Since there are a whole lot of signs up soliciting your vote for a replacement judge for the 1st Circuit, which encompasses Carbondale, here is what the Illinois State Bar Association has to say about each candidate. The short form is:
Ben Reed--Recommended
Casey VanWinkle-Not recommended
Heather Heaslett and Leonard Snyder each had too few responses for the ISBA to Recommend or Not Recommend
Another house has been razed near Memorial Hospital, this time at the corner of Pecan and Poplar. Eventually I expect SIH will buy up the entire area between Poplar and University, demolish the remaining houses and expand the hospital complex further north. Hospitals, Universities and Churches tend not to care much about the historical aspects of the areas in which they want to expand.
Hawthorne Art has closed its gallery and event space though the buiness will be active online. Appears not enough demand for an additional event venue in Carbondale
One of the things the snow showed was how little use a lot of front doors get. I saw houses a week after the snow still with front steps and sidewalks unshoveled and, in many of those cases, not even footprints coming out and going down the steps. It just shows how much of our lives come out of the back door and head for the car.
Still noticing a whole lot of sidewalks uncleared over a week after the snow. At this rate, they will all be melted clear before anyone gets out to shovel them.
A lot of communities in Illinois increased their sales taxes at the start of the year. happily Carbondale was not among them. Unhappily, Carbondale's rate of 9.75% is still higher than all of the communities on the list save 3, at least by my count.
Kudos to the city for getting the streets cleared. I heard from several people that even the side streets, which have been bypassed during the past few snows, got cleared. Even the alley running paralel to North Oakland, which has never been plowed in the 20 yars I have lived there, got plowed this time.
