The Beardstown Police Department is being sued in federal court.

In a lawsuit filed by Lisa T. McMahon of Beardstown against Beardstown Police Officer Ian Dennis on December 22nd in U.S. District Court of Illlinois’ Central District, McMahon alleges that Dennis illegally detained her for a false arrest, used excessive force, and improperly charged her for resisting or obstructing a peace officer without probable cause.

According to the suit’s details, on February 15^th, 2021 at approximately 7:30PM McMahon captured a car crash on video with her cellphone that occurred near the intersection of 6^th Street and Arenz Street in Beardstown while playing slot machines at the Wheel Inn.

The lawsuit says that a passenger in another vehicle also witnessed the event and called police to report the car in the ditch near the intersection due to the crash. McMahon then left the Wheel Inn to visit a friend’s house on 4^th Street nearby prior to police arriving to the scene of the crash.

Officer Ian Dennis of the Beardstown Police later arrived to the car crash, and upon investigation, learned that McMahon may have captured the car crash on video with her cellphone. Dennis allegedly began looking for Dennis and then followed shoe tracks in the snow to the 4^th Street residence where McMahon had gone to visit friends. McMahon was in their friend’s detached garage talking about the incident when Dennis, according to the suit, approached the garage “in an aggressive manner.”

The suit further says that Dennis accused McMahon of running from police. When McMahon was asked to go to Dennis’ vehicle for questioning, the suit claims that Dennis began detaining her in handcuffs for an alleged arrest. McMahon allegedly asked why she was being arrested and at that point the suit says that Dennis “violently grabbed [McMahon] by the back of her neck and threw her face first into the gravel driveway” of the residence. McMahon allegedly suffered injuries to her face and mouth, requiring extensive orthodontic work.

According to Cass County Court records, McMahon was charged with one count of resisting or obstructing a peace officer on March 15^th, 2021. The case was later dismissed with leave to reinstate by the state on September 22^nd.

McMahon is being represented in the suit by Louis Meyer of Meyer & Kiss, LLC of Peoria. Meyer says that the Beardstown Police Department has not yet answered the case in federal court at this time. A jury trial in front of Justice Richard Mills has been requested. No date for the next hearing has been placed on the docket.

The Jacksonville City Council approved an extension of a key designation to spur property development on the former MacMurray College campus.

Bonnie Waters of the Jacksonville Regional Economic Development Corporation gave a brief presentation to the council during a public hearing last night detailing how an extension of the city’s enterprise zone would benefit property owners in their efforts to revitalize and maintain the buildings on the 174-year old campus: “The building materials sales tax exemption is one of the benefits. Any building materials that they purchase can be purchased with the sales tax abated. However, it will require any work that’s done will require a building permit [from the city] to be eligible for that. If you are a property owner and your business is industrial or commercial, you, the property owner, can make an application to have the property tax on the increase in assessed value abated. It does have to go through our office to get that to qualify. It’s an abatement of 3 years at 100%, and then the tax increase is 20% until the 8^th year it becomes fully taxable. I really want the enterprise zone so that the MacMurray properties can be viable again, and get on the tax rolls. They’ve never been on the tax rolls because it was a college. We would like to see that, and enable the property owners to be able to make upgrades to their properties.”

Waters says that many of the new property owners on the former campus did not realize how much maintenance and renovation would be required to get some of the buildings up to current code, and that an extension to the enterprise zone would allow them to recoup some of the costs.

Mike Hayes, one of the property owners on the campus, says the designation of the enterprise zone is the difference between getting something major done and letting the buildings just sit in some cases: “The enterprise zone can be the difference between us taking on a project and not. I mean it saves us [money]. You get a sales tax abatement for basically all of the building materials, and then we get some tax relief for the first three years, and actually it extends into Year Eight. It ramps up over time, but when you run the numbers, it makes a difference between some things happening and not happening. It will definitely create some new opportunities for that [area]. We are not planning any major changes that will change the aesthetics of the property at all – just really improvements to the buildings that need to occur. Some of the buildings were in worse shape than we thought. Some are going to need more money put into them. This will allow us to do some things that we may not have been able to do before.”

The 55 acres of ground has seen some extensive usage since the college’s closure.

Hayes believes that even more projects will be coming in the future, especially now that property owners have the Enterprise Zone to rely on for some tax relief and an ability to recoup renovation costs.

Prairieland United Way announced today that an important, mandatory meeting has had its format changed due to Covid concerns.

The 2022 mandatory Pre-Allocation Meeting scheduled for Thursday, January 20th at 9AM is going virtual.

Any 501(c)3 organization in Morgan, Scott, Cass, and Northern Greene counties wishing to receive 2022 funding from the Prairieland United Way must attend the meeting and provide a presentation. Application requirements, procedures, and deadlines are all discussed and reviewed at the meeting.

For meeting login information, please contact Executive Director Karen Walker at karen.walker@prairielandunitedway.org by Noon on Wednesday, January 19th.

A Barry man was arrested on several drug charges in a traffic this morning near Hull.

Pike County Sheriff David Greenwood says that Pike County Sheriff’s Deputies were conducting traffic detail near the Village of Hull at 7:28 this morning and conducted a traffic stop on McCraney Creek Road, about ¼ of a mile north of Illinois Route 106 on a tan colored 1995 Buick passenger car.

Subsequent to an investigation, the driver 41 year old James A. Kurtz of Barry was arrested for Unlawful Possession of Methamphetamine, Unlawful Possession of Hypodermic Syringes, Driving Under the Influence of Drugs, Unlawful Possession of Adult-Use Cannabis in a Motor Vehicle, Improper Use of a Turn Signal, and Pike County warrants for a petition to revoke probation and failure to appear in court on previous charges.

Kurtz remains lodged at the Pike County Jail. Sheriff Greenwood says the incident remains under investigation and further arrests are likely. The Pike County Sheriff’s Department was assisted by the Illinois State Police.

A Texas-based company planning an over 1,400 mile carbon-capture pipeline across the listening area will be holding public meetings in Mt. Sterling and Jacksonville this week.

The Heartland Greenway, a project by Navigator CO2 Ventures, LLC, will have a sequestration pipeline would go through Brown, Scott, Morgan and Sangamon counties. A separate line would tap into the system near the Adams-Schuyler counties line, carrying captured carbon dioxide through Henry, Knox, McDonough and Schuyler counties. It would carry carbon dioxide from South Dakota to a sequestration site in Christian County.

To get to the sequestration site, the pipeline would enter Illinois in Hancock County and cut through Brown County, into the northeast corner of Pike County, northern Scott County above Bluffs, into Morgan County and continue north of Chapin across the county, entering Sangamon County southwest of New Berlin.

According to Navigator, at full capacity the pipeline would capture up to 15 million metric tons of Carbon Dioxide from industrial customers and keep it out of the air. Navigator says it’s like taking 3.2 million cars off the road.

Navigator says it began reaching out to landowners in October and will continue the process through February.

A series of information open houses this week opens up at the KC Hall in Mt. Sterling 6-7:30PM Wednesday night and at Hamilton’s in Jacksonville 10-11:30AM on Thursday; and at the Edgewood Golf Club near Auburn 6-7:30PM Thursday. There also will be a virtual meeting from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday. Details are available at heartlandgreenway.com.

The Journal Courier reports the company hopes to begin submitting permit information to the Illinois Commerce Commission in the second quarter of this year. If the permit process and easements run smoothly, construction would begin in 2024. Groups along the pipeline’s possible easement have already said they plan to submit legal and permit challenges for the project.

Governor J.B. Pritzker named a Jacksonville native to the Illinois Forensic Science Commission today.

Carrie Ward will serve on the commission. Ward is the Chief Executive Officer of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault, where she works with legislators at the state and federal level to improve the policies and resources available to survivors of sexual assault. She was named to the CEO role last year, and was named Executive Director in 2019.

Prior to working in this role, she was the coalition’s Grant Director for 14 years, where she helped the coalition distribute $26 million in funding for rape crisis services statewide. Prior to that post, she served as a full-time Program Developer for 8 years.

Ward has also worked as an Adult Therapist for Rape Information and Counseling Services (now called the Prairie Center Against Sexual Assault) in Springfield, and as a Case Manager for Big Brothers and Big Sisters.

Ward is a 1991 graduate of Illinois College and received her Masters of Arts in Human Development Counseling from Sangamon State University (now known as the University of Illinois-Springfield).

The Illinois Department of Labor filed peremptory amendments on Friday to officially adopt the Biden Administration’s vaccine mandate for large employers in the public and private sector.

The filing comes a day after the U.S. Supreme Court said it would review the rules questioning the federal government’s authority to enforce a mandate over private employers that don’t receive federal funding.

Illinois’ new move would apply to all public sector employers under the jurisdiction of Illinois’ OHSA, which includes all state government workers and contractors as well as first responders at police and fire departments in municipalities across the state.

According to the federal guidelines , which also apply to large private companies with over 100 employees, employers must require their workers to show proof of vaccination from COVID-19 or wear a mask and submit to testing to enter the workplace. The rules would also order employers to prohibit workers from working on premise if they test positive for the virus. The federal rules would not apply to a company’s remote workers.

The new Covid policy would be set to expire on July 24th. If the U.S. Supreme court upholds the review of the rules, companies with 100 or more would have until January 24th to formulate a workplace policy concerning vaccination status and then would have until February 24th to begin enforcing the rules.

The next Illinois Joint Committee on Administrative Rules meeting, where such emergency rule-making is overseen by state bodies, is Tuesday.

A challenge to the federal OHSA vaccine mandates for employers of more than 100 employees was heard Friday in the U.S. Supreme Court. During arguments, the Supreme Court suggested states could have more legal authority to implement a vaccine mandate over private business than the federal government. Governor J.B. Pritzker spokesperson Jordan Abudayyeh told WCIA-Champaign on Friday that if the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the rule, Illinois’ peremptory amendment would be rescinded: “We just have to match the feds with whatever happens, and filing the rule gives people time to plan if it’s upheld.”

Currently, municipalities in the area don’t track vaccination status of their workers. Under the rules if they are upheld, cities and large-scale employers would be required to provide testing for all employees who don’t get vaccinated. Employers must also provide support for employee vaccination.