The Wright County
Monitor
Sports Page 13
147th year Number 8
Official newspaper of Wright County
Super heroes stop bullying A Super Hero writing and art contest was recently held at the Clarion-Goldfield-Dows Middle School. The School Relations Peer Helper committee, consisting of Maya LaRue, Lacy Buchanan, Camryn Reece, Jennifer Lorenzo, and Monic Fonseca, was in charge of the contest and promoted it to the students. Students were asked to decide what they could do to help students who were not being treated right by their peers, taking a SUPER HERO approach to find positive approaches to inappropriate behaviors by students.
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Marys and Marthas also donated money for winner prizes. “It is so wonderful when our service organizations help us with sponsoring our events,” Margaret Askelsen, middle school guidance counselor, said. 7th and 8th grade winning entries: First place art and writing entry: Shpresime Iafoski. Second place art and writing entry: Jaidyn Lockwood. 6th grade winning entries: First place art: Paige German. First place writing entry: Delia Swanson.
Shpresime Iafoski’s first place art entry.
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Mike O’Connell takes new courthouse IT position Kacey Ginn, editor wrightcomonitor@gmail.com After several months of assessments and discussions, Wright County has finally found a person to serve as the new Information Technology director for all the county systems: Mike O’Connell. Identifying the need for a director and finding the right candidate involved forming an IT committee and bringing in an outside company, LightEdge Solutions, to help. “With expansion of technology, in order to move forward, we felt an on-site IT person was necessary to meet the growing needs of the county,” said auditor Betty Ellis, a member of the IT committee. She also cited efficiency as a reason the county decided to create the new IT position. A previous business owner, O’Connell understands the need for efficiency when it comes to technology. “Some people don’t adapt to change as well as others,” he said. “You have to change sometimes to be more efficient. But it also over time decreases the cost of doing business.” O’Connell’s main interest is in networking, which involves creating and maintaining a computer system that shares information. “I’ve been building computers since I was 14, and networking for the majority of that,” O’Connell said. After high school, O’Connell started attending NIACC, but after one year left school to work
in telecommunications, where he learned as he worked. “All the training I had was on-the-job,” he said. In 2010, O’Connell bought the Mason City-based Stevens Communications and worked largely with phone systems. Then, he started bringing the company back toward his original dream. “I decided I wanted to expand the business in the networking side, so I went back to NIACC,” he said. O’Connell has almost completed his degree in information assurance and networking. Though he enjoyed doing business, the new IT position was an opportunity for O’Connell to more directly pursue his interests. “My passion lives more in the IT part of it than pones and security, like I was doing,” he said. “So I threw my hat into the ring.” Within 10 days of his taking the courthouse job, his business sold. O’Connell has now been working at the courthouse for a month and has enjoyed getting to know the people and the needs of the county. “It’s a wide variety of users. You’ve got the Sheriff’s department, whose needs are different from the engineers, whose needs are different from public health,” he said. “All the different systems and the requirements for those systems— that is strange to me and challenging to me personally, and it’s a learning
curve for me to get familiar with what they need and how everything works.” The county networks and computer systems help with both quality assurance and security. That’s why it’s important to stay abreast of changing technology. “You don’t really have a choice but to try to keep up with it,” O’Connell said. “It just evolves everything. For the most part, once you get past the initial shock, it makes everything better.” O’Connell doesn’t find the difficulties of changing technologies a deterrent. “I like the challenges.
I’m just a big fan of technology. Everything I’m doing with computers or networking is fun for me, and that includes when things are broken. Some of the best parts of the job are figuring out when things are broken and fixing it,” he said. Though he called his telecommunications business a bit of a sidetrack, he doesn’t regret the work. “Everything so far I’ve learned, I’ve been able to use some of that in this job, at this location,” O’Connell said. “When I was 17, 18 years old, just graduated and going to school, this is actually what I pictured myself doing.”
McGrath appointed planning and zoning administrator Kacey Ginn, editor wrightcomonitor@gmail.com At their regular meeting Monday, the board of supervisors appointed Sandy McGrath as the Planning and Zoning administrator for the county. McGrath had previously been a nurse for public health and headed up Environmental Health and Bio-Emergency. In her new position, she will still do reports on bio-emergencies and environmental health along with her planning and zoning duties. McGrath said it is common for environmental health officials to have some overlap in their duties. “If you poll the state, a lot of them will do environmental health–emergency management, or environmental health–P and Z,” she said. McGrath gave an environmental health update. She said the department was focused on epidemiology and preparing to deal with threats like the Zika virus. “We’ve now morphed into where it’s called ‘bio-preparedness,’” she said. County engineer Adam Clemons, who attended the meeting by phone, wanted to thank Jeremy Abbas for his interim work in planning and zoning before McGrath’s appointment.
Next, Sally Woodley, a member of the managing committee for the Clarion Farmer’s Market, spoke to the supervisors about moving the market back to the courthouse lawn this summer. “For several years, we had moved to the Gazebo Park in Clarion. It’s really nice over there, but a lot of the businesses had asked us to be on Main Street. They think it helps support them and support each other,” she said. “We are looking to increase our traffic, too, so we would like your permission to set up on the courthouse lawn along Main Street. We’d choose to be north of the main sidewalk. Unless we get a lot more people being vendors, half a block will be plenty enough room.” The markets will run from 9-11 a.m. on Saturdays from May 21 through October 8. Those dates will allow the market to be certified to take WIC and seniors nutrition vouchers. Woodley also said that the committee is considering opening Wednesdays from 4-6 p.m. June 1 to August 10, and that they’d be happy to have more vendors. “We’re always looking for more people,” Woodley said.
The supervisors made a motion approving the use of the courthouse lawn for the farmer’s markets. Next, the supervisors held a short Emergency Management Budget hearing. Jim Lester, Emergency Management Coordinator, said that some of the only changes to the budget from last year had to do with a three-year step increase from cities and towns in Wright County that was voted on last year. “The commission did approve for the purchase of a Toughbook tablet. And we also talked about an app for fire departments, funding an ‘I am responding,’ or a ‘Who is responding’ type app. We’re still doing some research on that.” Lester said that the price is a problem on a county level, though some of the town fire departments were looking into it. Lester thought the app could be helpful, but couldn’t replace their current system. “They still need the pagers,” Lester said. “They can’t rely on the apps.” Board Chairman Stan Watne pointed out Emergency Management’s $100,000 ending
balance. “If we get a huge event, a tornado, we have to have something set aside to get through the very beginning of the crisis,” Watne said. “We’ve got to get some emergency funds to get some semblance of order. It’s not sitting there because we’re trying to get a big balance, it’s sitting there because we need it.” Auditor Betty Ellis raised a question. When the bird flu hit last spring, some county funds had to be used to manage it. “We took that out of the board of supervisors,” Ellis said. “Is that the way we want to handle it all the time, or should it maybe come out of Emergency Management?” The consensus was that it depended on the situation. Though the bird flu did cause a state of emergency, no human lives were in danger, so funds weren’t immediately needed to assuage the situation The supervisors ended the discussion by approving the budget. “Thanks for all the good work you’ve done, Jim,” said Supervisor Rick Rasmsusen.
Paige German’s first place art entry.
Jaiden Lockwood’s second place art entry.
The Heartland Museum recently held its annual meeting and election. Volunteers are the heart of this organization, and they make up the board members and officers who help keep the museum running smoothly. Pictured here are some of those volunteers. Front row, left to right: Dan Odland; Normajene Collier, co-president; Melanie Maasdam, secretary; Dick Berens, vice president; Dustin Rief, new board member. Back row: Nick Nichols, treasurer; Mary Tesdahl, co-president; Peggy O’Neil; George Boyington; Doug Riley.