Archive

IOWA CITY– Brad Kunkel will likely be Johnson County’s next sheriff.
Kunkel, a sergeant and the public information officer for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, defeated Al Fear, a sergeant with the Patrol Division of the Cedar Rapids Police Department, with an overwhelming 82 percent of the vote in a Democrat primary election Tuesday, June 2. Kunkel, of rural Solon, had 19,469 votes to 4,128 for Fear, a resident of Swisher.

SOLON– In mid-March, the Solon Community School District (SCSD) had to move fast to put together a plan for distance learning.
Now the district has to figure out how to bring kids back to school.
SCSD board members reviewed voluntary participation numbers during the final months of the school year and listened to an overview of the district’s Return to Learning plan at a regular meeting May 21.
Superintendent Davis Eidahl walked board members through both reports.
Eidahl complimented district staff for quickly adapting to a model of remote learning for the final months of the year.

SOLON– It’s a strain.
“Trauma is a big scary word but that’s kind of what we’re living through right now,” noted Troy Ward of Ward Counseling Services. “I can’t do the things that I used to be able to do, I don’t know when I’m going to be able to do them again.”
That’s hard to deal with, Ward said, and if you are an individual already struggling in some way, you just had a lot more piled on your plate in the last two months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ward has been offering free telehealth services for the uninsured and underinsured during the outbreak.

NORTH LIBERTY– The schedules for the 2020 high school baseball and softball seasons were released by the Mississippi Valley Conference (MVC) and WaMaC Conference, and set the stage for a short campaign for the Liberty High Lightning and the Clear Creek Amana (CCA) Clippers.
On Wednesday, May 20, Gov. Kim Reynolds announced the summer sports season could proceed and approved the reopening of school facilities beginning on Monday, June 1.

OXFORD– In a normal year, American Legion Post 537 in Oxford conducts Memorial Day observances in six cemeteries. The veterans typically bus from site to site participating in a short parade and drop a wreath into Rhine Creek. Later, a detachment deploys to Sutliff for the evening ceremony on the bridge.