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Ames man accused of inappropriate contact with 4 year old girl

July 12, 2010 By

Michael Trachta (jail mug shot)

Michael Trachta (jail mug shot)

An Ames man is facing charges for inappropriate contact with a four-year-old girl. Story County Sheriff’s deputies arrested 18-year-old Michael Trachta Sunday night.

Captain Barry Thomas says Trachta is charged with three counts of lascivious acts with a child. “The victim in the case had come forward and told people about some events that had taken place and once the sheriff’s office received that report, we started investigating,” Thomas said.

The child said the contact occured at least three times over the course of several months at Trachta’s home. Thomas says Trachta admitted to the “inappropriate contact.” He is being held in the Story County Jail. Thomas described Trachta as a family acquaintance of the young girl.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Challenger says State Treasurer should have taken a pay cut

July 12, 2010 By

The Republican who’s running for state treasurer is criticizing the current office holder for failing to take a pay cut. Governor Chet Culver ordered a 10 percent across-the-board cut in the state budget last October and Culver cut his own salary by 10 percent. State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald’s salary was not impacted by Culver’s action.

Dave Jamison, Fitzgerald’s Republican opponent, says the treasurer failed a leadership test by failing to cut his own pay, too. “Even though the dollar amount may not be a large dollar amount — it’s not going to, of itself, save the budget — but I think it’s important to lead by example,” Jamison says.

Jamison has been Story County Treasurer since 1995 and last year Jamison led an effort to freeze the pay of county elected officials like himself because Story County workers weren’t getting pay increases. “It was important to me that they understood that I was in it with them,” he says of those county workers.

Jamison says Fitzgerald should have taken a pay cut of some sort, or perhaps some unpaid days off, to signal to employees in the treasurer’s office that the state budget situation is tight and everyone needs to do their part.

Filed Under: Politics & Government Tagged With: , ,

River savior is nominated for title, big money prize

July 12, 2010 By

The Quad Cities-area native who launched a river clean-up project more than a decade ago is now competing for the title of Hardest Working Man in America. Chad Pregracke is president and founder of the non-profit group Living Lands and Waters. He started it with just himself, pulling garbage out of the Mississippi River. 

Since founding the organization at age 27 in 1998, it’s grown to encompass 11 full-time workers and a fleet of barges clearing waterways in more than a dozen states. At last count, he’s guided more than 60,000 volunteers to collect more than six-million pounds of debris. Pregracke says, “I get a lot of attention and do a lot of interviews and stuff like that but it’s really the team of people who work here every day that really make it happen.”

The East Moline, Illinois-based venture is multi-faceted — but he says all goals point to a cleaner, healthier environment. “We do not only river cleanup, which is the majority of our time, but we also have a nursery in Beardstown, Illinois,” Pregracke says. “It’s part of our Million Trees program and we give out 100,000-plus trees a year, all native trees. We also do teacher education workshops and just quite a bit of different projects.”

Mike Rowe, host of the TV show “Dirty Jobs,” has nominated Pregracke for the “Hardest Working” title through a contest hosted by the antiperspirant, Mitchum. The top prize is $100,000. “There’s about 90 other entries and they’re just different people doing different hard-working jobs around the country,” Pregracke says. “Mine’s just one of them and Mike Rowe does the intro for me. It’s pretty cool.” Learn more and cast an online vote at:

www.mitchumhardestworking.com

and go directly to Pregracke’s entry here:

http://npp9fn31fuu.mitchumhardestworking.com/

In one of Pregracke’s recent success stories, he hosted an Alternative Spring Break program in Cedar Rapids last spring, luring nearly 200 students to help remove huge piles of debris that were left along the Cedar River following the record 2008 flood.

Filed Under: Environment & Conservation, Human Interest

Cost of passports to go up

July 12, 2010 By

The cost to get a U.S. passport will increase Tuesday. Jasper County Recorder, Nancy Parrott says the increase will bump the cost over $100 dollars for both adults and children. She says the adult passport cost of a book increases $35 to $135 dollars, and for anyone under 16, the cost increases $20 to $110.

The cost of passport cards are also going up. Parrott says the card allows you to travel by land or sea to Canada, Mexico and some islands, but if you travel by air, you need a passport book. The cost of the cards for kids increases by $5 to $40 overall and for adults by 10 dollars to $55 overall. Parrott says the county recorders will not get any extra money from the increase, as it all goes to the federal government.

Parrott says they receive $25  for the execution of a first-time passport, and they don’t get any fee when a person renews. Parrott says it usually take four to six weeks from the time you order a passport to receive it.

By Randy Van, KCOB, Newton

Filed Under: Politics & Government

Iowa business to be featured on cable show

July 12, 2010 By

A couple of Iowa businesses should get some national exposure tonight on a Travel Channel program. Tonight’s episode of “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” will likely include footage of the chef and author’s visit to Iowa in November when he was in the state for an appearance at the Des Moines Civic Center. Bourdain’s film crew traveled to the Hamilton County town of Stanhope to shoot footage of the Stanhope Locker and interview the locker’s owner, Clint Smith.

“They really just wanted to see the steps of this processing facility…a small meat locker,” Smith said. Smith did not meet Bourdain, but says he enjoys watching the program. He says the film crew wanted to document how animals arrive at the locker and end up on a family’s dinner table.

“Their whole idea was to show that you have local processors and you can identify where your meat is coming from,” Smith said. While Bourdain was in Des Moines, he took a film crew to the French restaurant Bistro Montage. Bourdain sampled a number of the restaurant’s menu items, including cheese from Reichert’s Dairy in Knoxville. Tonight’s episode, titled “Heartland,” airs at 9 o’clock on the Travel Channel.

Filed Under: Recreation & Entertainment Tagged With:

Radio Iowa/Baseball Coaches Associastion Poll.

July 12, 2010 By

Class 4A
1. Mason City (30-6), LW #1
2. Dowling Catholic (26-6), LW #3
3. Dubuque Hempstead (30-3), LW #5
4. Iowa City West (25-7), LW #2
5. Des Moines East (29-7), LW #6
6. Davenport Central (25-7), LW #7
7. Cedar Rapids Kennedy (25-10), LW #9
8. Sioux City North (24-10), LW #4
9. Fort Dodge (26-10), LW #8
10.S.E. Polk (24-11), LW (X)

 

Class 3A
1. Boyden-Hull/Rock Valley (23-2), LW #1
2. Sergeant Bluff-Luton (28-2), LW #2
3. Dallas Center-Grimes (23-4), LW #3
4. Davenport Assumption (25-6), LW #4
5. Hampton-Dumont (23-2), LW #5
6. Glenwood (23-6), LW #6
7. Norwalk (25-7), LW #7
8. ADM (Adel) (21-5), LW #8
9. Harlan (22-7), LW #9
10.Washington (22-6), LW #10

 

Final Class 2A
1. Solon (35-2), LW #1
2. Dyersville Beckman (31-5), LW #3
3. Davis County (28-2), LW #2
4. Wilton (22-6), LW #6
5. Gilbert (24-4), LW #4
6. Logan-Magnolia (20-3), LW #5
7. Fort Dodge St. Edmond (22-9), LW #7
8. Van Buren Keosauqua (21-3), LW #8
9. Lake Mills (22-6), LW (X)
10.OA-BCIG (19-3)

Final Class 1A
1. Martensdale-St. Marys (36-0), LW #1
2. Mason City Newman (26-2), LW #2
3. Don Bosco (29-1), LW #3
4. EHK-Exira (24-0), LW #4
5. North Sentral Kossuth (30-7), LW #6
6. Lansing Kee (30-6), LW #7
7. N-U High (Cedar Falls) (23-5), LW #8
8. Council Bluffs St. Albert (18-6), LW #5
9. Treynor (23-3), LW #9
10.North Tama (24-6), LW #10

Filed Under: Radio Iowa Poll, Sports

Electronic system to track pseudoephedrine sales on track for September

July 12, 2010 By

The state’s drug czar says it looks like a new system to track a key ingredient used to make methamphetamine is ready to meet the September 1st deadline for statewide use. Gary Kendall, the director of the Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy, says the new system will allow pharmacies to track the sale of cold and flu medications containing pseudoephedrine.

“What it will do is stop people from going from pharmacy to pharmacy and buying their limit at each pharmacy that they go to, which has been happening over the past couple years since we passed the restrictions that put it behind the counter and placed a limit on how much they can buy,” Kendall says. Some pharmacies have already been using the new system in a pilot project.

Cheri Rockhold-Schmit works at an Ames pharmacy, and says the system has worked well. “It’s freed us up and given us more time to actually fill prescriptions and counsel patients and do the things we’re suppose to do because we’re not spending as much time on the phone calling other pharmacies trying to figure out if a purchase is legitimate or not,” Rockhold-Schmit says.

The legislature passed the bill two sessions ago to set up the electronic system after law officers said meth makers were getting around the purchase limits set on pseudoephedrine by going pharmacy to pharmacy in a practice known as “smurfing.”

Filed Under: Business, Crime & Courts, Politics & Government Tagged With:
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