FRIDAY December 28, 2012
In Court Man charged in counterfeiting case Page A2
Obituary
Basketball
Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf dies at 78
Central Noble boys take down East Noble
Page A4
Page B1
Weather Mostly cloudy skies today. High 28. Low 18. Snow possible Saturday. Page A9
Kendallville, Indiana
GOOD MORNING Snowmobile crash injures Avilla man AVILLA — A snowmobile accident injured an Avilla man Thursday morning, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources said. Christopher W. Hackman, 57, of the 5500 block of East Baseline Road, sustained a leg injury and was treated at the scene by Noble County EMS. An ambulance crew then took Hackman to Parkview Regional Medical Center in Fort Wayne for further treatment. Indiana Conservation Officer Andrew Harmon said Hackman was working on a 1999 Polaris 500 Indy Trail snowmobile in a garage to the west of his residence. Hackman was sitting on the snowmobile when he started it. The throttle stuck open, causing the snowmobile to accelerate out of the garage. It traveled approximately 100 yards to the northeast, where it hit a small tree head-on, throwing Hackman from the snowmobile. Harmon was assisted by the Noble County Sheriff’s Department and the Albion and Avilla fire departments as well as Noble County EMS.
2 rescued after car goes into frigid lake FISHERS (AP) — Bystanders have rescued two people who were trapped in a frigid lake when their car went off the road in a suburb north of Indianapolis. Fishers Deputy Fire Marshal Ron Lipps says in a news release that the accident happened Thursday morning at an old quarry filled with water that is believed to be 60 to 80 feet deep. The temperature at noon was about 30 degrees. Three or four people saw the accident and jumped into water to help the car’s occupants get out. Lipps says everyone made it out safely, but both people in the car and their rescuers were taken to area hospitals. Police were investigating whether road conditions were a factor following a snowstorm Wednesday. Divers were working to extricate the car Thursday afternoon.
MOVIE REVIEW What did KPC movie critic Jenny Kobiela-Mondor think of ‘Les Miserables’? kpcnews.com
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Property assessments sent Appeals procedure explained ALBION — Form-11 Notices of Assessment are being sent out today to Noble County property owners, Noble County Assessor Kim Miller said. Form-11 is not a tax bill, Miller said in a news release. It is a notice of assessed value as of March 1, 2012, for property taxes payable in
2013. “The assessor’s office is not responsible for the tax amount, so please do not contact them for that information,” the news release said. “At this time, neither the auditor nor the treasurer can tell you the taxes due, because the county does not have the tax rates
to establish taxes due.” Anyone disagreeing with his or her total assessed value has 45 days to appeal. The deadline for filing an appeal is Feb. 13, 2013. There will not be an additional opportunity to appeal from the tax billing for the spring. An appeal form, Form 130, is available at in.gov/dlgf or in the assessor’s office on the first floor of the Noble County Courthouse. Evidence to be provided for an
President invites top lawmakers to White House talks
BY PATRICK REDMOND predmond@kpcnews.net
PATRICK REDMOND
Danny Bloss, of Niles, Mich., starts shaping a 300-pound block of ice into the image of Joseph Thursday afternoon for an ice nativity scene as part of the Shipshewana Ice F estival. More than a dozen professional ice carvers will be in Shipshewana today and Saturday for the sixth annual Shipshewana Ice F estival. Ice art can be found all around the downtown area as well as at Y oder’s Shopping Center.
purchasing tickets that allow them to sample the chili.
The festival runs through Saturday evening.
Casino revenue drops; competition blamed INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana state government could see a big drop in casino tax revenue over the next two years because of competition from new casinos in Ohio, state officials say. The latest state revenue forecast released this month projects the state’s annual casino tax revenue to decline by about $42 million, or 9 percent, for the second year of the new two-year state budget that legislators will decide during their session that starts next month.
SEE SENT, PAGE A9
Leaders to meet on ‘cliff’
Cool artists set for ice show SHIPSHEWANA — Sixteen tons of ice arrived in Shipshewana Thursday morning for the sixth annual Shipshewana Ice Festival that runs today and Saturday. More than a dozen professional ice carvers and their chainsaws are tearing up huge blocks of ice in the annual festival that will showcase ice sculptures throughout the downtown area. At least nine ice artists will participate in a competitive icecarving contest today at 10 a.m. just outside the Davis Mercantile. The artists will be carving 600pound blocks of ice with chainsaws into works of art. Levi King, a local businessman and Ice Festival promoter, said more than 30,000 pounds of specially made, crystal-clear blocks of ice have been trucked into Shipshewana just for the event. Ice artist Danny Bloss of Niles, Mich., said the Shipshewana event is one of the biggest icesculpting events in the area. Saturday, the festival kicks it up a notch, hosting a chili cook-off contest in a tent set up in the Da vis Mercantile parking lot. Ten seasoned chili cooks will set up their kitchens and prepare their own secret versions of chili, hoping to win the local chili crown. Visitors can participate by
appeal can include, but is not limited to, at least three comparable properties, real estate listing information, pictures of the condition of the home, a recent appraisal done to establish property value or a purchase or settlement agreement. For a new house rented before March 1, 2012, property owners should contact the assessor’s office to submit proper paperwork if it
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, said he didn’t believe Indiana’s casino revenue would ever return to the levels seen when there was little competition from neighboring states. He said state lawmakers should support measures that ensure Indiana’s casinos remain as competitive as possible, The Times of Munster reported Wednesday. “You’ve created an industry you’ve said, ‘We’re willing to
have,’ and you have to be viable,” Kenley told the newspaper. “So now I think it’s a question of whether we’re going to make changes that allow them to continue to be viable or whether we’re going to let the industry just die.” Indiana had tax revenue of $496.5 million from its 13 casinos during the 2012 budget year. As recently as 2008, when Illinois was the only adjacent state with
SEE CASINO, PAGE A9
WASHINGTON (AP) — A deadline looming, President Barack Obama will meet with congressional leaders at the White House on Friday in search of a compromise to avoid a year-end “fiscal cliff” of across-the-board tax increases and deep spending cuts. The development capped a day of growing urgency in which Obama returned early from a Hawaiian vacation while lawmakers snarled across a partisan divide over responsibility for gridlock on key pocketbook issues. Speaker John Boehner called the House back into session for a highly unusual Sunday evening session. Adding to the woes confronting the middle class was a pending spike of $2 per gallon or more in milk prices if lawmakers failed to pass farm legislation by year’s end. Four days before the deadline, the White House disputed reports that Obama was sending lawmakers a scaled-down plan to avoid the fiscal cliff of tax increases and spending cuts. Administration officials confirmed the Friday meeting at the White House in a bare-bones announcement that said the president would “host a meeting.” An aide to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said the Kentucky lawmaker “is eager to hear from the president.” A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner issued a statement that said the Ohio Republican would attend and “continue to stress that the House has already passed legislation to avert the entire fiscal cliff and now the Senate must act.” While there was no guarantee of a compromise, Republicans and Democrats said privately elements of any agreement would likely include an extension of middle class tax cuts with increased rates
SEE CLIFF, PAGE A9
Area linemen spend holiday helping out BY JENNIFER DECKER jdecker@kpcnews.net
ANGOLA — A few Steuben County Rural Electrical Membership Corp. linemen spent Christmas away from home helping provide power to those in need in Michigan. A severe snowstorm swept over much of Michigan over the weekend. Thousands were left without power. A cry for help reached Indiana Statewide Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives. They then reached out to Steuben County REMC. A crew of two linemen, Terry Dowell and Rod Allen, packed up their tools and headed north on Saturday. They braved extreme
winter conditions of snow and ice. “The snow was so bad, it stood 4-6 inches thick on some of the poles,” Dowell said. “You could reach up and grab the cables (that hung down because of the weight of the snow).” Dowell and Allen drove to the northern part of the mainland to assist Presque Isle Electric & Gas Cooperative. According to the coop’s website, “an estimated 21,752 services lost power after a foot or more of heavy snow fell across the region late Friday morning.” By Saturday evening, the Steuben County linemen were on the job working throughout the night and into the early morning
SEE LINEMEN, PAGE A9
PHOTO CONTRIBUTED
Journeyman lineman/lead man Rod Allen, left, and journeyman lineman Terry Dowell pose with a two-track vehicle that was used to work on hard-to-access rights of way in deep snow .