(Radio Iowa) — A Virginia-based company is announcing plans to build up to 85 wind turbines in central Iowa starting next year. Holly McCoy-Nelson, spokeswoman for Apex Clean Energy, says the development will be called the Great Pathfinder Wind Project.  “We are working towards having a buildable project in Boone and Hamilton counties,” McCoy-Nelson says. “They’re in the Stratford area and south, and then north of Boone.” The process is slow going and McCoy-Nelson says they’re working to apply to get energy onto the grid. “We’ve had some delays with that but we would hope to permit this in Boone County, where they have zoning and a permit process, in the first quarter of 2020,” she says.

Apex is working with landowners, community leaders and various stakeholders on the project, which McCoy-Nelson says would provide energy for 78-thousand homes.  “They’ll start some of the construction in 2021,” she says, “and then may have to finish in 2022 depending on whether we can get our power out and onto the grid.”

Apex says the construction project would create up to 200 jobs with another 15 to 20 full-time local jobs for operation and maintenance of the wind farm. The county to the east of Hamilton County is Hardin County, where county supervisors voted unanimously last week to pass an indefinite moratorium on wind turbine building permits. In southwest Iowa, Madison County leaders passed a similar ban in October.

The Cass County Board of Supervisors will hold their regular weekly meeting in Atlantic, Tuesday. The session at 9-a.m. take place in the Supervisors’ Board Room at the Courthouse. On their agenda is: Recognition of Volunteer Service; the appointment of a Brighton Township Clerk; discussion/review of Board and Commission appointments and committee assignments to be made at the Supervisors’ Organizational Meeting on Jan. 2nd, and, regularly scheduled Department Head reports.

Members of the Exira-EHK School Board will meet tonight (Dec. 16th) at 6 o’clock in the Conference Room at the Elk Horn Building. On their agenda, is discussion and/or action with regard to: Negotiations; an At Risk/Drop Out Prevention Application request for a modified supplemental amount equal to, or less than, $107,931; Approval of the second reading of Board Policy 711.10 (with regard to School Bus Passenger restraints), and Approval of Early Retirees’ applications.

Other business will include discussion and action on Personnel matters, early retirement resignations as received from Connie Burns, Geralyn Christensen, Lisa Dreier, Char Bintner, Tami Jacobsen, and Patty Mortensen.

(A-P) A Sioux City man has died in a shooting near the city’s downtown. Police say 42-year-old Chad A. Thomas was killed in the shooting just after 10 p.m. Saturday. The Sioux City Journal reports police received calls about shots and a short time later a person returning home found an unconscious man on a sidewalk. The man had been shot multiple times and was pronounced dead at a hospital. The shooting is being treated as a homicide.