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POLO Season Preview
Tri-County Press August 25, 2016 Volume 158, Number 49 - $1.00
Teeter Totter
NUIC football teams Polo and Forreston are both ready to kick off the season. B1
Recycling Event
A man hopes to enter the record books with his teeter totter. A9
A free electronics recycling event will be held in Oregon on Friday, Aug. 26. B4
Mt. Morris will work together with the county By Vinde Wells vwells@oglecounty news.com
Dinner is Served Renee Gray, left, and Ericka Cox serve up dinner Aug. 19 during the Polo Booster dinner. Photo by Chris Johnson
County prosecutors may soon be helping a local municipality with enforcing its ordinances. The county board approved an intergovernmental agency agreement Aug. 16 with the Village of Mt. Morris that authorizes the Ogle County State’s Attorney’s office to prosecute persons who violate village ordinances. Currently, as in most municipalities, the village attorney prosecutes anyone
cited under the village code. However, Mt. Morris Village Attorney Robert LeSage, of the law firm of Ward, Murray, Pace & Johnson in Dixon, recently suggested that village officials pursue an agreement with the state’s attorney as a cost saving measure. LeSage said that while his law firm would be willing to prosecute village cases, because of the distance from the Ogle County court, the attorneys’ fees would be high. In similar situations, he Turn to A3
Small homes are more sustainable over the long term By Chris Johnson cxjohnson@oglecounty news.com Living in a tiny home is not a new idea, however it is the direction some people think needs to be reintroduced to homebuyers. “Since the 1950s the average house size in the United States has increased steadily,” said Doug McWain, Dayton, Ohio. “The average floor space is increasing, however the family size is lower.” McWain was one of the presenters during the annual Illinois Renewable Energy and Sustainable Lifestyle Fair Saturday morning at the Ogle County Fairgrounds. He said homes in the 1950s averaged 1,000 square feet and today homes are more than double that. “We need to have sustainability and we need to reduce what we are using,” McWain said. “Do you need a McMansion or can you live in a small home?” Some television shows are showcasing the micro
homes that are under 500 square feet, but McWain said an energy efficient small or tiny house is anything under 1,000 square feet. “You learn how to organize and be creative with smaller homes,” he said. “Do you really need all that space?” Having a smaller house built on a foundation will cost the homeowner less initially than a larger home, and will also cost less over the life of the home than a larger home. “Tiny houses do take less to build and less energy to live in,” he said. The idea of living with what is needed was documented by author Henry David Thoreau, McWain said. Thoreau wrote “On Walden Pond,” a poem that looks at simple living and the reasons Thoreau decided to try simple living. McWain has been interested in sustainable energy efficient homes since the oil crisis in the 1970s. He built his first home, an earth sheltered home in
1983. “That home has 800 feet of living space and was built with 85 percent recycled materials,” he said. Using recycled materials from offices that are remodeling, homes that are being torn down, and ding and dent materials can save costs for homeowners. It also has an added benefit of keeping the materials out of a landfill, McWain said. “I look for places that are being demolished and ask permission to reclaim the materials,” he said. “You can find good prices on construction materials on online auction sites and Craigslist.” McWain showed a variety of examples of how people repurposed existing structures as homes. They included busses, vans and box trucks, train cabooses and Pullman cars, homes built using pallets and recycled windows. “I love this kind of stuff,” McWain said. “Look around and you can find materials for a home. The sky is the
Doug McWain, Dayton, Ohio, talks about this home with a front wall made from reclaimed windows during his presentation during the Illinois Renewable Energy and Sustainable Lifestyle Fair Saturday morning. Photo by Chris Johnson
limit, use your creativity.” In addition to building a home on a foundation, there has been a trend in building a small home on a trailer frame. This makes the home
portable and allows for more creativity than existing RV trailers on the market. “Trailers are not designed for year-round living,” said McWain. “If you build your own you can have an
attractive home with yearround living comfort.” With any building project, check local ordinances to make sure the structure meets all building code requirements.
Employment for developmentally disabled at new bakery By Vinde Wells vwells@oglecounty news.com For anyone with a sweet tooth, Oregon’s new bakery will soon be the place to go. Village of Progress (VOP) officials sealed the deal on a downtown building Monday and hope to open a bakery, complete with a drive-through window, by Thanksgiving. VOP Executive Director Brion Brooks said the Village Bakery at 101 N. Third St., the northeast corner of Third and Washington Streets, will sell cakes, pies, doughnuts and other sweet treats, a full line of coffees, and customordered ice cream. The best part is that the new business will provide employment opportunities for developmentally disabled
youth and adults in the community. The idea for the bakery developed from a conversation Brooks had a year ago with a job coach from the Ogle County Educational Cooperative (OCEC), which provides Special Education services for many area schools. She voiced her frustration, he said, at the difficulty at finding jobs in a rural community for older Special Education students. “Few large corporate employers, a below-average income, and no convenient public transportation are big hurdles for job seekers with developmental disabilities,” Brooks said. “I thought it would be great if we could find employment opportunities in the community.”
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The plan grew from there. “The idea behind the bakery is to employ developmentally disabled people from the community, not just from VOP or OCEC,” Brooks said. “It gives them experience, a resume, and references. It gives them a track record.” Some will be permanent part-time employees, while for others it will serve as a “job incubator,” he said. The bakery also will employ a full-time baker and bakery manager. “If there’s someone out there who has skills baking or managing a restaurant we would happy to hear from them,” Brooks said. “Baking a Difference” is the theme of the project. Brion Brooks, executive director of the Village of Progress, stands in front of the “We’re trying to make a building where the agency will have a new bakery. The building, located on the corner
Church News, A5 Classifieds, B6-B10 College News, A7 Entertainment, A6 Fines, B5
Turn to A3 of Third Street and Ill. 64, used to house Basler’s Ace Hardware and more recently Max Media. Work on remodeling the building will start this week. Photo by Earleen Hinton
Marriage Licenses, A7 Public Voice, A7 Property Transfers, B5 Sheriff’s Arrests, B3
Social News, A4 Sports, B1, B2 State’s Attorney, B3 Weather, A2
Deaths, B4 Mildred Brown, Irma Ossmann
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