More Important News

Ag in the Classroom Helps Students Celebrate 100 Days

Melinda Charbonneau, Ag Literacy Coordinator for Ogle & Carroll counties, provided a program in conjunction with the Kindergarten classes at Eastland and West Carroll celebrating their 100th Day of School.

Melinda read the story, "Miss Bindergarten Celebrates

the 100th Day of Kindergarten". After hearing the story, students learned how agriculture was involved in each item that the characters brought to Miss. Bindergarten's class.

At the conclusion of the program, students received a piece of paper with the number 100 on it. Each student turned their 100 into an agricultural item.

"Ag in the Classroom" is offered through the University of Illinois Extension-Ogle County in partnership with Carroll County Farm Bureau, Ogle County Farm Bureau, Carroll County Soil & Water, and Ogle County Soil & Water. For more information about the program, call the Ogle County Extension Office at (815) 732-2191.

Lanark Lions Give Back

Don Hart (rt) representing the Lanark Lions Club, presents a check for $1000 to the Shannon Food Pantry, which serves residents of both Lanark and Shannon. Accepting the donation, proceeds from the Lions' 2008 fund-raisers, is Mic Crichton (center) President of the SFP Board, and Wilmer Jacobs, Treasurer.

"We've done well with our fund raisers this past year," Hart said. "We had great community support for our Pancake & Sausage Supper, Ham Sales, and Candy Days. We decided it's time to give back to the community."

The Shannon Food Pantry is located at 109 E. Badger. Seven area churches and other local volunteers help distribute the food when the pantry is open, every 1st and 3rd Tuesday, from 2 to 4 p.m.

"We try to supply a good variety for our people," Jacobs said. "The people and businesses in the area are so very generous."

For more information about the Shannon Food Pantry, please call Wilmer Jacobs at , or Mic Crichton at . Monetary donation may be sent to 502 Stanton St., Shannon, IL 61078. (PA article & photo/Tom Kocal)

50th Anniversary for Koellers

Fay P. & Arlene (Schrader) Koeller of 10692A Shannon Rt., Lanark, IL were married February 25, 1959 at the Bethel United Methodist Church in Shannon with the Rev. Robert Hartman officiating.

Attendants were Leona & (the late) Gary Sturtz from Lanark.

Fay and Arlene have three sons: Korey of Lanark; Kevin (Tina) of Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Kyle of Shannon. The couple have two grandchildren, 7 step-grandchildren and 12 step-great grandchildren.

Little-Imel Engagement

Darci Little and Eric Imel, both of Sterling, announce their engagement. The bride elect is the daughter of Jamie Long of Mendota and Dennis Little of Rockford. Her fiancé is the son of Duane and Barb Imel of Chadwick. The bride elect is a graduate of Sterling High School and Sauk Valley College. She is an AFLAC insurance agent. Her fiancé is a graduate of Chadwick/Milledgeville High School and Sauk Valley College. He is employed at Plews/Edelman in Dixon. The couple's wedding is planned for March 14, 2009.

Awards Presented for Advertising and Marketing Works

Five Ashford University students and alumni won "Addy Awards" on Thursday, Feb. 12, for their advertising and marketing works during the Quad Cities Advertising Federation's Addy Awards Show 2009.

"CSI: Creative Scene Investigators" was the theme of this year's Addy Awards and the ceremony, held at the Putnam Museum/IMAX Theatre in Davenport, Iowa, honored works created throughout 2008. The competition was judged by local professional graphic artists.

"Two of our students were double winners and one of our sophomore students won the top prize, a gold Addy," said Dr. Charlie Minnick, Dean of Ashford's College of Business and Professional Studies. "Ashford faculty, students and their parents were there to honor the award recipients and to celebrate this great achievement. We congratulate the student award winners, as well as our computer graphics and art faculty who spend so much time mentoring and guiding our students on a daily basis. This is a wonderful accomplishment."

Kelsay McCausland of Camanche, IA, was awarded a Gold Addy for her Marilyn Monroe illustration and a Silver Addy for her Time Magazine cover.

Mitchell Seifert of DeWitt, IA, received a Silver Addy for his online portfolio and a Bronze Addy for his design logo.

In the animation category, a Silver Addy went to Alex Riggen of Morrison, IL; Dan Park of Geneseo, IL, and Adrienne Breen of Mingo, IA for their Nerf Commercial. Riggen was the modeler and in charge of sound effects, Park was responsible for texture and special effects, and Breen created the animation.

For more information about Ashland University, please visit www.ashford.edu.

Local Students Answer Presidents Call

President Obama used the occasions of Martin Luther King Day and his Inauguration to rally our nation to commit to service in our communities. Through media ads and the launch of the usaservice.org website, he called upon Americans to give back to their communities.

Over 480 students from five school districts in Northwest Illinois answered his call and participated in a community service project the week of Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service holiday. The project was created and organized by John Huggins, an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) member for the Blackhawk Hills Entrepreneur and Inventors Club. More than 13,000 service projects took place across the country, more than double last year.

The project involved students creating hand-made greeting cards for a variety of occasions such as birthday, Valentines, thank you, etc. The cards will then be distributed to nursing homes in the area along with envelopes and some stamps for seniors to choose from and send to loved ones for free.

The school districts that participated were: East Dubuque, Chadwick-Milledgeville, Prophetstown-Lyndon-Tampico, Rock Falls, and Scales Mound. International Payment Solutions and The Prairie Advocate News provided donations for the envelopes and stamps. "The students were excited to give back to the seniors by creating cards," said Kathy Stierman, the art teacher at East Dubuque. "As part of the project, the students learned that this was a Martin Luther King Day of Service project, where people of all ages and backgrounds come together to improve lives, bridge social barriers, and move our nation closer to the 'Beloved Community' that Dr. King envisioned."

Illinois Sheriff's Association Scholarships

Carroll County Sheriff Jeff Doran announced that the Illinois Sheriff's Association will be awarding over $53,000 in scholarships throughout the state to student's wishing to pursue higher education during the 2009-2010 academic year. The scholarships are to be applied to tuition, books and fees only. The student must be enrolled full-time at a certified institution of higher learning within the state of Illinois. The amount of the scholarship to be awarded in Carroll County will be $500.00.

There is no restriction on any applicant by reason of race, age, creed, color, sex or national origin. The only requirements are: applicants must be a permanent resident of Illinois; scholarships must be utilized at state of Illinois institutions of higher learning; students must be enrolled as a full-time student during the 2009-2010 school year, excluding summer session.

Applications are now available at the Carroll County Sheriff's Office or at www.ILsheriff.org. Completed applications must be returned to the Sheriff's Office of the student's county of residence before March 13, 2009. For more information or questions, call

Metal Recycling and Export Center Coming to Savanna Depot Park

Riverport Railroad (RVPR), Illinois International Trade Centers (IITC) and CIMCO Resources announced an agreement last week to joint-venture in the development of a state of the art, rail served metal recycling and export center at Savanna Depot Park.

RVPR will commit land and rail infrastructure to the project; IITC will incorporate the center as part of its Inland Port and Foreign Trade Zone development and use its Ocean Transportation Intermediary license to establish cost competitive, door to door freight rates for containerized scrap exported from Savanna Depot Park. CIMCO will bring its expertise, state of the art and environmentally friendly technologies and market strength to the project. Together they will create a successful new business at Savanna Depot Park, one that will facilitate and encourage other businesses coming to the site. CIMCO Resources is one of the largest and most successful metal recyclers in the State of Illinois. They have six facilities located throughout the State but none in the northwest quadrant that is home to Savanna Depot Park.

CIMCO approved the joint venture at their regularly scheduled Board Meeting last week. John Gralewski, President and CEO of CIMCO, who has been working with RVPR and IITC for the last four months to fashion the joint venture, gave the plan his full endorsement at that meeting, but cautioned that it would be "baby steps" at first.

"We will start by leasing a small building and some land as a collection and consolidation point for our scrap containers," said Garlewski. "We will provide any interested tenant at the Depot, starting with RVPR, with their own container and our 'open book contract'. That contract makes us a transparent partner in managing clients' scrap to market, risk managed, at the highest price. We will initially use our new facility in Sterling to process the scrap from the Depot while we prove the market and design and construct the required amenities at Savanna Depot Park."

Rob Canier, IITC's Director of Business Development at Savanna Depot Park, will be the on-site "agent" for the new CIMCO services and believes that having on-site, risk-managed scrapping and recycling services will be an attractive amenity to existing and new tenants alike. "Because CIMCO's facilities are all new, green field developments, without the historic environmental issues and liabilities associated with many older scrapping and recycling facilities, and because they use the most modern and environmentally friendly technologies and an 'open book' contract, tenants will get value and transparency without liability," said Canier.

Inviting and supporting the development of a metal scrapping and recycling center at the Depot is part of RVPR comprehensive and long term development strategy of inviting complimentary businesses to Savanna Depot Park that support each other and that use rail. RVPR has land to commit and capital to spend on developing rail infrastructure at the site to meet any appropriate business needs and they will help those businesses find clients for those services and environments created. This year alone, RVPR is spending over three million dollars on such client driven projects at Savanna Depot Park.

RVPR is proud that CIMCO will be the next beneficiary of their incentive programs and believes that RVPR will be able to quickly identify and generate business for the new enterprise. This development fits well with RVPR master plan for the site. With over 60 miles of existing track and new track being added every day, RVPR is already the largest rail car storage facility in the region with over two thousand cars in storage. Its tenant, Rescar - who received incentives similar to those being offered to CIMCO - is one of the largest rail car repair companies in the country, able to repair and refurbish cars stored at the Depot and induce cars to the site for that purpose. With the addition of CIMCO, the site will now be able to store, repair and, if appropriate, scrap and recycle those cars and convert unrepairable rail cars into much needed and welcomed cash for their owners.

The long term goal of the joint venture is to construct a state of the art, rail served, purpose built, "green" facility for effectively scrapping and recycling large vehicles of all kinds. The project will start with rail cars, some of which are already resident at the site, but will target a market that includes truck trailers, international containers and farm equipment.

International containers are of particular interest to IITC, which intends to develop interchange agreements with several container leasors that serve the mid-west and encourage them to store a portion of their empty containers at the site. Simultaneously, IITC will identify and seek out regional exports and provide empty containers to those export locations at a greatly reduced cost, thus lowering the costs of exports from the region and opening up international markets, especially for local agricultural products.

The fact that those containers can be shipped by rail to and from the site; stored inexpensively; repaired by Rescar, if required; filled with regional exports, in the best case and scrapped and recycled by CIMCO, in the worst case; could truly make Savanna Depot Park and effective consolidation point for regional exports.

CIMCO will make its own contribution to this development. Much of the non-ferrous metal collected by CIMCO at their various facilities ends up being containerized and exported, primarily to the Far East; they hope to make Savanna Depot Park their export center for such materials.

The RVPR, IITC & CIMCO joint venture is aimed at making Savanna Depot Park home to a successful business, a logical and effective location for scrapping and recycling steel of all kinds and a consolidation and export center of non-ferrous metals. If they can accomplish those modest goals, Savanna Depot Park may be well on its way to having the export world as one of its oysters. However, in keeping with John Garlewski's admonition for "baby steps", the new partnership will start with small, pragmatic and incremental developments, but remain ever mindful of the broader potential.

February Art Show at Eastland

The following students have art pieces in the February Art Show in the Eastland Art Gallery located in Mr. Hansen's office: K-John Morgan, Christopher & Shelly Morgan; K- Jacob French, Jeffrey & Jacqueline French; 1- Julia Lehman, Timothy & Heather Lehman; 2- Madelynn Meador, Jeff & Elisha Meador; 3- Kaitlyn Myers, Melissa Metz; 4- Alexis Cox, Jennifer Cox; 5- Bailey DeMichele, Jason DeMichele; 5- Haley Cox, Jennifer Cox; 5- Samantha Johnson, Larry & Denise Johnson; 5- Mia Sheffield, John & Christina LaPointe; 6- Nicholas Simpson, Kurt & Kris Simpson; 7- Valdet Seferi, Aslan & Dashurije Seferi; 8- Haley Miller, Mike & Tammy Miller; HS- Wally Wirchianski, John & Nadia Wirchianski; HS- Karissa Pierce, James & Kristy Pierce; HS- Hope Linker, Douglas & Jeanette Linker; HS- Kaitlyn Bissell, Toni Warfield.

CCSC Offers Tax-Aide Program

The Carroll County Senior Center is home to the AARP Tax-Aide Program again this year. The Tax-Aide Counselors are available on Wednesday and Friday mornings to assist seniors with their tax forms. Nine certified counselors volunteer their time for this program. Newcomers this year are Carl Gates and Eric Trager. They join returning counselors Mary Ann Hutchison, Anne Haliotis, Vicky Trager, Gladys Larem, Frank Nester, Russellyn Peterson, and Barb Anderson. Intake facilitators are Howard Kennedy and Diane Frese.

Congress' new stimulus plan will provide some special breaks for taxpayers that purchase their first home, add energy efficient windows, furnaces or air conditioners or purchase a new car. There will be increased tax credits for college tuition expenses as well as a reduction of tax on unemployment benefits.

To schedule an appointment for taxes or transportation to the Senior Center, call or toll-free . Senior Center staff will also assist with Circuit Breaker and Tax Freeze applications.

SAD Mailing List

The Savanna Army Depot will be soliciting comments on upcoming remedial actions that will take place on cleanup projects at the Savanna Army Depot over the next several years. If you would be interested in receiving detailed information on the specific actions that will be taking place at various sites, and providing comments on those reports, we will place your name and address on our Depot mailing list.

Per CERCLA law we are required to solicit comments and hold public meetings on all proposed plans that impact cleanup at the Savanna Army Depot. For each proposed plan there is a 30 day comment period that runs in conjunction with all public meetings where your comments will be considered.

If interested in this process, please contact the following individuals. John Clarke, BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) Environmental Coordinator at , or Jo Carey , .

JBS Loses Fight Over National Beef Merger

JBS S.A., the Brazilian meatpacker that has quickly become a dominant player in the U.S. beef sector, announced today that the company will cease efforts to acquire National Beef Packing of Kansas City, effective February 23.

"This is a huge victory for American ranchers and farmers with livestock. Thousands of family farmers, ranchers and other concerned citizens, rural and urban, signed the Center for Rural Affairs' petition against the JBS mergers and reached out to the Justice Department to urge them to challenge the JBS mergers," said John Crabtree of the Center for Rural Affairs. "Justice responded by challenging the JBS - National Beef merger in court, and this announcement is the end result."

JBS originally announced its intention to acquire National Beef on March 4, 2008. The Department of Justice filed a suit to block the deal on Oct. 20, 2008, on grounds that the merger reduced competition in cattle markets.

"Family farmers, ranchers and their allies can and should be proud of winning this battle. I know the Center for Rural Affairs is proud of our efforts and of all our friends that stood with us on this. So many people have told us so many times that nothing can be done about these mergers. Well, they were wrong. We won . . . family farmers, ranchers and rural communities won . . . JBS lost," concluded Crabtree.

In a statement, the Brazilian beef giant said all related litigation with the Department of Justice also will be terminated.

"JBS will try to spin it, but this time, on this deal, the little guys won the day," added Crabtree.

JBS became one of the top three U.S. beef packers in October 2008 when Justice approved their purchase of the Smithfield Beef Group, which included four beef packing plants and the Five Rivers Ranch cattle-feeding operation with the capacity to feed over 800,000 head of cattle. However, JBS negotiations with the Justice department were insufficient to convince Justice to compromise.

JBS S.A. is currently the world's largest beef producer and packer, with a daily slaughter capacity of 65,000 head of cattle. They are the largest global exporter of processed beef. Their operations include 22 plants located in nine Brazilian states, six plants located in Argentina, nine plants in Australia, 10 plants in Italy and in the U.S. a daily beef slaughter capacity of 28,100 cattle, Five Rivers Cattle Feeding and a lamb slaughter plant along with three pork packing plants with a daily slaughter capacity of 47,900 hogs.

For more information visit: http://www.cfra.org/competition

Ashford U Recognized for Community Service Efforts and Service

The Corporation for National and Community Service has honored Ashford University (AU) with a place on the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for exemplary service efforts and service to America's communities.

"We are excited to be named to the Community Service Honor Roll for the second year in a row," said Dr. Jane McAuliffe, Ashford University President. "This honor highlights how important community service is to the students, faculty and staff at Ashford."

Launched in 2006, the Community Service Honor Roll is the highest federal recognition a school can achieve for its commitment to service-learning and civic engagement. Honorees for the award are chosen based on a series of selection factors including scope and innovation of service projects, percentage of student participation in service activities, incentives for service, and the extent to which the school offers academic service-learning courses.

Ashford was honored because of its involvement in several projects, including:

- Campus Pals, a group of AU students who meet on Monday afternoons to mentor at-risk middle school students;

- A KnowHow2Go event during which middle school students visited the Ashford University campus to learn about going to college;

- Several student organization sponsored activities ­ two blood drives, holiday giving trees for senior citizens and the Clinton County Humane Society, supply collection for a Haiti mission trip, and two off-campus concerts.

"In this time of economic distress, we need volunteers more than ever. College students represent an enormous pool of idealism and energy to help tackle some of our toughest challenges," said Stephen Goldsmith, vice chair of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), which oversees the Honor Roll. "We salute Ashford University for making community service a campus priority, and thank the millions of college students who are helping to renew America through service to others."

Recent studies have underlined the importance of service-learning and volunteering to college students. In 2006, according to CNCS's Volunteering in America 2007 study, 2.8 million college students donated more than 297 million hours of volunteer service.

ACT Conference Topics: Immigration and Diversity in the Classroom

Three Ashford University staff members will present informational sessions during the American College Testing (ACT) Program's 2009 Annual Conference on Wednesday, March 4, in Ames, Iowa. The theme for this year's conference is "Educator Impact: Creating the Leaders of Tomorrow."

During a session titled "Immigration ­ Bridging the Borders," Anabel Duarte, Admissions Representative, will present the facts about immigration and its process through the eyes of an immigrant.

Jason Woods, Director of Admissions, and Ty Perkins, Instructional Specialist Manager, will lead a session called "Diversity in the Classroom ­ Beyond the Color Barriers," focusing on diversity beyond race, gender and ethnicity.

In the past year, the ACT test, a national college admissions examination, was administered to nearly 41,000 students in Iowa. According to the organization's website, ACT results are accepted by all four-year colleges and universities in the United States.