WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 2016
Serving Polk County’s St. Croix Valley since 1897
VOL. 118 NO. 34 www.osceolasun.com $1.00
ELECTION: County board, Village of Osceola, St. Croix Falls candidates in spotlight. PAGE 21
Senator welcomes Evan Wright to State Capitol OHS student attends 2016 Senate Scholar Program Senator Sheila Harsdorf welcomed Evan Wright of Osceola High School to the State Senate last week. Wright was chosen to participate in the 2016 Senate Scholar Program and spent the week of March 13 observing and helping the senator. “I am pleased to have Evan join other high school juniors and seniors from around the state to learn more about our state government,” Harsdorf said. “The Senate Scholar Program offers high school students an opportunity to experience firsthand the legislative process.” The Senate Scholar Program curriculum includes a full schedule of activities. Students are introduced to many facets of the legislative process, meeting with legislative support agencies, staff to legislators and the governor, Supreme Court justices, media, lobbyists, and UW-Madison faculty. Senate Scholars will put their knowledge into action to draft their own legislation, as well as staff the Senate during floor session. The week’s events culmi-
ATVs, Model Ts back in Gandy plan BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@OSCEOLASUN.COM
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Sen. Harsdorf with Evan Wright on the State Senate floor.
nate in a Senate Scholar committee holding a public hearing on a bill they have drafted. “It is a very full week of activi-
ty for the Senate Scholars, and I am pleased that Evan has taken the opportunity to participate,” Harsdorf said.
The annual veterans ATV ride and Ford Model T tour are back in the running for a day on the Gandy Dancer Trail each summer. Tues., March 15, the Polk County Board re-added and approved amendments allowing motorized vehicles on the trail by special permit twice each summer and, for the sake of balance, also permitting two special events for non-motorized vehicles each winter (when the trail is open to snowmobiles). Both amendments had been struck two weeks before by the committee in charge of changing the master plan, the Conservation, Development, Recreation and Educa-
SSUZANNE LINDGREN | THE SUN
“It all comes back to the veterans who fought so we could have the right to have this debate,” said Adam Jarchow, Assembly Representative for District 28, at the March 15 Polk County Board meeting.
tion (CDRE) Committee. The re-addition was possibly a result of 15 residents, including local Assembly RepresentaSEE GANDY, PAGE 14
Funds still needed for feed-the-hungry effort BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@OSCEOLASUN.COM
Music blasts in an expansive room, and volunteers take up their stations: unfolding large cardboard boxes, filling bags with fortified rice and soy-based meals, packing the meals into boxes and hauling the boxes away. Some work cautiously at first, then gain confidence, weighing, pouring or transporting with speed and certainty. They don’t know yet where the meals they’re packing will end up, but they’re confident their efforts will change the fate of at least a handful of the 6,200 children who die worldwide each day from hunger or a related disease. It’s a familiar scene for Feed My Starving Children volunteers, many of whom return year after year to help with the local pack. The nonprofit Christian organization is coming to Osceola with its “MobilePack” April 1 and 2. This year, the event is sponsored by six local churches, which are currently rounding up the money needed to fund the event. They’ve committed to packing 125,000 meals, which means raising $27,500. “We have to buy everything for the pack,” said Deb Hill, the office manager at Bethesda Lutheran Church. “The rice and other supplies. The meals cost about 22 cents each to pack. Financially it’s very efficient. It’s a well-run charity and they use their money SEE FUNDS, PAGE 15
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Volunteers pack dry meals of rice, soy, and a fortified seasoning mix at last year’s Feed My Starving Children MobilePack event in Osceola.
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