The new Woodbury County Law Enforcement Center is taking shape, but it will open later and be pricier than expected. The LEC is now likely to be finished August 2023, and that is five months later than the original estimate, according to the Sioux City Journal.
Woodbury County LEC Authority chairman Ron Wieck told the Sioux City Journal Tuesday the delay is due to supply chain issues and periods of inclement weather.
Counting additional other expenses, the project's price tag now stands at $69 million. Woodbury county voters passed a $50.3 million bond issue in March 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain issues, the low bid for the main construction phase came in well above estimates at $58.4 million.
Woodbury County fell to a low level of COVID-19 transmission in the past week; and the number of tests coming back positive for the virus continued to decline, according to the latest state and national data.
The county saw a 16% decrease in positive COVID tests reported in the last seven days, according to the state's most recent COVID-19 report. The data, which was updated by the Iowa Department of Public Health on Tuesday, shows 189 positive tests, which is down from the 226 positive tests reported on Aug. 23.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID Data Tracker rates Woodbury County's community transmission level as low. That level was calculated on Aug. 25 using data from Aug. 18 to 24.
In Iowa there is a slight increase in the number of reported positive COVID-19 tests in the past week. There were more than 61 hundred positive tests in the past seven days. An increase of about 200 from last week. That’s as federal officials report COVID hospitalizations have remained stable.
As of today, 265 Iowans hospitalized have tested positive for the virus.
State officials have confirmed an additional 33 deaths associated with COVID this week, bringing Iowa’s total death count to more than 99 hundred.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly 63 percent of all Iowans are fully vaccinated against the virus.
Iowa will soon have three health insurance companies to help run its Medicaid program.
Today the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services announced the intent to award managed care contracts to two winning bidders: Amerigroup Iowa and Molina Healthcare of Iowa. Iowa Total Care currently holds a managed care contract with Iowa that lasts through 2025.
Starting next year, the for-profit companies will help manage the joint federal and state program that finances seven- billion-dollars in health care annually for nearly 790,000 lower income and disabled Iowans.
Nebraska and Iowa residents hitting the road for Labor Day weekend fun should remember that law enforcement agencies are on high alert for drunken drivers.
Nebraska and Iowa State Patrol troopers, county sheriff's deputies and police officers in both states will be working overtime through Monday as part of the Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over campaign.
Troopers with the Nebraska State Patrol arrested 15 impaired drivers during the first weekend of the annual two-week campaign.
