Boone County Farm Stoll returns October 6

 It’s free and sounds very educational.  Click on the following for the details: 

Boone County Farm Stoll returns October

The participating farms and their addresses are listed below:

Alpaca Pines Farm and Fiber Mill

21756 Beaverton Road, Poplar Grove, IL 61065

Illinois Wool and Fiber Mill

10828 Caledonia Road, Belvidere, IL 61008

Claretta Farm

10636 Orth Road, Garden Prairie, IL 61038

Nature’s Best Christmas Trees and Honey

13001 Illinois Route 76, Poplar Grove, IL 61065

DieHard Dairy

4915 Genoa Road, Belvidere, IL 61008

S & J Farm Kirkland LLC

1745 Cherry Valley Road, Kirkland, IL 60146

Freedom Farms

34314 Wheeler Road, Kirkland, IL 60146

Susie’s Garden Patch

10258 US Highway 20, Garden Prairie, IL 61038

Homestead Farm

9222 Huber Road, Belvidere, IL 61008

Trogg’s Hollow CSA and Market Farm

11577 Poplar Grove Road, Poplar Grove, IL 61065

Teenage girl missing, Boone County sheriffs ask for public’s help

BOONE COUNTY, Ill. (WIFR) - The Boone County Sheriff’s Office asks for the public’s help to find a missing 17-year-old girl.

Eleanor Brown was last seen at 9 p.m. Sept. 17.

She is 5 feet 1 inch tall and weighs 100 lbs. She has blonde hair and blue eyes and has both ears and nostrils pierced. She wears glasses with clear frames.

If you have any information, contact the Boone County Sheriff’s Office at 815-544-2144.

UPDATE: As of Sunday evening, the Boone County Sheriff's Office said the teen has been found and returned home.

Letter to Editor of Boone County Journal

September 12, 2024

Referendum

Will taxes decrease when Belvidere North High School bonds are paid off?

Belvidere School Board #100 is debating that issue right now.

If you recall North was built during the housing boom to provide adequate classrooms for ten years. The boom busted and our school district with 9000 plus students now has approximately 7500 with projections of little growth in school age population for years.

North was built with capital appreciation bonds which had large increased payments as the projected new homes came on the tax rolls. That never happen but the taxpayers did have an “out”. In 2012 voters approved a 1% sales tax referendum which paid the increased bond payments and kept the tax rate stable.

In 2028 the Belvidere North bonds will be paid off. But District 100 has plans to borrow more for a list of projects even before that date. The most disturbing thing is that they may do so without the approval of a public referendum and do so this year.

In 2008 district petitioners convinced the Board of Education to stop such an attempted “back door referendum”. As prescribed by law, thousands of voter signatures on a prescribed petition form were needed to force a referendum on that bond request. If the board attempts the same now, will enough petition signers come forth in the limited time allowed by law and stop the tax extension?

The district has a number of other sources for building projects. There is a year’s worth of excess funds in non-capital funds. Most school districts have only 90 to 120 days in excess funds. With school board approval some of these funds could be used for building projects. When the Belvidere North Bonds are retired the school sales taxes (currently $800,000 per year) would be available. Impact fees from the city and county are also possible. The City of Belvidere just delivered a $520,000 check for the last three years of impact fees. Nonetheless the board is still considering various backdoor referenda.

Should taxpayers be alarmed? On September 5 the board had a two-hour meeting regarding funding options for large capital projects (available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKTbeigSVG0). On September 16 the actual projects and timing will be discussed at Central Office, 1201 5^th Ave, Belvidere, 6:00 –7:30PM. Please spread the word and talk to your school board members. Express your opinion. Soon the board may make its decisions and your opinion will have no weight.

I am not opposed to any specific project but the people’s voice through a referendum is the proper means to continue the Belvidere North tax rate.

Bill Pysson

YAHOO: WHERE HARRIS AND TRUMP DIFFER ON THE BIG ECONOMIC ISSUES

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WHERE HARRIS AND TRUMP DIFFER ON THE BIG ECONOMIC ISSUES

Harris:  Supports the Biden plan to allow all tax cuts to expire except for households earning less than $400,000

THE 2017 TAX CUTS FOR INDIVIDUALS, WHICH EXPIRE AT THE END OF 2025

Trump:  Extend or make permanent all the 2017 tax cuts

Harris:  Raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%

CORPORATE
TAXES

Trump:  Lower the corporate tax rate from 21% to as low as 15%

Harris:  Eliminate federal income tax on tips; impose new tax on wealth above $100 million

OTHER
TAXES

Trump:  Eliminate federal income tax on tips and on Social Security income

Harris: Continue to restrict high-technology exports to China and sustain 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles

TRADE

Trump:  Impose a 10% to 20% tariff on most imports and a 60% tariff on imports from China

Harris:  A new $6,000 tax credit for families with newborns; expand the child tax credit by up to $3,600 per child

CHILD
CARE

Trump:  May propose an expansion of the child tax credit

Harris:  Support all green-energy measures Biden has enacted; possibly ease targets for electric vehicle adoption and green electricity production

GREEN
ENERGY

Trump:  Kill or reduce electric-vehicle subsidies Biden signed into law in 2022. Produce more fossil fuels

Harris:  Extend or make permanent temporary subsidies for higher-income Americans to buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act; forgive some medical debt

HEALTHCARE

Trump:  Repeal Affordable Care Act or reduce subsidies

Harris:  Continue executive action to limit asylum claims at the border, pass immigration reform legislation

IMMIGRATION

Trump:  Build a border wall and return to the strict anti-immigrant policies of the first Trump term; deport millions of undocumented migrants

Harris:  Enact a $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers; establish incentives and reforms to help build 3 million additional homes

HOUSING

Trump:  Pressure the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low, ease regulations, open federal land to development

Harris:  Defend a 2022 law requiring Medicare to negotiate the prices of certain drugs with manufacturers

DRUG
PRICES

Trump:  Unclear, but possibly soften Medicare price negotiations with manufacturers

Harris:  Continue military aid to Ukraine

RUSSIA'S WAR
IN UKRAINE

Trump:  Seek a settlement with Russia and end or restrict US military aid to Ukraine

Harris:  Raise from $7.25 per hour to as high as $15

FEDERAL
MINIMUM WAGE

Trump:  No change

Harris:  Continue Biden's efforts to forgive student debt

STUDENT
DEBT

Trump:  No forgiveness

Harris:  $2 trillion increase

10-YEAR EFFECT ON THE NATIONAL DEBT*

Trump:  $4.1 trillion increase

*NATIONAL DEBT ESTIMATES ARE FROM THE PENN WHARTON BUDGET MODEL AND ASSUME EACH CANDIDATE'S PLANS ARE ENACTED IN FULL.

Above is from:  https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-kamala-harriss-approach-to-capital-gains-is-generating-so-much-controversy-112935244.html

Walz has some Chinese expertises

The Republican attack on Tim Walz over Tiananmen Square is almost unbelievable

Opinion by Zeeshan Aleem

• 20h • 4 min read

Topics mentioned in this article

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Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc.; Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s meteoric rise and his aptitude for putting down Republicans is driving the GOP crazy and has it scrambling desperately to find comebacks. By far the funniest attempt to take down Walz has come from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.

In an interview this week with Fox Business, Johnson warned that Walz is a “radical leftist” and made the case by pointing out what he called Walz’s “strange” relationship with China. “He got married on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square. He’s gone to China. He’s taught in China. He’s got deep connections to China,” Johnson said in the interview.

I had to listen to the interview twice to make sure I wasn’t mishearing it, because I couldn’t believe Johnson had pointed to Walz’s remembrance of the Tiananmen Square massacre as evidence that he could be some kind of Manchurian candidate. Johnson seems unaware that he scored an own goal.

Follow MSNBC’s live blog for real-time updates on the final night of the Democratic National Convention.

Johnson is right about the basic fact: Walz did choose the date of the incident for his marriage. But the 1989 incident, during which Chinese troops opened fire on and killed hundreds — possibly thousands — of peaceful protesters in Beijing who were calling for political reforms, is an event that the Chinese Communist Party loathes anybody mentioning. The government has aggressively sought to suppress information about the protests and the Communist Party’s crackdown in China; even so, the event remains one of the most iconic reference points for human rights criticism of Beijing. Walz has said the date “will always have a lot of bitter memories for the people”; his choice to make it the date of his wedding anniversary is clearly an homage to the victims. Walz’s act of remembrance is an act of rebellion against the Chinese government’s agenda to conceal its murderous repression.

In other words, Johnson, a China hawk like most members of his party, ought to be encouraged by Walz’s symbolic gesture, not suspicious of it. Either he’s illiterate about Chinese history or he’s just throwing anything at the wall to see what’ll stick. Maybe it’s both. The GOP has gone all in trying to peddle conspiracy theories that Walz’s many trips to China — first to teach English, and then as a teacher escorting American students on cultural exchange visits — have compromised him somehow. House Republicans are investigating Walz for ties to China, and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has hysterically accused Walz of having been covertly co-opted by China, posting on X that Walz is an example of how “Beijing patiently grooms future American leaders.”

But, again, the GOP has gotten everything exactly upside down. Walz’s background and record on China are not liabilities but strengths. There’s nothing known about Walz’s trips there that suggest anything unseemly. His comments on the record — many of which were documented in local papers long before he expressed any political ambitions — show that he has consistently expressed affection for the Chinese people and criticism of their government. “If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what [Chinese people] could accomplish,” he told the Alliance Star-Herald in Nebraska in 1990. Walz also speaks Mandarin. This kind of background is not a warning sign. It’s reflective of the kind of cosmopolitan, critically engaged sensibility one wants in a politician who can influence international affairs.

As my colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim has pointed out, Walz’s congressional record suggests he’s far from a pushover when it comes to pointing out China’s problems:

As a member of Congress, he met with Tibetan leaders and Chinese dissidents, and he served on a congressional commission that tracks human rights abuses in China. In 2017, he co-sponsored the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act; Jeffrey Ngo, a senior policy and research fellow at the Washington-based Hong Kong Democracy Council, credited its passage years later to Walz’s early support.

Walz also opposes China’s expansion in the South China Sea but has expressed optimism about “areas of cooperation that we can work on,” and believes the U.S.-Chinese relationship doesn't necessarily need "to be an adversarial relationship.”

As Paul Musgrave, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, puts it, Walz’s record is “that of a measured critic of the Chinese Communist Party—prone neither to exaggeration nor accommodation.” In Musgrave's assessment, Walz is a moderate who defies the categories of "hawk" and "dove" on China, and approaches the issue as "a student and a teacher."

Republicans, frantic to find a vulnerability in Walz’s armor as an affable happy warrior from the Midwest, have decided that his China affiliations are a path to taking him down. But the more one learns about those affiliations, the more one realizes that it’s a good thing that someone with his background could soon become the vice president.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com

UAW chief tells of Belvidere Assembly Plant delayed

If you saw the speech at last night’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago here is the verification of the delay.  Will it ever really happen? Will there be a strike on this issue?

SEE newest updates:   Stellantis confirms Belvidere delay; says union can’t strike (msn.com)

UAW threatens strike, accusing Stellantis of delaying Belvidere reopening (msn.com)

United Auto Workers (UAW) Union Poised for Nationwide Strike (msn.com)

UAW rallies in Belvidere, demands Stellantis keep its promise (msn.com)

Microsoft coming to Boone County?

Microsoft proposes Cherry Valley data center on 300 acres

Story by Jeff Kolkey, Rockford Register Star

• 5h • 3 min read

Aproposed Cherry Valley Microsoft data center at U.S. Route 20 and Wheeler Road in Boone County could bring up to 300 high-tech jobs to the region by 2030.

Microsoft unveiled the proposal on 309-acres of what is now agricultural land during an open house Monday at the Tebala Event Center, 7910 Newburg Road.

The prospect of new high-paying jobs coming to the region attracted the attention of Dino Pandya, a Rockford resident who has one child who studying for a doctorate in physics at Princeton University and another who will soon graduate from Northwestern University with a master's degree in computer science.

"It’s going to be a good thing for the community," Pandya said. "I think we need something like that to bring high-quality jobs to the area, and it will inspire our next generation."

The project will be considered by the Cherry Valley Planning & Zoning Commission at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.

More: Microsoft keeps expanding its Racine-area data center campus. Latest purchases total $14.6 million

A rendering on display during a Microsoft data center open house Monday, Aug. 19, 2024, shows a six-building complex near U.S. Route 20 and Wheeler Road that would employ an estimated 300 people by 2030.© Jeff Kolkey/Rockford Register Star

Microsoft would be 'a very quiet neighbor'

A Microsoft spokeswoman in an email to the Rockford Register Star said the Cherry Valley data center is part of Microsoft’s "broader strategy to expand its datacenter infrastructure to support increasing demand for Azure cloud services."

If the project moves forward, it would begin in summer 2026 and is expected to create hundreds of construction jobs. The first data center building would be complete in summer 2028.

Related video: Multi-million-dollar company looking to build database at the Stateline (WQRF Rockford)

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Additional buildings could be constructed afterward and up to six buildings would be built on the site in all. Each would house servers that help form the backbone of cloud computing services relied for shopping, banking, streaming videos, sending emails, storing files and doing anything else online.

The servers are air-cooled to minimize water use and the operation at full capacity is expected to consume about the same amount of water as 30 homes. Microsoft is promising to utilize 100% renewable energy by 2025 and plans to eliminate the use of diesel generators for backup power by 2030.

Each building utilizes about 50 employees including staff management, environment operation personnel, learning and development staffers, information technology operators, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, security guards and building maintenance workers.

Plans call for the campus to be surrounded by a 10 to 12-foot berm to cut down on any noise. Mature trees will be planted between the data center campus and its closest neighbor, the East Valley neighborhood, to create a buffer zone that is about 1,500-feet wide, Cherry Valley Village Administrator Jim Claeyssen said.

"They're a very quiet neighbor," Claeyssen said. "Even their new generator systems are much quieter than they used to be and they only run if there's a total dropout of power. They're going to take their power off the ComEd high power grid that runs down the county line. So there's nothing that has to come underground from out of the village."

Microsoft says it will invest in STEM education to prepare residents for high-tech jobs, local infrastructure and local suppliers.

State Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Cherry Valley, said he expects the data center to generate large amounts of property taxes for area taxing bodies and to be a better neighbor than other potential industrial uses that could have come to that land.

"It's one of those things that's good for a community's reputation that you have, a Microsoft cloud here," Syverson said. "Just like Rockford gets to say it has a Hard Rock, so it's one of those things that is really a win-win."

Residents view information boards at a Microsoft data center open house information session Monday, Aug. 19, 2024, at the Tebala Event Center, 7910 Newburg Road.© Jeff Kolkey/Rockford Register Star

Jeff Kolkey writes about government, economic development and other issues for the Rockford Register Star. He can be reached at  (815) 987-1374, via email at jkolkey@rrstar.com and on X @jeffkolkey.

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Microsoft proposes Cherry Valley data center on 300 acres