•October 21, 2020•
By Crystal Reed
NP Writer

The Moultrie County Board approved amending the Moultrie County Health Department FY 2020 budget by increasing the revenue by $123,094 in the following amounts: DHS Census 2020 FY grant $10,000, COVID 19 Crisis Grant $35,672 and COVID 19 Contract Tracing Grant $77,422. “These were grants that came in after the start of the year; that’s why they weren’t initially in our budget,” Angie Hogan said.
The board approved a motion to reinstate payment in lieu of tax monies to the townships for FY 2021. According to Chairman Dave McCabe, they originally decided to take money out of the funds to help fund a request for the dive team, but the Budget and Finance Committee discussed this over the last few meetings and decided that it was not fair to the townships to take that money out of the townships’ budgets. Read More

Photo by Ellen Ferrara
Michelle Campbell (right) and daughter Amanda pose with their Halloween decorations.

•October 21, 2020•
By Ellen Ferrara
NP Writer

Going in and out of Sullivan on Route 121 one cannot help noticing the imaginative and fantastic Halloween display in the yard on the corner of Eastlawn Drive. Every inch of the lawn is decorated in skeletons, witches, graveyards, spiders and much more.
Michelle and Roger Campbell and their family are the creators of this Halloween fantasy land loosely organized around this year’s theme of Sleepy Hollow and the Headless Horseman. Read More

Photo by Ellen Ferrara
Shirley Rodgers checks the temperature of her husband Don at First Baptist Church.

•October 14, 2020•
by Ellen Ferrera
NP Writer

Fifty years from now today’s generation will recall 2020 as the year of the great pandemic. They will talk of the masks, the plastic shields, the marked standing spaces in stores and speak reverently of those who died alone in hospital beds. They will remember the creative ways in which we were forced to adapt.
Science tells us that adaptation is the first law of survival. Covid-19 has required that we very social humans greatly alter the ways in which we interact with each other. This has placed a great burden on schools, nursing homes and, especially, churches where our one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord but weekly offerings pay the bills.
A recent Sunday was devoted to visiting several local churches to see what protocols they had instituted to protect the congregations and how the pandemic had altered their Sunday services. Read More

Photo by Crystal Reed
Sullivan firefighters Rob Young and Kaleb Randol with an example of the reflective signs that Sullivan Fire Department makes for residences or businesses to help their addresses be more visible.

•October 7, 2020•
By Crystal Reed
NP Writer
When it’s an emergency locating a person’s address on their home or business is critical to getting assistance to a person in an emergency. Sullivan Fire Protection has the ability to help your home or business be more visible with signs that display the address number using reflective numbers.
According to Sullivan firefighter Kaleb Randol, the signs are made at the fire department all that they need to make them is a person’s address. He recommends that those who live in the country get one of the signs but also stresses the importance of those who live in the city to have visible their numerical address number. Read More

Cheri Burcham

•September 30, 2020•
University of Illinois Extension Educator Cheri Burcham (pictured) along with team members Cara Allen (retired), Karla Belzer, Chelsey Byers, Tessa Hobbs-Curley, Molly Hofer and Susan Sloop were honored recently at the National Extension Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (NEAFCS) 86th annual session, whose theme was “Life Elevated”. The team received Second Place Central Region NEAFCS Educational Curriculum Package Communications Award at the conference held virtually on September 14 - 16, 2020. Read More