By ANNA AUSTIN
At Central Valley’s football field Friday, the smell of hot chocolate and hotdogs will drift through the crisp fall air as usual.
Loyal and new fans alike will pack themselves along the sidelines and bleachers, like always.
The cheerleaders will provide the crowd and players with encouragement and motivation, as they have every year.
The rambunctious younger kids will play their own football game off in the distance, too.
And Coach Randy Vigen will proudly stand next to his blue and gold-clad players like he has done every fall for the past 32 years. (more…)
Categories: School News
Senator Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) will hold a Farm Bill meeting in Hillsboro Tuesday afternoon to gather input from the agriculture community on the next Farm Bill.
The public is invited to the 2 p.m. meeting at Lynn Kritzberger’s farm one mile west of Hillsboro on CR 11.
“Agriculture is the largest sector of our state’s economy, and I am going to do everything I can to make sure North Dakota’s voice is heard before Congress begins debate on this extremely important bill,” Senator Conrad said. (more…)
Categories: Agricultural News · Area News
By NEIL O. NELSON
There are at least 750 veterans living in Traill County.
Les Ashe, Traill County Veterans Service officer, is reasonably sure there are more than 1,000 residing in the county.
In presenting his 2008 budget to the Traill County commission this week, Ashe made his case for a full-time Veterans Service Officer. Ashe currently works three days a week in the county from offices in Hillsboro, Mayville and Hatton.
Veterans are questioning the accessibility of the county’s VSO, Ashe told the commissioners Tuesday morning. (more…)
Categories: County Commission Meetings
By MICHELLE MCLEAN
At their regular meeting Monday, Hillsboro city commissioners addressed concerns about the lack of traffic control and the abundance of construction activity on local streets.
The city-wide pavement improvement project is at the height of activity, reported Roger Grimsley, a representative with Advanced Engineering, which is overseeing the work by general contractor Central Specialties.
Grimsley said milling was to be completed Monday with paving set to begin Tuesday. Concrete work should be done by the final week of August, he added. (more…)
Categories: City Council
By MICHELLE MCLEAN
Facing new special assessments on an annual basis, Hillsboro residents should be given the chance to budget for the inevitable tax bill, suggests city commissioner Jeff Nelson at the commission’s meeting Monday.
Residents received a letter earlier this month listing the special assessment for last summer’s water distribution improvement project.
The special assessment committee will hear public comment on their work at a hearing Wednesday, September 5 at 7 p.m. in City Hall.
The special assessment committee set the special assessment for the water project at $1,678.83 per “user unit.” (more…)
Categories: City Council
By MICHELLE MCLEAN
Electric rates in Hillsboro must increase to keep pace with rising wholesale power costs, city commissioners learned Monday.
Missouri River Energy Services, the city’s supplemental power supplier, recommended a 20-percent increase spread over two years for both residential and commercial customers to keep the electric department from slipping deeper into the red.
Rates will likely go up January 1, 2008 — or it could be sooner.
“We’re deficit spending right now,” noted commission president Kevin Burg.
Through 2011, MRES calculated the city’s cost to buy and deliver power will rise from 2.7 cents per kilowatt hour to 4.21 cents per kwh. (more…)
Categories: Uncategorized
Just when we’re ready to bury them, send the whole bunch of ‘em packing — the manager, GM and the players — the Minnesota Twins pick up a win and are back in the hunt.
Unfortunately, not unexpectedly, the wins are few and far between.
Hardly professing to be prognosticators, far be it for us to predict the future, whilst our tendency is to twist history to our liking, but we did see this day coming: the Minnesota Twins were not going to be a factor in this year’s American League Central Division Race. (more…)
Categories: Banner Editorial
Sympathetic to the task at hand, we poked fun last week, with tongue in cheek, at the street project currently underway in our town.
We told of the project’s many twists and turns, and how the Hillsboro populace was handling the inconvenience of taking different routes to reach Point B from Point A.
We feared for small cars, kids and pets, expecting they might be lost in the deeper holes in the middle of our streets.
We attempted to put a kind face on the Hillsboro drivers. (more…)
Categories: Banner Editorial
We have parts of the country going under water while other sections of the U.S. are burning up, literally.
There’s a forest fire every week in Idaho, right?
Meanwhile, towns in Minnesota, Ohio and Oklahoma are being flooded by normally quiet streams and rivers.
Hurricanes are battering coastlines in Mexico and beyond.
The hurricane that threatened Hawaii was named Flossie, one of the nicknames given my mother, Floris, by dad’s side of the family. (more…)
Categories: Column - Neil · Editorial
