LIBRARY BOARD
The Le Mars Public Library Board of Trustees meet this afternoon in their regular monthly session.
Their agenda includes an Iowa Library Association report to the trustees, a budget request to the Plymouth County board of Supervisors, and action on budget worksheets.
The Trustees meet at 5-30 at the Public Library meeting room.
AIR CRASH
Six people were killed in Texas after two historic military planes from the Commemorative Air Force collided midair and crashed Saturday during a Dallas air show. One of the planes was a B-17 bomber known as “Texas Raiders” that flew into Sioux City in July for the 80th anniversary of Sioux Gateway Airport. Larry Finley, director of Sioux City’s Mid America Museum of Aviation and Transportation, says the two pilots and the bomber’s crew members were all well trained.
The restored World War Two-era bomber collided with a P-63 Kingcobra, a vintage fighter plane. Videos shot by spectators at the event show the Kingcobra fly into the bomber, causing them to immediately crash to the ground and explode. The National Transportation Safety Board had taken control of the crash scene and Finley says the investigation will be slow and methodical.
Finley says Texas Raiders was one of just ten B-17s still in existence and just a couple of them were air-worthy.
In July, the Texas Raiders flew for a week in Sioux City, with over a hundred people booking flights on the vintage aircraft.
IOWA HHS OVERHAUL
Iowa Health and Human Services officials are starting the process of significantly updating the state’s child welfare system. The state’s contracted with the Change and Innovation Agency to extensively review and update the state’s policy and procedures along with working to completely replace the I-T system. Janee Harvey, an administrator with Iowa H-H-S, says the current I-T system is so outdated, it’s causing workforce retention issues.
Harvey says they’re updating everything to best serve Iowa children and families.
The system overhaul comes as Iowa has seen several high-profile child abuse cases highlighting failures in its current system.
LE MARS SCHOOL BOARD
The Board of Education of the Le Mars Community School District holds its annual meeting tonight. Board officers will be elected to serve for the next year. Among the reports tonight will be the district’s certified enrollment. The district has applied to the School Budget Review Committee a request for additional spending authority to cover open enrollment costs, and excess costs for Limited English Proficiency students. The Board meets at 6 pm at the Education Service Center.
BUY LOCAL
Many Iowa retailers are already offering holiday-themed bargains, ahead of the Black Friday and Small Business Saturday shopping events. They are two weeks away. Jayne Armstrong, director of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Iowa District Office, says 97-percent of Iowa’s businesses are small businesses and it’s vital for our economic livelihood to support them all year, not just on November 26th. Armstrong says COVID taught the lesson about how much we rely on the neighborhood mom-and-pop businesses. She notes, there’s an obvious advantage for consumers to “Be Loyal, Buy Local,” instead of shopping online, since when you find and buy an item at a brick-and-mortar store, there’s no worry about it being delayed or lost during the shipping process.
DEERE PARTNERSHIP
Iowa’s largest manufacturing employer is using this Veterans Day to announce a new partnership targeting those who’ve served. Quad Cities-based Deere & Company is signing an agreement with the U.S. Army Reserve Private Public Partnership Office. Deere says it will help service members and their families access career opportunities as they transition to civilian life. A news release says the agreement enables Deere to provide active-duty soldiers, who are transitioning into the Reserves, meaningful education and skills that will make them top candidates for future potential employment. The new agreement builds upon the Department of Defense’s “SkillBridge” program, which helps to place active-duty military members in civilian jobs during their final six months of military service.
UNI NURSING PROGRAM
All three of Iowa’s state universities will now have nursing programs after the Board of Regents gave the go ahead for the University of Northern Iowa to start one. U-N-I Provost, Jose Herrera, says there’s no doubt the program will help fill gaps in the health care system. He says many major medical centers and rural hospitals are forced to close entire floors due to the shortage of nurses. The Board of Regents approved the new program during their meeting last week. U-N-I will seek accreditation of the nursing program with the hope of getting it started on the Cedar Falls campus in the fall of 2024.
LAW LIBRARIES
The Peoples Law Library of Iowa And the State Law Library of Iowa and University of Iowa Law Library have teamed up with the hope of offering clear information to people involved in a case or just trying to understand a particular issue. U-I Law Library director, Carissa Vogel, says the website is an onramp for non-lawyers looking for quality information. Vogel says. A 2015 national survey of civil dockets found at least one party was self-represented in 76 percent of civil, non-family related cases. Twenty-five years before that — nearly all cases involved attorney on both sides. The Iowa project was funded with 100-thousand dollars from the American Rescue Plan.
TOUCHY SUBJECTS
Many Iowans will be meeting up next week with family members they haven’t seen in a while, and some of us need to mentally prepare ourselves so we’re not sucked into a squabble that ruins Thanksgiving. University of Iowa professor and psychologist Michele Williams says we just had the mid-term elections last week, but that’s likely something to be avoided, along with discussions about inflation, gas prices and the economy. Even vaccines can still be a touchy subject. Stay patient, she says, and tread carefully on potential hot-button topics.
