(Atlantic, Iowa) – Atlantic Mayor Grace Garrett, Wednesday, informed the public that the City’s Code Enforcement personnel are out and about, checking for property violations (such as overgrown grass, trash accumulation, snow removal, etc.). “So just be aware, if you have a business or a home, please comply with the ordinances that are on the books,” she said, because they are out in force, and they are working on Code Enforcement, and we will be enforcing codes.”

The Mayor said “Last year we increased the fees because we were using City equipment [and] City personnel, to abate properties, and that takes a lot of time and money and wear of our equipment, as a city. So the rates were increased.” She encourages everyone, from land-lords or a property owner or business owner, “to make sure that you’re complying and keeping up your properties, or we will be coming in to abate it, and you will be receiving a bill in the mail.”

City Clerk Barb Barrick said “Once you get the bill, if you don’t pay it within 30 days, it will be assessed to your taxes.” The Mayor said it is less expensive to do the work yourself, than to have the City clean-up your property.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Grace Garrett, the Mayor of Atlantic, announced during this (Wednesday) evening’s City Council meeting, that she and Cass County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Kennon, and Lieutenant Governor Adam Gregg, met last week to discuss a grant the County has received from the Iowa United First Aid Pilot Project.

The Mayor said “The project is a first aid response within our community. We will be recruit volunteers soon, so if you are retired or currently active as a medical personnel, retired veteran or active medic, or would like to be trained as a first aid responder, we would love to hear from you.”

The project is a combined effort between the City of Atlantic and Cass County to provide first aid to the entire 565 square miles of Cass County. Garrett said the project and program has its roots in Israel. “It will be a technology-based response.” The two entities chose a tech company once the grant was received, that will work with the Cass County 911 Communications Center.

The alerts will be telephone-based, with the volunteer trained first responders closest to the scene of the emergency, receiving notification of the alert. They will attend to the emergency until EMS or Fire Department personnel arrive on the scene. The volunteers will be trained by the local Public Health Department, and they will receive all the necessary equipment, such as an AED (automatic external defibrillator).

“The volunteer will actually have a vest, backpack and an AED. They will be trained [in the use of] and all the supplies will be given to them as a volunteer, so that there will be no expense incurred by the volunteer for their needed supplies,” the Mayor said. She asked if anyone is interested, to please contact Mike Kennon at 243-1500, or Mayor Garrett at 243-4810.

The hope is to roll out the program this September once all the volunteers are trained.

(Radio Iowa) – As the movie “Oppenheimer” opens Thursday, the story of the physicist who developed the first nuclear weapons, a documentary screening tonight (Wednesday) will focus on a role Iowa played in the Manhattan Project.

Ames native and filmmaker Brittany Prater’s documentary, “Uranium Derby,” centers on top-secret experiments that were conducted in her hometown during the 1940s. One source is heard during the movie trailer saying, “On the campus at Iowa State during the war, they were making materials for atomic bombs.”

Prater details how the Ames Laboratory, run by the Department of Energy, at one point flushed high-level radioactive waste down the city’s sanitary-sewer drains. She visits an Ames neighborhood that suffered from what she calls a “cancer epidemic” in the 1990s, where toxic waste was buried, under what eventually became a youth sports complex. Once it went public, she says, the site was hastily cleaned up.

Prater will be at The Varsity Theater in Des Moines for tonight’s 7 P-M showing of the 88-minute documentary and she’ll take questions afterward.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Congressman Zach Nunn says the defense spending bill that congress passes each year includes an expansion of parental leave for some National Guard and Reserve soldiers. Nunn, who’s in the Air Force Reserve, and a Democratic Congressman from North Carolina who’s also a reservist, co-sponsored a Parental Leave Parity Act earlier this year and it was included in the annual defense bill that passed the House last week.

“We ask our men and women in uniform to go overseas in combat zones,” Nunn says. “When the active duty folks come home, they get up to six weeks to spend with their new family members. We want to make sure that our Reserve and Guard members here in Iowa get that same privilege.” Birth mothers in all branches of the military can take up to 12 weeks of paid leave, but only fathers and adoptive parents who are full time soldiers are currently eligible for parental leave. Nunn says expanding parental leave to reservists and National Guard soldiers may boost recruitment.

“They deserve the opportunity to be there when their babies are born, help the spouse through the process,” Nunn says, “and also encourage foster families to look at adoption and know they’re going to get the same benefits as everybody else.” Nunn says as a reservist, he was denied paid parental leave when he and his wife recently adopted two foster daughters. He also experienced the disparity a few years ago when he was serving in the Iowa National Guard.

“My daughter was born and that weekend I was away at drills, leaving my wife to have both an infant baby in the hospital and being responsible for taking care of the kids,” Nunn says. The parental leave change for reservists and guard members has had bipartisan backing in the U.S. Senate and Nunn says the new policy is likely to stay in the National Defense Authorization Act when the Senate voted on it.

(Creston, Iowa) – Police in Creston report a legally parked 2011 GMC Terrain was struck at around 9:10-p.m. Tuesday, by a hit-and-run vehicle. The GMC, registered to Amanda Fletchall, of Creston, sustained $8,000 damage. An investigation, including witness statements, determined the suspect vehicle was a 2010 Ford Transit van, operated by 40-year-old Arturo Marin, of Creston. The van also sustained about $8,000 damage.

Authorities say a bumper with license plate attached to it, lead them to Marin, who admitted to being behind the wheel of his vehicle, when the accident occurred. Witnesses say they saw the van was parked at a bar in Creston about 15 minutes before the accident. It was also seen operating with no lights on, and running stop signs before the van struck the GMC.

As of this report, no citations had been filed nor charges issued.

(Bartlett, Iowa) [updated 7/20] – The Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI) is looking into the cause of death of a person whose body was found Tuesday afternoon from the Missouri River, south of Bartlett. The body of a white female was retrieved from the river about four miles south of the Bartlett boat ramp, at around 12:45-p.m. The State Medical Examiner’s Office in Ankeny will work to identify the woman, and determine her cause of death.