Gehlen Catholic Changing Dates On Homecoming
(Le Mars) — Gehlen Catholic High School is changing the date of its Homecoming. According to Lisa Niebuhr, Development Director with Gehlen, Homecoming will now be celebrated on October 18th, as opposed to the original Homecoming date of September 27th.
City Administrator Talks About City Parks
(Le Mars) — Construction on the new city skateboard park located at O’Tool Park on the north end of town is nearing completion. City Administrator, Jason Vacura says the project was funded by contributions to the Community Betterment II program. He says the final touches are now being conducted on
the new skateboard complex.
Vacura says the city is planning to have two separate celebrations acknowledging its opening.
Vacera says the city is seeking another community that may have an interest in acquiring the old skate board park presently located near the outdoor swimming pool.
City leaders have announced the playground structure located at
Cleveland Park will be dismantled sometime this autumn. Jason Vacura, city administrator says the playground equipment known as the Castle is showing its age, and needs to be replaced.
Vacura says, as of right now, the city doesn’t have specific plans on what type of playground equipment or design will be used to replace the Castle Playground structure, but he says the city wants the public to submit their ideas.
Many people have expressed an interest to keeping the theme of the Cleveland Castle Park which showcased ice cream, and even a miniature replica of the famous Tonsfeldt Round Barn.
Vacura says one idea that has surfaced would be to construct a splash pad at the Cleveland Park.
Vacura says the city council hasn’t set a timetable for a new playground structure to replace the existing structure scheduled to be dismantled in September.
Congresswoman Axne Says Trump Is Losing Support Of Farmers
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Iowa Congresswoman Cindy Axne says the patience of Iowa farmers is wearing thin as President Donald Trump’s trade policies damage soybean markets and his administration’s ethanol policy reduces corn demand by billions of bushels.
Axne, a Democrat, convened a meeting with farmers and agriculture groups at the Iowa Capitol on Thursday with USDA Under Secretary Bill Northey, a Republican and former Iowa secretary of agriculture.
Axne says farmers are tired of the heavy cost they are paying for
Trump’s trade disputes with China. And Axne says Trump “sold them a bill of goods” by promising to expand ethanol sales but then cutting the demand for the corn-based fuel by approving exemptions to oil refineries.
Northey says Trump realizes farmers are stressed in part because of the administration policies and that’s why he is providing billions of dollars in temporary assistance and is promising this week to fix the ethanol market issue with an as-yet undisclosed program.
Democrats Call For Abandoning Virtual Caucus
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – The Democratic National Committee will recommend scrapping state plans to offer virtual, telephone-based caucuses in 2020 due to security concerns, sources tell The Associated Press.
The final choice whether to allow virtual caucuses in Iowa and
Nevada is up to the party’s powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee.
But opposition from DNC’s executive and staff leadership makes it highly unlikely the committee would keep the virtual caucuses, leaving two key early voting states just months to figure out an alternative.
The state parties had planned to allow some voters to cast caucus votes over the telephone in February 2020 instead of showing up at traditional caucus meetings.
Iowa and Nevada created the virtual option to meet a DNC mandate that states open caucuses to more people.
Former Electrical Generating Plant Is Imploded
MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa (AP) – It took only seconds for a towering coal-fired electricity plant in Marshalltown to be reduced to rubble.
The Sutherland Generating Station was imploded Thursday morning, with explosions causing the structure to crash to the ground and send up a plume of dust.
The plant, owned by Alliant Energy, had operated since the 1950s but ceased operation in 2017 after a natural gas power plant came online.
Funeral Home Asking People To Pick Up Family Dead Remains
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – An Iowa funeral home is calling on families to pick up the unclaimed cremated remains of nearly 100 people that it has been keeping in a locked closet for years, some since the mid-1990s.
Lanae Strovers, of Hamilton’s Funeral Home in Des Moines, told TV station KCCI that she has been trying to reach the families for two years and has had some success, making arrangements for 200 sets of the ashes. But the funeral home is still trying to make arrangements for 91 others.
She says in the immediate aftermath of a death, some families aren’t emotionally ready to take home a loved one’s remains and eventually forget to pick them up. Others mistakenly think another family member picked them up.
Remains that aren’t claimed in the coming weeks will be buried during a mass service on Sept. 26 at Avon Lake Cemetery.
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Former Pastor Charged With Witness Tampering
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – A former western Iowa pastor already charged in Nebraska with sexually assaulting two children has, along with his wife, been charged with an additional count of witness tampering.
The Omaha World-Herald reports that 44-year-old Emanuel Rodriguez and 42-year-old Veronica Rodriguez were arrested this week. Police say Emanuel Rodriguez called his wife from jail after his arrest earlier this month on the sexual assault counts and told her to contact the mothers of the two girls. Victoria Rodriguez later told her jailed husband that she said she had sent text messages to the girls’ mothers saying her husband
“had lost his whole career in the ministry” because of the accusations.
Police say Emanuel Rodriguez fondled two prepubescent girls between 2017 and May 2019 at two Omaha homes previously owned by Rodriguez.
Rodriguez was the pastor at Calvary Assembly of God Church in
Council Bluffs, Iowa, at the time of his arrest.
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