Archive - Feb 2012 - News Article
February 10th
By CARLA MEYER
Staff Writer
Unzipping his baseball equipment bag in the Wapakoneta City Council chambers, a local teen pulls out a handgun and an assault rifle.
Councilors did not panic. The youth then explained a new hobby centered on airsoft guns. The replica guns have the weight, look and feel of an actual weapon.
The Wapakoneta High School eighth-grader stressed to councilors the need to develop a policy to ensure the welfare of the youngsters possessing these guns and the well-being of the city’s police officers.
By CARLA MEYER
Staff Writer
Four local families from Wapakoneta are ecstatic regarding a recent proclamation signed this week by Gov. John Kasich.
The week of Feb. 7-14 is to be designated as Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week in Ohio — as Kasich signed the document this month.
Kasich noted thousands of children are born with birth defects every year, including approximately 40,000 children in the U.S. who begin life with one or more than 35 identified forms of congenital heart defects.
With Wapakoneta facing costly sewer upgrades, the Clean Water Affordability Act introduced Thursday by a U.S. legislator could provide some relief for the city and the city’s utility consumers.
A Wapakoneta administrator would support the measure if it provided such relief to the city which acted proactively and whose residents keep the city solvent.
A recent tragic accident claimed the life of a Mercer County teen while she was driving in Putnam County. She accidently drove her car off the roadway and entered a nearby pond.
Seventeen-year-old Brianna Coon, of Rockford, called 911 for help, but the sinking vehicle soon trapped the youth and took her life.
Chiefs of two Wapakoneta departments say developing a plan and rehearsing a possible emergency exit — even in a person’s mind — can help a person stay calm and contribute to saving a motorist’s life.
Hoping to save teens and their parents some money and find them beautiful dresses to wear to prom, one local Relay for Life team is again planning a Prom Dress Exchange.
“I think the last few years have been financially difficult on people either directly or indirectly, and they want to save and make money,” said the event organizer Tiffany Fullenkamp. “This also gives them the opportunity to support a well known organization (the American Cancer Society) on a local level.
February 9th
Two residents of Auglaize Acres — who have a passion for baking — were recently reunited after many years.
Two former school cooks, 103-year-old Myrtle Delong and 93-year-old Leola “Dolly” Meyers, worked together as cooks at Northridge Elementary School in the 1960s and 1970s and were recently reunited when Delong became a resident of the short-term stay unit at Auglaize Acres.
UNIOPOLIS — Uniopolis Village Council members plan to discuss financial concerns of the village next week which could result in placing a levy on the ballot or even dissolving the village at the crossroads of Ohio 65 and Ohio 67.
Councilors called a special meeting for 6 p.m. Monday to discuss solutions for their financial problems. They plan to discuss the possibility of putting a police levy on the ballot to help a budget that councilors feel the village cannot balance in light of state cuts to municipalities.
BOTKINS — Botkins Board of Education members voted to approve the final plan for a project agreement with the Ohio Schools Facilities Commission to build a new school. The board made the move at its regularly scheduled board meeting Wednesday.
“The project is still in the design phase and this doesn’t really change that,” Superintendent Connie Schneider said. “This just formalizes the agreement for both the school board and the OSFC. It allows funding to start flowing in for the project.”
February 8th
A mild winter has left the Auglaize County engineer in a unique predicament of what to do with extra salt.
To date this winter, the county has dispatched snowplow trucks 12 times and spread 923 tons of a stone and salt mixture. At this same time last season, county trucks had been sent out 41 different times and applied 4,132 tons of grit mix.
“We were in the middle of an icing event at this time last year where we experienced heavily packed snow and ice compounded with lower than average temperatures,” Auglaize County Engineer Doug Reinhart said.
If an international corporation builds the wind farm north of Wapa-koneta, the towers and blades will stretch more than 40 stories into the sky — visible to people as far away as three miles, members of a new local group say — and they believe local people should have input regarding if the project should proceed or stop.
The group — Auglaize Neighbors United — recently formed to disseminate information to the public about the advantages and disadvantages of wind farms in the area, especially those planned north of Wapakoneta.
