The
Buffalo and Pepin County Health Departments in cooperation with the
Wisconsin National Guard will be holding a covid-19 testing site
today. The stie will be open from 11-7 today at the Buffalo County
Highway Department in Alma. The test is open to those who have
symptoms or are asymptomatic or are in a high risk group and is a
resident of Wisconsin or is an employee at a business located in
Wisconsin. If you wanting the test your advised to check the Pepin
County Health Department facebook page to make sure tests are still
available before driving to Alma.
Residents
in Mondovi will soon see the Mirror Lake refilling. Over the winter
the city had the lake drained for repairs to the dam and also for
dredging of the lake. Crews should be completing the dredging in a
few weeks and the lake will begin to fill starting on May 18.
A
former library director in western Wisconsin will be sentenced in
July for misusing library funds. Patricia Blount entered a
guilty plea to theft charges in Pepin County Circuit Court.
Blount was charged last December for using library funds to pay
personal bills, buy tires for her car and purchased thousands of
dollars in gift cards. Possible restitution of $29,000 was discussed
at Tuesday's court hearing.
The
Durand-Arkansaw School District will continue to serve meals to
students even after school ends. Superintendent Greg Doverspike says
the district will serve the meals until June 30th. The
meals are being paid for by USDA and that program will end on June
30th.
Those families still interested in signing up for the meal program
are to contact the Durand-Arkansaw School District.
Wisconsin
gun shop owners say fear associated with the coronavirus pandemic is
driving gun sales much higher. In Eau Claire, General Coin and
Gun Exchange owner Luke Weyers says he’s seeing new customers come
into his business. Lake Hallie shop owner Dan Marcon says he’s
happy about the increased sales, but training people on how to use
their new gun is still a priority. The owner of Marc-On
Shooting says he has added training classes.
Eau
Claire-based Menards is joining Costco in requiring shoppers to wear
masks while you are in their stores. Both companies made the
announcement Wednesday. Menards says if you don’t have a
mask, it will sell you one for a dollar. Both companies say
they are taking this step to protect their workers and other shoppers
during the coronavirus pandemic.
Voters
in Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional
District are deciding to cast absentee ballots in big numbers.
The election to fill the seat vacated by Republican Sean Duffy is set
for May 12th. The Wisconsin Elections Commission reports more
than 44 percent of those who requested absentee ballots have already
returned them. The vote has Republican State Senator Tom
Tiffany running against Democrat Tricia Zunker, president of
the Wausau School Board. The congressional seat has been vacant
for more than seven months.
The
Wisconsin D-N-R and the U-S Fish and Wildlife Service continue to
investigate a rash of dog and wildlife poisonings in the northern
part of the state. Four more dogs that died this month and a
one-thousand dollar reward is now offered for information that leads
to an arrest. A lab and a poodle mix died last weekend in
Forest County after eating substances along gravel roads and two
others died in the Town of Alvin on public land. The deaths of
a total of nine dogs as well as coyotes, wolves, racoons. weasels and
raptors are part of the investigation. Pet owners are being
encouraged to keep dogs on a leash if they're in a northern county.
A
bill passed in the Minnesota Senate would allow farmers to deduct
large equipment purchases, expand the K-12 education tax credit
and delay tax payments for struggling businesses. The coronavirus
economic recovery act is a 330-million-dollar bill. Tax
Committee Chair Roger Chamberlain of Lino Lakes says businesses badly
need stability to have any hope of retaining workers and eventually
rebuilding. Saint Paul Democrat Richard Cohen warns
spending money not directly related to COVID is "simply unwise"
given the state's financial situation. Chamberlain accused
Democrats of "negativity." and called for some optimism for
a change.
Some
Wisconsin recipients of those 600-dollar Federal Pandemic
Unemployment Compensation payments briefly got twice as much as they
were supposed to get. The state Department of Workforce
Development is blaming a technical malfunction for the overpayments.
D-W-D says it is fixing the problem, but those recipients will have
to wait to receive the correct amount. It isn’t clear how
many people got double payments. The 600 dollars-a-week
compensation is scheduled to last until the end of July. It
comes on top of the normal state unemployment check.
After
a tie breaking vote by the mayor Tuesday night, the Rice Lake city
council approved a resolution allowing local businesses to reopen
with some limitations. Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald says
that has simply led to confusion. Fitzgerald
says his department and the Rice Lake City Police Department have a
sworn duty to enforce the law - including the statewide Safer at Home
order.
From
now on, anyone in Wisconsin who has symptoms will be able to get
tested for coronavirus. The Wisconsin Department of Health
Services made the announcement Wednesday that the rules determining
who gets tested have been relaxed. Previously, only the people
who were most at risk for the virus could be tested. The D-H-S
is making the change at a time when the state is trying to reach an
average of 12 thousand coronavirus tests each day.
The
University of Wisconsin-Madison says top campus leaders are taking
pay cuts and most employees will have to take three-to-six furlough
days between now and October. The university is trying to
absorb 100 million dollars in lost funding due to the coronavirus
pandemic. Graduate assistants, post-doctoral, temporary and
student workers will be exempt. Chancellor Rebecca Blank says
campus workers taking the time off will save about 30 million of the
100-million-dollar shortfall.
Supreme
Court Justice Daniel Kelly had recused himself when the Wisconsin
court took up a lawsuit seeking to purge more than 200 thousand
people from the state’s voter records. Now he's back.
Kelly recused himself in March because he was running in the April
7th election.
He lost that election and Wednesday Kelly announced he would be
rejoining the case. He says the reason he recused himself no
longer exists, no one has objected to his return and he feels he has
a duty to hear every case he can before he leaves the court and
challenger Jill Karofsky takes his seat.
Minnesota
State Fair officials are shooting down social media rumors and false
information about this year's Great Minnesota Get-Together. They say
the 2020 Minnesota State Fair has not been cancelled. General manager
Jerry Hammer said last week that there is no specific date by which a
decision to hold the fair must be made. Governor Tim Walz expressed
some doubt about the State Fair going on due to the COVID-19
pandemic, saying "it's gonna be a hard lift, but we'll hope."
Hammer says the State Fair will do the right thing for Minnesota, our
nation and world.
Minnesota-based
Best Buy plans to open 200 of its locations in May for in-store
shopping by appointment. The electronics retailer already resumed
in-home installations and repairs with employees wearing face shields
and masks. It’s been more than five weeks since Best Buy closed its
nearly one-thousand stores in the U-S suspended in-home services.
The company has been taking online orders only and offering curbside
pickup and home shipping.
Maybe
it’s a noisy neighbor or a leaky roof. A national survey
finds about 30 percent of renters who live in Madison are looking to
move. ApartmentList-dot-com is releasing its Renter Migration
Report this week. It shows that renters wanting to move from
Madison have their sights set on Milwaukee, Chicago and Minneapolis.
By contrast, only 13 percent of Milwaukee renters are looking to make
a move – but if they do, they prefer Chicago, Madison or Phoenix,
Arizona.
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