(Elk Horn, Iowa) – Members of the Exira-EHK School Board, Monday, voted to approve a One-dollar per hour raise for all classified staff. That includes bus drivers on routes and in the second semester, custodians. According to Superintendent Trevor Miller, the move comes amid competition from other, potential employers, and a shortage of workers. The Board, he said wanted to show its appreciation for the hard work the classified staff does.

To his knowledge, Miller said it’s the first time the Board has issued a raise for classified staff in the middle of the year. In other business, the Exira-EHK Board approved one new hire during their meeting, Monday: Jordan Webster will take over the District Leadership Team position.

(Radio Iowa) – State liquor sales for the fiscal year that ended in July broke the record set the previous year. Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division spokesman, Jake Holmes, says alcohol sales hit nearly 416 million dollars.  “That amounts to a 13-point-two percent increase over fiscal year ’20. For comparison, F-Y ’20 saw about an eight percent increase over F-Y ’19. Typically we’ve seen about four or five percent year-over-year. But eight percent and 13 percent are very large increases,” Holmes says.

The last fiscal year was the first time sales topped the 400-million-dollar mark. The pandemic was credited for the increase in the 2020 fiscal year, its impact is likely behind the continued booze buying in the last fiscal year. “It’s hard to say for certain — but a safe assumption would be that there’s some sort of correlation with the pandemic — because that’s really when we started to see these big increases, obviously,” he says.

“If you were to ask me would our sales have jumped like this if there wasn’t a pandemic — I couldn’t confidently say that was true,” Holmes says. He says sales saw a shift during the height of the pandemic, but things seemed to have returned to a balance. He says the off-premise establishments did see quite an increase in sales for take-home liquor when restaurants and other establishments got shut down — but he says the sales for bars and restaurants did come back after the shutdowns.

One type of seller has continued to see increases in licenses in the last fiscal year. “The Class E licensees — so think those places where you can buy liquor to go, so grocery stores, gas stations liquor stores, things like that — that’s been trending up over the years and it’s at the highest it’s ever been at this point. A lot of the on-premise licenses — it was difficult during the pandemic, we had some close and then some reopen,” Holmes says.

The pandemic led to supply chain issues for a lot of businesses. Holmes says I-A-B-D was not immune to them — but was able to manage.  “Because A-B-D is the sole wholesaler of liquor in Iowa, and with the relationships that we have with those suppliers — we so far have been able to manage those shortages relatively effectively.– and ensure that those products are still being delivered efficiently,” according to Holmes.

He says they have always kept a good supply of the most popular items — and the shortages came in those brands that were not among the top sellers.

Police in Red Oak arrested a woman Tuesday night, who was wanted on a Cass County warrant for Forgery. Authorities say 56-year-old Lorisa Louise Buckley, of Red Oak, was taken into custody at around 9:10-p.m. in the 200 block of W. Reed Street, in Red Oak. She was transported to the Montgomery-Cass County line and turned over to Cass County Deputies, before being transported to Atlantic. Buckley was being held in the Cass County Jail on a $5,000 cash or surety bond.

(Radio Iowa) – An insurance agent from Spirit Lake will fill a vacancy in the Iowa Senate. Unofficial results from Tuesday’s special election in senate district one show Republican Dave Rowley defeated his Democratic opponent by a wide margin. This is Rowley’s first run for elected office.

“However, I served as chair of Dickinson County Republicans and co-chair over the last 10 years,” he says, “so that helped a lot to get acquainted with the political scene.” Rowley will be sworn into office on January 10th, the first day of the 2022 legislative session. Reducing and ultimately eliminating the state’s personal income tax is a goal Republican Governor Kim Reynolds and the Iowa Senate’s Republican leader have embraced.

“The State of Iowa is probably in one of the best positions it could ever be to at least take a hard look at that,” Rowley says. Rowley says as a resident of northwest Iowa, he sees first hand some of the migration South Dakota gets because it does not have a state income tax.  “I do know that once people reach retirement age, they look very hard at their state income tax,” Rowley says. “South Dakota seems to have a fairly good model and it does appeal to a lot of people.”

Rowley will replace Republican Zach Whiting who resigned from the state senate to take a job in Texas. Rowley will represent Clay, Dickinson, Lyon, Osceola and Palo Alto Counties for the next year. He intends to seek reelection in 2022, but in a new state senate district that includes his home county of Dickinson as well as Clay, Emmet, Kossuth and Winnebago. “My experience in insurance…in the last 30 directly in western Iowa, I have some very good friends that are in those counties,” Rowley says, “and I’ll definitely be reconnecting with a lot of the people that I know.”

Rowley, who has lived in Spirit Lake since the 1990s, works at an insurance agency in Estherville. Unofficial results show Rowley received 75 percent of the votes cast in the special election. He defeated Democrat Mark Lemke, a retired businessman who also lives in Spirit Lake.