•January 20, 2016•

When the Lovington village board met in December they voted to change meetings to the second Monday of the month and reduced the number of Class A liquor licenses from three to two.

The meeting change was to accommodate preparation of the village treasurer’s report with Jim McMahan moving to approve the change with April Daily seconding and all members voting in favor.

On the recommendation to reduce the number of Class A liquor licenses from three to two by Roger Walker with a second by Dennis Garmon: Garmon, Walker, Daily and Pam Anklam voted for the measure with Jim McMahan voting no.

Christmas bonuses of $200 full time and $100 part time village employees were approved unanimously.

A $450 donation to Breakfast for Santa sponsored by the Park District was approved. Read More

•January 6, 2016•

Sullivan City Council met December 28 agreeing to sell dilapidated property on Graham Street, while discovering the bid process needs some work.

Mayor Ann Short explained the original $3000 bid from Nick Grooms was made public before the city attorney advised the council to rebid the sale of the property.

Grooms had submitted his original bid of $3000, which included a provision the property would have to be cleaned up within 60 days.

Greg Yoder also submitted a bid for $6300 during the new round of bidding, causing the council to weigh the bid process results with doing the right thing.

“Since Mr. Groom’s bid had been made public, we felt the only fair thing to do was to honor that original offer,” Short explained of the unanimous vote to let Grooms have the lot for $3000.

Yoder operates a demolition company and said he planned to remove the dilapidated house and probably build a duplex there.

“I was a little ticked off when I first heard what happened, but I understand the situation,” Yoder said. Read More

•December 30, 2015•

By Mike Brothers

People, get ready the train’s a comin’, you don’t need no ticket, ya just get on board”.

Not just a lyric from a popular song , but it was a call to collect for the Toys are Tots train in this area.

That train brought Toys for Tots back to Moultrie County where they  collected 360 toys in Sullivan, Bethany and Lovington.

Moultrie County Toys for Tots coordinator Ric Kenney said in this return year for the U.S. Marine Corp based program 179 children in Moultrie County received toys or books from the program.

One way people were able to help without buying toys was to purchase a train at participating locations for $1.00. Names go on the trains which were displayed at the Toys for Tots business location.

Drop boxes at the Sullivan IGA, First National Bank of Sullivan, First Mid Illinois State Bank & Trust and Scott State Bank generated the bulk of toys collected.

Kenney noted Christmas week they were still picking up toys which they were still delivering on Christmas Day.

“When I took the final box check at IGA in Sullivan, people were still dropping off toys (December 22),” Kenney said.

He explained that monetary collections went for the purchase of new toys and books.  Read More

Shawnee to Preserve Moultrie Heritage and Continue Network Improvements

•December 23, 2015•

Shawnee Communications (Shawnee) and Moultrie MultiCorp, Inc., today announced that Shawnee, a rural provider of telephone, high speed Internet and other telecommunications services in five southern Illinois counties, would acquire Moultrie MultiCorp, Inc., the holding company of Moultrie Independent Telephone Company (MITC) and MITC’s affiliated companies, including One-Eleven Internet Services and Moultrie Telecommunications.

Shawnee announced that the Lovington based companies would continue to operate with no changes and that Shawnee would continue investing in technology infrastructure to provide customers with the latest in telecommunications and high speed Internet services, preserving the strong legacy left by Moultrie’s current owners, the Bowers brothers. Read More

•December 16, 2015•

Meeting Opens with Prayer

By Mike Brothers

The Moultrie County board  approved employee appreciation bonuses at the December meeting.

Budget and finance committee chair Ron White moved that full time employees receive a net $200 bonus with part-time employees receiving proportional amounts.

Board chairman Dave McCabe explained that the bonuses were excluded from the Health Dept., elected officials and those covered under collective bargaining contracts. The board approved the $8165 total in bonuses unanimously.

Opening the meeting with a prayer for the first time was Father John Sohm of St. Columcille Catholic Church in Sullivan. Prayer was followed by the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.

White proposed to invest $7500 in Sullivan Economic Development Commission’s No Job Left Behind program. This was a $2000 increase over the previous budget year. The measure was approved unanimously.

The Code Red five year contract totaling $7,749.40 annually was approved. Code Red Director Jan Haegan explained the contract includes the automated weather alert system which calls individuals within a watch area in the event of tornado, floods and other natural disasters.

Haegan may also get onto the Code Red web site to discover if other dangerous situations require automatic telephone alerts.

“If a tanker overturned causing a dangerous gas leak,” Haegan said, “the system would then call everyone within the evacuation area in a couple of minutes.” Read More