(LE MARS)–Service to Plymouth County residents is the focus of questions county officials are asking about a state cost cutting move.
The Iowa Department of Human Services director has ordered 23 more county D-H-S offices to be reduced to part-time to deal with the state budget crunch.
Tom Bouska of the Iowa Department of Human Services says in western Iowa the staff numbers are 350 and are being reduced to 273. Plymouth County is among the counties where the staff and hours are being reduced
At this week’s meeting, supervisor Craig Anderson asked Bouska about serving the public.
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Bouska told supervisors chair Jim Henrich telephone, internet and mail service can be used by D-H-S clients. Answering Henrich’s question, he said a face to face meeting could take place between staff and their clients within five working days.
Henrich told Bouska, “We’re not real happy about what’s happened here in Plymouth County.”
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Bouska and Jim Thompson who is a D-H-S supervisor are asking the county to lend office furniture purchased with county and federal funds to a Sioux County D-H-S location. Some staff members are being relocated to Sioux County.
Supervisor Mark Loutsch was among the board members objecting saying the office item would be needed for other tenants. Supervisor Gordon Greene asked to have the D-H-S proposal in writing.
Plymouth County rents the building to the state agency.
The county’s coordinator of mental health and general relief, Sharon Nieman, was told a process will be set up to handle DHS mail after July first when the change is made.
(LE MARS)–A child from Honduras who received care in the United States through connections made during Mission Honduras trips has died.
Supporters of Gehlen Catholic Mission Honduras, Mission Honduras Le Mars and ..then Feed Just One helped to bring the child, Illich Rivera, for evaluation and care in Le Mars and at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
After care in the United States, students and adults saw the child while on mission trips to Honduras.
He was hospitalized at a private clinic earlier in the week and Mission co-director Richard Seivert was notified Thursday morning that the child had died.
Seivert says a foundation, the “Illich Foundation” was started in Honduras a year ago to help little children and is in its final approval stage from the government.
(ORANGE CITY)–Technology will bring crime tips to the Sioux County Sheriff’s office.
Sioux County Sheriff Dan Altena says the popularity of text messaging creates a significant opportunity for the public to help law enforcement fight crime.
The sheriff’s office is using Anderson Software to allow citizens to send anonymous tips through a text message from a mobile phone or an online message from their computer.
The Text-a-Tip program allows the sheriff’s office to respond to the tip without knowing who the tipster is.
The user’s information is given an alias and a unique I-D before it’s sent.
The Sioux County sheriff adds one caution, do NOT text and drive.
Information about Text-a-Tip is available on the sheriff’s office web site, www.siouxcountysheriff.com.
(ORANGE CITY)–A celebration of Orange City’s health care heritage is tomorrow, rain or shine.
The Orange City Area Health System is partnering with the city of Orange City, the Chamber of Commerce, Staples Promotional Products and Sanford Health for “Play on the Pond.”
The musical performances are a celebration of the Orange City Area Health System’s 50th anniversary.
The Prairie Grass Music Festival features free music on the pond area near Highway 10 East from noon to 8:30 in the evening tomorrow.
In case of rain, the three bands will play in The Barn at Blue Mountain at 814 Lincoln Circle Southeast. The groups include “Little Fox” at 12:15; “Avian Sunrise” at 1:30 and at 3:15, “3Past Curfew.”
The Des Moines rockers, “the Nadas” will perform at 5:30 p.m. either outdoors or in the M-O-C Floyd Valley High School gym
(WASHINGTON, D-C)–Senator Chuck Grassley is announcing funds for Siouxland airports.
Grassley says the funding is to increase the safety and efficiency of the airports as well as to help provide economic development opportunities in the communities with the airports.
The Sac City Municipal Airport will receive 155-thousand dollars for runway lighting rehabilitation and beacon replacement.
Emmetsburg Municipal Airport will receive about 276-thousand dollars for taxiway rehabilitation.
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) The family of an Iowa airman says he’s in critical condition after his helicopter crashed in Afghanistan.
Chet Wisniewski, of Iowa City, told the Iowa City Press-Citizen that his son, 30-year-old David Wisniewski, was piloting an Air Force Black Hawk helicopter when it went down on Wednesday.
David Wisniewski is hospitalized in Germany.
His father says his son is engaged and lives in Las Vegas. He’s stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
Chet Wisniewski says his son graduated from Woodbury Central Community School District in Moville before going to the United States Air Force Academy and flight school.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
(SIOUX CITY)–A Sioux City man will spend up to 25 years in federal prison for a child pornography conviction.
According to written information from the U-S attorney’s office, 48-year-old Sengkeo Phanaphay was sentenced after he pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a child.
Prosecutors say Phanaphay admitted in federal court that between April and June of last year he created child pornography by taking sexually explicit photos of an eight-year-old child.
He was prosecuted after an investigation by Sioux City Police.
He is being held for the U-S Marshal’s service until he can be taken to a federal prison.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) Authorities say three people are dead in a farmhouse in rural Calhoun County in western Iowa.
Jessica Lown of the Iowa Department of Public Safety says agents with the state Division of Criminal Investigation have been sent to the scene, which is between Auburn and Lake City.
Lown says she was notified that three people were found dead around 7:30 a.m. on Friday. She had no other information. She says DCI investigators are assisting the Calhoun County sheriff’s office, which has not released any details.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
OTTUMWA, Iowa (AP) Authorities say a teenager was hospitalized after drinking too much with friends at a park in southeast Iowa.
Wapello County Deputy Sheriff Chris Shadduck says authorities found seven teenagers when they responded to a call about a car accident at Camp Arrowhead Park on Tuesday.
Deputies found two girls unconscious, and one was taken to the hospital.
Shadduck says it appears seven Ottumwa High School students skipped school, stole a bottle of a gin and drank it at the park.
He says when the teens realized that two of the girls had drank too much, another teen tried to get help but crashed the car. They then went to a house and called police.
The sheriff’s office did not release the teenagers’ names because they are juveniles.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) Iowa is scrambling for options as a nationwide shortage of road paint for marking highway stripes hits home.
The Iowa Department of Transportation says roads where pavement markings are in the worst shape will be painted.
At issue is a global shortage of raw materials used to produce acrylic waterborne pavement marking paints. Prices of materials have soared and could go higher.
In a typical year, crews repaint the center lines on all 9,400 miles of Iowa’s highway system. The edge lines are painted if they were not painted the year before.
Transportation officials say they’re developing contingency plans to prioritize use of limited paint supplies. They’re also identifying alternative materials.
KEOKUK, Iowa (AP) Roquette America Inc. plans a $27 million remodeling project at a feed house at its corn wet milling plant in Keokuk.
The Iowa Department of Economic Development awarded the company tax benefits of about $2.5 million on Thursday to support the project.
The feed house is the same building responsible for a $1 million fine the company paid in February. The feed house, where animal feed is made from byproducts of corn processing, was cited for exceeding air pollution emission limits.
Roquette agreed to modernize the feed house.
Roquette manufactures a variety of corn starches, starch derivatives and corn syrup at its Keokuk plant, which has about 500 employees.
Roquette America is a subsidiary of the privately held Roquette Freres, headquartered in Lestrem, France.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) Search and rescue crews are looking for a pair of men overdue from a planned hike to Bagby Hot Springs in the Mount Hood National Forest.
Sheriff’s deputies from Marion and Clackamas counties were joined Thursday by Portland Mountain Rescue volunteers. Search teams made camp Thursday night where they were when darkness fell and planned to resume the search Friday.
The Oregon National Guard plans to join the search with helicopters if weather permits.
Marion County sheriff’s spokesman Don Thomson says the hikers are a 35-year-old Hillsboro man and a man in his 20s visiting from Iowa. One of their wives called when the men didn’t return Wednesday.
Thomson says the men took sleeping bags, maps, compasses, cell phones, warm clothing and food. They are traveling with two Labrador retrievers and a pit bull.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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