Iowa, Cedar Rapids | featured news

The Gazette’s Business Notes is a compendium of the week’s promotions, new hires, certifications, added business lines and business events, among other items, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and the rest of the Corridor.

The following is a roundup of Iowa news from the past seven days.

I recently spoke with a job seeker who applied through a company’s website only to discover via his networking activity that the employer was not hiring at this time. The hiring manager shared that this was the company’s way of “seeing what’s out there” but had no immediate plans to hire for that role.

Iowa administered an additional 39,706 coronavirus vaccines as of 11 a.m. Saturday for the previous 24-hour period. That takes to total number of individuals fully vaccinated to 652,349.

DES MOINES — It’s do or die week in the Iowa Legislature.Friday marks the second “funnel” deadline, which means policy bills that do not involve budgeting or taxation issues must be passed in either the House or Senate and clear a standing committee in the other chamber to remain eligible for further consideration this legislative session.

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Cedar Rapids Community School District has completed its COVID-19 vaccine clinics, after months of administering the two-dose Moderna vaccine to school staff. In a newsletter to families Friday, school nurse and nurse practitioner Jill Asprey said it was a “privilege to play a part in ending this pandemic.”

CEDAR RAPIDS — The team leading the effort to “ReLeaf” the community after last summer’s derecho downed most of the city’s tree canopy has created a website to collect citizens’ ideas about reviving the lost urban forest.

OTTUMWA — A jury has handed down a mix of convictions and acquittals for two Iowa men for a violent home-invasion robbery in 2018 that led to the fatal shooting of a third suspect by police.A Wapello County jury on Thursday found Michael Bibby, 35, guilty of the attempted murder of former police Chief Tom McAndrew, the Ottumwa Courier reported.

IOWA CITY — A former acting director of University of Iowa Health Care’s Central Sterilizing Services is suing UIHC and the Board of Regents for gender and pay discrimination, asserting she was excluded from meetings and decision making, paid less and fired after reporting concerns about bias and unsafe practices.

Below is the full letter sent to Iowa Department of Health leadership from an official at Linn County Public Health, who questioned the state’s decision to allocate Johnson & Johnson vaccines to “very high functioning and health literate professional populations.” In the letter — written by Tricia Kitzmann, community health division manager — officials