(Audubon, Iowa) – Members of the Audubon Community School District’s Board of Education will hold a Special Session and Public Hearing Monday evening, on the proposed issuance of approximately $3.4-million in School Infrastructure Sales, Services and Use Tax Revenue and Refunding bonds. Superintendent Eric Trager has said approval of the bond measure is part of the process needed to finance the district’s building renovation project. Following the public hearing, the Board will take action Monday on a resolution supporting the issuance of the aforementioned bonds

The meeting begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Board Room at the High School. The next regular Board meeting will be held Monday, September 20^th.

(Radio Iowa) – Filming is scheduled in November, in Kossuth County, for a movie about a World War Two camp near Algona for German prisoners. The movie’s crew was in the area last weekend, scouting possible filming locations. D. J. Perry is the C-E-O of Collective Development and author of the screenplay for “Silent Night in Algona.” “If we find something and then the owners are agreeable to having us shoot there, sometimes it’s actually deconstructing or taking modern stuff out temporarily,” he says. “Sometimes it’s set directing and adding stuff to a location.” Perry says they’re looking for homes and buildings that were around 77 years ago — during the fall and early winter of 1944. The crew was in Whittemore and Lone Rock this past weekend, searching for places to film. “We’ll be back in end of October with our art team and starting to turn everything into 1944,” he says.

The film will focus on a four month period in late 1944 — from September through December. “It’s about unity, it’s about patriotism — a lot of themes that are very relevant to what’s going on now as well and it’s important that things aren’t forgotten from the past,” he says. “As we know, we are doomed to repeat mistakes if you don’t learn from your past.” Lead actors for the film have been cast, but Perry says they’ll be looking for area residents to be extras and assist in other ways. “When you see those end credits of the movie — all the special thanks and all the people involved, that’s what it takes,” Perry says. “It takes a small army to make these things happen.”

Perry says filming will take about three weeks and he expects the movie to be released in 2022. Perry’s company is based in Michigan and announced this summer two German actors will play lead roles in the film. Another actor who had role in two t-v dramas — St. Elsewhere and Tour of Duty — will portray the Kossuth County Sheriff in the film. Algona was notified in 1943 that a P-O-W camp would be built in the county and an estimated 10-thousand German soldiers passed through until it was dismantled in 1946. A 20-foot by 60-foot nativity scene carved by six German P-O-Ws remains in Algona.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The City of Atlantic’s Personnel and Finance Committee is set to meet 5:30-p.m. Monday, Aug. 30th, in the City Council’s Chambers, at City Hall. During their session, the Committee will review and act on a recommendation to the City Council, with regard to a request to connect the City’s Sanitary Sewer to a commercial property at 60365 Glacier Road. City Administrator John Lund says a new business has signed a lease for the building on the City’s northwest side, that will create 10-to-12 jobs, and are requesting a sanitary sewer hook-up.

Persons with property outside the City Limits must receive approval from the Atlantic City Council before the hook-up can be made. Lund says he will endorse the P&F Committee recommendation because “It is in the best interest of tax payers,” and it would expand the tax base, creating “Downward pressure on property taxes.” Lund says in the future, the City should “Insist on annexation of properties wanting to connect to our utilities.” In this instance, however, the City has already extended utilities far beyond the limits, and there are parcels of land in between “that make annexation impractical, if not unfeasible,” according to Lund.

He added “The City has placed itself in this situation, where we cannot leverage sewer access to compel annexation. We should consider this an instructive lesson. This is not something we should ever do again.”  In other business, the Personnel and Finance Committee will review and act on making a recommendation to the Council, with regard to East 3rd Street Place Land Donations, and with regard to a New Business Incentive Proposal.

IOWA CITY– The Iowa Department of Corrections reports State Prison inmate, 61-year old James Lee Blair was pronounced dead Friday evening at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Officials say his death was likely due to complications related to COVID-19 and other preexisting medical conditions. Blair He had been transported there recently from the Iowa State Penitentiary due to his declining health.  He was serving a Life sentence for Murder-1st Degree in Polk County.  His sentence began on November 24, 1982.

A 23-year-old U.S. Marine with ties to Red Oak was among 13 service members killed in a terrorist attack Thursday in Kabul, Afghanistan. According a statement from the family released to KETV in Omaha, Corporal Daegen William-Tyeler Page was killed when a suicide bomber detonated a device near the city’s airport in the wake of mass evacuations from the country.

The statement said Page was raised in Red Oak and attended high school at Millard South in the Omaha metro. Corporal Page joined the Marines in 2019. He was a member of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California.

His family says after finishing his enlistment, Daegan planned to come home and go to a local trade school, possibly to become a lineman.