Gazette Daily News Briefing, March 13 and March 14
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Saturday March 13 and Sunday March 14.
First off, a reminder to set your clocks forward Sunday morning for Daylight Saving Time. Local fire departments would also probably like me to tell you that this is the perfect time to check the batteries in your smoke alarms to see if they still work.
I mentioned yesterday that Friday would be the last day of sunny, warm weather for awhile. That weather prediction turned out to be slightly wrong: it looks like you will also get part of Saturday. According to the National Weather Service it should be sunny with a high near 60 degrees in the Cedar Rapids area through Saturday afternoon. Saturday evening the temperature will drop, and there will be a small chance for rain.
Sunday that chance for rain will grow, as it will be mostly cloudy with a high of about 51 degrees. The wind will pick up to 15 to 20 mph, gusting as high as 30 mph. If that all didn’t sound fun enough, Sunday night into Monday is predicted to bring a snowy mess that turns into a rainy mess. Up to 2 inches of snow could fall overnight Sunday, with rain turning into a rainy and snowy mix on Monday. Happy first day of Spring Break. I hope you are traveling somewhere warm or you enjoy staying inside and watching basketball.
Without conducting a formal search — despite earlier suggestions it would — the University of Iowa on Friday named another interim administrator to assume a top leadership post on campus: dean of its largest college.
Sara Sanders stepped in as interim dean of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in July after its former and short-lived dean Steve Goddard abruptly resigned just a year into the job following a contentious Zoom town hall about budget cuts and fall return plans with 400-plus faculty and staff.
Sanders — a social work professor who before her interim appointment served as associate dean for strategic initiatives and director of the college’s diversity, equity, and inclusion division — will earn an annual salary of $375,000, up from her interim pay of $305,000 and previous $160,980 salary.
Farmland value in Iowa rose by an unusually high 7.8 percent between September 2020 and March 2021, according to a new survey from the Realtors Land Institute’s Iowa chapter.
Troy Louwagie from Hertz Real Estate Services in Mount Vernon said low interest rates, government support, relatively few farms for sale, and concerns about inflation led to the jump.
“Over history, we have not seen those types of increases,” he said.
More than 1 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered in Iowa as of Friday afternoon, with 990,459 of the shots going to Iowa residents.
Some 366,371 individuals — 15.2 percent of Iowa’s adult population — have been fully vaccinated as of 11 a.m. Friday.
This briefing is sponsored in part by Corridor Careers. Are you looking for a job? CorridorCareers.com is a resource to local job seekers where they can get job tips, sign up for local job alerts, build a resume and more. Check it out at CorridorCareers.com.
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