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DAILY CHRONICLE Trio of DeKalb receivers pose matchup problems for most foes / B1
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Hundreds will have aid restored
Local child care providers still want to see state budget in place By RHONDA GILLESPIE rgillespie@shawmedia.com DeKALB – Reversing changes to the state child care subsidy program once again could make 361 children from 228 DeKalb-area families eligible for assistance, but local organizations said they still
want to see a budget in place. Gov. Bruce Rauner announced Tuesday that he would roll back income eligibility requirements to the Child Care Assistance Program that he put in place July 1. After lawmakers failed to pass a budget the governor would support, he set income
guidelines to where families could not make more than 50 percent of the poverty level to qualify, where it had been as high as 185 percent. Before July 1, a family of four could make up to $3,677 to be eligible for assistance as a new applicant, then it dropped to $1,011. As a result,
thousands of families statewide did not qualify for the program. “This a good step toward repairing, and enabling families that want to work and want to go to school to access quality child care,” said Susan Petersen, executive director of Community Coor-
dinated Child Care. The agency processes child care assistance applications for DeKalb County residents. “We can’t lose sight of the fact that we don’t have a budget.” Copays, the amount that individual families contribute to child care costs, were also increased. The increase
is not expected be immediately rescinded. Rauner credited lawmakers this week with moving on legislation that boosts his reform agenda. “As a result of their efforts, now we are able to move
See CHILD CARE, page A7
Fret not: You’ll have pumpkin pie, turkey for Thanksgiving
FEED MY STARVING CHILDREN
By STEVE KARNOWSKI The Associated Press
Photos by Monica Synett – msynett@shawmedia.com
Volunteer Aminah Pasanrang (left) laughs while working to fill packages with food during the first volunteer shift for Feed My Starving Children at The Suter Company on Thursday in Sycamore.
Local effort, global impact DeKalb County volunteers help provide food for starving children By KATIE SMITH ksmith@shawmedia.com SYCAMORE – A few hours of work from local volunteers Thursday might be enough to feed entire villages of starving and malnourished children from around the world. More than 360 people gathered Thursday to help pack boxes for a Feed My Starving Children mobile packing event, where volunteers filled boxes of packaged bags with special ingredients to be sent to the world’s hungriest children. Tim Suter, president and CEO of The Suter Company in Sycamore, has hosted the program for six consecutive years. Once the food has been packaged and shipped, Feed My Starving Children will send Suter updates, letting him know which areas have received Sycamore’s donations. On a weeklong mission trip to Haiti last year, Suter and his wife saw firsthand the impact of Feed My Starving Children meals. “There’s no doubt in my mind that these meals work and that the kids who are eating them are getting the nu-
Volunteers package meals Thursday at The Suter Company in Sycamore.
See THANKSGIVING, page A7
trition they need to get to the next step in life,” he said. Feed My Starving Children is a Christian nonprofit organization that depends on volunteers to hand-pack shipments of vitamin-rich ingredients that are later donated to orphanages, schools and clinics in villages experiencing severe poverty. Each bag of food, or “Manna Pack,” contains a combination of vitamin mixtures, dehydrated vegetables, soy
Volunteers package a vitamin mixture, dehydrated vegetables, soy for protein and rice into Manna Packs at The Suter Company.
See MEALS, page A7
MINNEAPOLIS – Bird flu took a bite out of the turkey supply. Heavy rain washed out the pumpkin crop. Yet Thanksgiving groceries likely won’t cost Americans much more than last year, and nobody should have to miss gobbling down their favorite holiday foods. The holiday season perennially generates stories about some items being in short supply or dramatically pricier, but markets have a way of balancing themselves out, particularly around this meal. So although bird flu wiped out 8 million turkeys – driving production down and wholesale prices up – you’re in no danger missing out. These birds don’t play by the usual rules of supply and demand. That’s because one of the most effective things grocers can do to lure holiday shoppers is offer cheap turkeys, even selling them at a loss, said Richard Volpe, a professor at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California, and former retail food price economist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Further shielding consumers is that most of the birds destined to grace Thanksgiving tables this year already were born, slaughtered and frozen before the outbreak, said Thomas Elam, president of FarmEcon LLC, a consultant to the poultry industry. Frozen whole turkeys make up as much as three-quarters of the Thanksgiving market. In fact, retail prices for frozen birds have been softening, according to a USDA weekly supermarket survey. Frozen hens averaged $1.08 per pound as of Nov. 6, down from $1.69 three weeks earlier, although up from 89 cents a pound a year ago. The exception? Fresh turkeys. Most birds that will be sold fresh were hatched after the outbreak passed, and wholesale prices have been rising. USDA figures show that fresh whole hens averaged $1.60 a pound on the spot market at the start of November, compared with $1.36 a year ago. Supply also may be tight – although hardly scarce – so Elam suggests locking in your order early. It also helps that retailers had plenty of time to compensate. In fact, Wal-Mart expects to have more turkeys than ever before, and prices actually will be lower than last year, said spokesman John Forrest Ales. For example, a 16-pound premium frozen Butterball will cost about 64 cents less than
Thanksgiving turkeys are shown at a Cub Foods store in Bloomington, Minn. Richard Volpe, a retail food price economist, said one of the most effective things supermarkets can do to lure holiday shoppers is to advertise cheap turkeys. AP photo
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Kishwaukee United Way hosts Taste of the Vine / A3
Huskies now in control of their own destiny in football / B1
First Midwest to acquire NB&T in $70 million deal / A3
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