The Red Oak Police Department reports 45-year old Raymond Lee Briggs, of Red Oak, was arrested Tuesday on a 5th degree Theft charge. Briggs was arrested in the 400 Block of North 3rd Street where he was found in possession of stolen property from a vehicle burglary that had occurred 20 minutes prior. Briggs was taken to the Montgomery County Law Center and held on $300 cash bond. There is still an open investigation on the vehicle burglary.

A head-on crash Tuesday afternoon east of Shenandoah has claimed the life of the Shenandoah High School Volleyball Coach. The Iowa State Patrol reports 45-year old Chad Van Houten of Shenandoah died at the scene of the crash at around 2:30-p.m., four-miles West of E Avenue on 190th Street. The driver of the other vehicle, 64-year old Larry Wise of Clarinda, was transported to the Shenandoah Hospital by ambulance. Both men were wearing their seat belts.

Officials say Van Houten was westbound on 190th Street in a 2003 Dodge Intrepid, while  Wise was eastbound in a 2006 GMC pickup. Their vehicles met at the crest of a hill and collided in an offset, yet head-on manner. The accident remains under investigation.

Van Houten coached volleyball at Shenandoah for more than 5-years. He also worked as a guard for the Iowa Department of Corrections in Clarinda, and co-owned a drug store in Clarinda, along with his wife, Annie. Tuesday’s school board meeting in Shenandoah was postponed, and grief counselors called-in to help students, staff and the community deal with the loss.

Council Bluffs is preparing for 25-thousand visitors as RAGBRAI begins this weekend. The Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa brings in bicyclists from around the world and they’ll start the west-to-east trek in Council Bluffs this year. Kathy Fiscus, with the Council Bluffs Convention and Visitors Bureau, says 20 committees have been working on RAGBRAI preparations for several months, with public safety as the top priority.

Fiscus says, “That means examining the route to make sure the streets are in good shape, to consider where directional signage should go so that semi-truck traffic and RVs and campers and bicycles don’t tangle up and create a mishap.” Fiscus says it’s an honor for Council Bluffs to be the first host city for this year’s big cycling event. “It’s a way to show, not only Iowans, but the world, our beautiful city,” she says. “This year, the tire dip is at the Tom Hanafan River’s Edge Park and the exit route this year will go through Council Bluffs, so the riders will see our beautiful Bayliss Park, our historic 100 block of Broadway, for example.”

Council Bluffs hosted RAGBRAI in 2009 and was designated then as City of the Year. Fiscus says 15-thousand bicyclists are expected to leave Council Bluffs Sunday morning for the start of the week-long RAGBRAI. Riders will also pass through Harlan, Perry, Des Moines, Knoxville, Oskaloosa and Fairfield along the route. RAGBRAI ends on July 27th in Fort Madison.

(Radio Iowa)

Clarinda Police Chief Keith Brothers reports a Page County Sheriff’s vehicle was involved in an accident this (Tuesday) morning. According to the report, 43-year old Sheriff Lyle Palmer, of Shenandoah, was traveling west on Lincoln Avenue at around 11:05-a.m., when the 2009 Chevy Silverado Sheriff’s pickup he was driving, and a 2010 Mazda driven by 62-year old Rebecca Wiese, of Clarinda, collided in the middle of the uncontrolled intersection, in the westbound lane. The accident happened as Wiese was traveling north on 15th Street and approaching the intersection with Lincoln Street.

Wiese was issued a citation for Failure to Yield. Damage from the crash amounted to $10,000. No injuries were reported.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – State data shows that more than 3,200 license plates have been issued to local, state and federal agencies with a designation that allows them to avoid tickets from Iowa traffic cameras.  A recent speeding incident involving Gov. Terry Branstad’s state SUV has revealed how cities give a break to some government vehicles caught on red light and speed cameras.  Several cities said they do not issue tickets to drivers whose plates are not included in police databases because they’re conducting undercover or sensitive work.

Iowa Department of Transportation data requested by The Associated Press shows that 350 agencies have been issued at least one license plate with that designation, ranging from small police departments to the Transportation Security Administration. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources leads the way with 210.

You’ve heard of flash flooding. Now, there’s the flash drought. Parts of Iowa are seeing the driest July in decades and Jim Lee, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, says the term “flash drought” applies, as the heat wave came on very quickly following Iowa’s wettest-ever spring. “A drought can be characterized by a lack of rainfall, low levels of ground water and soil moisture, affects on plants and so forth and sometimes droughts occur over long time scales of several years, sometimes the occur over a period of a few months,” Lee says. “So for the shorter events, sometimes we refer to them as flash droughts.”

Lawns that aren’t being watered are becoming brown and crunchy, especially in parts of central Iowa, where it’s the driest July, so far, since 1976. Des Moines has only gotten six-hundredths of an inch of rain this month. Lee notes, the turnaround from earlier this year is unusual.

“We did have the wettest spring on record in Iowa in terms of the average statewide rainfall from March through May,” Lee says. “We’re not necessarily in a drought yet, in fact, very little of Iowa is in drought conditions right now, however, if we continue to see the dry pattern that we’ve seen established over the last couple of weeks persist through the rest of July, then we could enter that territory.”

Much of the state and a large portion of the region were hit with a drought that lasted the majority of last year, however, the rainy spring gave promise to a change for Iowa. Lee says it’s still not known whether this flash drought will become another full-fledged drought. Lee says, “The fortunate thing about events like this is that because we had that wet spring, we were able to replenish our soil moisture, subsoil moisture, river levels, reservoirs and so forth, so that we’re better able to take a drier second half of summer.”

(Radio Iowa)

The forecast calls for a few scattered showers but no significant rainfall until perhaps the weekend.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Environmental groups pushing the federal government to take over enforcement of Clean Water Act regulations in Iowa say Gov. Terry Branstad has lobbied the EPA on behalf of farmers, ignoring the fact that water in Iowa’s rivers is worsening due to manure spills and farm runoff.

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement says Tuesday it has obtained a letter from Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds through a Freedom of Information Act request. The letter shows Branstad and Reynolds wrote to top EPA officials in Washington in May, stepping over the EPA’s regional office in Kansas City, which is negotiating with Iowa DNR about stricter livestock enforcement.

Branstad and Reynolds express “strong concern” about proposed increased farm regulation. The EPA has been pushing Iowa for stricter enforcement for a year.

In area school board news from Monday’s evening’s meetings, the CAM Board approved an increase in the price students will pay for their school lunch. Superintendent Steve Pelzer said the costs will go up a dime for the coming school year. Pelzer says Pre-k through 5^th grade lunches will be $2.45, 6^th through 8^th grade students will pay $2.50, and 9^th through 12^th grade students lunches’ will cost $2.60.

The CAM Board also approved a three-percent increase in salary/benefits for Pelzer. Tami Jacobsen, Secretary/Treasurer for the Elk Horn-Kimballton Board, says they approved contracts Monday evening with Tony Santisteban and Kelly Juhl. Santisteban will be the junior high boy’s basketball coach and assistant high school boy’s basketball coach, while Juhl will be the assistant girl’s high school basketball coach.

The Griswold School Board had a case of what might be described as “sticker shock” Monday evening, with regard to the high school locker rooms and bathroom renovation projects. Griswold Superintendent Dana Kunze says they’re going to have to make some changes in their plans because of the huge costs involved.

He said Estes Construction Company came back with some “harder numbers” on the projects, than had previously been determined. Kunze said the board had a hard time wrapping their heads around the $1.7-million price tag. He said they simply don’t have the money right now to complete the projects with the costs being so high.

Kunze says they’ve got to take a look at scaling-back the projects and making them more affordable for the district, and prioritizing again. The restrooms have to be redesigned to make them ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant for both students and patrons. As for the school’s boiler system, that’s another area where the costs are inflated due to the work that’s necessary to incorporate a new system into the buildings structure.

He says the plan is to try and switch from partial steam and hot water heat, to all hot water heat. That would mean the boilers would be scrapped, but the plumbing that runs through the ceiling would also have to be replaced, and that requires tearing out the dropped ceilings. The result is that the costs start piling up pretty fast, according to Kunze.

Dana says the bottom line is that the designers and engineers associated with the projects will be asked to come up with ways to shave some of the dollars off the costs of those projects or provide a better plan to serve the needs of the district and its facilities. And he says they’ve been willing to accommodate the district the same way with other projects in the past, and saved a good chunk of money in the process.

w/ Ric Hanson

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