Cops & Doughnuts; taxis used for students; fake senator jailed
- Updated
Odd and interesting news from the Midwest
- By STEPHANIE JAQUINS The (Ottawa) Daily Times
- Updated
OTTAWA, Ill. (AP) — Veronica Kroeze's mother died in 2004, and since then, her mother's ashes had been displayed in an urn on her credenza in her living room.
She recently heard of an option she felt would better memorialize her mother, Genevieve Shipp.
"A friend of mine had her father's ashes (used for cremation glass). I was thrilled at the idea of being able to do something like that in remembrance of my mom."
Kroeze, of Buda, delivered her mother's ashes to Laura Johnson, owner of Starved Rock Hot Glass, who specializes in hand-blown glass art and jewelry. Kroeze had two orders for family, including necklace pendants, heart-shaped paperweights and an egg. The art infused with her mother's ashes was for her brother, sister, niece and herself. Some family she told of her plans beforehand, and others she surprised them as gifts.
"I thought it was a great way to display the ashes," she said. "It's beautiful."
It's about an hour drive from Buda in Bureau County to Johnson's shop in Ottawa, but Kroeze didn't mind.
"I would do it all over again. It was wonderful."
Johnson said it's common to have people travel for her services. The closest custom glass businesses are in the Peoria and Chicago areas. She opened her business in 2009 and added cremation glass a few years ago after a few clients expressed an interest.
"And it just exploded from there. Now I work on ashes every single day. I have a list of orders. It keeps me very busy."
Each cremation glass piece takes her about 10 minutes to design. Throughout the process, Johnson doesn't stand still. With each step, she's heating, cooling and shaping the piece that includes just a sprinkle of ashes. To view the process, a video is on The Times website at mywebtimes.com.
In addition to other glass-blowing projects, she completes one to two cremation glass orders a day. The orders vary from one to 25 pieces.
"They'll get one for each child, one for each grandkid," Johnson said. "That way everyone has their own memorial piece. Each one is one of a kind, even if you choose the same colors, the same shape. Everyone has their own unique piece."
Sometimes she gets special requests, such as a family who wanted glass blue birds. She's working with the family to come up with a design. The client's mother was a fan of blue birds — it was her favorite bird. The family wants a blue bird for each of the women's children and each of her grandchildren to remember her by with the ashes inside.
The orders aren't just for clients' parents and grandparents, though. She's handled the ashes of furry friends, too, including dogs, cats, hamsters, rats and horses.
Paperweights will display ashes the best — anything solid, Johnson noted. Shapes that are more blown out or stretched will dilute the ashes more, so they're not quite as visible. However, anything Johnson makes can have ashes added. She also makes a lot of vases, flowers, ornaments and jewelry.
A perk to Johnson's job is seeing how happy and grateful her clients are to have the creations Johnson makes with loved ones' ashes.
"Just recently I had a lady pick up some paperweights. She was so thrilled about it she jumped behind the counter and gave me a big hug. She was like, 'Thank you so much. You don't know what this means to me.' To get that kind of gratitude from customers is really great. It's why I love it."
___
Source: The (Ottawa) Daily Times, http://bit.ly/1VGBO46
___
Information from: The Daily Times, http://www.mywebtimes.com
This is an AP-Illinois Exchange story offered by The (Ottawa) Daily Times.
- Updated
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A former Minnesota college professor was ordered Monday to pay a $500,000 fine for illegally smuggling items made of elephant ivory.
Yiwei Zheng, 43, of St. Cloud also was sentenced in federal court to three years probation, six weeks of intermittent confinement and 150 hours of community service. He could have faced up to about three years in prison.
Zheng was a philosophy professor at St. Cloud State University, about 65 miles northwest of Minneapolis. When he pleaded guilty in January, he acknowledged smuggling ivory carvings of potted flowers and other items from the U.S. to China in April 2011.
He also admitted to illegally exporting two rhinoceros horns to China in July 2010 in violation of the U.S. Lacey Act, which bans trade in wildlife that has been illegally taken, transported or sold.
Prosecutors say Zheng smuggled elephant ivory, rhinoceros horn and other items worth more than $1 million.
"Those who engage in this illegal trade create demand, and a market for, the exploitation of endangered species such as black rhinoceros," Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Provinzino said in a statement. "This defendant helped to sustain this illegal market for years, engaging in more than 300 sales and earning more than $1 million. His profit was earned at the expense of these threatened and endangered species."
Zheng had agreed to pay the fine, which will go into the Lacey Act Reward Fund. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses the fund to reward tipsters who provide information about wildlife crimes and to pay the costs of caring for fish, wildlife or plants being held as evidence in ongoing investigations.
Ed Grace, Fish and Wildlife deputy assistant director for law enforcement, said stopping illegal trade in ivory and rhino "continues to be a huge conservation priority for us."
Zheng's attorney, Tim Webb, has said his client has long traded in historical Chinese artifacts and authored books on Chinese trinkets. Webb said most of the items Zheng had were antiques and weren't illegal in and of themselves, but that Zheng knowingly didn't follow regulatory and permitting requirements to buy and transport some items. Webb said his client is remorseful and regrets his actions.
Zheng had taught at St. Cloud State since 1999. A school spokesman said Monday his employment there ended in March 2016.
- Updated
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — State transportation officials say law enforcement officers throughout North Dakota worked more than 400 hours of overtime last month in a campaign meant to deter distracted driving.
The North Dakota Department of Transportation says the additional patrols in April resulted in 370 citations, including 141 for distracted driving and 44 for speeding.
The "U Drive. U Text. U Pay." campaign is funded by federal grant money distributed through the state Transportation Department.
Law enforcement agencies that participated include the Burleigh County Sheriff's Department, as well as the police departments in Bismarck, Devils Lake, Dickinson, Fargo, Grand Forks, Jamestown, Minot, the University of North Dakota, Valley City and Watford City.
___
Online: www.ndcodefortheroad.org
- Updated
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Douglas County commissioners are asking a judge to stop a family from dumping junk at an old schoolhouse property south of Lawrence.
The Lawrence Journal-World (http://j.mp/1YgmNEe ) reports that a petition filed in Douglas County District Court requests a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction. The property includes a rural schoolhouse that was built in 1890.
The petition describes the property as a "junk yard" and describes it as "dangerous" and a "nuisance" that could harm the health, welfare and safety of other residents. Junk on the property includes old cars and tires, machinery, vehicle motor parts and yard equipment.
It's an unusual step for the county, whose code-enforcement philosophy in recent years has been to work with violators rather than to penalize them.
___
Information from: Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World, http://www.ljworld.com
- By DONALD BRADLEY The Kansas City Star
- Updated
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Laura Drescher, an engineer by trade, married into a family of child welfare workers.
Husband, mother-in-law, sister-in-law. So Drescher heard lots of shop talk at the dinner table. But all of it in the abstract.
Pass the potatoes.
Then Drescher met Aubri Thompson and all that talk came to life in a girl whose mother and two brothers had died and who had lived in — she thinks — 21 foster homes and attended 13 high schools, never long enough to make lasting friends.
"I didn't have anybody, not really," Aubri said.
When she finally got together with Drescher and her husband, Bryan, through a mentoring program, they changed one another's lives, The Kansas City Star (http://bit.ly/1WVrOU5 ) reports.
And maybe lives well down the road.
From aging out of the foster system, being unprepared for life on her own and feeling pretty much alone, Aubri found new hope in Laura and Bryan. They took her to a family Christmas gathering — she even got the traditional new pajamas.
Laura, a civil and environmental engineer at Burns & McDonnell, and Bryan will soon move into an old building in Kansas City, Kansas, that used to be a convent.
Eight boys in foster care will live downstairs, and eight girls upstairs. The Dreschers, who have no children, will live in the middle.
The place is a big white building with a bright blue door.
Thus, the Blue Door Project, a new group home and shelter started by the couple and others in Bryan's family to help foster kids, particularly the older ones facing the same problems as Aubri, who now works and attends college.
The color blue, according to the flier, symbolizes strength, freedom and new beginnings.
"Aubri was my catalyst for all this," said Laura, who will keep her engineering job. "But this family was meant to do this."
Carla Drescher, Bryan's mother and the former director of behavioral health for Kansas, will serve as executive director. Her husband, Phil, said of Laura: "She's an engineer, but she has a social worker's heart."
"They sucked me in," a smiling Laura, 28, said of her husband's family.
Then she turned serious and started rattling off statistics like the ones she used to hear at the dinner table: Half of foster kids age out without getting a high school diploma. Many will be homeless at some point.
Aubri, now 20, is too old for Blue Door, but she showed up on a recent Sunday to help get the place ready for an open house.
Laura wanted her to paint the door blue.
Of Laura and Bryan, Aubri said: "Most of my life I was a case number; that I didn't matter. They showed me I do matter."
Chance at stability
Think of your high school years.
Now imagine going to 13 schools and moving every few months.
That's reality for some kids. And when some age out of foster care at 18, they sometimes lack the most basic of skills: shopping, budgeting, taking care of a car, cooking, housekeeping and healthy eating. Some don't even have a driver's license.
"Just seeing how a married couple lives day to day," Laura said. "They're going to see me go to work everyday. I will take them shopping. I'm going to teach them how to cook."
Aubri remembers the feelings of first being on her own.
"Overwhelmed," she said.
There are resources to help, she quickly added. But a lot of kids don't know where those are or whom to ask for help. Things for her went smoother when when she met the Dreschers through Youthrive, an initiative that supports foster youth as they transition out of the system to adulthood.
"I think I always had the stigma of being a foster kid, but it never mattered with Laura and Bryan and their families," Aubri said.
Youthrive founder Tim Gay attended a Blue Door open house recently and said such a facility could provide much needed stability in the lives of older foster kids.
"This family (the Dreschers) not only wanted to do something like this for a long time, but they have the experience to make it work," Gay said.
Carla Drescher, who has worked 25 years in child welfare, said that many young people face the same challenges as Aubri and that Blue Door will help fill gaps so some kids don't have to move so often.
"If this works, this place will be the first of several in the metro area," she said.
The organization bought the old convent last fall for $175,000. JE Dunn Construction will oversee a budgeted $300,000 renovation. Some of the work will be donated. The hope is to open by August in time for the school year.
The Blue Door Project, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, is accepting donations to help get started. After that, Drescher said, it will operate on an annual budget of $750,000, most of that coming from the per diem rate provided to foster care providers.
For Aubri, who studies theater at Kansas City Kansas Community College, she's back to feeling a bit overwhelmed.
"I was a foster kid all those years and I never even had anybody to spend holidays with," she said inside the Blue Door house. "There were times when I thought nobody cared.
"It's kind of crazy that I can help inspire something like this."
___
Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com
This is an AP Member Exchange shared by The Kansas City Star.
- Updated
VAN BUREN, Mo. (AP) — City council members in the small southern Missouri town of Van Buren are taking turns keeping City Hall open after two employees walked off the job in the midst of the mayor's legal dispute.
It wasn't immediately clear what prompted the resignations last week of the city clerk and assistant clerk.
Meanwhile, the Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic (http://bit.ly/1COCxBR ) reports that Mayor Mike Hoerner, who was elected April 5, is accused of lying on forms he signed to run for mayor. The state of Missouri says he is ineligible to serve as mayor because of failure to file and pay state income tax from 2010 to 2014.
Hoerner has said he has no outstanding tax bills.
Van Buren is a town of about 800 residents in Carter County.
___
Information from: Daily American Republic, http://www.darnews.com
- Updated
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Sioux Falls schools are using taxi cabs to shuttle a growing number of students with special education or behavioral needs between buildings, and the practice is unsettling to some parents.
Parent Jennifer Miller, who has an autistic son, worries that taxi drivers aren't trained to work with children with special needs. Parent Renee Bostick chooses to drive her autistic son between programs rather than have him transported in an unsupervised cab with a strange driver.
"I wouldn't have minded a cab if (drivers) had training, and if there was an aide or another individual in the cab," she told the Argus Leader newspaper (http://argusne.ws/277gh8N ).
Cab drivers move about 160 students each day. The school district paid a taxi company about $200,000 in the last fiscal year.
Superintendent Brian Maher said he initially also had concerns when he took the job last year, but that his fears were assuaged when he saw the district's requirements for cab drivers. They undergo local and national criminal background checks similar to school bus drivers, and taxi drivers are banned from touching students or using foul language around them.
"There are expectations and training that go into play for the drivers transporting our students," Maher said.
Sioux Falls isn't the only school district that has used taxis but it might be the only district in the state still using them, according to Tim Neyhart, executive director for South Dakota Advocacy Services, which helps people with disabilities. Cab rides aren't inherently a bad way to move students, he said, but issues arise when parents aren't informed or consulted.
"It would seem to me to be a good practice to have the conversation with the parents so they understood what was happening," Neyhart said.
___
Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com
- Updated
BAY CITY, Mich. (AP) — An effort by police officers in Michigan to keep old bakeries going is expanding to two more cities this spring.
The Ludington Daily News and radio station WSGW report a Cops & Doughnuts bakery is opening Sunday in the former McDonald's Bakery in the western Michigan community of Ludington. Another one is scheduled to open by the end of June at the former Sutherland's Bakery in Bay City on the other side of the state.
Both bakeries were more than a century old.
Cops & Doughnuts began in 2009 when officers in the mid-Michigan community of Clare pooled their money to save an old downtown bakery. There's also a Gaylord location. Vice President Al "Bubba" White says plans call for expanding outside of Michigan.
- By STEPHANIE JAQUINS The (Ottawa) Daily Times
OTTAWA, Ill. (AP) — Veronica Kroeze's mother died in 2004, and since then, her mother's ashes had been displayed in an urn on her credenza in her living room.
She recently heard of an option she felt would better memorialize her mother, Genevieve Shipp.
"A friend of mine had her father's ashes (used for cremation glass). I was thrilled at the idea of being able to do something like that in remembrance of my mom."
Kroeze, of Buda, delivered her mother's ashes to Laura Johnson, owner of Starved Rock Hot Glass, who specializes in hand-blown glass art and jewelry. Kroeze had two orders for family, including necklace pendants, heart-shaped paperweights and an egg. The art infused with her mother's ashes was for her brother, sister, niece and herself. Some family she told of her plans beforehand, and others she surprised them as gifts.
"I thought it was a great way to display the ashes," she said. "It's beautiful."
It's about an hour drive from Buda in Bureau County to Johnson's shop in Ottawa, but Kroeze didn't mind.
"I would do it all over again. It was wonderful."
Johnson said it's common to have people travel for her services. The closest custom glass businesses are in the Peoria and Chicago areas. She opened her business in 2009 and added cremation glass a few years ago after a few clients expressed an interest.
"And it just exploded from there. Now I work on ashes every single day. I have a list of orders. It keeps me very busy."
Each cremation glass piece takes her about 10 minutes to design. Throughout the process, Johnson doesn't stand still. With each step, she's heating, cooling and shaping the piece that includes just a sprinkle of ashes. To view the process, a video is on The Times website at mywebtimes.com.
In addition to other glass-blowing projects, she completes one to two cremation glass orders a day. The orders vary from one to 25 pieces.
"They'll get one for each child, one for each grandkid," Johnson said. "That way everyone has their own memorial piece. Each one is one of a kind, even if you choose the same colors, the same shape. Everyone has their own unique piece."
Sometimes she gets special requests, such as a family who wanted glass blue birds. She's working with the family to come up with a design. The client's mother was a fan of blue birds — it was her favorite bird. The family wants a blue bird for each of the women's children and each of her grandchildren to remember her by with the ashes inside.
The orders aren't just for clients' parents and grandparents, though. She's handled the ashes of furry friends, too, including dogs, cats, hamsters, rats and horses.
Paperweights will display ashes the best — anything solid, Johnson noted. Shapes that are more blown out or stretched will dilute the ashes more, so they're not quite as visible. However, anything Johnson makes can have ashes added. She also makes a lot of vases, flowers, ornaments and jewelry.
A perk to Johnson's job is seeing how happy and grateful her clients are to have the creations Johnson makes with loved ones' ashes.
"Just recently I had a lady pick up some paperweights. She was so thrilled about it she jumped behind the counter and gave me a big hug. She was like, 'Thank you so much. You don't know what this means to me.' To get that kind of gratitude from customers is really great. It's why I love it."
___
Source: The (Ottawa) Daily Times, http://bit.ly/1VGBO46
___
Information from: The Daily Times, http://www.mywebtimes.com
This is an AP-Illinois Exchange story offered by The (Ottawa) Daily Times.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A former Minnesota college professor was ordered Monday to pay a $500,000 fine for illegally smuggling items made of elephant ivory.
Yiwei Zheng, 43, of St. Cloud also was sentenced in federal court to three years probation, six weeks of intermittent confinement and 150 hours of community service. He could have faced up to about three years in prison.
Zheng was a philosophy professor at St. Cloud State University, about 65 miles northwest of Minneapolis. When he pleaded guilty in January, he acknowledged smuggling ivory carvings of potted flowers and other items from the U.S. to China in April 2011.
He also admitted to illegally exporting two rhinoceros horns to China in July 2010 in violation of the U.S. Lacey Act, which bans trade in wildlife that has been illegally taken, transported or sold.
Prosecutors say Zheng smuggled elephant ivory, rhinoceros horn and other items worth more than $1 million.
"Those who engage in this illegal trade create demand, and a market for, the exploitation of endangered species such as black rhinoceros," Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Provinzino said in a statement. "This defendant helped to sustain this illegal market for years, engaging in more than 300 sales and earning more than $1 million. His profit was earned at the expense of these threatened and endangered species."
Zheng had agreed to pay the fine, which will go into the Lacey Act Reward Fund. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses the fund to reward tipsters who provide information about wildlife crimes and to pay the costs of caring for fish, wildlife or plants being held as evidence in ongoing investigations.
Ed Grace, Fish and Wildlife deputy assistant director for law enforcement, said stopping illegal trade in ivory and rhino "continues to be a huge conservation priority for us."
Zheng's attorney, Tim Webb, has said his client has long traded in historical Chinese artifacts and authored books on Chinese trinkets. Webb said most of the items Zheng had were antiques and weren't illegal in and of themselves, but that Zheng knowingly didn't follow regulatory and permitting requirements to buy and transport some items. Webb said his client is remorseful and regrets his actions.
Zheng had taught at St. Cloud State since 1999. A school spokesman said Monday his employment there ended in March 2016.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — State transportation officials say law enforcement officers throughout North Dakota worked more than 400 hours of overtime last month in a campaign meant to deter distracted driving.
The North Dakota Department of Transportation says the additional patrols in April resulted in 370 citations, including 141 for distracted driving and 44 for speeding.
The "U Drive. U Text. U Pay." campaign is funded by federal grant money distributed through the state Transportation Department.
Law enforcement agencies that participated include the Burleigh County Sheriff's Department, as well as the police departments in Bismarck, Devils Lake, Dickinson, Fargo, Grand Forks, Jamestown, Minot, the University of North Dakota, Valley City and Watford City.
___
Online: www.ndcodefortheroad.org
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Douglas County commissioners are asking a judge to stop a family from dumping junk at an old schoolhouse property south of Lawrence.
The Lawrence Journal-World (http://j.mp/1YgmNEe ) reports that a petition filed in Douglas County District Court requests a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction. The property includes a rural schoolhouse that was built in 1890.
The petition describes the property as a "junk yard" and describes it as "dangerous" and a "nuisance" that could harm the health, welfare and safety of other residents. Junk on the property includes old cars and tires, machinery, vehicle motor parts and yard equipment.
It's an unusual step for the county, whose code-enforcement philosophy in recent years has been to work with violators rather than to penalize them.
___
Information from: Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World, http://www.ljworld.com
- By DONALD BRADLEY The Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Laura Drescher, an engineer by trade, married into a family of child welfare workers.
Husband, mother-in-law, sister-in-law. So Drescher heard lots of shop talk at the dinner table. But all of it in the abstract.
Pass the potatoes.
Then Drescher met Aubri Thompson and all that talk came to life in a girl whose mother and two brothers had died and who had lived in — she thinks — 21 foster homes and attended 13 high schools, never long enough to make lasting friends.
"I didn't have anybody, not really," Aubri said.
When she finally got together with Drescher and her husband, Bryan, through a mentoring program, they changed one another's lives, The Kansas City Star (http://bit.ly/1WVrOU5 ) reports.
And maybe lives well down the road.
From aging out of the foster system, being unprepared for life on her own and feeling pretty much alone, Aubri found new hope in Laura and Bryan. They took her to a family Christmas gathering — she even got the traditional new pajamas.
Laura, a civil and environmental engineer at Burns & McDonnell, and Bryan will soon move into an old building in Kansas City, Kansas, that used to be a convent.
Eight boys in foster care will live downstairs, and eight girls upstairs. The Dreschers, who have no children, will live in the middle.
The place is a big white building with a bright blue door.
Thus, the Blue Door Project, a new group home and shelter started by the couple and others in Bryan's family to help foster kids, particularly the older ones facing the same problems as Aubri, who now works and attends college.
The color blue, according to the flier, symbolizes strength, freedom and new beginnings.
"Aubri was my catalyst for all this," said Laura, who will keep her engineering job. "But this family was meant to do this."
Carla Drescher, Bryan's mother and the former director of behavioral health for Kansas, will serve as executive director. Her husband, Phil, said of Laura: "She's an engineer, but she has a social worker's heart."
"They sucked me in," a smiling Laura, 28, said of her husband's family.
Then she turned serious and started rattling off statistics like the ones she used to hear at the dinner table: Half of foster kids age out without getting a high school diploma. Many will be homeless at some point.
Aubri, now 20, is too old for Blue Door, but she showed up on a recent Sunday to help get the place ready for an open house.
Laura wanted her to paint the door blue.
Of Laura and Bryan, Aubri said: "Most of my life I was a case number; that I didn't matter. They showed me I do matter."
Chance at stability
Think of your high school years.
Now imagine going to 13 schools and moving every few months.
That's reality for some kids. And when some age out of foster care at 18, they sometimes lack the most basic of skills: shopping, budgeting, taking care of a car, cooking, housekeeping and healthy eating. Some don't even have a driver's license.
"Just seeing how a married couple lives day to day," Laura said. "They're going to see me go to work everyday. I will take them shopping. I'm going to teach them how to cook."
Aubri remembers the feelings of first being on her own.
"Overwhelmed," she said.
There are resources to help, she quickly added. But a lot of kids don't know where those are or whom to ask for help. Things for her went smoother when when she met the Dreschers through Youthrive, an initiative that supports foster youth as they transition out of the system to adulthood.
"I think I always had the stigma of being a foster kid, but it never mattered with Laura and Bryan and their families," Aubri said.
Youthrive founder Tim Gay attended a Blue Door open house recently and said such a facility could provide much needed stability in the lives of older foster kids.
"This family (the Dreschers) not only wanted to do something like this for a long time, but they have the experience to make it work," Gay said.
Carla Drescher, who has worked 25 years in child welfare, said that many young people face the same challenges as Aubri and that Blue Door will help fill gaps so some kids don't have to move so often.
"If this works, this place will be the first of several in the metro area," she said.
The organization bought the old convent last fall for $175,000. JE Dunn Construction will oversee a budgeted $300,000 renovation. Some of the work will be donated. The hope is to open by August in time for the school year.
The Blue Door Project, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, is accepting donations to help get started. After that, Drescher said, it will operate on an annual budget of $750,000, most of that coming from the per diem rate provided to foster care providers.
For Aubri, who studies theater at Kansas City Kansas Community College, she's back to feeling a bit overwhelmed.
"I was a foster kid all those years and I never even had anybody to spend holidays with," she said inside the Blue Door house. "There were times when I thought nobody cared.
"It's kind of crazy that I can help inspire something like this."
___
Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com
This is an AP Member Exchange shared by The Kansas City Star.
VAN BUREN, Mo. (AP) — City council members in the small southern Missouri town of Van Buren are taking turns keeping City Hall open after two employees walked off the job in the midst of the mayor's legal dispute.
It wasn't immediately clear what prompted the resignations last week of the city clerk and assistant clerk.
Meanwhile, the Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic (http://bit.ly/1COCxBR ) reports that Mayor Mike Hoerner, who was elected April 5, is accused of lying on forms he signed to run for mayor. The state of Missouri says he is ineligible to serve as mayor because of failure to file and pay state income tax from 2010 to 2014.
Hoerner has said he has no outstanding tax bills.
Van Buren is a town of about 800 residents in Carter County.
___
Information from: Daily American Republic, http://www.darnews.com
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Sioux Falls schools are using taxi cabs to shuttle a growing number of students with special education or behavioral needs between buildings, and the practice is unsettling to some parents.
Parent Jennifer Miller, who has an autistic son, worries that taxi drivers aren't trained to work with children with special needs. Parent Renee Bostick chooses to drive her autistic son between programs rather than have him transported in an unsupervised cab with a strange driver.
"I wouldn't have minded a cab if (drivers) had training, and if there was an aide or another individual in the cab," she told the Argus Leader newspaper (http://argusne.ws/277gh8N ).
Cab drivers move about 160 students each day. The school district paid a taxi company about $200,000 in the last fiscal year.
Superintendent Brian Maher said he initially also had concerns when he took the job last year, but that his fears were assuaged when he saw the district's requirements for cab drivers. They undergo local and national criminal background checks similar to school bus drivers, and taxi drivers are banned from touching students or using foul language around them.
"There are expectations and training that go into play for the drivers transporting our students," Maher said.
Sioux Falls isn't the only school district that has used taxis but it might be the only district in the state still using them, according to Tim Neyhart, executive director for South Dakota Advocacy Services, which helps people with disabilities. Cab rides aren't inherently a bad way to move students, he said, but issues arise when parents aren't informed or consulted.
"It would seem to me to be a good practice to have the conversation with the parents so they understood what was happening," Neyhart said.
___
Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com
BAY CITY, Mich. (AP) — An effort by police officers in Michigan to keep old bakeries going is expanding to two more cities this spring.
The Ludington Daily News and radio station WSGW report a Cops & Doughnuts bakery is opening Sunday in the former McDonald's Bakery in the western Michigan community of Ludington. Another one is scheduled to open by the end of June at the former Sutherland's Bakery in Bay City on the other side of the state.
Both bakeries were more than a century old.
Cops & Doughnuts began in 2009 when officers in the mid-Michigan community of Clare pooled their money to save an old downtown bakery. There's also a Gaylord location. Vice President Al "Bubba" White says plans call for expanding outside of Michigan.
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