(Creston, Iowa) – The Creston Police Department reports the arrest at around 12:40 this (Monday) morning, of 27-year-old Carlos Ivan Cortez, from Lenox. Cortez was arrested at the intersection of Elm and Page in Creston, and charged with Possession of a Controlled Substance-Marijuana 1st Offense, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, and OWI 1st Offense. He was taken to the Union County Jail and held on a $2,300 cash or surety bond.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services plans to sell some of its land at all five of its state-owned facilities. H-H-S owns and operates mental health institutions in Cherokee and Independence, the Boys State Training School in Eldora, and the Woodward and Glenwood Resource Centers. Glenwood is slated to close next year. H-H-S Director Kelly Garcia says one reason they’re selling some of the land at the Cherokee facility is to help address that area’s housing crisis. “We’ve had a few team members where we’ve tried to recruit moving from out of state and they cannot move because there is zero housing,” Garcia says.

Like many Iowa communities, affordable housing is at a premium and these parcels of land should both bring a good price and create new places to build. “We had already been thinking about really making sure we’re not holding on to land and parcels that we don’t need to anymore,” she says, “but also being good stewards of the sale of that property.”

Garcia says the department plans to host a town hall meeting in Cherokee on Wednesday about the sale. Land surveys are already complete and the properties should be on the market soon.

(Radio Iowa) – The preferred design for a new Interstate-80 bridge in the Quad Cities will be unveiled at an online hearing on Wednesday and the public will be given a chance to comment. The current I-80 bridge over the Mississippi opened for traffic in 1966. The bridge replacement project would cover six miles on I-80 — from LeClaire, Iowa, to Quincy, Illinois. Steve Robery of the Illinois D-O-T says the bridge is nearing the end of its useful life and maintenance projects have been more costly and more frequent in the past several years.

“That impacts traffic in a negative way,” Robery says. “…There’s very narrow shoulders there on the existing bridge so we often have to close down a lane of traffic and that causes back-ups.” The Iowa and Illinois Departments of Transportation launched an engineering study in 2020. In October of last year, the agencies announced bridge design alternatives had been reduced from seven to four and it’ll be narrowed to one this week.

“What we plan to do at the meeting on the 15th is to present the information that we’ve worked on in the past year,” Robery says, “…(and) explain our justification for it.” Robery says construction could start in mid-2028 or 2029. Phase One of the project is likely to be done by the middle of next year.

“Phase I is the environmental and engineering study. Phase II is the development of the plans and specifications used to actually build the bridge. That process is two to three years in itself on a major bridge,” Robery says. The bridge and the lanes leading to and from it will have a larger footprint. That means some land has to be acquired for the project and Robery says that could take up to two years.

(Radio Iowa) – South Carolina Senator Tim Scott has suspended his presidential campaign. Scott made the announcement on the Fox News Channel program Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy. Scott said the message is clear that voters are telling him not now. Scott had cancelled events in Iowa this weekend. His campaign said he had the flu. In late October, Scott’s campaign announced he was going all-in on Iowa.

A few days later a Des Moines Register/N-B-C News Iowa Poll found former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s support growing, while just four percent of likely Iowa Caucus goers said they intended to vote for Senator Scott.

Scott said on Fox News last (Sunday) that he does not intend to endorse a presidential candidate and is not interested in being the party’s vice presidential nominee.