Cass County Secondary Road crews spent a few hours Sunday afternoon repairing a portion of a County road near the Atlantic Airport. Pictures from the scene showed a large section of G-30/Highland Road, buckled upward, creating a steep, 6-to 8-inch incline and similar sharp drop-off on the other side. The pavement blow-up happened near the curve around the airport, or about one and a half miles west of Atlantic.

Cass County Engineer Charles Marker said pavement blow-ups, caused by “Thermal Expansion,” can happen without warning this time of year. He said “As temperatures rise, most material expands. That includes concrete. Steel and concrete and almost every material we know, gets longer as the temperature goes up. That’s thermal expansion. In concrete, as we saw in the concrete road…where normal saw joints have worn or cracks appear…and there isn’t enough room in those to expand, and it has no where to go except out of alignment, which means ‘up.’”

Photos courtesy Jessica Tye Shroyer

That type of expansion can create something more than just a “speed bump.” Marker says a motorist either saw the situation unfold or came upon the ramped-up portion of pavement, and flagged down other motorists so they wouldn’t hit the obstruction. That same person also notified the County. Marker said he was notified about the road problem at around 3-p.m. Crews were quickly dispatched to remove the damaged section of concrete and replace it temporarily with rock filler.

He said they tear out the old sections and replace it with gravel or crushed limestone. The road will remain that way until this fall, when the temperatures cool enough to allow the concrete to be replaced. Marker says the road was installed sometime around the year 2000, and has seen no problems since then, until Sunday.

Officials with the Union County Emergency Management Agency reported to the Union County Sheriff’s Office, Friday, that sometime during the last month, someone entered the Union County Emergency Management bus parked at 1701 Commerce Road. The person or persons responsible for the crime took a Motorola CB radio with an estimated value of $500. Anyone with information about the crime should contact the Union County Sheriff’s Office.

Gov. Terry E. Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds today (Monday) announced the creation of a Chronic Absenteeism Advisory Council to address chronic absenteeism in Iowa schools.  Plans to create the Chronic Absenteeism Advisory Council were announced at the 2016 Future Ready Iowa Summit, which began a statewide conversation about how to close the skills gap, one of the biggest challenges Iowa faces. Among those appointed to the Council, was Martha Bruckner, Superintendent of the Council Bluffs Community School District.

Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10 percent or more of schools days for any reason, excused or unexcused.  In Iowa, that means at least 18 days of school a year, or nearly a month.  Chronically absent students are more than one and a half times less likely to be proficient in reading by the end of third grade according to analysis by the Child and Family Policy Center.  In Iowa, nearly 25 percent of students did not read proficiently by the end of third grade in 2014-2015.  Those numbers reflect the skills gap that could potentially be keeping students from graduating from high school ready for college or career training.

The Council will meet once a month starting in August and make final recommendations to the Administration in November.  The Council includes many educators, school board representatives, non-profit and business leaders as well as state legislators.

Residents in the northwest Iowa town that calls itself the Popcorn Capital of the World plan to cook up a massive popcorn ball later this week to reclaim the title of world’s largest popcorn ball. Shirley Phillips, executive director of Western Iowa Tourism, says Sac City has already set the world’s record three previous times, most recently with a five-thousand pound popcorn ball in 2009.

“The Indiana State Fair built a popcorn ball last year during their fair at 6,500 pounds,” Phillips says. “That certainly surpassed our 5,000-pound record. This year, we’re going to attempt to make an 8-to-10,000-pound and I can tell you, the reason there’s a gap in there is because when we get so aggressive at building a popcorn ball, sometimes we don’t stop when we should.”

It’s anticipated the new record-setting popcorn ball will be 10 to 12 feet tall. A larger building is being constructed in Sac City just to house it, Phillips says, and a small army is being assembled to create the enormous sphere of popcorn on Saturday. “Last time, it took us 12 and a half hours and it took 253 volunteers,” Phillips says. “We’ll take all of the volunteer help we can get that wants to punch and pack popcorn that day.”

The final weight will be verified by an Iowa Department of Transportation scale but she notes, before it comes to that, it’ll be a complicated process to create to world’s largest popcorn ball. “The Noble Popcorn plant here in Sac City makes and sells flavored popcorn and they have these huge cookers that’ll cook 60- to 65-pound batches at a time,” Phillips says. “What they do is mix up the sugar and the syrup — it has to be an edible recipe — to make the flavored popcorn and then it dumps out onto a conveyor belt which we grab in big buckets and we start punching and packing into a popcorn ball shape.”

Sac City first created the world’s largest popcorn ball in 1995, weighing 2,225 pounds. That record was later beaten and another record-setter was created in 2004, tipping the scale at 3,100 pounds. Again, someone built a bigger one and Sac City created its most recent 5,000-pound popcorn boulder in 2004. Phillips says popcorn was introduced to growers in Sac County in 1885.

(Radio Iowa)