One of my friends suffered anthrax poisoning last week. Don’t freak out, it was not the viral strain, it was the bacterial version of the virus.
My friend works for Hormel in Austin. During work he got a large amount on his stomach while moving meat around. It caused burns and eventually required surgery.
Writing this makes me think of Bob Hanson’s fact or fiction, including a recent column. I didn’t think someone in the 21st Century would get anthrax poisoning. (The statistics in the United States average two cases per year.) I also fell hook, line ,and sinker into Bob’s story about his dream vacation.
We have great writers here at the Star Eagle. Lately I have heard multiple positive comments regarding our columnists and I wanted to thank those individuals for their kind words. It means a lot to us here at the paper to provide the news, and hearing that we are serving you well is incredible motivation to continue our hard work.
I started regularly attending New Richland City Council meetings this year. I didn’t think I would get talked to as much as I do during meeting. In fact, I didn’t think I would ever be spoken to during a meeting, but it has happened during each council meeting thus far.
So far I have been impressed with how the council is handling the new year. I, personally, did not cover the council during the past years, but it feels like there is a lot of productive discussion happening.
At the most recent meeting of the council, a resident of New Richland came forward with receipts going back to 2014 from bills from Consolidated and the water bill. Included in the bills were franchise fees totalling $770 from one of the particular sets of bills. The resident asked the previous City Administrator what happened to those dollars and where they were being spent. She was reportedly told that the money was put into the general fund. This didn’t sit well with the resident as it was believed by her and members of the council that the money associated with these different additional charges was supposed to fund various projects in the city and it appears that didn’t happen.
Outside of simply reporting what happened, I mentioned this for another reason. At the previous workforce meeting, the Tuesday prior, Councilperson Jody Wynnemer suggested removing the franchise fees from the bills. I believe he said he didn’t understand why the charges were there and justified his reasoning for asking that they be removed so that he could save residents that money.
To summarize, I am simply grateful to witness good discussion at the council meetings, not only between the council members but also with the public.