TYSON MOVES
Tyson Foods today announced they plan to move all of its corporate team members to its world headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas. This will shift executives from offices in Dakota Dunes, Chicago, and Downers Grove, Illinois.
A company statement says they will expand their world headquarters. This includes indoor and outdoor spaces designed to foster collaboration, connection and creativity. This includes a remodel of existing facilities there. The phased relocation will begin early next year. The company will release more details on this multi-year campus development.over the coming months.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
The Plymouth County Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a proclamation declaring October Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Kathy Van Maanen of Safe Place, an agency based in SIoux City, presentted the proclamation to the Supervisors. Safe Place has shelters in Le Mars and Sioux City. Van Maanen says they serve 19 counties in northwest Iowa, and Union County, SD and Dakota County, NE.
JUDICIAL APPOINTMENT
Governor Kim Reynolds today announced her appointment of Jessica Noll of Akron as a district associate judge in Judicial Election District 3B. Noll currently serves as a magistrate in Woodbury County. She was appointed to that post in 2018. She practices law with Deck Law, P.L.C. in Sioux City. Noll received her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of South Dakota. Noll fills a vacancy created by the addition of four new district associate judge positions authorized by the legislature in this year’s session. Judicial Election District 3B includes Plymouth, Woodbury, Sioux, Crawford, Ida, and counties.
WINTER FORECAST
The La Nina weather system often brings Iowa and the Midwest an above-normal helping of precipitation, but even though the pattern is expected to stick around for yet another winter, we’re still suffering with drought. Doug Kluck, the climate services director for the Central Region of the National Weather Service, says there would normally be a lot more rainfall, especially in the Missouri River basin.
The expected amount of precipitation simply hasn’t been materializing, he says, and it’s unclear whether that will change with the snowpack in the winter season ahead.
Kluck says this situation is what adds to so much climate prediction uncertainty.
The National Climate Prediction Center is forecasting this La Nina will fade away by early spring. The latest report from the U-S Drought Monitor shows 80 percent of Iowa is either abnormally dry or in some level of drought.
DRUG SENTENCE
A Spencer Iowa man caught getting meth through the mail has been sentenced to nearly two decades in federal prison. The U-S Attorney’s Office says 55-year-old Armando Silva Reyes of Spencer gave a quarter pound of meth to an informant on two occasions. On February Third 2021, Silva Reyes and others received three pounds of meth through the Post Office in Spencer. Prosecutors say Silva Reyes was part of a network that distributed meth by the pound in northern Iowa.
FENTANYL BILL
After being blocked in a procedural move by a Democrat last week, Republican Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says he will try again to move forward with a bill that would permanently schedule all knock-offs of the drug fentanyl. Grassley says 200 Iowans died of fentanyl overdoses last year, while it killed 70-thousand people nationwide. Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey opposed the measure, according to Grassley, because it includes mandatory sentencing. Grassley says he hopes to work out a compromise with Booker and get the bill passed before year’s end, when the current scheduling expires.
4H FOUNDATION
The Iowa 4-H Foundation is holding its annual Iowa Giving Day over 24 hours, from noon Tuesday through noon today. While there are some 23-thousand young Iowans currently in the organization, the day is an appeal to all past members and others, according to Emily Faveraid, executive director of the Ames-based foundation. Faveraid says it’s a great opportunity to highlight the 4-H program and all the things that it does for young people throughout the year. While many think of 4-H as an ag-focused organization, she says it enables young people to do things like robotics, entrepreneurship, and much more. Learn more by visiting Iowa-4-H-Giving-Day-dot-org and you can make a donation directly to any of 50 individual 4-H clubs in Iowa, or to the club in general.
ELECTRIC CHOICE
A new group is proposing that businesses that use the most energy in Iowa be able to buy electricity from other sources. Under current rules, customers must use the utility assigned to both maintain the power grid in their area AND provide the electricity for it. R.G. Schwarm is executive director of the new Iowa Economic Alliance.
The concept called electric choice is up and running in some other states, like Illinois and Ohio, and customers can compare electricity prices from different providers — but still are required to pay fees to the company that maintains the electric lines in their area. Schwarm says electric rates are a factor businesses evaluate when deciding where to locate or expand.
Schwarm is not revealing the names of the businesses that are part of the Iowa Economic Alliance, but he says the coalition’s members have seen electric rates sharply increase over the past couple of years.
The group recently commissioned a statewide survey to gauge public sentiment about the concept of electric choice. The poll found about 70 percent of Iowans prefer the idea of choosing from among electric providers rather than being restricted to the one company state regulators have designated to serve their area.
DRY, HOT SEPTEMBER
All counties across the northern third of Iowa wrapped up the month as the tenth driest September on record, which is significant given that’s over one-and-a-half centuries of record keeping. Most of that region was two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half inches below normal for rainfall. The statewide average temperature for September was 65 degrees, which is about one-and-a-half degrees warmer than normal. State Climatologist Justin Glisan says the summer overall temperature was slightly warmer than normal, too, at 73 degrees. He notes Iowa is heading into October in much the same condition as last year, following an exceptionally dry summer. Glisan says “months and months” of above-average precipitation is needed to recover from the current drought.
TRACTOR STRIKES CHILD
The Lyon County Sheriff’s Office Responded Friday afternoon to an accident in George. Norwood Geerdes (85) of George was driving a tractor pulling a grain trailer when a young child ran into the street and Geerdes struck the child. The child was transported to Avera Hospital in Rock Rapids and then to Sioux Falls. The Lyon County Sheriff’s Office was assisted by George Rescue, George Fire Department and the Iowa Motor Vehicle Enforcement.
ECONOMY SLOWING
The Creighton survey of Midwest purchasing managers for September shows the overall measure dropped again. Economist Ernie Goss says they measure the status of states on a zero to 100 scale, with 50 representing growth neutral. The September index was 52-point-seven — still above growth neutral — but down from 55-point-five in August. This is the fifth decline in the last six months — and the lowest number since June of 2020. Iowa’s individual state index was 50-point-nine in September — down from 55-point-seven in August.
