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Volume 35, Issue 10 | January 27, 2022 50 Cents | www.LHIndependent.com | News@LHIndependent
2022
Barry Boren is at 800 wins and counting p.5
Senior midfielder running the engine room p.6
Liberty Hill Independent goes daily online, monthly in print
From left, Girl Scout Jillian Hamrick, Pacesetter K9 Owner Brad Langham, LHPD Officer Esteban Gomez-Sanchez and LHPD Chief Royce Graeter with K9 Evo following the ceremony welcoming him to the police department.
K9 officially joins ranks of LHPD
By RACHEL MADISON Staff Writer After nearly two years, Girl Scout Jillian Hamrick’s project to donate a K9 to the Liberty Hill Police Department has come to a fulfilling end. Hamrick, who was working toward earning her Gold Award through the Girl Scouts of America—the high-
est award that can be earned as a Girl Scout—decided that for her award, she would train and donate a K9 to LHPD with the help of Brad Langham, owner of Pacesetter K9 in Liberty Hill. Throughout her project, Hamrick, who is a senior
See POLICE, Page 4
By SHELLY WILKISON Owner/Publisher Big changes are in store for your hometown newspaper next month -- changes that will help you get the news and information you’re looking for in real time while enjoying a monthly news tabloid delivered to your mailbox. We launch our new website -LHIndependent.com -- on Feb. 1. Updated daily with local news, sports, an event calendar, opinion pieces, classified ads and much more, the new website will keep you updated and engaged in real time. With the launch comes the email newsletter -- THE DAILY INDEPENDENT -- with the latest from the newsroom directed regularly to a growing list of subscribers. The website becomes the community’s daily newspaper -- a first for Liberty Hill. With the launch of our daily web product, we are saying goodbye to our weekly print newspaper on Feb. 10. After more than 34 years in print every week, it will be a big change for our business, but the decision was driven by the significant movement of readers who prefer digital for-
mats over print, as well as increased costs for paper, printing and postage. As is the case for newspapers across the nation, these are challenges that your hometown paper has been dealing with for a few years, but the pandemic’s two-year impact on local advertisers escalated the need to make this change now. For those of us who prefer to get ink on our hands when we read the newspaper, some of the changes in our industry have been hard to watch. But at the heart of our continued drive for excellence is this community’s continued trust in the reporting of our profes-
sional team of journalists. An online daily offers us a more effective way to reach you in real time and offers a format to report the news without regard to print page boundaries and word counts. Our brand new monthly publication -- LIBERTY HILL INDEPENDENT MONTHLY -- will be delivered to every household and business! While the weekly print edition will stop publication next month, it will be replaced by a monthly tabloid that will mail to every postal customer in our zip code (78642) starting March 4. The publication will include all of the local news and feature stories that you rely on from us
every day online, as well as the special lifestyle features and departments typically published in our signature magazine Liberty Hill Living. The Monthly publication will be a hybrid of both publications. This is a big win for everyone! For local businesses, the change brings the ability to reach more customers where they are -- online where prior to the new website launch more than 28,000 viewers per month were reading our stories, and in print where the circulation of our Monthly tabloid will reach more than
See WHAT’S NEW, Page 4
City making progress on swim center
Dirt is moving at Liberty Hill City Park where the future swim center will be located. The project is set to be completed this summer. City Administrator Lacie Hale said the City has received approval from the permitting process through Williamson County as well as the Health District. She added that the final design plans are 75 percent complete and horizontal construction has started to keep the project on track to finish by summer 2022. Hale said the construction site does block off one entrance and some parking at the park, but that it is necessary for the safety of the site. She added the City will be communicating with the Liberty Hill Youth Soccer Association, which will run practices and games at the park during its spring season, to let the community know that area will be closed to the public until the pool is complete. The construction should not affect any of the fields, she added, just one entrance and some of the parking. RACHEL MADISON PHOTO
Malted Grains owners selling restaurant, moving to new ventures
By RACHEL MADISON Staff Writer For the last five years, Michael Biggs and Melissa Day have been a huge part of the Liberty Hill community through their restaurant Malted Grains. From when they first opened under the name Liberty Hill Bakery and Café until they became the place for family- and individual-sized to-go meals, the restaurateurs molded themselves into what the community wanted and needed—like the time they provided food for donations only during the first wave of the COVID pandemic in 2020—and kept customers ©2022 The Liberty Hill Independent
coming in with popular weekly events like their Friday pizza night and Saturday bake shop. Now, the couple is selling their restaurant, which they renamed Malted Grains a year after they opened, and are moving on to a new adventure. “Our goal was to be here five years, and it’s been five and a half,” Biggs said. “We wanted to get our kids out of high school before we did anything. We are empty nesters now, all our kids are in college, and we are going to be able to semi-retire.” Day said moving on from Malted Grains after five years has always been the plan, as the couple eventually wants to land in East Texas. “We’re not doing this out of necessity; this is our plan,” she said. “We want to eventually open a venue in East Texas for
weddings, reunions and other events. That’s the direction we’re going in, but when we leave Liberty Hill, we plan on traveling for five or six weeks first so we can just relax and see the country.” Day said the couple plans to keep their Malted Grains Facebook page live so the community can follow along with their travels. She added that they plan on posting an occasional video sharing where they are and what they’re up to as they explore the country. After their trip, Biggs and Day will start looking for a property in East Texas that will work for their future venue. Money from the sale of their home here will be used to purchase the land, and then they’ll start working toward building
RACHEL MADISON PHOTO
Michael Biggs and Melissa Day, owners of Malted Grains restaurant in downtown Liberty Hill, See MALTED, Page 4 have sold their business and will soon embark on their next venture in East Texas.