Gazette Daily News Briefing, January 12
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for January 12, 2024.
According to the National Weather Service it will snow all day on Friday in the Cedar Rapids area, with a high near 31 degrees. The current NWS prediction is for 5 to 11 inches of snow by the end of Friday. It will be windy to start the day, leading to a chance of blowing snow, reduced visibility, and possible blizzard-like conditions. And it will grow even windier throughout the day, with wind gusts as high as 45 mph by Friday evening.
The snow will finally run out of steam on Saturday. After that, it is going to get really, really cold next week.
Instead of the nearly $40 million appropriations increase Iowa’s Board of Regents wanted the Legislature to approve for the next budget year, Gov. Kim Reynolds has recommended a $12.3 million bump — amounting to a 2.5 percent increase for each of Iowa’s public universities.
In making that recommendation as part of her fiscal 2025 budget proposal released this week, Reynolds rejected several specific regent university requests.
Reynolds’ proposal also excluded any funding toward a $1 million request for expanded mental health services on campus that student leaders implored regents to add to their legislative request for funding.
It remains to be seen whether the Iowa Legislature will follow her budget recommendations, but the governor’s proposal is a sign that it may be another year where Iowa’s universities receive far less funding than they asked for.
The city of Cedar Rapids saw a noticeable decrease in shots-fired incidents and other violent crime in 2023, according to the Cedar Rapids Police Department’s annual crime statistics.
Shots-fired incidents have been consistently decreasing in Cedar Rapids since they spiked in 2020 — jumping to 163 reports from 99 in 2019.
In 2023, 81 shots-fired incidents were reported in the city, the first year the total has dropped below pre-pandemic levels. It’s also about 35 percent less than the five-year average of 124.
Violent crime — the category including murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — dropped to 435 reports in the city in 2023, down from 465 in 2022, but still above the 2018 and 2019 totals, which were 281 and 283, respectively.
Police attribute the decrease to some arrests made early in the year and the city’s Group Violence Intervention Program.
The city of Cedar Rapids has been working to reduce violent crime through its Group Violence Intervention Program since 2019. The program involves police and other community members working with people in the community who may be at high risk of being a victim or a perpetrator of violent crime.
Hundreds of people said goodbye Thursday to a vibrant 11-year-old boy known as “Smiley,” a week after he was shot to death at his school in Perry.
According to reporting from the Associated Press, residents of the small community of Perry packed a Catholic church and spilled over to a nearby church where the funeral for Ahmir Jolliff was televised. They recalled a boy with a “spirit bigger than his 11-year-old body could contain,” as the Rev. Andrea Brownlee put it.
A 17-year-old student named Dylan Butler armed with a shotgun and handgun killed Ahmir before classes began Jan. 4, the first day back from winter break. The high school principal, two other staff members and four students were wounded. Butler later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
School has been canceled since the shooting, but elementary students will go back to class Jan. 18 and middle school students will return Jan. 19. The shooting started in the cafeteria the middle school shares with the high school, so the repairs must be done there before the middle school can reopen.
In an earlier interview, Ahmir’s mother, Erica Jolliff, described her son as an outgoing boy who seemed to know everyone in Perry.
“He was so well-loved and he loved everyone,” she said.
