Gazette Daily News Briefing, May 6 and May 7
Welcome to the weekend!
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for Saturday, May 6, and Sunday, May 7.
Higher temperatures and a slight chance for rain will continue into the weekend. According to the National Weather Service it will be cloudy with a high near 76 degrees in the Cedar Rapids area on Saturday. There will be a slight chance of rain in the morning, then an increasing chance for showers and thunderstorms into Saturday night.
On Sunday the high will jump up to a summerlike 87 degrees with sunny skies. There will again be a chance for showers and thunderstorms, however, primarily after 1 p.m.
After cresting along Iowa’s eastern border this week, the Mississippi River is now receding.
In the first week of April, historic snowpacks in Minnesota and Wisconsin melted in about 96 hours, with 6 to 10 inches of snowmelt rushing into waterways that fed into the river, according to senior service hydrologist Matt Wilson of the National Weather Service’s Quad Cities bureau.
“The vast majority of the floodwater came from that snowmelt … so that’s really unique,” Wilson said. “When we do our modeling forecasting, we go back to past events and look at that. There wasn’t a past event to go back to look at this current setup.”
The amount of snowpack, plus above average temperatures, created “worst-case scenario” conditions, he said. Thankfully, not much rain fell to add to the swollen waterways.
Iowa river communities from the Minnesota border to Muscatine were hit hardest by the flooding.
Iowa lawmakers sent the last of Iowa’s 2024 budget bills to Gov. Kim Reynolds’ desk for approval on Thursday, directing billions of dollars to departments and operations across the state.
The general fund budget totaled $8.5 billion for the fiscal year starting July 1, a 3.7 percent increase over this year’s budget. More than $1 billion will be appropriated from other funds.
According to an analysis from the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency, the expected state surplus after the 2023-24 budget year will be more than $2 billion.
Funding for Iowa’s K-12 schools represents the bulk of this appropriation. Schools will see a 3 percent increase in per-pupil funding, or about $107 million more than this fiscal year.
Iowa families who wish to apply for state-funded financial assistance to attend a private school in the 2023-2024 school year can submit an application starting at the end of this month, Gov. Kim Reynolds’ office announced Wednesday.
Applications for the Students First Education Savings Accounts will be accepted starting May 31 and through June 30, the governor’s office said.
With those applications pending, the state education board is adopting rules that specify eligibility requirements and parameters for the application process, as well as program administration and accountability, the governor’s office said.
Reynolds and the Republican-led Iowa Legislature earlier this year created the program, which will be phased in over four years until, at full implementation, all K-12 students in Iowa will be eligible for roughly $7,600 per year in state funding to put toward private school tuition or other private school expenses.
The program is expected to cost $107 million in the first year and by 2027, when phased in, will cost $345 million.
Have a good weekend everyone!
