, and was forced to deal with severe leaking. The restaurant’s owner said water came down so hard it seemed like it was raining inside, but when the storm hit, her staff sprung into action and used everything available to them to capture the leaks and mop-up.

Tornados were observed near Macedonia, Sidney and Thurman, while multiple funnels clouds were observed elsewhere, including as far north as Kiron, in Sac County.  There were no reports of injuries stemming from the recent storms. (Click on the images below to enlarge). Parts of eastern Nebraska also experienced damage from large hail.

Crawford County EMA Photo

(Radio Iowa) – The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics received approval today (Wednesday) to lease a building in Sioux City as part of an effort to keep a program that produces doctors. David Kieft told the Board of Regents that the building houses the Siouxland Medical Education Foundation family medicine practice and its three-year residency program.”This is the only such search residency facility west of Des Moines,” Keift says. He says the program has been highly collaborative with the University of Iowa Family Medicine Residency.

“The program may be failing in its existing operations and so the University of Iowa has agreed to a 10-year lease agreement for the facility. It’s with Siouxland Medical Education Foundation,” he says. Keft says they hope the University of Iowa intervention will keep the Siouxland program from closing. Two other programs have closed in the past three years, resulting in 12 fewer family physicians in Iowa per year.

The U-I-H-C will pay all operating costs of the building and has the first option to buy it. The initial lease term would commence in June 2023 and end on June 30, 2033. There are two five-year renewal options.