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DAILY CHRONICLE Jimmy Butler scores a career-high 53 points for Bulls / B2
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DeKalb 1 step closer to 10-year plan City leaders meet to finalize strategy to shape future budgets, goals By BRITTANY KEEPERMAN
bkeeperman@shawmedia.com
DeKALB – City leaders met Thursday to move toward finalization of the 10-year strategic plan that could shape DeKalb’s upcoming budget process and guide municipal goals for years to come. The city has been working toward developing a strategic plan since early last year. Residents had a chance to
voice their opinions on the plan t h r o u g h community forums held between May 1 and July 31. Mayor John Survey reRey sponses are included in the strategic plan for reference. Northern Illinois Univer-
sity’s Center for Governmental Studies presented a draft plan in August. The plan has also been the subject of extensive discussion at City Council and Committee of the Whole meetings and retreats, as was the case Thursday. Officials say that the plan will be a flexible, guiding force moving forward. “It won’t be a document that just sits on the shelf,”
Mayor John Rey said. The plan is part of the Frontier Communications America’s Best Communities grant application process. The city was named a quarterfinalist in the competition last year. This week officials announced DeKalb advanced to the semifinals, putting the city one step closer to grand prizes up to $3 million. Some goals that have been
laid out in the plan include looking at DeKalb Farmers’ Market expansion. Creation of a vibrant downtown with an arts corridor is also an element. Part of the overall goal of a thriving downtown would be to attract businesses that would create living-wage jobs for residents. The city would also seek to co-sponsor downtown events with the university, to bring
more students to the area. “It was observed that students just have no reason to come downtown,” said Diana Robinson, director of Center for Governmental Studies. “Bringing them here – and them seeing things like our beautiful new library – might increase traffic.” Infrastructure, transportation and financial goals are
See PLAN, page A2
New policy could hurt home care for disabled
JACK MCCULLOUGH BACK IN COURT
By ASHLEY LISENBY The Associated Press
Danielle Guerra – dguerra@shawmedia.com
Convicted murderer Jack McCullough walks into Judge William Brady’s courtroom Thursday in the DeKalb County Courthouse in Sycamore for a hearing on his request for post-conviction relief. McCullough, an inmate at the Pontiac Correctional Center, has been in prison since his 2012 conviction for killing 7-year-old Maria Ridulph in 1957.
McCullough returns to Sycamore Next appearance on his request for post-conviction relief set for March By KATIE SMITH
ksmith@shawmedia.com SYCAMORE – A judge could decide in March if convicted child murderer Jack McCullough will get another chance to prove his innocence. McCullough entered a Sycamore courtroom Thursday for the first time since he was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for the murder of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph of Sycamore in 1957. His conviction marked the end of the oldest cold case to be solved in U.S. history. DeKalb County Judge William Brady presided over what attorneys called a case management hearing Thursday, where Brady set a deadline for DeKalb County State’s Attorney Richard Schmack to file a response to McCullough’s petition. In September, DeKalb County Judge Robert Pilmer dismissed McCullough’s request for post-conviction relief, calling it “frivolous and without merit,” according to
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Conference title DeKalb’s wrestling team takes down Sycamore, 54-16 / B1
court documents. McCullough wrote the petition by hand from prison without help from a lawyer. However, the 76-year-old ex-police officer filed a successive motion Dec. 11 in another attempt to make his case. McCullough believes Jan Swafford, 74, who was known as Jan Edwards in 1957 and was dating McCullough, who was known as John Tessier at the time, has new information that would prove his innocence. It was Swafford who found McCullough’s unused train ticket in a framed photo of the two of them, which poked a hole in his alibi and led police investigators to renew their focus on McCullough as a suspect. Swafford said she remembered McCullough asked her to hold onto his train ticket. She said she told McCullough he should put the ticket in his wallet, but he insisted, and she put the ticket behind a framed photograph of the two of them. In a 2014 letter to Schmack,
“[Seeing him] doesn’t faze me at all. He’s dead to me. He really is. He’s just an old man – a sick, sorry old man.” Mary Hunt
Jack McCullough’s half-sister
however, Swafford contradicted FBI reports that said she didn’t see McCullough on the night Ridulph disappeared. Swafford was subpoenaed by the prosecution and came to Sycamore for the 2012 trial, but never testified, she said in her letter. McCullough’s motion claims prosecutors didn’t want her to testify. Thursday was the first time McCullough and his half-sister, Mary Hunt, had seen each other since the trial. McCullough was one of more than 100 people who were briefly suspects after Maria’s disappearance. But the case went cold for decades until Hunt told Illinois State Police about a deathbed con-
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Reading plans
D-427 elementary schools will implement family reading program / A3
fession from their mother, naming McCullough as the murderer. In court Thursday, Hunt sat among the Ridulph family, having disowned her brother years ago, she said. “[Seeing him] doesn’t faze me at all,” Hunt said. “He’s dead to me. He really is. He’s just an old man – a sick, sorry old man.” Maria Ridulph’s brother, Chuck Ridulph, hoped Thursday would be his family’s last trip to courthouse, where they have relived the tragedy of Maria’s disappearance repeatedly since McCullough’s trial. “You can’t just pick and choose what you want,” Chuck Ridulph said. “All the evidence – when you put it together – leaves no doubt of his guilt. We’re confident that the system will prove that to be true.” The case will reconvene March 2, when McCullough will be transported again from the Pontiac Correctional Center to the DeKalb County Courthouse for a review of Schmack’s response and a possible ruling.
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WHERE IT’S AT
DeKalb wins NIB 12 tourney; Sycamore regular season / B1
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Boys bowling
SPRINGFIELD – Disabled Illinois residents who depend on in-home help for daily needs will suffer once the state stops paying overtime for their caregivers beginning March 1, some home health care workers and their union said. Tens of thousands of employees who help people with disabilities live independently are eligible for time-and-a-half pay over 40 hours in a week, under a federal rule that took effect Jan. 1. But without a state budget in place to control spending, Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration said it can’t afford the extra pay. A state Department of Human Services memo obtained by The Associated Press indicates the policy will allow 35 hours of work and five hours of travel. The workers, who make about $13 an hour, and their supporters said that 30,000 clients who need assistance because of physical or developmental disabilities will receive less-efficient and less-effective care because most need more than 40 hours of weekly assistance. Families will have to find other aides to help, meaning disruption and for some clients, discomfort with a new person. “This is a devastating impact on families,” said James Muhammad, spokesman for SEIU Healthcare Illinois, which represents 25,000 home care workers. “Families now have to find other people to come into their homes.” Human Services spokeswoman Marianne Manko said the administration wants to control costs in the absence of a full-year spending plan. The Republican governor and the Democrats who control the Legislature have deadlocked over a budget that should have taken effect July 1. Rauner wants Democrats to bend first on business-friendly changes and measure that would weaken unions; Democrats want a tax increase and spending cuts to deal with a huge budget deficit. “DHS wants to control overtime costs without interrupting the necessary care people need,”
See CARE, page A4
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