Representatives from Springfield Plastics in Auburn announced today their intentions to bring a major expansion to their facility off of Illinois Route 104.
The growth project includes a 63,000-square-foot expansion of their facilities in Auburn, coinciding with hiring 65 new full-time positions.
According to a press release, construction on the expansion will begin in early next year with expected completion in 2024. Hiring for the 65 new positions will begin immediately.
Springfield Plastics officials say that massive growth in its delivery of virgin-resin made product to 9 states and the addition of a facility in Humbolt, Iowa is spurring the additions in sales, shipping, accounting, engineering, and manufacturing.
The owner of a Jacksonville construction company pleaded guilty to home repair fraud yesterday in Morgan County Court.
45 year old Clint A. Stevens of the 1800 block of Mound Road, owner of C&A Construction, pleaded guilty to home repair fraud, a Class 4 felony. The single charge stems from an arrest by Jacksonville Police on April 12th, 2021 after an investigation.
According to the charges, Stevens misrepresented material facts relating to terms of a contract or promised performance, saying September 28, 2020 that he would start repairs on a home on Pintail Court by October 2020 and then didn’t initiate the work.
Stevens has settled tort damages, small claims, and breach of contract cases on 9 separate occasions dating back to 2013. The settlements include restitution totaling nearly $100,000. One small claims case remains open dating from February of last year.
According to the Better Business Bureau, Stevens’ construction business has received 7 complaints over the last 3 years.
Morgan County Assistant State’s Attorney Chad Turner says that the felony charges don’t preclude a potential lawsuit down the line: “When this case was initiated, when we first got the police reports in and the investigation was concluded at least to a point where the Jacksonville Police felt comfortable making an arrest, Mr. Stevens came forward with the full restitution to the victim that was the subject of this case. I doubt it resulted in civil litigation, but certainly the paying of restitution would not preclude some sort of civil litigation. Literally, on the day of his arrest and when he bonded out of the Morgan County Jail, somehow Mr. Stevens came up with the money to pay the full amount of restitution in the charged case.”
Stevens was sentenced to 1 year of probation, a $500 county fine plus probation fees and court costs. Turner says that Stevens must all pay restitution to a local business in a separate investigation initiated by the Jacksonville Police: “Mr. Stevens was required to make full restitution to a local business that he had defrauded that was a subsequent investigation that was initiated by the Jacksonville Police Department after this particular case was charged. He did plead guilty to a felony, and while obviously he was trying to negotiate to avoid that, we thought that it was important in order to, not that it is hugely and readily accessible to the home repair/construction consumer, we thought it was important that he get a felony so that people would know if they chose to look him up before hiring him for any future contracting jobs.”
Representatives of Jacksonville Memorial Hospital, Kiwanis, the Rotary, the local NAACP, DOT Foods, and the City of Jacksonville gathered at Minnie Barr Park to re-dedicate the park after completion of a nearly 3-year long renovation project.
Organizers have raised more than $115,000 to install and restore playground equipment, provide an expanded basketball court, in addition to new landscaping, fencing, and security lighting.
Jacksonville Memorial Hospital President & CEO Dr. Scott Boston says it’s all a part of completing the hospital’s mission of a happy, healthy, and active community: “It’s really exciting to see all the fruits of the labors of everybody that’s been involved, particularly the people in the neighborhood and how involved they’ve been in making this particular project a success. This is a way for us to fulfill our mission to be a partner in helping people to improve lives and building stronger communities. This really lets us do both of those things. It’s a healthy activity to come out to the park and run around and play in the sunshine, but it’s also a part of the community and building a stronger neighborhood and really having a focus for the community come here and enjoy healthy, safe activities together.”
A sign at the entrance of the park shows the names of all the community partners who made the renovations possible.
Jacksonville Park Director Adam Fletcher says he’s really proud the way the community came together to donate both money and time to cleaning up the park: “Overall, it’s a wonderful project because our goal is to make the parks in the city better than what they were. This park gets a whole lot of use for not much attention that had been given to it. For us to be able to give this park attention and show the community the use that this park can get when it’s in good shape and when it’s a presentable park is just amazing. The public really stepped up and did a good job getting this project together and going. To come to fruition like this is awesome because it shows that the community can join together, and whether it’s a park that does or doesn’t get a whole lot of attention, we need to have our parks looking good and it needs to have different options for our youth to come and partake of the activities that the park can provide. If we can do that by just making a park a little better, I’m all for it.”
Director of Community Health for Jacksonville Memorial Hospital and one of the chief organizers of the rehab project, Lori Hartz, says she’s thankful that DOT Foods stepped in near the end of the project to donate to the rehab of the basketball court, which is the most used piece in the park by the neighborhood: “It was huge. You can imagine working on this for a couple of years, and we were kind of wondering if we were going to be able to finish this. Knowing that this was so important to the children, it was really important for us to renovate the basketball court. I had started to research other funding sources. DOT Foods did not forget about us. They were just involved with Covid-19 response and having to provide food relief. Their focus had to be there at that time. When that focus shifted a little bit, they kept this project in mind. In fact, they contacted me and said ‘We’re ready to get back in the conversation about that project in Jacksonville.’ They’ve just been a super partner, not just in this park. I think people will notice around town that they are involved in lots of things with a focus on children, mentoring, and healthy activities for kids. We are really pleased that they stepped up for this project, and are very grateful that we were able to finish it.”
Hartz and Fletcher both say that new additions to the park may come in the future.
Fletcher specifically says that more trees and shade may be planted in the not-too-distant future.
Hartz says if a new need by the community comes forward, the hospital and the Jacksonville community will step forward to help fulfill that request, whatever it may be.
Residents of Northern Greene County will once again have to drive to get groceries.
The Greene Prairie Press reports that Triple J Meats in Roodhouse closed its doors as of May 13th. The store was opened by Clint Jones in November 2020. The business opened with its wide selection of meat that Jones had been known for operating as a food truck throughout the area for a number of years before deciding on a permanent location.
Jones also wanted the North Greene area to have a grocery store after the local Meehan’s and then Krogers in White Hall & Carrollton went out of business. Alongside fresh meat, the store offered fruit, vegetables, dairy products, and a lunch and dinner counter.
Jones passed away on December 24, 2021 from Covid-19 related complications according to family members talking to the Greene Prairie Press.
Jones’ family continued to operate the store after his death, until its recent closure. Family members believe they may have a buyer who will re-open the location at a later date.
The Illinois School For the Deaf has been listed as a part of over $46 million in improvements announced by the Capital Development Board last Thursday.
The funding is going toward deferred maintenance projects at state agencies that have been stalled due to a lack of investment by previous administrations, according to a press release.
Construction Administrator Ron Wright of the Capital Development Board says that over $1.7 million will be invested into new roofing on the ISD campus in Jacksonville: “We have a $1.7 million project replacing roofing systems at the High School building, the Power Plant, and the Laundry building. The Power Plant is about an 18,490 square-foot building. The High School Center is 36,900 square-foot, one story building. The Laundry #14 building is a 1,375 square-foot building. This project is in early design, what we call program analysis schematic design. It’s replacing 53,700 square-foot of roofing between the 3 buildings. This includes sheet metal roofs, a rubber membrane roof, insulation, and what we call the necessary ancillary accessories or sealing of the roof, water dams, any HVAC equipment that we have to cap and/or drain.”
Wright says that the project is one of more than 700 currently in the process of either being designed or placed out for bid. He says a contractor for the ISD project is currently being sought. The project’s funding is coming from the 6-year Rebuild Illinois state infrastructure plan.
Wright says more projects are on the way for Jacksonville in the near future: “There is a project in design over at the Correctional Center replacing some sally port gates for $486,000. We have locking systems at the prison for $1.6 million that’s in design. At the mental health facility at the prison, we have a camera system that’s going in. [At ISD], we have some renovation in classrooms, sprinklers going in, and we have an air conditioning unit that’s in design as well as the building automation or the software to run it effectively is at an estimated cost of $6.4 million. That’s almost nearly $10 million for ISD that’s in active design that have been selected as funded projects that are coming to the facility.”
Also involved in this round of current projects are improvements at the Alton Mental Health facility and Pere Marquette State Park in Grafton.
Wright says that the Capital Development Board oversees projects at over 8,700 state-owned buildings that cover over 100 million square feet of floor space around Illinois.
The City of Winchester is increasing water rates. The increase amounts about to a little less than $10 on the average.
Mayor Rex McIntire says that the increase can be attributed to upcoming maintenance to infrastructure and the need to qualify for loans and grants to make repairs: “We have certain areas and neighborhoods that have old water mains, a lot of them are still old lead mains as I understand. Many of them are undersized. Plus, the fact, we have many water main breaks and leaks quite a bit, which that costs money every time it happens and it creates problems for the customers, too. We are trying to get government grant assistance from the USDA and the Illinois EPA to construct new water mains in these areas. One of the requirements (It doesn’t make a lot of sense) is that we have to have an average monthly water rate of over $40 per customer. Winchester’s is running a little bit below that. That was one of the reasons we were wanting to increase the rates, so we can fall into their qualifications for the grants or low-interest, long-term loans.”
A photo of the new water rates structure for City of Winchester customers.
McIntire says that operational costs and expense have increased: “We redid both of our wells in the bottoms within the last few years. It cost $30,000 for each one of them. That’s an ongoing maintenance problem that we have going on down there. You have to do that if you want potable, clean water to come into the city. We’ve had increases in labor costs. We’ve seen increases in materials and fuel. Everything goes to effect the price.”
McIntire says the city hasn’t raised water rates since 2015. McIntire says talks about increase just the water rates began last Fall but the natural gas spike and polar vortex placed those talks on hold while the city dealt with the fallout of the exorbitant natural gas costs to the city. McIntire says it will only make changes to cost of water billing and not sewer.
Other recent changes that the city council made was to the city’s level pay ordinance. McIntire says the level pay rate is the average over a year’s average usage.
He says that Winchester has recently had people move to town who have wanted to get on level pay. McIntire says that the City Council passed a new amendment to the level pay ordinance to help figure their level pay rate: “I told the girls in the front office, let’s just go back the last 3-4 months and get their average cost and put that down as their level pay rate. Actually, it should calculate higher than what they are required to pay year round because you may be looking at some of your highest consumption months – especially if you are looking at the winter or early Spring months where your gas consumption is normally higher. If people would like to go that route, they should be fine. They should have a nice credit at the end of the season in April.”
Another amendment passed at the city’s May 4th meeting that dealt with utility shut-off. It said that all utility services shall be due and payable on the 25th day of the month. If they are not paid by the 25th, a penalty of 10 percent of the amount of the bill will be added to the bill when it is paid. If a customer is late paying their bill three times during any 12-month cycle, the penalty increases to 25 percent of the amount of the bill on top of the amount of the bill. McIntire says that he and the council are tired of people abusing the system and want the public to know that their bill is due every month on time.
A local police officer was honored with a ceremony and meal yesterday for his heroic work in the line of duty.
Steven Helmich was presented a certificate by Glock on Thursday to purchase a new service weapon and given a donated meal by Mission BBQ in Springfield at the South Jacksonville Police Department.
Helmich is still recovering from being shot in the line of duty on March 26th as he and other officers attempted to take Daniel Payne of Tennessee into custody in rural Brown County after a three-county chase. Payne remains held at the Schuyler County Jail on attempted murder charges. He’s next due in Brown County Circuit Court on June 1st.
Helmich, who has been with Chapin Police since 2016 and its chief since January, was hit in his abdomen and upper left thigh during an exchange of gunfire with Payne. Helmich currently is walking with the aid of a cane, but says he’s steadily beginning to recuperate to full strength: “I still have a long road to recovery, but I do have physical therapy three times a week. I still have a lot of appointments with surgeons and doctors, but progress is being made. God has really blessed me with being healthy already, so it’s kind of helped with the recovery. I’m just taking it one day at a time.”
Helmich plans to be back to work some time in mid to late Fall.
A photo of Helmich’s Certificate to purchase a Glock handgun, like the one depicted, for a new service weapon.
Unfortunately, Helmich’s service weapon from March, which was his own personal weapon, is currently in the hands of the Illinois State Police forensics lab and may remain there for quite some time. Glock USA heard through the grapevine that he would need a new service weapon to return to work, and according to Glock District Manager Dustin Clark, they employed a program to help him get a new one: “We try to help fallen officers, officers that have been in officer-involved shootings. The State Police Crime lab takes their firearm for investigation. Chief Helmich, that was his own, personal firearm that he bought for duty use. With him being out and coming back to work, not having something like that, we wanted to help. This is a program where Glock appreciates his continued support of our product, but also, we appreciate his service to the community so we are just trying to do something to give back to him for that service.”
Helmich says the donations from the local and state police lodges and the Village of South Jacksonville and Village of Meredosia along with the ceremony was extremely humbling: “I moved away for a long time with the military. I moved back a few years ago. Jacksonville is my hometown. Morgan County is my hometown area and most of my family is here. The support that we have here just really shows why I moved back to the Morgan County area, why I serve the community, and why I am so grateful for everyone here. I am just very humbled by the show of support for law enforcement in general and certainly for me. I am just grateful to be here and grateful to be alive.”
Helmich was joined at the small event yesterday by members of the Village of South Jacksonville, Village of Chapin, the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department, the Chapin & South Jacksonville Police Departments, and several close friends and family.
Transcripts of a 2018 federal wiretap of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan shows that he knew about a plan to arrange secret payments to a disgraced aid implicated in a sexual harassment lawsuit.
Madigan has always denied any involvement in the scheme in which Madigan’s lieutenant Michael McClain of Quincy allegedly arranged a group of lobbyists to make monthly payments to Kevin Quinn who had been ousted over his treatment of former Madigan worker Alaina Hampton.
Court documents show that a telephone call between Madigan and McClain on August 29th, 2018 show McClain telling his boss that he had put together a group of people willing to make monthly payments to Quinn until Quinn could find a job.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the call was referenced in a sworn affidavit by an FBI agent on May 13th, 2019 as federal agents sought a search warrant for McClain’s home in Quincy. A redacted version of the 136-page affidavit was unsealed Friday in federal court in Springfield.
The affidavit also sets out phone conversations that McClain had with several other lobbyists he attempted to enlist in the payments to Quinn.
The release of the wiretaps are the most detailed about the federal government’s dragnet into Madigan’s operations to date. McClain and Madigan were charged earlier this year in federal court for racketeering among other charges. McClain faces a separate indictment with three others on federal bribery charges, which is set to go to trial in September.
Updates to the Greene County Courthouse are coming. Circuit Clerk Shirley Thornton notified the Greene County Board that the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts would be conducting audits of the courthouse at some point this summer to ensure compliance with the the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Greene County Sheriff Rob McMillen, who is in charge of the facilities at the courthouse, says a number of updates need to be completed soon. McMillen says that one of the changes that will be have to be made is to the location of the Lactation Room: “We did have a room that was used for that, but the requirement for that room now, the current room will not work. It cannot be in a restroom. It wasn’t in a restroom in the beginning. It has to have a sink facility in that room, a table, a chair, and of course be accessible to a handicapped person, and have an electrical outlet. We have a room that we have been using that met all those requirements, but it doesn’t have a sink in it so now we have to either move the room or install plumbing. I think we are going to have to make a new room for that.”
McMillen says the plumbing and widening of a doorway to the room that is in the upstairs of the courthouse will make it an easy move.
The other item that McMillen says will need to be changed is that both single occupancy restrooms will have to be changed to gender neutral and have diaper changing stations installed in both. He says the changing of signs and installing the changing stations should occur within the next few weeks.
McMillen believes his office’s budget will be able to absorb the extra costs for the updates: “These things were not budgeted for this year, but the cost is very minimal. The most expensive cost is revamping a room and making it the Lactating Room because it doesn’t currently have any plumbing. We are probably talking about $2,500 or so to get that room put together. We may be able to absorb the costs of getting the courthouse into compliance all of those laws within our budget this year. I just didn’t have those things planned on for spending it this year. If I had known it was coming up, I would have probably thrown some extra money in the budget to cover the costs. I think we can probably cover those and get the updates done.”
McMillen says he is also on a search for a personnel member in the courthouse to become the courthouse’s Disability Coordinator. He says he would prefer it would be someone inside the courthouse that could be the point person for any needs the comes up for disabled community members. He says that the position shouldn’t take up too much time and that the person should be available during the courthouse’s business hours.
The Richardsonian Romanesque Revival-style building was built in 1891-1892. The architect of the building, Henry Elliott of Chicago, also designed the courthouses in Edgar, Pike, and Jersey Counties which were all built around the same time. The cost of building the courthouse, the third in the county’s history, was built by contractor Frederick W. Menke of Quincy for a cost of $40,321.
A Cass County woman has died after a fall in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado on Thursday.
Park authorities told local media that the body of 21 year old Lydia Davidsmeier of Virginia, Illinois was recovered at Adams Falls along the East Inlet Trail on the west side of the park. Grand County, Colorado and Grand Lake, Colorado emergency services aided the National Park Service in the recovery.
According to a press release from the National Park Service on Thursday, visitors should be careful near streams, rivers, and waterfalls, where rocks can be slippery and currents can be powerful due to Spring runoff. Park Public Affairs Officer Kyle Patterson said it was the third fatality in the park this year.
