(Update 3-p.m.: Meeting postponed until January)

Members of the Cass County Conference Board are set to meet Tuesday evening in the basement meeting room at the Cass County Courthouse. During the 5-p.m. session, the Board will review the Assessor’s budget. Cass County Assessor Brenda Nelson says they don’t have the taxable valuations yet or what the County’s insurance costs will be, but she added that it all looks pretty similar to last years budget.  The Board will hold two more meetings on the budget in January and in February or March.

The Conference Board consists of the members of the Board of Supervisors, the Mayors of all the incorporated cities, and a member of each school district within its jurisdiction.

Congressman Steve King says he’s had a “one on one conversation” with President-elect Donald Trump about plans for the wall along the U.S./Mexican border. King says the conversation happened “behind the curtain” at Trump’s “Thank You” rally in Des Moines last Thursday. “I talked him about my design and he has three architects that he wants to put me with and I’m going to find a way to sit down with them and draw up a design,” King says. “I think the function of putting the money together and getting a design approved and all, I think congress is ready to move on that as soon as we reach a consensus.”

King also spoke twice last week with House Speaker Paul Ryan. “He essentially said to me we need to give the president-elect what he wants on border security,” King says. “And so I find myself in a pretty good spot to accomplish some pretty big things that I’ve been working on for a long time and I recognize that wouldn’t happen if we didn’t have a President-elect Trump.”

King’s vision here is not for just a single wall. It’s for three barriers: a fence, a wall and a fence. That would create a sort of “no man’s land” in between the fences and that wall, as King describes it. “I’ve long said we just keep building that fence, wall and fence until they stop going around the end,” King says. “If it takes 2000 miles, it takes 2000 miles.”

The southern border is approximately two-thousand miles long. King expects construction on a secure border barrier to start in the first half of 2017. And King says Trump’s decision to nominate a “border hawk” to lead the Department of Homeland Security is another significant signal the wall will be built. King says a concrete wall, with wire fencing on either side, is the cheapest way to secure the border.

Some critics say completely walling off the southern border sends the wrong signal about our democracy. Others say high tech surveillance can be used along the border. King says a “virtual wall” will not be effective. Government records indicate fencing is already in place along 700 miles of the 2000 mile border.

(Radio Iowa)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – A 12-year-old Iowa girl is recovering from a gunshot wound after being struck by a bullet while she was in her living room. The Des Moines Register reports the drive-by shooting happened in Des Moines Sunday afternoon around 4:15 p.m.

Des Moines Police Sgt. Joe Morgan says a white, four-door sedan pulled up in front of the house and someone fired several shots at the home. Police are searching for the car that was used in the shooting. Investigators hope a neighbor’s security camera or someone in the area may have seen the car.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Police in Des Moines are looking for whoever briefly stole a car from a driveway with two young kids inside. KCCI reports the incident happened around 5 p.m. Sunday. An alert was issued after a woman found the car with her 2- and 3-year-old kids missing. The woman told police she left the kids in the car while she ran into the home to grab something.

Police found the car a short while later with the kids still asleep inside. It appears that the thief ditched the car after seeing the kids. The family was reunited less than two hours after the car was reported stolen.