Durand Fun-Fest will be returning this year. During a committee meeting last night, 10 new volunteers attended and committee members decided to have the event move forward. The Sunday Parade will be held and the committee is finalizing the rest of the event schedule and is requesting anyone who would be willing to volunteer to contact Funfest via their Facebook page. Fun-Fest will be June 11-13 at Memorial Park in Durand. Over the last few years, only 3 people have been organizing the entire event and its hoped that more will become involved to help Funfest grow.
The Red Cedar Speedway will be holding racing again this season after canceling last year's schedule due to the pandemic. Dunn County and Racing Association officials have finalized a plant to allow racing at the track. The allowed attendance for the Friday night races will be determined the Wednesday before and will be based on the number of average covid cases per 10,000 people per week. Fans are encouraged to visit Red Cedar Speedway's Facebook page or website for the announcement on attendance numbers. The first official race of the season will be April 16th.
A Wisconsin man has filed an appeal to have his guilty pleas reversed. Twenty-four-year-old Colten Treu says his attorneys told him he would still be able to appeal the judge’s denial of a change of venue even if he entered a guilty plea. Treu was convicted in March of last year of killing three Girl Scouts and a mother in a hit-and-run crash. A fourth Girl Scout was injured along a road in Lake Hallie in November of 2018. Treu is serving a 54-year sentence. Chippewa County Judge James Isaacson ruled Treu can’t withdraw his pleas at a hearing last month. The judge says his previous defense team didn’t make a mistake.
Students of CVTC will be back on campus for the fall semester. CVTC plans for pre-COVID delivery of courses, including shifting classes that were previously face-to-face or MyChoice back to in-person delivery instead of the alternative online method utilized over the past year. CVTC will continue to offer online course and program options, as it did prior to COVID-19, to meet the needs of working adults. Staff members will be returning to on-campus work this month and hope to have a full return by the fall semester.
Two suspects are accused in the December drug overdose death of a man in Eau Claire County. Prosecutors say 19-year-old Noah Beckstead of Ettrick and 33-year-old Trenton Wik of Eau Claire are facing one count of reckless homicide. Wik is also charged with selling fentanyl. The victim's body was found in a parked car in December. Beckstead told investigators that he and the victim were drinking and doing other drugs and then injected what he thought was heroin. The autopsy showed the man died of a fentanyl overdose. Officers say Wik sold him the drugs. His first court appearance is Thursday.
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau says Republican plans for spending three-point-two-billion dollars in federal stimulus money might not be allowed. The Bureau reviewed those plans and just issued its analysis. The proposals call for spending about 626-million dollars of the money on things prohibited by federal law. Another billion in property tax cuts and some money earmarked for unemployment insurance might have to be repaid. A package of 11 bills was discussed in a Wednesday public hearing before the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee.
Wisconsin election officials say the voter turnout for Tuesday’s spring election was just barely over 20-percent. There was only one statewide race on the ballot – where Jill Underly defeated Deb Kerr by about 16 percent in the race for the Department of Public Instruction superintendent. Early figures show a little over 921-thousand ballots were cast in that contest. Four years ago the spring election drew only 16-percent of eligible registered voters to the polls to cast their ballots.
Federal investigators say photos show 42-year-old Michael Fitzgerald of Janesville inside the U-S Capitol during the January 6th insurrection. Fitzgerald is the second person from Wisconsin facing federal charges for taking part in the attack. The F-B-I accuses him of being one of the first people to force their way inside, saying he was in there for about 40 minutes. He faces three counts – obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, entering and remaining in a restricting building without lawful authority, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.
University of Wisconsin System students who get vaccinated for COVID-19 will no longer have to be tested weekly for the virus. It's a policy interim UW System President Tommy Thompson announced on Wednesday, calling it an incentive to increase campus vaccination rates. Thompson says the change is designed to maximize vaccination numbers prior to students returning home this summer. Efforts to get as many faculty, staff, and students vaccinated as possible are key to Thompson's pledge to hold at least 75 percent of fall classes in person.
Three Wisconsin cities are asking a federal judge to make former President Donald Trump cover their legal fees. Green Bay, Kenosha, and Racine are asking for reimbursement of 42-thousand dollars. The legal fees are attached to the case Trump brought challenging Wisconsin’s presidential election results. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has already asked a court to award the state 145-thousand dollars in legal fees from the former president connected to the same lawsuit. Trump argued the Republican-controlled Legislature should decide who gets Wisconsin’s ten electoral votes, saying this state’s voting practices are improper.
The legal battle isn’t over. A ruling by a Wisconsin appeals court that lets the names of businesses with COVID-19 outbreaks be made public is expected to wind up before the state Supreme Court. The Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce joined other groups in the suit against the Evers administration. It was aimed at blocking the release of the names of more than a thousand businesses with at least 25 employees who have had two or more of them who tested positive for the virus. The groups that brought the lawsuit argue disclosing those names would further hurt businesses already struggling during the pandemic. The names of those businesses will remain a secret while the appeal is moved on up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The Department of Natural Resources says it has conducted a study that concludes high-capacity wells are draining three lakes in central Wisconsin. Former Governor Scott Walker signed legislation mandating the study released Tuesday nearly four years ago. It looked for the impact those wells might be having on Long, Plainfield, and Pleasant lakes in Waushara County. The study found more than 200 of the high-capacity wells have impacted the ecosystems and recreational use of the lakes. A water-use district could be created to implement new steps aimed at reducing the impact the wells are having.
No one was injured Sunday when a concrete slab fell off the façade of the University of Wisconsin System headquarters building. When the section of concrete hit the sidewalk three stories below part of it shattered and another part fell on a dumpster. Officials at U-W-Madison are investigating. They say no construction work was being done at the time that might have precipitated the slab separating from the front of Van Hise Hall. The dumpster had been placed in front of the building during renovation work that was being done on a restroom.
Members of the Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee questioned the outgoing Department of Public Instruction superintendent Tuesday about several things – including when in-person classes will resume. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the way Wisconsin public schools have responded dominated the hearing. Lawmakers asked whether more than two billion dollars in federally allocated funding is going to the right school districts. State Superintendent Carolyn Stanford Taylor told committee members she doesn’t have the authority to order schools to reopen. Taylor stressed that would be a local decision.
The state’s elections agency will study voting at nursing homes, rather than push for new rules. The Elections Commission has decided against creating a new rule -- or pushing for a new law -- to clarify how to handle voting during a pandemic. Commission members say with vaccinations rising and coronavirus cases remaining flat, there’s not as much of a chance that nursing home voting will be an issue. The problem last fall was that nursing homes were closed to visitors, including special voting deputies who were supposed to help people who live in nursing homes cast their ballots.
The Minnesota Lottery is using a new scratch game to raise awareness about the state's bumblebee and other native pollinators. The Bee Lucky scratch ticket featuring the endangered rusty patched bumble bee went on sale Tuesday. Players scratch a "Bee Informed" box to reveal facts about Minnesota's pollinators. The tickets cost two dollars and the top price is ten thousand dollars. The proceeds will support environmental projects to improve pollinator habitat.
Stillwater police say a 10-year-old boy who led officers on a chase in the family minivan told them he was going to the store to buy Cheerios. The small driver was spotted by an officer Sunday at about 9:30 p-m. The boy speeded up when the officer activated his emergency lights, reading speeds of 50 miles an hour. Police were able to block his path, ending the chase with nobody hurt. The boy told officers he was headed to Target or a downtown co-op to buy Cheerios for breakfast. The parents said they were sleeping and had no idea he’d taken the minivan.
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