Iowa State officials say general public tickets to the Cyclones’ bowl game will go on sale once their destination is known. ISU finished the regular season 6-5 after a loss to Missouri and at this point the Houston Bowl appears to be the most likely spot.ISU ticket manager Jared Sturtewagen says they sent out a preorder form a couple of weeks ago and the deadline to get it in was last Friday. He says once they find out the actual bowl, they’ll open up the ticket sales to the public. Sturtewagen says they won’t know how many tickets they have until a bowl invitation is accepted. He says most bowls allot around 10-thousand tickets. Sturtewagen is confident Cyclone fans will fill the allotment. He says the potential locations have nice weather and he says there’s a lot of excitement among fans.This will be Iowa State’s fourth bowl trip in five years.
Bird on wire shuts off electricity in Grundy County
Some northeast Iowa residents woke up in the dark this morning. About 40 customers of Grundy County Rural Electric Cooperative were without electricity for about two hours. Kevin is operations manager for the R-E-C. He says a bird landing on a utility line created a short, which shut down a switch in a substation near Hudson. The outage happened around 5:30 Tuesday morning, and affected parts of Grundy and Black Hawk counties.
Rhodes Mayor says DNR hampered tire clean up efforts
Officials from the state, Marshall County, and a private disposal company held a news conference today to announce the start of a program to clean up there-quarters of a million discarded tires from a dumpsite near the small town of Rhodes. But local folks say it’s long overdue and should never have been allowed in the first place. Mayor Danny Clement says the dump’s been there for about ten years and he estimates the total’s closer to a million and-a-half tires. He says when it catches on fire you can’t put it out — and a couple years ago the pile did catch fire, and burned for days. He says oil runs out of the dump, too, and flows into a local creek. The mayor says when Bee-Rite began to haul them in, the site was only supposed to be for temporary storage, before the tires were ground up and hauled to Mason City to be burned in the cement plant there. Once they quit taking tires away, the town tried to prevent them from bringing in any more, but he says the D.N.R. told them they had no control over it. The community took its case to the state supreme court, and after five years it ruled Rhodes could halt the addition of tires to the dumpsite — but “by that time they were there,” he says. Now the taxpayers are paying for the cleanup, Mayor Clement points out. He says the company was paid two-dollars for each car tire it collected, and five dollars for truck tires, but didn’t use that money to dispose of the tires. The D.N.R. and a new company, Greenman Technologies, will haul the tires away as part of the cleanup plan unveiled today. They’ll grind them up for fuel and playground surfacing materials.
Marshalltown teen won’t face federal charges in robbery
A teenage boy under arrest for robbing a Marshalltown Credit Union will not be tried in federal court, as most bank thieves are. Marshalltown Police Chief Lon Walker explains.Walker says federal officials have declined to prosecute because the feds don’t file bank robbery charges against juveniles. State charges have been filed. Fifteen-year-old Fernando Samuel Garcia faces state charges of first degree theft and second degree robbery. Garcia’s also been charged with interference with official acts for running from the cops. The robbery happened just before noon on Monday. A Marshalltown resident listening to the radio heard a description of the suspect, and tipped police off when they spotting someone they believed to be the suspect getting into a vehicle a few blocks from the bank. Walker says cops recovered all of the stolen money as well as the gun, the ski mask and the clothes witnesses say Garcia was wearing.
DHS Director says shared office with Nebraska working
The director of Iowa’s Department of Human Services says he’s pleased with the early operation of an office set up to share child support information with Nebraska. D-H-S Director Kevin Concannon says they’re able to collect two-thirds of the child support ordered by Iowa courts, and they hope the two-state office in Omaha will improve that number. He says if you look at the one-third of support that’s not collected, a disproportinate amount is owed by people who move to other states to avoid collection. He says they recognized a number of people moving over into Omaha, or came back over from Council Bluffs. The office opened in April and Concannon says they’ve made progress in working out the system. He says both states are learning how to get things entered and get wage attachments done quickly in two states where people move back and forth across the border. He says with people from two states sitting side-by-side with access to the records of both states, they’re more able to track people down for child support. Concannon says the hardest part of getting the operation going was to solve the legal concerns. He says there were legal questions about giving access to records to information. He says both states have laws to provide access in each state, and he says they had to work out how to give each state comparable access to the information from both states. Concannon visited the office today (Tuesday) and says the first-of-its kind experiment is getting notice. He says the federal government had a representative there too, as the office may be a model for other states seeking to catch people who move to avoid child support. Concannon says securing the child support helps the kids, and the state also gets some of the money. He says there’s also a benefit for businesses.He says about two-thirds of child support payments are made through wage attachments and it was possible that Iowa and Nebraska could both have filed a wage attachment with a company. He says the joint office ensures that there’s just one attachment filed. Concannon says that makes it easier for businesses to keep track of the attachment. Concannon said the three-person unit is currently monitoring hundreds of cases that span both states. He says the percentage of on-time payments is up, as are collections in past-due cases.
November was wetter and warmer than normal
This November has been a tiny bit wetter but quite a bit warmer than usual according to State Climatologist Harry Hillaker. Hillaker says temperatures were over five degrees warmer than normal. November 2004 will be the 17th warmest in the 132 years officials had been keeping weather record. Hillaker says precipitation levels were very close to normal. However, 2004 will be an above-normal year for precipitation. Hillaker says as far as weather records go, September, October and November are considered fall. He says this fall has been drier than normal. The fall of 2004 was mild, according to Hillaker. Temps averaged about three-and-a-half degrees warmer than normal. “Otherwise, nothing terribly out of the ordinary regarding the fall weather,” Hillaker says.
Iowa and Drake meet in Des Moines
The Iowa Hawkeyes visit Drake tonight looking to continue a string of victories in the series that has now reached 25. The Hawks are 3-1 and nationally ranked after an impressive trip to Maui. Iowa coach Steve Alford does not expect a letdown, he says if Drake beats his team, it’s because they were better on that night, not because they overlooked the Bulldogs.For many teams, the first game back from Hawaii is lackluster. Alford is not expecting that. He says there’s no excuses, as his team knew they were going to have a very difficult five game stretch and this will test their mental toughness.Alford says the Hawkeyes need a lot of improvement defensively and they will be tested tonight. He says they’re good in transition, make or miss. He says they really like to get the ball up and down the floor and he says his team needs to control their tansition game. Drake enters tonight’s game with Iowa 1-1 and the Bulldogs will be looking to bounce back from a 73-46 loss at Iowa State. Coach Tom Davis says his players have come off that loss with the right attitude. He says they recognize they have a long way to go to improve.Davis says Iowa, Iowa State and UNI all appear headed for strong seasons and the Bulldogs need to do their part. He says they each have proven they can play at a good level, and he says his team is the question mark when it comes to proving they can play at a post-season level. Davis says the in-state games have added interest this time of year, and he says he hopes the fans at all four like seeing how the teams match up. Iowa leads the all-time series 51-7 and Drake’s last win was December ninth of 1978.
