TUESDAY December 10, 2013
Momentum Colts ready to start playoff push Page B1
LaGrange Focus
Hall Of Fame
Wolcottville seeks downtown improvements
Managers head to Cooperstown
Page A7
Page B1
Weather Partly cloudy early, then sunny and breezy, high 26. Low tonight 12. Page A8 Kendallville, Indiana
Serving Noble & LaGrange Counties
kpcnews.com
75 cents
New county office building discussed GOOD MORNING Video highlights available on line for parade, time capsule KENDALLVILLE — Video from two downtown Kendallville events held Saturday is online at kpcnews.com. Highlights from the 45th annual Kendallville Christmas Parade are included in the “Kendallville Christmas Parade” video, including clips of the East Noble Marching Knights, various floats and walking groups, and children sharing their Christmas wishes with Santa Claus after the parade. Scan the QR code to watch the Christmas parade video on your tablet or smartphone. A second video covers the ceremony as Kendallville’s sesquicentennial time capsule was sealed and buried outside the front of City Hall. To take a look at the latest KPC Media Group videos, go to kpcnews.com and select Multimedia > Video from the navigation menu.
BY BOB BRALEY bbraley@kpcmedia.com
ALBION — The Noble County Board of Commissioners Monday took a step that could lead to a new county government building in a few years. The commissioners authorized the architects and engineers of DLZ Indiana LLC to devise a scope of work for a possible study of space needs for county offices. “We need more space,” Commissioner Chad Kline said. The issue is trying to determine how much more, and if it can be
PHOTO GALLERIES East Noble, West Noble girls basketball kpcnews.com Multimedia > Photo Galleries
Info • The News Sun P.O. Box 39, 102 N. Main St. Kendallville, IN 46755 Telephone: (260) 347-0400 Fax: (260) 347-2693 Classifieds: (toll free) (877) 791-7877 Circulation: (260) 347-0400 or (800) 717-4679
Index
•
Classifieds.................................B6-B8 Life..................................................... A6 Obituaries......................................... A4 Opinion .............................................B4 Sports.........................................B1-B3 Weather............................................ A8 TV/Comics .......................................B5 Vol. 104 No. 339
up with storage, Kline said. “We have offices that could be used as offices, but are full of books,” he said. Some of that storage is required by state law, he added. The county currently rents two court-related buildings, Kline said. Moving those offices into the Noble County Courthouse would save the county rent every month. Another potential problem is the location of the Noble County Emergency Management Agency’s command center in the Noble County Annex on Weber Road,
next to the CSX railroad tracks in Albion, Kline said. “If that railroad ever had a derailment in that location that required work of that agency, it couldn’t be from its command center,” Kline said. Noble County owns the courthouse, the annex, the Noble County Office Complex-South on S.R. 9 south of Albion, the Noble County Prosecutor’s Office across the street from the courthouse, and the Noble County Jail and Noble County Highway Department on SEE BUILDING, PAGE A8
GM bailout had big cost $10.5 billion lost; More than a million jobs saved
Avilla man hurt in tree stand fall WATERLOO — An Avilla man was injured when he fell from an elevated tree stand Sunday, Indiana Conservation Officers said. Victor Hernandez, 50, was hunting deer in the 2800 block of C.R. 27 early Sunday morning when he fell approximately 17 feet to the ground. Hernandez sustained a back injury and an internal injury from the fall, officers said. Hernandez was transported privately to DeKalb Health hospital at Auburn and then by ambulance to Parkview Regional Medical Center, Fort Wayne, where he is being treated for his injuries.
gained from existing county facilities. What needs to be determined is if the county has enough space, and if it’s well distributed to make things work for county taxpayers, Commissioner Dave Dolezal said. Kline agreed, saying it might be more efficient to move departments not directly involved with the courts into a separate space, where taxpayers could use related services such as the surveyor’s and recorder’s offices without driving from building to building. There’s also a lot of space tied
PATRICK REDMOND
Christmas wishes Hunter Ritchie of Kendallville, spends time visiting with Santa Claus Saturday afternoon, after Santa arrived downtown on a fire truck as part of the annual Kendallville Christmas Parade.
DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. government ended up losing $10.5 billion on the General Motors bailout, but it says the alternative would have been far worse. The Treasury Department sold its final shares of the Detroit auto giant on Monday, recovering $39 billion of the $49.5 billion it spent to save the dying automaker at the height of the financial crisis five years ago. Without the bailout, the country would have lost more than 1 million jobs, and the economy could have slipped from recession into a depression, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said on a conference call with reporters. “The economic stakes were high, and President Obama understood that inaction was not an option,” Lew said. “His decision to commit additional support to GM while requiring them to fundamentally restructure their business was tough but it was
right.” The government received 912 million GM shares, or a 60.8 percent stake, in exchange for the bailout in 2008 and 2009. It began selling shares once GM went public again in November of 2010, and the pace picked up this year as the stock rose more than 40 percent. Last month, the government said it expected to sell the remaining 2 percent stake by the end of the year. GM shares rose 73 cents, or 1.8 percent in after-hours trading following the announcement. They rose 1.8 percent in regular trading, at one point reaching $41.17, the highest level since GM’s 2010 initial public offering. Earlier Monday, Mark Reuss, GM’s North American president, told reporters in Warren, Mich., that a government exit would boost sales, especially among pickup truck buyers. GM has SEE BAILOUT, PAGE A8
Obama to speak at Mandela memorial WASHINGTON (AP) — The comparisons are perhaps inevitable. President Barack Obama and former South African leader Nelson Mandela each served as their nation’s first black president, living symbols of struggles to overcome deep-seated racial tensions. Each was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But as Obama prepares to honor Mandela at a memorial service today in South Africa, people close to the U.S. president say he is well-aware that his rapid rise through America’s political ranks pales in comparison to Mandela’s 27 years in prison fighting against a repressive government that brutally enforced laws that enshrined racial discrimination. Rather than view himself as a counterpart to Mandela, Obama has said he sees himself as one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Mandela’s life. “Like so many around the globe, I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set, and so long as I live, I will do what I can to learn from him,” Obama said in somber remarks after Mandela died last week at the age of 95. In the days following Mandela’s death, Obama began crafting the 20-minute speech he will deliver during Tuesday’s service in Johannesburg, where
AP
President Barack Obama arrives on the tarmac to board Air Force One to travel to South Africa for a memorial service in honor of Nelson Mandela Monday at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.
tens of thousands of South Africans and dozens of foreign dignitaries are expected to pack a sports stadium. Obama is expected to speak of Mandela’s influence on South Africa and on his own life, while also reflecting on the complexity of Mandela’s rise from anti-apartheid fighter and prisoner to president and global icon. The memorial service will also serve as a rare reunion of nearly all living American presidents. Former President George W.
Bush and wife Laura Bush joined the president and wife Michelle Obama on Air Force One as it departed Washington Monday morning. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter were traveling to South Africa separately. George H.W. Bush, the only other living U.S. president, will not attend because the 89-year-old is no longer able to travel long distances, his spokesman Jim McGrath said. Also traveling with Obama
were national security adviser Susan Rice, Attorney General Eric Holder, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was meeting her husband in South Africa. For Obama, who was too young to be active in the American civil rights movement, it was Mandela’s struggle against apartheid that first drew him into politics. He studied Mandela’s speeches and writings while studying at Occidental College from 1979-81 and became active in campus protests against the apartheid government. “My very first political action, the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics, was a protest against apartheid,” Obama said last week. “The day that (Mandela) was released from prison gave me a sense of what human beings can do when they’re guided by their hopes and not by their fears.” By the time Obama became president, Mandela had retired from public life. But they did have one in-person meeting, a hastily arranged 2005 encounter while Mandela was visiting Washington. The South African leader had been encouraged to meet a young black U.S. senator who was a rising star in American politics and invited Obama to visit him at his hotel. A single photo from the meeting shows the two men SEE OBAMA, PAGE A8
Winter weather interrupts travel plans MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Snow and bitter cold snarled traffic and prompted another 1,650 U.S. flight cancellations on Monday, and tens of thousands of people were still without power after January-like weather barged in a month early. The storm covered parts of North Texas in ice over the weekend and then moved East. Below-zero temperatures crowned
the top of the U.S. from Idaho to Minnesota, where many roads still had an inch-thick plate of ice, polished smooth by traffic and impervious to ice-melting chemicals, making intersections an adventure. Many travelers wished they were home, and people in homes without power wished they were somewhere else.
Some of the most difficult conditions were in North Texas. More than 22,000 Dallas-area homes and businesses were still without power on Monday, according to electric utility Oncor. That was down from 270,000 on Friday. Dallas students got a snow day. More than half of the nation’s flight cancellations on Monday were at Dallas-Fort Worth Interna-
tional Airport, dominated by American Airlines. About 650 travelers were stranded there Sunday night. Nationally, there have been more than 6,100 flight cancellations since Saturday, according to FlightStats.com, including more than 2,800 by American or its American Eagle regional airline.