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SOFTBALL • SPORTS, B1
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New tow fee funds police extras WES
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Mayor: No problem with use of money, but may get closer look in future By KATIE DAHLSTROM kdahlstrom@shawmedia.com DeKALB – Since early 2013, the DeKalb Police Department has used around $300,000 of the $350,000 collected in administrative tow fees to buy a wide range of items outside of its regular budget. Among the many purchases, administrative tow fees helped outfit the new $12.7
Gene Lowery
Anne Marie Gaura
million police department, buy an $80 spill-proof dog bowl and provided nearly
$1,400 in Jimmy John’s meals to outside police agencies helping DeKalb during Corn Fest and Northern Illinois University move-in day. Police Chief Gene Lowery said his department would not have been able to afford things necessary to its operation without the fees generated when police tow a vehicle involved in certain criminal activities.
“This program has had a dramatic impact on criminals because of the immediate financial sanction against them,” Lowery said. “I think this is a great way to fund the necessities of the department and it’s a widely adopted practice.”
A NEW FUNDING SOURCE In December 2012, the DeKalb City Council established an administrative tow
fee, allowing police to tow a vehicle that is connected to illegal activity ranging from driving without a valid license to using the vehicle while committing a felony. Regardless of a person’s guilt or innocence, the accused must pay $500 to reclaim the vehicle, although the charge can be disputed through an administrative hearing process.
The fee has bolstered police finances by more than $350,000 since it was instituted, according to records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. When the ordinance was passed, the fee was expected to generate “some” revenue, and Lowery was given the discretion to use the funds it
See TOW FUNDS, page A10
U.S. gets back jobs lost in recession
SIGNS OF SPRING?
March report shows 192K jobs added By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER The Associated Press
Photos by Danielle Guerra – dguerra@shawmedia.com
Sycamore Golf Club grounds crew member Armond Mattingly drives the greens roller Wednesday afternoon in preparation for the Sycamore Park District course’s opening at 8 a.m. today.
Golf courses, farmers taking stock after ground thaws By DEBBIE BEHRENDS dbehrends@shawmedia.com Despite a brutally cold winter, Sycamore Golf Club is opening today, just a day later than last spring. The 18-hole course will be open for walkers only to give the bent grass more time to awaken from its winter dormancy before heavier motorized carts roll across it. “It’s been a long winter, and the melt has been slow,” golf superintendent Kirk Lundbeck said. “The good news is that we don’t see a lot of damage to the
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course, and we’ve had no flooding problems so far.” Overall, the DeKalb County area experience the second coldest period from December through March on the books, with some records going back to the 1870s, Northern Illinois University meteorologist Gilbert Sebenste said. The frost level
typically extends six inches to two feet into the ground each winter, but this year it varied between two and four feet deep, Sebenste said. The ground thawed this week, leaving farmers and other area residents to discover that moisture from the snow melting and recent rain did not penetrate far into the soil, Sebenste said. The slow thaw helped local golf courses. Flooding can be an issue for the Sycamore Golf Club as well
See SPRING, page A9
Danielle Guerra – dguerra@shawmedia.com
Terrie Tuntland, owner of Waterman WInery and Vineyards, prunes organic Frontenac Gri grapevines Friday in his vineyard in Waterman. Tuntland has been pruning since December and will continue until the vines bud.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. economy has reached a milestone: It has finally regained all the private-sector jobs it lost during the Great Recession. Yet it took a painfully slow six years, and unemployment remains stubbornly high at 6.7 percent. The comeback figures were contained in a government report Friday that showed a solid if unspectacular month of job growth in March. Businesses and nonprofits shed 8.8 million jobs during the 2007-09 recession; they have since hired 8.9 million. But because the population has grown since the big downturn, the economy is still millions of jobs short of where it should be by now. Also, government jobs are still 535,000 below the level they were at when the recession began in December 2007. That’s why the overall economy still has 422,000 fewer jobs than it did then. As a result, most analysts were hardly celebrating the milestone. Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, called it a “pretty meaningless benchmark economically.” “The potential labor force is growing all the time, so the private sector should have
See ECONOMY, page A9
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