*The number of people running for November municipal elections is increasing, with the first person to run for the Sioux City Council coming forward.
There are three council positions, and former Sioux City mayor Craig Berenstein is the first candidate. He served in city elective office in the 2000’s, with four years on the council and four as mayor.
There will be three city council positions that go before voters, for terms that will soon end for Councilmen Alex Waters, Dan Moore, and Matthew O’Kane.
Those three Sioux City Council contests may have a special extra primary election on October 7, if more than six candidates file papers by August 28.
More broadly throughout Northwest Iowa, the November 4 election will include contests for school board, city council, and mayor positions. People can file nomination papers for those spots from August 25 to September 18.
Storm Lake Mayor Mike Porsch will not run for re-election in November. Porsch has served for 16 years, first as a City Council member and later in two terms as Mayor.
He announced that decision on Monday.
“It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve and represent the community I’ve called home for over 50 years,” Porsch said.
*Additionally, the Iowa Board of Regents approved new policy revisions Tuesday that say professors should avoid indoctrinating students through their teaching.
Those are part of a broad effort to regulate how some controversial topics are taught.
The Board’s existing policy says teachers at Iowa’s public universities cannot introduce controversial matters during class that have no relation to the subject. The new revisions say information should be presented in a way that avoids indoctrination of one perspective.
Regent David Barker voted for the revisions.
“If some controversial policy is taught, students should be informed that this is controversial and they should have an understanding of both sides of it. But this policy is not about censoring. It’s not about saying there is anything that shouldn’t be taught. It’s that things should be taught in a balanced manner,” Barker said.
The Board proposed the changes after receiving pushback for an earlier proposal that would have limited teaching on topics related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
*The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declined to comment Tuesday on the decision to remove five Iowa rivers—including the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers—from the impaired waters list.
The Des Moines Register reports the EPA told state officials in July that it reversed the Biden-area decision to target those rivers for pollution control. That happened while Central Iowa Water Works was struggling to keep drinking water below the federal limit for nitrates.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin was in Iowa.and was asked why the EPA took the rivers off the impaired waters list, which he did not address.
A Food and Water Watch official says Trump’s EPA is callously turning its back while Iowa faces a crisis of nitrate contamination in major urban drinking water supplies.
