The Brown County Public Library in Mt. Sterling is another step closer to getting a new facility.

WGEM in Quincy reports that bids will open to contractors from August 3rd-August 30^th for constructing a new facility for the library at 106 South Cross Street.

Friends of the library have been raising money for a new facility with their “Meet Me At the Library” fundraising campaign since last summer. The expected cost at the time was $5.4 million, with the library seeking a $2 million match in that total. The funds will help construct a new 12,500 square foot facility.

The current library at 143 West Main in Mt. Sterling has been outgrown. Library Board Director Richard Young told WGEM that the board will discuss the bidding awards in September and hopefully break ground in the fall on the new facility.

The Morgan, Scott, Cass Crime Stoppers are seeking tips to assist the Jacksonville Police in an investigation of a theft.

Some time between the hours of 6PM July 10^th and Noon on July 11^th, unknown individuals removed a Simplicity zero-turn riding lawnmower that had been on display at the Morgan County Fairgrounds during the fair.

Anyone who has any information concerning this incident should submit an anonymous tip online at morganscottcrimestoppers.webs.com. Click on the “Leave A Tip” button on the home page and fill out the form.

Tips may also be submitted anonymously by phone at 217-243-7300, by text to 274637 – the first word of the text tip must be “PAYOUT”, or download the Morgan, Scott, Cass Crime Stoppers mobile app from Itunes or the Google Play store and submit a tip in the app.

If your tip leads to an arrest, you may be eligible for a cash reward.

A Springfield man’s court hearing in Adams County ended Wednesday in a flurry of expletives and his removal from the court room.

35 year old Bradley Yohn once again attempted to fire his public defender and push his right to a speedy trial in court on Wednesday. According to Muddy River News, Yohn filed a motion on Monday to have his newest public defender Todd Nelson removed from his case, once again claiming ineffective assistance. Yohn also filed a motion on June 22nd to have his case dismissed because of a violation of his right to a speedy trial. In May, Yohn fired public defender John Citro also citing ineffective assistance of counsel and proceeded pro se. In late June, Yohn accepted counsel once again prior to jury selection.

Judge Roger Thomson is reported to have asked Yohn Wednesday to let Nelson continue in the case, to which Yohn agreed, only moments later to have Yohn object to a motion to continue the case to August 3^rd so Nelson could continue review of discovery.

Judge Thomson would go on to silence Yohn several more times before Yohn was escorted from the courtroom by bailiffs while shouting vulgarity at Thomson. Thomson went on to grant the August 3^rd continuance for Nelson to continue to review evidence.

Yohn is charged with home invasion, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated vehicular hijacking and aggravated criminal sexual assault with a weapon as a result of incidents that occurred at the home of Christine Schmitt along North Bottom Road in rural Quincy. Schmitt would die from complications of injuries she sustained in the incident a month later. Yohn also faces additional counts in a separate case from October 2021.

In a separate hearing, Yohn’s counterpart, 33 year old Karen Blackledge of Quincy, who pled guilty to to one count of home invasion and one count of aggravated sexual assault on April 1^st and was sentenced to 2 consecutive 20-year prison terms in prison is allegedly reconsidering her plea.

According to a separate Muddy River News report, Blackledge’s public defender Babs Brennan says she may be filing a motion to either withdraw or reconsider the guilty plea in the next few days. During her plea hearing, Blackledge admitted to that she illegally entered a home on Quincy’s North Bottom Road on November 9, 2021 and while in the home, used a weapon to to penetrate Schmitt.

Blackledge will be back in court on August 19^th.

Illinois Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin have announced more than $46 million in grants to support Head Start services for the state.

The Department of Health and Human Services grants are to support services for children under the age of five in receiving wrap-around support in early learning and development.

The Illinois Valley Economic Development Corporation, which covers Greene, Macoupin, Jersey, and Calhoun counties will receive $2,210,120 out of the total award to the State. The Springfield Urban League received $6,494,331.

Attorney General Kwame Raoul has announced a multi-state lawsuit settlement that will provide relief to American service members duped by deceptive marketing tactics by a national jewelry retailer.

Harris Jewelry will provide relief totaling $34.2 million for more than 46,000 service members and veterans nationwide, including over $750,000 in relief to Illinois consumers. According to the original complaint filed in New York by a group of 18 states and the Federal Trade Commission, Harris Jewelry, who purposefully built retail locations on or near military bases around the country, used deceptive marketing tactics to lure active-duty service members to its financing program, falsely claiming that investing in this program would improve service members’ credit scores. Instead, service members were tricked into obtaining high-interest loans on overpriced, poor quality jewelry that saddled them with thousands of dollars of debt and worsened their credit.

If approved by the court, the settlement requires that Harris Jewelry refund tens of thousands of service members for warranties they were tricked into purchasing, stop collecting over $21 million in debt, correct bad credit scores, and dissolve all of Harris Jewelry’s businesses. This agreement also requires Harris Jewelry to pay a $1 million penalty.

Service members and veterans who entered into a predatory financing loan with Harris Jewelry between January 2014 and July 2022 will be eligible for restitution to the extent they paid for warranties. Eligible service members and veterans will receive an email and letter in the mail notifying them of their eligibility and the process to make a claim. An independent monitor will be installed to oversee this process.

“View Your Deal,” a segment on the popular day-time talk show The View, recently featured a Jacksonville business.

The segment, which was shown Monday morning, featured Nothing Fancy Supply’s popular beeswax reusable food wraps.

Nothing Fancy Supply owner and creator Colleen Flinn says she found out that her company would be featured on the show earlier this month, but due to ABC’s stipulations, she had to keep the appearance a secret until 48 hours before the show’s air date.

Flinn says holding in the big news was difficult: “It was hard because it took us about 4 months to get all the inventory ready to go. Then, we just had a couple days to ship all the orders out, so we were working really hard for several months and couldn’t tell anybody about it. It is exciting, especially for a small business.”

Flinn says she contacted Don’s Place new owner Rachel Kessler to set up a viewing party for the Monday morning debut of the show. The viewing party invited numerous members of Jacksonville’s small business community, friends, family, and the Nancy Fancy Supply team to celebrate. It’s the company’s second appearance on national television after appearing on Good Morning America almost one year ago.

Flinn says she wasn’t surprised by the large turnout, even on a Monday morning, for the watch party: “I think we have a really vibrant, supportive Jacksonville small business community. I’m not really surprised they showed up at all, to be honest. It’s an exciting thing and everyone is just really supportive.”

Flinn says orders have been flooding in since the appearance on the show. She attributes the popularity of the beeswax wraps to their quality and the nation’s move toward being more environmentally conscious and friendly: “I just think we make a quality product. We use all of our ingredients from the United States. I think that’s something that people really value now, especially after Covid-19 and all the supply chain issues that we’re still experiencing. Sustainable products are huge right now because we are all seeing the repercussions of years of using disposable plastic, so people want to make a difference in their own households.”

To find out more about Nothing Fancy Supply, you can purchase items through the “View Your Deal” website at viewyourdeal-nothingfancy.com, Nothing Fancy’s permanent website home at nothingfancysupply.com, or find them on Facebook.

Jacksonville Memorial Hospital’s top executive is the latest member of Illinois College’s Board of Trustees.

Dr. Scott Boston of Alexander was inducted as a trustee on May 7th. Boston says the first event he took part in as a trustee to the college was in June when 18th District Congressman Darin LaHood announced that Illinois College had received $330,000 in federal money for the college’s new Masters Degree in Nursing program.

Boston says he’s excited to add to the college’s excellence in healthcare education as a part of the board: “I was quite humbled and honored to be asked to join the Board of Trustees for Illinois College. Illinois College President Dr. Barbara Farley was someone that I had gotten to know during her time serving on the Jacksonville Memorial Hospital Board. We had been collaborating quite a bit on a lot of different projects and things with Illinois College. One of the things we’re obviously most interested in is their Nursing Program. The hospital had a lot of involvement with Illinois College when they were starting their Bachelor’s program and I got to know quite a bit about that. What I hope to be able to bring to the board is sort of a local understanding of the impact that Illinois College has particularly in the healthcare market, but not just the healthcare market, but in many of the areas that Illinois College has an impact in our local community.”

Boston says Illinois College’s ability to provide a high-level education rivals that of larger institutions in the state and in the country: “It’s interesting that Illinois College, being a private local liberal arts community institution, really provides an experience that you could get at a larger institution. You have that combination of that sort of local, intimate undergraduate experience but you’re also getting a world-class education. Locally, what that does for us, what that allows us to do is as a community – our local students get access to that. What we find is many times that if you do your education locally, you stay in that community and participate in the local economy and workforce.”

Boston says that many of the colleagues at Jacksonville Memorial Hospital either graduated from Illinois College or have a direct connection to the college. He says he hopes his perspective on the Board of Trustees will continue to help the college and its programs, especially the healthcare-related programs, continue to thrive and grow for many years into the future.

The Village of Rockbridge will be celebrating 150 years of existence on August 7th with a host of food, music, games, and historical presentations.

The town of about 175 people is situated in the southeastern corner of Greene County just off of Illinois Route 267.

The first settlers to the region arrived in 1819. John and Ambrose Taylor and Benjamin Allen created homes on what would become known in the early history of Greene County as “Taylor’s Prairie.” The first major building erected was a grist mill on the Macoupin Creek in 1826 by John Hardcastle and Moses Stephens. Over the next 30+ years, the mill changed hands and a cluster of cabins sprung up around it along the creek. A covered bridge to cross the creek was built just south of the mill in 1845. A separate settlement with a Catholic Church sprung up a half-mile west of what was known as Rockbridge in the early 1850s known as Dublin. The only remnants of the settlement is a cemetery. A post office called “Rockbridge” was established in 1849. George D. Randle, the first postmaster, operated the office out of his log cabin.

Things changes for the settlement in 1870 when the Rockford-Rock Island-St. Louis Railroad laid down tracks through the area. The village was moved a half mile northwest of the old mill. The “new town” was laid out by G.T. Sheffield and George Hudson on July 18, 1871, and the railroad company named the location “Sheffield” according to the founder. That would be the town’s name until the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Company purchased the line and returned the moniker to Rockbridge a few years later. The name of the post office, though, has never been altered. With the railroad and movement of the town came businesses, a bank, schools, and new homes. The Village of Rockbridge would be formally incorporated in 1885 when they installed a board and village president.

The town would reach its height of population around 1910, with about 275 residents recorded in the federal census that year. Like many small prairie towns, the Great Depression destroyed businesses, small banks, farms, and lives causing a decline. The building of the highway system in the 1950s and the decline of passenger trains also didn’t help.

You can read more history about the village here. A small summary of Rockbridge High School can be found here.

Despite the hardships of the past, Rockbridge lives on as a thriving center of agriculture for a small group of families in Greene County.

The Sesquicentennial Celebration will be held Sunday, August 7th from 11AM-5PM, with a catered meal to be served by the Brass Door Restaurant of Carrollton from 11:30AM-1PM. Tickets for the catered mill are required and are available for purchase until July 31st. Cost is $10. Inquiries for tickets can be made by calling Dennis Price at 618-407-2489 or via email at dennis@troyumc.org, Sherry Freer at 618-535-4768 or Theresa Walden at 618-339-8122. Tickets may also be purchased at Wagner Seed & Supply.

Food trucks will also be on hand if you are unable to purchase a ticket. The keynote program will begin at 1PM and feature former Rockbridge resident Mike Adams. For more information, visit Rockbridge IL Sesquicentennial on Facebook.

Parents shopping for school supplies will get a little break at the cash register next month.

The Illinois Family Relief Plan that went into effect on July 1^st created a sales tax holiday on school supplies effective August 5^th through August 14^th. The state sales tax on school supplies will drop from 6.25% down to 1.25%.

Items include qualifying clothing and footwear with a retail selling price of less than $125 per item and certain school supplies used by students in the course of study. School supplies are not subject to the $125 threshold.

A complete list of all the qualifying items can by found on the Illinois Department of Revenue’s website. Governor J.B. Pritzker announced back in June that the tax holiday is estimated to save Illinois families $50 million.

Jacksonville Police arrested an individual yesterday afternoon in connection to a shots fired incident in the city’s northwest end.

22 year old Deante J. Overton of the 400 block of West College Avenue was arrested without incident in the parking lot of a business in the 200 block of West Morton Avenue at 12:14PM yesterday for reckless discharge of a firearm.

Police say that Overton was the suspect connected to a shot fired incident that occurred at 10:23AM Sunday at a residence in the 800 block of West Railroad Street.

On Sunday morning, a complainant reported to police that a neighbor came to their door claiming they had been shot. Upon arrival, police had determined that a firearm had been discharged inside of a residence. No one was hit by gunfire and no one was injured in the incident.

Overton currently remains lodged without bond at the Morgan County Jail this morning.