WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2015
Serving Polk County’s St. t Croix C i Valley V ll since i 1897
VOL. 118 NO. 01 www.osceolasun.com $1.00
SPORTS: Braves head to playoffs. PAGE 11
Local business loan fund catches a break
When surviving cancer is like running a marathon BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@OSECOLASUN.COM
BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@OSCEOLASUN.COM
A tender bump below the armpit was Becky Anderson’s first sign of breast cancer. Curious and somewhat alarmed, the St. Croix Falls native did a self-examination and found a mass of tissue beneath her skin. Then she paid a visit to the doctor. When the results of the first ultrasound and mammogram came back negative, she wasn’t relieved. Instead of celebrating, she went with her gut and got a second opinion. As she, her husband and their two children were packing up for a summer trip to Wisconsin Dells, she got the diagnosis: stage II breast cancer. “I was diagnosed almost exactly a year ago,” she says now. “There’s nothing in my family history, so it was kind of a surprise.” Although the cancer had spread to a lymph node, causing the swelling and pain that alerted Anderson to the problem, it had not metastasized. According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, stage II breast cancer generally responds well to treatment. Knowing that — and trying to maintain a sense of normalcy — Anderson and her husband decided to continue on their vacation in spite of the news. “We weren’t going to tell the kids until we got back,” she says,
After months of digging to find out why money in revolving loan funds for local businesses had been in effect frozen at the federal level, staff at the Regional Business Fund got to the bottom of the issue in a July 31 conference call with Wisconsin’s Department of Administration. According to Beth Waldhart, a fund manager at the Regional Business Fund [RBF], the problem was RBF’s ties to state agencies, with which it worked to defederalize and oversee use of the once-federal funds. “It’s part of the statute from HUD [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] that if the state is going to use this program and consider the funds defederalized, once that occurs there can be no relationship between the state and the 105(a)(15) fund.” That partnership can be dissolved by nixing a memorandum of understanding from 2007 and creating a new agreement between RBF and the counties, said Waldhart.
SUBMITTED
Becky Anderson (right) will be the honorary cancer survivor at this year’s Polk-Burnett Relay for Life. She is pictured with her husband, Todd, and children Hope and Trey.
“but … we had to tell them.” After they returned, Anderson began the treatment process with surgery, followed by chemotherapy and radiation. Throughout the process, she stayed active and open to questions. “I talked to my son’s third grade class,” she says. “I was very open about it. After I went bald, I walked around bald. I welcomed questions and it was interesting, with both my son and daughter, how they and their friends learned through the pro-
cess too. Cancer is scary but it’s ok. Treatment is ok. You’re sick but you’re still ok.” Anderson finished treatment at the end of May and is cancer free. Now in the beginning stages of recovery, she will tell her story at this year’s Polk-Burnett Relay for Life, an event that raises more than $20,000 a year for the American Cancer Society. Her designation as the relay’s honorary cancer survivor is fitSEE ANDERSON, PAGE 13
After that, most of the money from the original Community Development Block Grants will be defederalized once more, freeing them up to be lent according to the less stringent standards RBF and other regional funds are known for. There are three such funds in the state of Wisconsin. If the new agreement process works, $5.2 million in defederalized funds will be available again — the same amount of money RBF was lending prior to April 1. “We have about $300,000 that still carried the federal requirement prior [to refederalization] and that will be moving forward as is,” said Waldhart. “The rest will be defederalized.” Waldhart expects the process to take one to two months. Background Reserves at the Regional Business Fund have been frozen since April 1, when HUD notified RBF staff that the money was to be lent according to federal Community Development Block Grant SEE LOAN, PAGE 12
Americana at the Polk County Fair BY SAMANTHA FOUNTAIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The gates to the Polk County Fair were open July 30 to August 2. The parking lots filled quickly and the fairgrounds were once again alive. This time of year seems to sneak up on us. Summer seems a distant horizon during the long Midwest winters and we welcome June through August with open arms. The Polk County Fair is the cherry atop the sundae known as summer. This Americana experience has been a summer staple in Polk County for the last 153 years, as the fair board had pointed out. The fair originated in
Osceola, but made its way to the grounds in Saint Croix Falls in the 1890s. The Polk County Fair has always been an agriculture-based event. In days of old, entering your family’s “secret recipe” sweet pickle or bringing the farms largest, fattest hog was a way of advertising a family’s business. A blue ribbon spoke volumes and helped promote a farm. What used to be known as the Calf Club has given way to what we now know as 4-H. These days families showing animals camp out at the fairgrounds, but 100 years ago there was a dormitory for the children to stay SAMANTHA FOUNTAIN | THE SUN
SEE AMERICANA, PAGE 19
Jackson Rude visits with a goat at the 2015 Polk County Fair.
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