Gazette Daily News Briefing, October 13
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for October 13, 2023.
Looks like it will be a rainy morning Friday. According to the National Weather Service there will be a high chance of showers and thunderstorms before noon on Friday, then a little break for rain in the middle of the day, before a chance for more rain Friday evening. The temperature will top out at 63 degrees, with a 15 to 20 mph breeze gusting as high as 30 mph.
Francis Marion Intermediate School in Marion is closed to students the rest of the week after Wednesday’s storm caused several parts of the school’s roof to collapse.
Restoration and construction companies were on-site at the school for third- and fourth-graders in the Marion Independent School District Thursday to survey the damage and determine a cost estimate and timeline for repairs.
Superintendent Janelle Brouwer said a “significant amount of water” overnight Wednesday damaged three classrooms and seeped into other areas of the building. Brouwer said a construction company likely will be working to make repairs to Francis Marion school, 2301 Third Ave., over the weekend.
The district’s other schools will remain open.
The damage was identified by an evening custodian in the school Wednesday, Brouwer said. Notification that the school would be closed Thursday and Friday was sent to families Wednesday around 8 p.m. The closure impacts about 240 students who attend the school.
Alliant Energy’s Iowa utility is proposing a rate increase for its electric and gas customers it says comes to about $150 a year — with more to come later.
Interstate Power and Light Company is requesting a 7.7 percent increase to residential customers’ total electric bills. If approved by the Iowa Utilities Board, the hike would go into effect in October 2024. That corresponds to about $10 extra a month, said spokesperson Morgan Hawk.
An additional rate increase of about 5.7 percent would follow in October 2025, which breaks down to about $7 a month.
There’s only one phase of rate increases for natural gas customers: a 5 percent increase that, if approved, would start in October 2024. It would add about $3 more to customers’ total bills.
The utility is asking to raise its rates to cover added operation costs, support grid resiliency and allow future growth, Hawk said.
IPL is moving overhead power lines underground to decrease the number and the length of power outages. Frequency and duration of Alliant outages have decreased by about 30 percent over the last decade as more lines have moved underground, Hawk said.
Iowa state revenue is expected to decline slightly in fiscal 2024 and 2025, owing largely to recent income tax cuts, a panel of revenue forecasters reported Thursday.
The latest projections from the Iowa Revenue Estimating Conference — which will guide lawmakers on how much money they have to spend — predict state income in the fiscal year that started July 1 will fall by 0.9 percent from the fiscal 2023 level. The state revenues this budget year are expected to be $9.75 billion.
Iowa’s revenue in fiscal 2023, which ended June 30, was $9.85 billion, a 0.4 percent increase from the previous year.
“The state is showing a modest slowdown in revenue. However, those reductions are planned and being driven by the tax rate reductions for Iowa taxpayers,” said Kraig Paulsen, the director of the Iowa Department of Management and chair of the panel.
Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a major tax overhaul law in 2022 that set Iowa's individual income on the course to a flat tax of 3.9 percent for all income brackets, and intended to lower corporate taxes to 5.5 percent if revenues hit a certain target each year.
