(Griswold, Iowa) – Cass County Extension Director Kate Olson reports that “In Cass County, mental health was identified as the top health concern in the 2021 Community Health Assessment. This summer, a group of local organizations and individuals began meeting to work towards improving mental health and wellness support across the county. This fall a new coalition was formed to help address these vital needs. The mission of the Cass County Coalition for Mental Wellness is ‘To build resilience, reduce stigma, and promote mental wellbeing in the community.”

Olsen says the coalition is committed to working collaboratively with community members, service providers, health officials, business owners, and more to:

• Identify gaps in mental health services in Cass County.
• Improve accessibility to mental health services.
• Reduce stigma by normalizing conversations about mental wellness.
• Strengthen support for those dealing with mental health issues and their families.
• Promote mental well-being and resilience.

The coalition meets monthly at the Griswold Community Building (601 2nd St, Griswold, IA 51535). Meetings are held on the 3^rd Thursday each month from 10:30-11:30am. All individuals, organizations and businesses are encouraged to join these open meetings.

Questions regarding this coalition should be directed to Michelle Hartfield ccc4mw@gmail.com or Gina Moulas Gina.Moulas@va.gov.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Supreme Court has upheld the hate crime conviction of a man who left derogatory notes on a Boone home where a rainbow flag was flying. Robert Geddes argued the handwritten notes he left at the home were free speech and his conviction for trespass as a hate crime violated his constitutional rights.

The Iowa Supreme Court upheld the conviction, saying the statute in question does not criminalize speech, but does criminalize conduct with a specific intent to trespass on property because of the property owner or possessor’s association with persons of a certain sexual orientation.

Geddes was sentenced to five consecutive one-year terms with the jail time suspended and was placed on probation for up to two years.

(Radio Iowa) – The state’s animal shelters continue to be overcrowded. Brenda Iwen, of Noah’s Hope Animal Rescue in Sioux City, says they are overcrowded with dogs, and are not the only ones. “Right now the rescue world is in a crisis. Not only us but all the shelters are full, rescue groups, it doesn’t matter where you’re at Texas, Tennessee, Iowa everybody’s full and because of that dogs are getting dumped,” she says.

Iwen says dumping dogs makes the problem worse. “We have a trapping team and so when dogs are dumped we trap them and then we try to find them foster homes,” Iwen says.”The problem is our foster homes are full and the shelters are full so it’s a crisis right now and I don’t know what we can do to change it other than spay and neuter.” She says it appears people have stopped spying and neutering animals and that leads to animals with unwanted litters.

“Right now we have three litters of puppies. Unwanted and so they come in with mom and and now we’re trying to find homes and so nice dogs but again we just have so many,” she says. “But you just can’t when you get a call you can’t just say I’m sorry we’re fall. We can’t help you just got to figure out where we can fit them in at.” Iwen says their costs for the extra animals are going to top 100-thousand dollars. “And that’s just on vet bills, that’s not our fuel, insurance, that’s not anything. That’s just our vet bills,” Iwen
says. “Because once we bring a dog or a cat into our system they get the same care that our own personal animals get.”

All of Noah’s Hope rescuers are volunteers, and she says they have had good financial support from the
community.

(Cedar Rapids, Iowa) – The U-S Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa reports a nurse from northwest Iowa, who stole controlled substances from a life care center where she was employed, pled guilty Thursday (11/30) in federal court in Sioux City. 32-year-old Cassandra Lynne Vonnahme, from Arcadia, entered a guilty plea to one count of acquiring a controlled substance by means of misrepresentation, fraud, deception, and subterfuge, and one count of false statements relating to health care matters. Vonnahme had been scheduled to begin a jury trial on December 11, 2023.

At the plea hearing, Vonnahme admitted that between November 2020 and December 2020, she diverted controlled substances and falsified related documents. The controlled substances Vonnahme stole and the records she falsified pertained to actual patients. Vonnahme was later convicted of burglary in Carroll County in 2021, where she stole controlled substances from a stranger’s home.

Sentencing before United States District Court Chief Judge Leonard T. Strand will be set after a pre-sentence report is prepared. Vonnahme remains free on bond pending sentencing. Vonnahme faces a possible maximum sentence of 9 years’ imprisonment, a $250,000 fine, and 4- years of supervised release following any imprisonment.

The case is being investigated by the Iowa Department of Inspections & Appeals, Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Ron Timmons.

(Creston,Iowa) – An accident Thursday afternoon, in Creston, caused $3,000 damage to a van, but no one was injured. Creston Police report a 2022 Dodge RAM pickup driven by 40-year-old Luis Miguel Huerta-Fernandez, of Hobbs, New Mexico,was pulling a trailer and traveling south on Cherry Street in Creston at around 4:05-p.m., Thursday, when a 2019 Chrysler Pacific van driven by 81-year-old Nellie Lou Loury, of Creston, began to back out of her driveway.

Huerta honked the horn to get Loury’s attention, and swerved out of the way, but when he came back into the correct lane, his trailer hit the van on the left front fender. The trailer wasn’t damaged. No citations were issued, but the Police report noted Loury failed to yield the right-of-way while exiting her driveway.

(Missouri Valley, Iowa/KETV) — Landowners near Missouri Valley want to know if their land and water are safe because they’re living on a former missile site. The Air Force scrapped the “Atlas D Missile Site 3” decades ago, but safety questions remain. All of the structures that had been in operation in the 1950’s and 60’s, were demolished in 1988. The area was sold for residential and ag use in 2006. But in 2013, a contaminant called “TCE**” was detected in residential wells.

The pandemic forced people in Missouri Valley to wait years to ask questions in person about the safety of their land, and water. On Thursday, the Army Corps of Engineers worked to provide them with some answers.

The Army Corps of Engineers says out of 140 drinking water wells tested 25 wells had levels of TCE. The Corps of Engineers said they wanted to assure the affected landowners and others, that they’re only trying to help, by cleaning the contamination up and fixing related issues. Engineers says they hope to have an effective plan on how to do so sometime in the next three-years, likely between 2025 and 2026.

With a final decision on a remedy sometime between 2026 and 2027. You can still submit your input HERE. The questionnaire site is available until Dec. 15^th.

**Trichloroethylene (TCE) is used as a solvent for degreasing metal parts during the manufacture of a variety of products. It can be found in consumer products, including some wood finishes, adhesives, paint removers, and stain removers. TCE can also be used in the manufacture of other chemicals. TCE that has been spilled or dumped on the ground can pollute soil and groundwater, where it may pollute private and public drinking water wells.

(Greenfield, Iowa) – Adair County Engineer Nick Kauffman, Wednesday morning, updated the County Board of Supervisors on recent Secondary Roads Department maintenance and activities. Kauffman said in Washington Township, the bridge Section 32 will have guard rails installed on Monday (Dec. 4^th), weather permitting. He said also their hydro-seeder was expected to have been delivered Wednesday afternoon. Hydroseeding is a technique that spreads a specialized grass “slurry” evenly over bare ground to grow grass and prevent soil erosion.

One of their new hires will start Monday, while another started on Thursday.

In other business, Supervisor Jodie Hoadley told the Board, and Kauffman, that the County had received a requested grant for the installation of fiber optics, which includes the Orient area.

The Adair County Board of Supervisor’s next meeting takes place 9-a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 6^th.

(Radio Iowa) – An ethanol industry group is accusing Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy of being hypocritical for supporting construction of an oil pipeline, but opposing carbon pipelines. Ramaswamy often recites what he calls the 10 “truths” on the campaign trail. One of them is that human flourishing requires fossil fuels and Ramaswamy has said construction of the Keystone X-L Pipeline for crude oil should resume.

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks to crowd at his Iowa campaign headquarters on Nov. 28, 2023. (RI photo)

This week, Ramaswamy criticized Governor Reynolds and other Republicans for not opposing the use of eminent domain to seize land for proposed pipeline to ship carbon out of ethanol plants. The Iowa Renewable Fuels Association says Ramaswamy’s playing a typical political game, not driven by principles. The group’s executive director says Ramaswamy is a hypocrite whose campaign is running on fumes.

At noon today (Friday), Ramaswamy and the Free Soil Coalition, a group that opposes the carbon pipelines, are holding an event in Des Moines.

(Des Moines, Iowa) – The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa, reports a central Iowa man entered a guilty plea, Wednesday, to a charge of wire fraud. According to public court documents, 47-year-old Zachary James Flaherty, of Clive, used his position as an insurance agent and annuity salesperson to defraud elderly individuals out of their retirement savings and other monies. Flaherty admitted to engaging in a scheme to defraud some of his insurance clients, specifically, that he intended to defraud some of his clients by making false statements to those clients to obtain financial benefits for himself to the detriment of his clients.

For example, Flaherty told one of the victims, referred to in court documents as Victim #10, that he would invest proceeds from the sale of her house on her behalf and for her benefit, even though Flaherty knew that his representations to Victim #10 were false. As a result of Flaherty’s false representations, Victim #10 wrote two checks, totaling $170,000, to a company Flaherty owned and/or operated. Flaherty used the proceeds of his fraudulent scheme to acquire various assets, including a boat and automobiles.

Flaherty is scheduled to be sentenced on April 12, 2024, and faces a potential sentence of up to twenty years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine the sentence Flaherty will receive after considering the United States Sentencing Guidelines and other sentencing factors.

United States Attorney Richard D. Westphal of the Southern District of Iowa made the announcement. The Iowa Insurance Division’s Fraud Bureau and the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated the case, with assistance from the Des Moines Police Department, Clive Police Department, and the Iowa Department of Public Safety’s Division of Criminal Investigation.