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Monday, July 7, 2014
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DeKalb to focus on development To address matter, city will hire full-time staff member by October By KATIE DAHLSTROM kdahlstrom@shawmedia.com DeKALB – Roger Hopkins plans to have plenty of information waiting for DeKalb’s new community development director in October. DeKalb City Council members recently decided to follow City Manager Anne Marie Gaura’s suggestion to replace Hopkins, the city’s economic development consultant, with a full-time city staff member. The idea was based on an update done in the past two years to a 2009 report by Executive Partners Inc., which suggested the city be more aggressive
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with economic development by adding a community development director to lead a new community development department. In turn, the city will end its contract with Hopkins’ company, Hopkins Solutions LLC. Hopkins has been the city’s economic development consultant since July 2010. He
was hired after the city decided not to fill its community development director position and dismantled the community development department in 2009. “I think we’re leaving the city with a lot of opportunities,” Hopkins said. The city plans to hire a community development director by Oct. 1. Until then, Hopkins will continue on as the city’s economic development consultant. The city will pay him $19,278 – $6.426 a month – through October. Moving the economic development efforts internally makes sense under the cur-
rent city structure, Mayor John Rey said. “I think it gives the city manager and her staff more involvement in that function,” Rey said. “I think it allows for closer collaboration.” Rey said he would also like to see more focus on areas such as South Fourth Street and West Lincoln Highway. When he leaves, Hopkins will turn over information on 140 business prospects, as well as information on several Danielle Guerra – dguerra@shawmedia.com areas where he hopes to see Roger Hopkins, DeKalb’s economic development consultant, points to more growth in the city, such as the area in the 2200 block a map of businesses in the city of DeKalb in his office on Thursday,
See DEVELOPMENT, page A8
July 3. Hopkins’ contract will expire in October and says the biggest business success while in DeKalb has been the opening of Faranda’s.
Fourth of July success
Nonprofits’ contraceptive cases next for justices MARK SHERMAN and RACHEL ZOLL The Associated Press
Fourth of July celebration since its beginning in the late 1940s and never stopped. Every year at six in the morning, Walter would be stirring pancake batter – even last year at 95 years old. “The guy who is cooking hamburgers, his grandson came down this year and started the batter. He’s 15. I told him, ‘You’ve only got 80 more years of stirring that batter,’ ” Lion’s Club member Jeff Anderberg said. To remember Walter Wittwer, the Lions Club members hung his
WASHINGTON – How much distance from an immoral act is enough? That’s the difficult question behind the next legal dispute over religion, birth control and the health law that is likely to be resolved by the Supreme Court. The issue in more than four dozen lawsuits from faith-affiliated charities, colleges and hospitals that oppose some or all contraception as immoral is how far the Obama administration must go to accommodate them. The justices on June 30 relieved businesses with religious objections of their obligation to pay for women’s contraceptives among a range of preventive services the new law calls for in their health plans. Religious-oriented nonprofit groups already could opt out of covering the contraceptives. But the organizations say the accommodation provided by the administration does not go far enough because, though they are not on the hook financially, they remain complicit in the provision of government-approved contraceptives to women covered by their plans. “Anything that forces unwilling religious believers to be part of the system is not going to pass the test,” said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents many of the faith-affiliated nonprofits. Hobby Lobby Inc., winner of its Supreme Court case last month, also is a Becket Fund client. The high court will be asked to take on the issue in its term that begins in October. A challenge from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, probably will be the first case to reach the court. The Obama administration argues that the accommodation creates a generous moral and financial buffer between religious objectors and funding birth control. The nonprofit groups just have to raise their hands and say that paying for any or all of the 20 devices and methods approved
See KIRKLAND, page A8
See JUSTICES, page A8
Photos by Mary Beth Nolan for Shaw Media
Amanda Wrobel of Belvidere plays with her 11-month-old son Leif while visiting the carnival at the Kirkland Fourth of July celebration. She grew up in the town.
Kirkland wows attendees with food, music By STEPHEN HABERKORN news@daily-chronicle.com For the first time in 36 years, Mark Wittwer was cooking pork chops at the Kirkland Fourth of July celebration without his father around. “It’s different. But, you know, when somebody’s been around for 95 years, it’s acceptable. It’s a big loss, but it’s all right. He’s missed; he was always doing something,” said Wittwer, who lives on a farm near Kirkland. Wittwer’s father, Walter, Cassie Wickham of Stillman Valley descends the Super Slide Saturday with her children Presley, 2, and Brady, 4, Saturday at the passed away in November. He had volunteered at the Kirkland Kirkland 4th of July celebration.
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