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“Where Fillmore County News Comes First” Weekly Edition
Fall Home & Garden Section Inside this issue
Rushford Village mulls over equipment page
Monday, September 25, 2017
Serenity Hills now open
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page
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Volume 33 Issue 1
Helping people live life to its fullest page
21
Houston Council preliminary budget page
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Canton • Chatfield • Fountain • Harmony • Houston • Lanesboro • Mabel • Ostrander • Peterson • Preston • Rushford • Rushford Village • Spring Valley • Whalan • Wykoff
Humanity shines through hurricane
Former Preston gal, Jamie Solberg, now of Texas, is shown bringing a horse out of flood waters as a result of hurricane Harvey. Photo submitted By Barb Jeffers barb@fillmorecountyjournal.com
“You hear stuff about price gouging — they talked about being out of bottled water and stuff, and they had just brought in a truckload of it so I bought 96 bottles of water for $11,” Dan says. After a full day of rain the two went to Jamie’s house to have supper and get some sleep. When Saturday morning came they went just down the hill from Jamie’s house to the Jimmie Stanzel Training Center, owned by Gina Winne, where Jamie boards her horse. Dan had gotten permission to ride Jamie’s best friend’s horse, so they saddled up the horses to check out the area. “It had rained hard enough See HURRICANE Page 2
By R ich Wicks rich@fillmorecountyjournal.com
The brats are just as delicious as ever, but the “Kraut” is on the side now. That’s one way to summarize what’s happening at Valley Butchery and Meat Market in Spring Valley. Another description would be: the more things change, the more they stay the same. The business has a new name, but was known for the past 50 years as Kraut’s Locker. Effective July 1, Ken and Janell Kraut are no longer the owners, but they continue to work part-time for new owners Rusty and Tanner Hellickson.
But Rusty stresses that he plans to make very few changes, since Kraut’s recipes and business plan were successful. Rusty explained that he also owns a fur business in Spring Valley, but, “The fur market had collapsed on us… The embargo that the U.S. put in against Russia killed us, because raccoons were my bread and butter, that’s what paid my bills. So we had to make a Plan B, and Kenny was ready to back off, so we decided to move forward.” Regarding the opportunity to have Ken stay on for now, See VALLEY BUTCHERY Page 6
Mabel-Canton School Board accused of violating policy By A nnie Lewis annie@fillmorecountyjournal.com
The Mabel-Canton School Board heard concerns from a resident during the public participation portion of its September meeting. Greg Turner addressed the board, stating that at its June 20 meeting, the board voted 5-1 to not renew the head boys basketball coach contract, but that employee (Doug Wyffels) had never been contacted regarding the cause for termination. Turner said, “You violated your own policy.” Turner did not say which policy had been violated. According to a statement from former Superintendent Jennifer Backer after the June 20 meeting, she said, “Wyffels received a favorable evaluation from the administration, but he did not live up to the expectations as provided by the school board one year ago.” According to Turn-
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er, the employee was never told what those expectations were. Turner had several other concerns: • He suggested that the school board be trained on their own policies and parliamentary procedures. • School board meeting minutes should be published in a timely manner on the district website. • Visitors at school board meetings should be seated in a place where they can see and hear the meeting, not facing the backs of the school board members. • The physical grounds of the school need to be addressed, i.e., bleachers from 1960s that are difficult to climb, weeds in baseball dugouts and fields not mowed. Turner concluded by saying, See VIOLATION Page 7
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When hurricane Harvey was barreling down on Texas in late August 2017, Dan Solberg, owner of Solberg Quarter Horses, of Preston, Minn., followed through with his pre-arranged plans to visit his daughter there, where he saw human kindness and determination triumph. Dan had talked with his daughter, Jamie, weeks before and made plans to visit her at her home in Richmond, Tex., as they had not seen each other for a length of time in quite awhile. “Then we heard about the hurricane,” stated Dan. “The hurricane was supposed to kind of settle in mid-day Friday
(August 25) in Houston at the airport, and my flight was scheduled so she was going to pick me up after work, so we changed my flight so that I flew in early morning instead,” he says. After leaving the airport, although it was raining, they thought if they were going to do anything it would have to be that day since the hurricane was on its way, so they went for a drive. “We headed out to the south and got in some rural areas and everything was shutting down and boarding up,” notes Dan. Thinking they should head toward Jamie’s house and get some supplies, they turned and headed back and found a store that was open, he says.
New owners “meating” customer needs