The Iowa Transportation Commission today awarded up to $469,210 to assist Waukee in paving approximately 1,850 feet of Northeast Westgate Drive west of Northeast Alice’s Road in the Crossing at Alice’s Road development. Funding will come from the Revitalize Iowa’s Sound Economy fund. The project will provide initial access to the proposed 51-acre office park. The commission approved about $5.7 million for 16 statewide transportation projects, including $750,000 for a Raccoon River Valley Trail addition in Dallas County.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has changed the way it reports on companies to help consumers make better-informed decisions about where to take their business. The BBB will now assign letter grades from A+ to F, replacing its current system of assigning “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” to businesses. The grades of more than 13,000 businesses can be reviewed at iowa.bbb.org.

The trade deficit narrowed to $40.4 billion in November, down 28.7 percent from October’s deficit of $56.7 billion, the Associated Press reported. The trade deficit through November was running at an annual rate of $688.2 billion, compared with $700.3 billion in the year-ago period. Exports of goods and services fell 5.9 percent to $142.8 billion due to declines in farm product, automobile and heavy machinery sales. Meanwhile, imports fell 12 percent to $183.2 billion, led by a record fall in the price of crude oil. The United States’ deficit with China also shrank by 17.5 percent to $23.1 billion.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. downgraded its rating on Deere & Co. to neutral from overweight, saying that corn prices are likely to fall, causing farmers to spend less on equipment, MarketWatch reported. Its prediction that farm equipment sales would start to decline follows a U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast that corn inventories will increase as demand falls off substantially.

As Barack Obama prepares to take over as president next week, he and his aides are already meeting with Senate members in anticipation of a possible vote Thursday on whether to release the second half of the $700 billion set aside for the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP), the Associated Press reported. In a Financial Services Committee hearing in the House this week, legislators will discuss placing tougher restrictions on recipients of the money and require spending to reduce mortgage foreclosures. President George Bush asked for the remaining $350 billion in the bailout program on Obama’s behalf yesterday, setting a 15-day deadline for Congress to disapprove the request.

Several major banks are scheduled to release their quarterly earnings in the next couple of weeks, which are expected to show that the credit crunch has affected credit cards, commercial real estate mortgages and other loans to consumers and businesses, the San Francisco Business Times reported. Bank of America Corp. will announce its results on Jan. 20, Citigroup Inc. will report its earnings on Jan. 22 and Wells Fargo & Co. will report earnings on Jan. 28. JPMorgan Chase & Co. moved up its earnings release date to Jan. 15 from Jan. 21.