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Serving DeKalb County since 1879
Monday, July 28, 2014
NATIONAL DAY OF THE COWBOY
NIU VOLLEYBALL • SPORTS, B1
Riders compete in Malta shooting event Local, A4
Overseas trip gives Kelly, Huskies positive exposure
Mary Grace Kelly
Turning Back Time keeps cruising Sycamore’s car show a long-running jaunt into car culture for Ehrler, a local mechanic who grew up in Sycamore. Rose Treml, Sycamore Chamber of Commerce executive director, said about half of the people who come out for the show are locals, while the other half travel far and wide to see the show or be a part of it. There were at least 800 cars in Sunday’s show. “I love a car show,” Criswell said. “It’s something that, over time, would evolve into a miniature Pumpkin Fest for Sycamore. I was coming back from a car show one day and listening to oldies on the radio
By JESSI HAISH jhaish@shawmedia.com SYCAMORE – Chuck Criswell thinks Glenn “Fizz” Ehrler would be on cloud nine if he could see what the Turning Back Time weekend car show is today. The 2014 Fizz Ehrler Memorial Turning Back Time Car Show, presented by Hagerty Classic Car Insurance, was Sunday in downtown Sycamore. Criswell, owner of Chuck’s Auto Center in Sycamore, created the car show 15 years ago, and it was named
in the car, and that’s how I got the idea.” Ehrler was present for the first show 15 years ago, but he had cancer and knew his time was limited. Criswell and others named the event for Ehrler that year, and Ehrler died in 2001. Treml said today, the Turning Back Time weekend, which features classic cars and live oldies music every year, is on par with Pumpkin Fest in terms of bringing people to Sycamore, filling hotels and promoting local businesses. “I remember that first
year,” Criswell said. “We had rain all day but we still had 375 cars in town. It was a lot for the first car show and a great thing for Sycamore.” Criswell said car shows are great for people of all ages, because older people can remember the cars, while younger people are just fascinated by them. “We never get to see these kinds of cars,” said Adam Hall, of Sycamore, who attended the car show Sunday with his family. “We come every year, and
See CAR SHOW, page A10
Jessi Haish – jhaish@shawmedia.com
Attendees of the Fizz Ehrler Memorial Turning Back Time Car Show check out a variety of cars Sunday afternoon in downtown Sycamore.
‘It’s really happening’
Simplifying health plan renewals may backfire By RICARDO ALONSO ZALDIVAR The Associated Press
Photos by Monica Maschak – mmaschak@shawmedia.com
Library members and supporters from the city dig into the dirt Saturday during the DeKalb Public Library groundbreaking ceremony.
Groundbreaking kicks off DeKalb Public Library’s expansion What to expect
By KATIE DAHLSTROM kdahlstrom@shawmedia.com DeKALB – DeKalb Public Library Director Dee Coover saw Saturday’s groundbreaking for the $24 million library expansion as a remarkable moment in DeKalb history. “We haven’t had a day like this for 80 years,” Coover said. The 19,000-square-foot library has served the community since it was built in 1930 with $150,000 from Jacob Haish. Through a combination of library and city funding and public support, the library will more than triple in size to 66,000 square feet by 2016. Coover spoke to a crowd of about 300 people that gathered Saturday at the parking lot across the street from the DeKalb Public Library for a ceremonial groundbreaking. During the next two years, crews will construct a 46,000-square-foot, two-story addition and complete $4 million in renovations to the existing building.
Through the fall, crews will demolish the library’s former parking lot and sidewalk, moving utilities and laying the foundation. Structural steel will be erected in December. The new building will be complete within the next 18 months. After that, crews will renovate the existing building, with the project slated to be complete in 2016.
leaders started talking about expansion in 2007. In turn, they adopted a resolution promising to expand. Although the Haish MemoLibrary Director Dee Coover addresses the crowd Saturday during the rial Library served as the backceremony. drop for Saturday’s speakers, the As library and city leaders, and it’s been wonderful, but today building was not always part of staff, library patrons and author- it’s really wonderful and today it’s the expansion talks. The library board in 2010 votities on the library expansion really happening,” Library Board took turns posing for pictures, President Clark Neher said. ed to purchase the former DeKalb Clinic buildings at 217 Franklin they marked not only a piece of Street and 302 Grove Street for city history, but a milestone in a FINDING A PLACE TO GROW seven-year saga filled with twists Seeing the need to improve the $1.8 million but terminated the and turns. aging building and provide more “The process has been arduous space for library patrons, library See LIBRARY, page A10
WASHINGTON – If you have health insurance on your job, you probably don’t give much thought to each year’s renewal. But make the same assumption in one of the new health law plans, and it could lead to costly surprises. Insurance exchange customers who opt for convenience by automatically renewing their coverage for 2015 are likely to receive dated and inaccurate financial aid amounts from the government, said industry officials, advocates and other experts. If those amounts are too low, consumers could get sticker shock over their new premiums. Too high, and they’ll owe the tax man later. Automatic renewal was supposed to make the next open-enrollment under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul smooth for consumers. But unless the administration changes its 2015 approach, “they’re setting people up for large and avoidable premium increases,” said researcher Caroline Pearson, who follows the health law for the market Caroline analysis firm Avalere Pearson Health. It could be a new twist on an old public relations headache for the White House: You keep the health plan you like but get billed way more. “It was our preference for [the administration] to have the capacity to update people’s subsidy information, but they haven’t been able to get that built,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the industry trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans. Here’s the issue, in a nutshell: To streamline next year’s open enrollment season, the Health and Human Services Department recently proposed offering automatic renewal to 8 million consumers who are already signed up. But the fine print of the HHS announcement said consumers who auto enroll will get “the exact dollar amount” of financial aid they are receiving this year. That’s likely to be a problem for a couple of reasons, not to mention inflation. First, financial aid is partly based on premiums for a current benchmark plan in the community where the
See HEALTH CARE, page A10
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