The Jacksonville Salvation Army closed the gap in the Red Kettle Campaign shortfall heading into the start of the year, and with less than a month to go, officials are urging the public to help get them over the top.

Major Chris Clarke with the Jacksonville Salvation Army says there is still time to get donations in for the campaign even though the kettles are put away for the holiday season.

He says a big push in the back half of December helped, but there is still a pretty big need for help. “Well, we’ve had a lot of donations come in the mail. People donate at the end of the year and we’re so thankful for that. But the campaign actually still goes through January 31^st and we still need to raise about forty-six thousand dollars, or about a quarter of our overall goal.

We put a plea out there, in fact, we sent out some letters urging our donors that if they haven’t given already and if they are able to give again we would certainly appreciate it.

Because we call it a goal but actually, that line item comes right from our budget. So if we can’t make that it is really going to hurt our ability to help as many people as we’d like to and right now we’re helping more people and seeing more people in need than ever.”

Clarke says reaching the budget goal is critically important to making sure they can offer continued service programs in the new year. He says the need for more donations coupled with increasing need in the community poses a two-fold effect.

“Because we’re hearing that some people are not able to give as much because the cost of everything has pretty much gone up so it’s hurting everyone’s pocketbooks in some ways. But it is also bringing more people in for things like food and help with utilities and things like that.

Our goal of one hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars, that makes up nearly half of our yearly budget, and we’re still like I said about twenty-five percent short. So that’s a big portion of our yearly budget and that is more than a month’s worth of services. So we don’t want to, but we’d have to revise our budget and look at ways to cut back.

It’s certainly something we don’t want to do but again, we are serving more people than ever and the need is greater than ever and we want to continue to help all those people we can, but if we don’t make our goal, we may have to make some tough decisions.”

Clarke says they are thankful to everyone who donated and volunteered for this year’s campaign, as well as for those who donated directly to help families in need during the holiday season.

“We are certainly thankful to the many people who helped with the Angel Tree campaign and adopting entire families for the holidays. We were able to help nearly five hundred children with toys, and people are so generous they gave so many good gifts to each child as well as helping people with food.

We were able to help a lot of people with food for the holidays as well. So we thank the community for that because, without the community’s help, we wouldn’t have been able to do that.”

In 2023 the Jacksonville Salvation Army provided more than 16,000 hot meals and over 800,000 pounds of food for those in need. More than 16,000 personal care items, 1,200 nights of shelter, clothing for 510 people, and housing stability for 114 families were provided via funds raised during the 2022 campaign.

For more information on the services provided by the Jacksonville Salvation Army, or to donate to the 2023 Red Kettle Campaign, go to centralusa.salvationarmy.org and search Jacksonville.

You can also drop off or mail donations to the Jacksonville Salvation Army at 331 West Douglas Avenue in Jacksonville.

The boil order in the City of Mt. Sterling issued last week for residents with city water north of Highway 24 and west of Highway 99 has been lifted.

The President and CEO of a West Central Illinois hospital has been suspended with pay pending an internal review.

According to reports by WIUM and Becker’s Hospital Review, the McDonough District Hospital Board of Directors voted to suspend President and CEO Brian Dietz following a nearly two-hour closed-door meeting on Thursday of last week.

According to the reports, the suspension with pay came due to a “personnel matter” and “the hearing of testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee.”

WIUM reports that prior to the closed-door meeting, Macomb Mayor Mike Inman addressed the board after the city received several anonymous letters citing issues raised by hospital employees.

Letters were also reportedly sent to members of the hospital board and county board as well. A second board meeting was scheduled for today.

Dietz was appointed President and CEO in June of 2018 and reportedly earns a salary of $550,000. According to a news release by the board on Friday, current Vice President and CFO, William (Bill) Murdock has been named as interim CEO.

The loss of some technology led to a drop in Crime Stopper tips in 2023, but officials say it was still a good year despite the loss.

Crime Stoppers of Morgan, Scott, and Cass Counties released the 2023 year-end stats Tuesday. Crime Stoppers Coordinator Loren Hamilton says overall the solved cases were up one to 10 in 2023 compared to 2022, even though the amount of tips received decreased considerably.

“It was a disappointing year, but we know why. We had worked most of the year without our website and without the cellphone app. And no reason, or excuse, it’s just that both companies that we used for the website and the cellphone app both went out of business.

So we started the search to replace those. The new website should be up and active by the end of the month. The cellphone app I’m not real sure. Most of the cellphone apps that we have looked at are way way out of our budget. So hopefully we will be able to bring that back as well but I can’t give you an answer on that as of yet.”

in 2023, Crime Stoppers received 225 tips, which is down 264 from 2022. Arrests made were down seven from the previous year, however, Hamilton says even though the tips were down, those that came in were very high quality as far as valuable information.

In total, 35 arrests were made and $10,800 in property was recovered due to anonymous tips submitted to Crime Stoppers, who paid out $4,275.00 in rewards.

He says the lack of a mobile phone app hurt the total numbers in the back half of the year. “That was probably the most disappointing one. Obviously, when we lost the website we lost another avenue where we collect tips from. But the majority we missed I think came from the cell phone apps because when we first contracted that- and it was through a grant that allowed us to do that, our target audience was young people, and I think that is what fell off.”

Hamilton says Crime Stoppers has tried to stay current with new technology such as the phone app and the current social media platforms as the only avenue for tips when he first started was the landline phone.

He says budgetary constraints have played a role in hampering being able to find a new mobile app, and if anyone has information that could help the local Crime Stoppers in that search, please call him at the Jacksonville Police Department.

Hamilton says another area they are still struggling in is with having enough members on the board. “The other thing that we tried to do is diversify our board geographically in the counties that we serve. Right now in some of the outlying communities, we’re lacking volunteers to serve on our board. Specifically speaking in Beardstown, Winchester, and Meredosia. So if there is someone in your audience that lives or works in one of those communities and would be interested in serving on the board please contact me.”

Hamilton says if anyone is interested in serving on the board, or thinks they could be of help in finding a suitable mobile application, to contact him at the Jacksonville Police Department by calling 217-479-4630.

Since its inception in 1985, Crime Stoppers of Morgan, Scott, and Cass Counties has received nearly 6,000 tips leading to 849 cases being solved with 2,322 arrests being made. To date, Crime Stoppers has recovered nearly $969,000.00 worth of property and paid out just over $142,000.00 in cash rewards.

Hamilton says that anyone with information on any crime in the three-county area can submit a tip anonymously through the Morgan, Scott, Cass Crime Stoppers Facebook page, or by calling 217-243-7300.

The Alsey Glasgow Water Commission had a water main break Tuesday and officials say all water customers in Alsey are on a boil order until further notice.

The Jacksonville Public Library has a bevy of events planned for the start of the new year. Jake Magnuson with the Library says several continuing activities for adults will return in January, along with some special one-time events. “We’ve got a craft session making snowflake hangers here on the third, we’ve got our book club on the tenth, and then movie night on the seventeenth. They’ve all been very popular so we’re kinda continuing on with those, but we also wanted to expand beyond those programs.”

Magnuson says part of that expansion into different activities offered at the library is the return of author appearances, with a pair of west-central Illinois authors kicking it off in January.

“We’ve done it in the past, but it’s kind of been a little while since we’ve regularly had author events. So we have a couple coming in January to talk about their books. Phil Bradshaw with his “Your Food, My Adventure” book, he’s coming on the twenty-fourth of January.

The Tom Emery and “The Morgan County History Reader” on the thirty-first of January. So we’ve got them lined up to come talk about their books, answer questions, have discussions, and things like that.”

Magnuson says Music Under the Dome returns to the Jacksonville Public Library in the new year as well that includes some area favorites. “On the twenty-first, we’ve got the Ensemble D’Amici, a classical quartet. Then throughout the spring, we have several Illinois College people coming to perform.”

For more information about the goings on at the library, go to jaxpl.org, or find the Jacksonville Public Library’s Facebook page.

According to reports by both Illinois State Police Troop 6 officials and the Beardstown Volunteer Fire Department, just before 3:00 pm Saturday, multiple agencies responded to a three-vehicle crash on Illinois Routes 67 and 100 on the approach to the Illinois River bridge.

According to a release by the Beardstown Fire Department on social media, upon arrival, an SUV had come to rest on its roof following the crash. Separate from the SUV, a four-door sedan was pinned against the guardrail by a third vehicle, a full-size pickup truck attached to a flatbed trailer.

Beardstown Fire officials say two people had to be extricated from the sedan that was pinned. One person was airlifted from the scene and two others were transported by ambulance, all to area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries.

According to the State Police, the Beardstown bridge was closed to traffic in both directions for approximately two hours and reopened to traffic shortly after 5:00 pm.

The incident remains under investigation by the Illinois State Police. Responding agencies at the scene were Beardstown Fire and Ambulance, Air Evac 27, Beardstown Police, Cass County Sheriff’s Office Deputies, Schuyler County Ambulance, and Illinois State Police.

Ameren Illinois Communication Director Brian Bretch says Jacksonville had what they call a near miss after he received a report of some Mylar balloons that were caught up in a major electric service line the week of December 15^th.

“I had received a call from one of the operations folks there in Jacksonville mentioning that a cluster was entangled into some of our sub-transmission power lines. The sub-transmission power lines are the higher voltage lines, which means they serve more customers.

They were getting ready to call local officials in the area and maybe even some schools because we were going to have to take a fairly significant power outage in order to safely remove the balloons from the power lines.”

Bretch says when mylar balloons come in contact with power lines and then explode, the material acts like chewing gum in a child’s hair. “It melts into our system and it becomes like that sticky gum. So we have to actually de-energize the lines so our linemen can get up into the air and remove all that metallic material. Otherwise, if they don’t, when the power is restored, that metallic property can cause the electricity to arc and cause flickering lights and other issues as well as causing significant damage to electric systems.

So believe it or not, it does pose a real threat to our electric system. We thankfully avoided an outage when the wind blew and blew the balloons out of the lines in Jacksonville. But then we kind of waited around nervously to see if they ended up in another community and would cause the same issue.”

Bretch says power outages related to balloons becoming entangled in power lines happens more often than you would think. “Since 2018 we’ve had more than sixty Mylar balloon-related outages along our system, so just keep that in mind. That is from people releasing those balloons in celebration. The rubber balloons don’t do any damage to our system other than getting caught up, but it’s the same thing. We have to go up in the air and de-energize an area to remove them.”

Earlier this year, the state of California passed legislation calling for a complete ban on Mylar balloons by 2031 due to the risk of sparks from power line entanglements causing wildfires and also being harmful to wildlife.

Bretch says you should take some precautions when handling balloons, by making sure they are attached to a weight so they can’t float away and to reconsider any celebration plans that call for releasing balloons free into the air, and deflating any balloons once the celebration is over.

Bretch says if you see a cluster of balloons entangled in a set of power lines, you should call and report it to Ameren at 800-755-5000 so a qualified lineman can remove them safely.

More information has become available on a recent vehicle burglary. Crime Stoppers of Morgan, Scott & Cass Counties are requesting information to assist the Jacksonville Police Department in their investigation of a recent theft.

Sometime between 11:30 pm on Friday, December 22^nd, and 10 am on Saturday, December 23^rd, an unknown person(s) entered an unoccupied vehicle while it was parked in the 200 block of South Prairie Street. The perpetrator reportedly removed several items from the vehicle, including various items of Jewelry.

The police are asking that anyone who has information concerning this incident, or any other crimes within the three-county area, submit an anonymous tip online by going to the Morgan, Scott, Cass Crime Stoppers Facebook page, or calling Crime Stoppers at 217-243-7300.

Tips may also be submitted by texting to the word CRIMES (274637). The first word of the text tip must be “payout” Crime Stoppers says if your tip leads to an arrest, you are eligible to receive a cash reward.