DRUG TAKE BACK DAY
National Prescription Drug Take Back Day is this Saturday from 10 a-m until 2 p-m. It’s a time for people to remember to drop off their used prescription drugs. Sgt. Jeff Kramer with the Le Mars Police Department says the department consistently receives unused prescription drugs throughout the year.
Information from TakeBackDay.com says there are alternative ways to dispose of used prescription drugs, like mixing them with garbage and throwing them away, or flushing them down the toilet, but Sgt Kramer doesn’t recommend them.
There are four drop off sites in Plymouth County – at Floyd Valley Health Care, the Le Mars Police Department, and the Hy Vee Pharmacy in Le Mars. There is also the Lewis Pharmacy in Kingsley. These are permanent drop off sites.
PLANTING CONDITIONS
Some farmers are getting into their fields for spring planting, but not all of them. Area Agronomist Leah Ten Hapel says the ones that are out there are using a variety of tillage methods…
Ten Napel says Iowa State University Extension does not have a climatologist, but the ones she has contact with tell her the La Nine pattern that has helped keep the region in drought for three years is finaly breaking down, and that;s good news for dry fields.
Ten Napel is optimistic that the change in the La Nina pattern,and a couple inches of rain locally in the past week, bode well for this crop season.
KUM & GO CHAIN SOLD
The Kum & Go convenience store chain that began with a single store in Hampton, Iowa, is being sold. A Utah based company plans to acquire over 400 Kum & Go stores. Terms of the sale are not being disclosed according to a Kum & Go news release. Salt Lake City-based Maverick has nearly 400 convenience stores in a dozen western states. Maverick is owned by a private firm that had been a co-owner of Pilot Flying J truck stops, but was bought out by Berkshire Hathaway earlier this year. Sixty-three years ago, Bill Krause and his father-in-law Tony Gentle started the Hampton Oil Company. There’s been no announcement of whether Kum and Go stores will retain the Kum and Go name or be rebranded as Maverik stores once the sale is completed.
UNEMPLOYMENT RATE FALLS
Iowa’s unemployment rate dropped a tenth of a percent in March. Last month’s two-point-eight percent unemployment rate is half a percent lower than it was a year ago. The percentage of working age Iowans who have a job or are actively looking for one increased to 68-point-two percent. Iowa Workforce Development director Beth Townsend says it’s a sign people who quit a job or retired during the pandemic are returning to the labor market.
The retirement rate was higher than projected during the pandemic and Townsend says there are a combination of factors prompting recent retirees to return to the workforce.
Government records indicate 27-hundred workers started new jobs in March. Nursing and residential care facilities were responsible for most of the thousand or so jobs added in the health care sector. Over the past three months, Iowa’s manufacturing sector has bounced back from what Townsend describes as a weak fourth quarter.
There were about a thousand job losses in Iowa’s transportation, warehousing and utility industries. Townsend says that may be due to supply chain issues. The leisure and hospitality industries in Iowa have added more than 51-hundred jobs since last March as the sector continues to bounce back from pandemic closures,
