The Jacksonville Sunrise Rotary Club recently received a rare citation.

The Sunrise Rotary was awarded a Rotary Citation by Shekha Mehta, the president of Rotary International for this year.

Out of forty-eight Rotary Clubs in Rotary District 6460, Jacksonville Sunrise Rotary Club is one of only eleven clubs, to receive this distinction. To qualify for a Rotary Citation, clubs must achieve a minimum of 13 goals outlined by Rotary International, including increased membership, donations to Polio Plus, per capita support for the Rotary Foundation, community service projects, conference attendance, and others.

Jacksonville Sunrise Rotary past president Jane Becker received the citation from immediate Past District Governor Ryan Byers at the club’s monthly meeting held yesterday in South Jacksonville.

Dimond Brothers Insurance of Jacksonville in partnership with IMT Insurance has made a donation to the Jacksonville Public Schools Foundation.

IMT recently announced its list of 53 Community Contest winners, and the Jacksonville Public Schools Foundation was selected through Dimond Brothers Insurance. The 25^th annual contest awards gifts to community projects and organizations in the states that IMT does business.

This year, entries were submitted for consideration from June to July, and 54 awards ranging from $500 to $1,000 were gifted to local projects and organizations in need.

With more than 125 entries submitted and $36,000 awarded to worthy causes, The Jacksonville Public Schools Foundation’s student supplies submission was chosen as one of the 2022 $1,000 winners.

Residents of Jacksonville have the opportunity to get involved in Big Brothers-Big Sisters even if they have a busy work schedule. Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Central Illinois has launched an initiative to recruit 50 mentors in 30 days in the month of September through their Mentor 2.0 program.

Brian Ganz of Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Central Illinois says it’s an easy program to get involved in to be a mentor to young students at Southeast High School in Springfield: “Now, this is not your typical Big Brothers-Big Sisters volunteer opportunity. It is curriculum based, so we talk to the kids that are in the program, and we have a lesson that we teach them every week. It allows the high school student to communicate with their volunteer virtually. Basically, it’s in an email format that we have set up. Every week your role as a mentor is simply to respond to your Little’s email. Then, once a month, we have an event at Southeast High School that people attend, as well. It normally starts at 5:30PM, so if you work in Springfield, you can stop by after work on your way home to have a party.”

This is the second year of the program and Ganz says that mentors from last year said it didn’t take too much time out of their schedule. Ganz went on to say with it being a curriculum-based program, it helps mentors who are in the school or community programs find out what works and what doesn’t with littles.

On Thursday, September 1^st from 5:30-7:30PM at Anvil & Forge Brewery in Springfield, the Mentor 2.0 program is having a kick off event. Ganz says last year’s successful program caused it to double in size this year: “Last year, we had 25 matches. This year the number of kids participating has jumped up to 46 plus we have some additional kids who are joining from last year’s class. There’s about 50 mentors that we need to recruit within the next month and a half. We’re going heavy with trying to get those recruited in Springfield.”

If you are looking to be a part of Mentor 2.0 and would like to visit the kick-off event, you can RSVP by calling Derek Haggard at 217-753-1216 or email d.haggard@bbbscil.org. For more information about Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Central Illinois, visit their website at bbbscil.org.

Members of the Sangamon Valley Group of the Sierra Club, the Illinois Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines, and Citizens Against Heartland Greenway Pipelines held an information meeting at a Jacksonville business this past Friday.

The group is attempting to put a halt or extremely limit the permit and land acquisition process for the Heartland Greenway CO2 sequestration pipeline slated to pass through Adams, Morgan, Pike, Schulyer, Scott, and Sangamon counties along with 7 others on its way to a sequestration site near Taylorville.

Members of the group Nick Dodson and Francesca Butler spoke with attendees at the meeting and revealed that the groups have collectively reached an agreement to hire private legal counsel in their fight to stop the pipeline.

The groups have hired Joe Murphy of the Meyer Capel Law Firm of Champaign to assist the group in legal documents and processes with the Illinois Commerce Commission, advise on helping suggest local ordinances to county boards regulating the pipeline, and answer landowners’ legal questions who may be approached for easements to the pipeline.

Dodson, who is a former resident of Jacksonville and currently resides in Springfield, recently said on AM1180 WLDS “What’s On Your Mind” that the costs outweigh the benefits to counties when it comes to having the pipeline being built: “You need more energy to pump liquid CO2 through this pipeline. You have to create more energy just to transport this to Illinois from out west. Nonetheless, think about the legacy costs of creating the infrastructure of this pipeline – the costs of the metals, the installation, the infrastructure of placing it in the ground with the heavy equipment, and all that and beyond – how much disruption is being created just by installing the pipeline? We believe it’s a shell game with taxpayer money.”

Butler, who is currently a graduate student in Environmental Studies and is an environmentalist, says that a lot of the up-front benefits to installing the pipeline go away quickly: “There is no permanent jobs with this. The permanent jobs exist much farther away. Of course, the pipeline will be laid and there will be temporary jobs for that, but save for a few maintenance people to run the whole gamut of the pipeline, it really doesn’t generate much for our economy here in Central Illinois.”

Butler and Dodson says that the pipeline is a perfect example of “green washing.” Green washing is a process of conveying a false impression or providing misleading information about how a company or a process or product is environmentally sound or is saving the environment in some way. Butler, who’s graduate degree is focused on environmental policy says that the whole reason the CO2 pipeline exists is to get it out of the environment to help with air quality and reduce greenhouse gases, but really it’s doing the opposite: “The question to ask is: ‘Why is CO2 being generated to start with?’ The whole reason that CO2 is being generated is the burning of fossil fuels. It’s a waste product from that. If we weren’t burning off fossil fuels, then we wouldn’t have this need to cart it across multiple states to Illinois to bury it in soil. In that way, the fossil fuel industry is able to create a market for themselves that they then use taxpayer dollars to fund.”

Butler says there are numerous ways for people to get involved: “If you’re somebody that’s kind of a home body and you don’t really feel like door knocking or going and personally talking to a legislator in person; write a letter, sign a petition, go to our website and see what actions we have set up. Definitely do not sign any voluntary easement agreements regarding your land until you’re educated and until you know that’s exactly what you want to do because it’s very hard, if not impossible to go back once you’ve signed one of those land agreements.”

More informational meetings will be announced soon. Dodson says he is willing to speak with individual landowners or anyone who is willing to discuss the impact of the pipeline locally. Dodson says you can contact him via email at nickdodson@gmail.com or find further contact information at noillinoisco2pipelines.org.

Morgan County’s beleaguered homeless shelter is now looking for a new executive director.

The New Directions Warming & Cooling Center Board of Directors announced today in a press release that Sarah Robinson has resigned as Executive Director effective September 30^th. Robinson has been in the position for the past 4 years.

The Board of Directors say they will begin interviewing candidates to fill the position over this coming month.

New Directions has been struggling to find money from various sources over the last several months to keep their doors open to the area’s homeless.

If you would like apply to the position or would like to make a financial donation to the 501(c)3 organization call 217-271-1014 or 217-245-9521 for further information.

Illinois College is currently looking for a new curator and archivist of the Khalaf Al Habtoor Archives. The archives announced via Twitter last night that Assistant Professor of History Samantha Sauer is leaving the college to pursue a new professional opportunity.

Sauer has been with IC for the last 6 ½ years, and joined the faculty in March 2016.

Before accepting her position at Illinois College, Sauer served as a Museum Educator with the Museum of Discovery in Little Rock, Arkansas from 2013-2016.

Sauer currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Jacksonville Area Museum and on the Communications Committee with the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress.

During the transition period, all questions about about the Archives and the Paul Findley Congressional Office Museum may be directed to the IC Office of Academic Affairs at 217-245-3010 or by email at archives@ic.edu.

Lightning nearly destroyed a home in rural White Hall on Sunday.

The initial call came in to the White Hall Fire Department from 523 Hilltop Road, about 5 miles east of White Hall for a structure fire at 1:29 in the afternoon Sunday after a brief thunderstorm.

White Hall Fire Chief Garry Sheppard says that they were able to save the structure: “The call came in as a lightning strike to a single story house. I sent two engines, a tanker, and rescue with about 9 people. Here in Greene County, we have automatic mutual aid on structure fires so Carrollton and Roodhouse were also sent. When they arrived, we sent them back because we didn’t need them. The house could be repaired but currently it’s unlivable.

“The lightning actually struck a pole outside and went into the electric lines and traveled into the basement and come out of the junction box. It caught that all on fire and then caught the floor and trusses on fire, and spread up towards the bathroom where it did some damage and smoked the rest of the house up. It can be repaired. We made a pretty good stop on it. There were no injuries to any fire department personnel or inhabitants who were home at the time. Everybody got okay. It’s probably a good thing they were home or it would have probably burned. It was beginning to get a good start by the time we got there.”

Sheppard says that the lone fire crew cleared the scene in approximately one hour. No injuries were reported. Sheppard didn’t not have a total for estimated cost of damages.

The Morgan County Commissioners say more capital improvement projects are on the way in Fiscal Year 2023.

The commissioners unanimously passed the FY 2023 on Monday. Commissioner Chair Brad Zeller says that soft revenues are up in the county: “Soft revenues have increased from the state. The replacement tax was one of the larger ones, and it was a one year jump. We want to monitor that for a couple of years to make sure that it’s going to remain consistently at that level, which we hope it will. The State Legislature is drawing from that fund more and more and using our tax money to reimburse us to pay for the [mandated] increase in the Sheriff’s salary. We don’t know how big a hit across the state that will be into that fund for that line item. We did show a little increase in our property tax revenues for the new growth from the energy parks that we have in Morgan County.”

Zeller says that the county is also monitoring revenues from a contract they signed with 4 other counties in the region with Cresco Labs for a cannabis grow facility located in Lincoln.

Zeller says that in expenditures, salary adjustments were a part of budget and were expected. Between 12-14 county employees will be receiving above the scheduled 3% increase for county employees this year due to the state minimum wage. Zeller says the increase is to remain in compliance and to stay competitive in salary for various positions.

The county commissioners approved a $1 million transfer to the capital improvement fund to complement a little less than $4 million in federal funding from grants and American Rescue Plan Act monies for upcoming capital improvements to the Morgan County Jail and the Courthouse: “With our next capital improvement project, it will be a major renovation of the security, heating, and air conditioning at the jail. We have also started the window project for the courthouse. With that window project, we are going to try to do a little heating and air [additions] on the first floor. If we are going to do the windows and get them back into shape, we also want to get rid of the air conditioning units hanging out of the 3 or 4 offices on this floor. It would be a significant improvement to the energy efficiency of the courthouse.”

Zeller says the final work at the courthouse will be putting new wiring and lighting in the main courtroom.

The last notable expenditure in the budget is that starting this month, the county will be giving $12,000 to New Directions Warming & Cooling Center to get the shelter through December out of the present fiscal year. Starting in January with the FY23 budget, Zeller says that the county will be giving the shelter $1,000 towards its operations to stay open. The line item will be in the General Assistance line item.

A well-known Springfield man is headed to federal prison for making, using, and possessing fake credit cards.

31 year old Calvin Christian III of Springfield was sentenced on Thursday to 2 years in federal prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, for six counts of either possessing or using counterfeit access devices or related offenses.

According to a press release, the federal government presented evidence that beginning in late 2014 Christian obtained card-encoding hardware that connected to his computer allowing him to re-code information from credit cards, gift cards, or other cards with magnetic stripes. He then used cryptocurrency to purchase stolen credit card information on the internet and used the information with the encoding hardware to make “new” credit cards that were linked credit card or bank accounts of other individuals. He and others then used the fraudulent cards to purchase goods or gift cards. Christian was held accountable for $44,634.34 in total loss, stemming from conduct which lasted from 2015 to 2017 with some of the fraudulent purchases taking place in Macoupin County, South Jacksonville, and Jacksonville at two Dollar General stores, Circle K, and Wal-Mart.

United States District Judge Sue E. Myerscough found Christian was an organizer or leader and that the offense involved at least six financial institutions and 14 individual victims. She also noted the length of his criminal actions and his persistence in continuing his enterprise, even after he had been caught multiple times.

Christian was indicted in June of 2017 and pleaded guilty in May of 2019. His sentencing hearing was continued numerous times because of COVID-19.

According to the Illinois Times, Christian’s co-defendants, Bianca Brown, Alexis Kimbrough-Hassan, and Alexis Brown also pleaded guilty to the charges and received a 98-day sentence in 2019, another was sentenced to two months that same year and a third got probation, also in 2019.

The Illinois Times also reports that Christian became a Springfield celebrity more than a decade ago when he amassed over 100 traffic citations, mostly issued by Springfield police, and demanded internal affairs files on officers. In 2011, Christian won a FOIA lawsuit against the City of Springfield asking for police internal affairs records.

In 2013, Christian won $103,000 from Springfield after requesting every internal affairs file held by city police. He made the request after asking for internal affairs files on former deputy chief Cliff Buscher, who’d been arrested in 2008 in Missouri after allegedly firing a gun while drunk. The Buscher file ended up getting shredded leading to the six-figure settlement and the eventual ouster of former police chief Robert Williams and former corporation counsel Mark Cullen. Incumbent Mayor Houston, who took heat over the destruction of police records in the episode that became known as Shredgate, didn’t make it past the 2015 primary.

Christian in 2013 won a lawsuit against the city, again for police disciplinary records, with Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge John Schmidt, who died in 2017, rejecting city arguments that release of files could compromise investigations, reveal identities of people whose names should be confidential and result in the release of information deemed preliminary.

Christian was suspected of creating and using phony credit cards in Missouri, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Nebraska when he was arrested by Springfield Police in 2017. Christian has also long been named as the person behind the Springfield Leaks reporting website, despite Christian denying the allegation. Christian is the son of T.C. Christian, former publisher of Pure News USA, which printed its final edition in July.

Jacksonville School District 117 will be on the cutting edge with school security with a new program later this year.

The Jacksonville School District approved a 4-year contract with Centegix Crisis Alert to implement a comprehensive alert system for any emergency event in the school.

Superintendent Steve Ptacek says he and Jacksonville Police Chief Adam Mefford met over the summer after a number of high profile school shooting incidents occurred at the end of the previous school year. Both men say it really pushed the issue to the forefront to make Jacksonville schools more secure.

Ptacek says he had been looking at a number of cellphone and computer applications that could implement a security alert system into the schools but none of them were quite what he envisioned. Ptacek says a Central Office staff member found Centegix and brought it to him as a proposed option: “It’s a card about the thickness of 3 credit cards, and it would go behind our lanyard ID that we carry around. It has one button on it. All of our staff will have it. You push the button 3 times and it indicates a local emergency, not 9-1-1 and not an active shooter, but a health emergency, a fight, or something like that. Then, the local building level administration, nurse, and people would come running. If they keep pushing the button, I think it’s 8 times consecutively, it sets off and triggers an entire building-wide lock down and issues a 9-1-1 alert.”

The lock down does not lock doors but puts the schools into an immediate emergency situation where students shelter in place or directs them to get away from a certain location based upon a pinpoint in a computer or mobile application accessed by staff.

Ptacek says the emergency lock down alert has many features at a good price point: “Strobe lights go off. It sends a signal to 9-1-1 dispatch, alerts to the building staff, and just everyone would know immediately to respond in the most safe way. We said, ‘Absolutely.’ We looked into [the company] and the price point. It’s kind of shocking, I feel, for all 11 buildings getting this system installed for $155,000 start up costs. That’s well worth it for what it’s going to provide, not just in the worst-case scenario active shooter but for seizures, for a fight, a call for help, who knows what. The fact that it pops up on all of our phones with a map of the school and specifically says where that situation is happening. That’s just amazing.”

Ptacek says that Jacksonville will be the first school in the Midwest to have the system, as the Atlanta, Georgia based company has alert systems installed currently in 80% of schools in the state of Georgia and about 20% of schools in the state of Florida.

Ptacek says there is training and a few things that will have to be worked through before the system is implemented, like alerting kids and staff who are outside of a building, for instance. He says people will still be picking up a phone to make contact with 9-1-1 as a fail safe to the system in case power or Internet are cut to the building. He says some of the older buildings will have to have their audio systems updated eventually to more modern intercoms to integrate it into the system.

Jacksonville Police Chief Adam Mefford says the timing is now to get a system in place to protect staff and students at area schools: “Right after the Uvalde Elementary shooting, [Ptacek and I] met. We were like, ‘It’s now. We need a system like this. We’ve got to take cost out of the equation, because what are our children worth? We have to be prepared for these emergency situations.’ Steve really took the lead in getting several companies to start demonstrating the proposed systems. When it was narrowed down to [Centegix], I was 100% in support of that decision. I support the school district in putting this system in. I think it’s the correct move, the right move, and the time is right for us now. To have a coordinated system that coordinates a school notification, a lock down, and a notification of the police simultaneously is paramount in response times.”

Mefford says to have the ability to call in an emergency at a school staff member’s fingertips is an extraordinary help. Mefford says that the system’s ability to directly pinpoint in a school building where an emergency is taking place along with a map on how to get there helps get first responders to the place they need to be the quickest and gets others away from that location who may be in danger.

Mefford says it will also help with coordinating external calls for lock downs like police chasing a suspect through an area near a school building or a phoned in threat to a school building. He says it will expedite those calls and coordinate them directly to classrooms through the system’s computer and phone apps. Mefford says if an emergency does occur within a school, the system could activate a school-based security command center within the police department to pinpoint and locate information through security camera access about a potential emergency.

To learn more about the Centegix system or hear the full interviews with Ptacek and Mefford, visit our audio archive. Here is a video of what was played before the District 117 School Board on August 24th.