Coming Attraction: Livestock Show, Sale (Page 2A)

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Established 1876 in Barron, home of the county’s fi rst newspaper

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The County Seat

Volume 133, Number 24 Barron, Wisconsin 54812 Wednesday, July 4, 2012 Tick! Tick! Tick! Pet owners’ alert (Page 12A)

(See Opponents page 2A)

Computer Purchase: Prairie Farm School (Page 2A)

(See Evans page 12A)

(See Groundbreaking page 12A)

At age 94, Arland correspondent turns in her pen

Plan August groundbreakingClinton sand processing plant, transfer yard

(See Jail Costs page 12A)

Mabel Rhodes decided that after her 94th birthday on May 18, she had spent enough time chronicling the doings of township residents.

Last column—Arland resident Mabel Rhodes offi cially retires this week as a local columnist for the Barron News-Shield. Rhodes, 94, has been writing for the paper at various times over parts of the last four decades.

So, after her daughter, Marie, dropped off her last handwritten summary of family celebrations, vis-its, and outings, Rhodes offi cially re-

tired as a News-Shield correspondent on Tuesday, June 26.

Rhodes writes everything long-hand, she said.

“I print the column on paper,” she said.

Her daughter, Marie, had a laptop computer on the kitchen table and could email the column for her, but Mabel said, “I don’t have nothing to do with that thing.”

For parts of at least four decades, Rhodes has faithfully copied down thousands of names and hundreds of

thousands of words.“I’ve tried to fi gure out how long

I’ve been doing it, but I just can’t,” she said. “I did the column for awhile, and then my niece took it over. But she died in 1997, and I took it back again.”

It was sometime during the early 70s that Rhodes agreed to write the weekly news that an aunt, Ruby Telthoester, had been writing.

“I never thought a lot about why I agreed – I just did it,” Rhodes said.

Ruby’s mother, Elsie White, came

Heavy equipment has arrived and an August groundbreaking is ten-tatively planned for the Superior Silica Sands dry sand processing and transfer yard in the town of Clinton, a company spokesman said last week.

“We are trying to organize a joint groundbreaking event with Cana-dian National Railway, “ said Rick Shearer, president and CEO, Supe-rior Silica Sands.

Shearer said the company hoped to have Gov. Scott Walker attend the event, but his schedule didn’t permit him to do so in July.

“So, we are looking for an alternate date in the middle of August,” Shear-er said.

Two companies will use the plant, including Superior Silica Sands and Midwest Frac, he said.

“There were conversations with a third company that didn’t pan out,” Shearer said.

He said that Superior Silica Sands is negotiating to lease land in the

Joint effort aims to reduce jail costsGrants sought, full-time position authorized

Representatives of Barron County’s law enforcement, jail, judicial and public defender’s communities are seeking two government grants that they hope will help bring down both the population and the cost of run-ning the county jail.

The county “Criminal Justice Col-laborating Council” has persuaded the County Board to create a full-time job to assess jail inmates and determine the best and most cost-ef-fective ways to deal with them while protecting the public.

Judge James Babler, council chair, said that he was pleased with the county board’s 27-1 vote last month that makes a fulltime position out of the job held by Shanda Harrington, who is now working as both the com-munity services and collaborating council coordinator.

Babler and other council members talked about two grants they hope will move the process forward.

Barron County frac sand mining opponents said last week that they will take their case to the public by arranging for a booth at the July 18-22 Barron County Fair in Rice Lake.

In separate interviews, three mem-bers of the Barron County Board of Supervisors said that recent com-mittee re-appointments will make it more diffi cult for them to make voices of dissent heard on the County Board.

Dallas resident Nancy Weise, who is coordinating the “Hills Angels” citizens’ group, said Saturday that the fair booth will be “our big push” for the immediate future. “We hope we can provide some information for the public,” she said.

Weise said the organization is ar-

A Barron County Sheriff’s Depart-ment captain, who has been on paid administrative leave since late May pending an investigation into un-specifi ed job-related charges, has an-nounced his retirement.

According to a statement released Tuesday by the county corporation counsel’s offi ce, Capt. Mark Evans will leave the department effective Aug. 31.

Evans was placed on paid leave during the third week of May in a case that began with an internal in-vestigation by Sheriff Chris Fitzger-ald and Chief Deputy Jason Leu. The case was later turned over to John Muench, corporation counsel.

Up to the point when Evans de-cided to retire, the investigation had not produced any leads that county authorities thought could be followed up with any further legal action, Muench said Monday. Evans’ deci-sion to retire halts any future investi-gation, he said.

Jail administratorchooses to retireamid investigation

A sheriff’s department administra-tor – such as Evans – does have the right to due process as outlined by state law, he added.

The process includes a case review by a grievance committee, which, in Barron County’s case, are the county supervisors who serve on the Law Enforcement Committee, Muench said.

But in this instance, the case didn’t reach that point before Evans decided to retire, he said.

When Evans was suspended, Fitzgerald said he believed that “the investigation involves a non-criminal act,” but he declined to provide fur-ther information.

Evans will have no further day-to-day contact with the department be-tween now and the date of his retire-ment, Muench said Tuesday.

“(Evans) will be using up vacation

up with the title of the weekly Arland column – “Friends Fairings.”

After retirement, Rhodes plans to keep busy visiting with relatives, like the great-granddaughters who’d come to visit on Monday.

“I volunteer at the historical mu-seum every weekend if the weather isn’t too hot,” she said.

But Mabel said she thinks her trav-eling days are over.

“I’m invited to a family reunion in Canada but I’m not going,” she said. The gathering is planned for Edmon-

ton, Alberta, where some of Rhodes’ ancestors lived when they came from Norway.

Her own father, Carl Tuftin, im-migrated to Wisconsin from the old country in 1905, Mabel said.

“I started working to help support the family when I was 14,” she said. “I got jobs cleaning people’s homes in the area. I went to high school in Turtle Lake, but I left to help out at home – a lot of the family came down with scarlet fever.”

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©2009 American Profile Hometown Content Service

town of Arland, near the intersection of County Hwy. P and Seventh Av-enue, for its second mine in Barron County. The company already oper-ates a mine in the town of Dovre.

Both companies will send trucks to the new plant via County P and U.S. Hwy. 8, Shearer said.

The company wants to have the plant up and running by the end of 2012. To do that, it will need employ-ees, and “we’re talking about a job fair sometime in August,” Shearer said.

Midwest Frac owner Matt Torger-son said that after receiving permis-

sion to mine in January, his compa-ny’s town of Arland operation was up and running as of mid-May.

A Turtle Lake resident, Torgerson said the mine is on 130 acres in Sec-tion 20 of the town of Arland. The company recently signed an agree-ment to pay $2,675,000 to Barron County to maintain and/or improve roads, culverts and related structures over which sand will be hauled.

He said that the company expects to employ 35 to 40 people when the mine is in full operation and when its on-site, wet-sand washing plant is complete.

Some of the company’s sand will be shipped to a contractor for processing and eventually sold to customers in Texas, Torgerson said.

“But it will be easier when Superior opens its plant,” he said. “We were lining up investors to build our own dry sand plant for about $35 million,

Frac opponentsplan Fair booth

ranging for non-profi t status and is having a trademark logo designed.

The group has been holding weekly meetings for parts of the last three months, many of them at Barron’s Woodland Elementary School. Its next meeting is July 12 in Dallas, Weise said.

County supervisors Russell Rind-sig, Bill Koepp and Carol Moen said that frac sand has changed the way the county looks at zoning issues and on the way that mines and process-ing yards affect the environment and the quality of life for people who live near the mines.

Rindsig is from Sarona. Koepp and Moen represent districts in the Cam-

One will provide $7,500 for new software that will allow Harrington to produce detailed summaries of jail inmates, why they’re there, and whether they have substance abuse and psychological problems that could or should be handled out of jail.

The second grant (about $5,500 in all) would train county jail and law enforcement specialists like Har-rington on how to assess inmates.

Barron County could qualify for the grant if it takes joint training with Eau Claire, Dunn and La Crosse counties, according to Harrington.

As an add-on, the county could also get grants for laptop computers that would make it easier for prosecutors and public defenders to gather infor-mation from jail inmates.

Stephanie Schmidt, a state proba-tion agent and council member, said her offi ce laptops don’t have wire-less Internet access and that new

machines would help her and other staffers save much time and money interviewing prisoners.

Dave Hensley, program manager for the county county Health and Hu-man Services department behavioral health unit, said he’s talked to the Sheriff’s Department about “a high level of distressed inmates” at the jail who underwent emergency mental health care earlier this year.

“Compared to neighboring coun-ties, our rate of (jail inmate emer-gency mental health treatment) far outpaced them,” Hensley said.

Out of roughly $100,000 spent treating indigent mental health pa-tients in the fi rst three months of 2012, jail inmates accounted for more than a fourth of the expenditure or about $25,000, Hensley said.

Chief Deputy Jason Leu said jail personnel talked with Hensley about how to better address people who break the law but have mental health

issues, and the number of calls for emergency services has decreased since then.

Jeff French said he attended that meeting.

“It was a little contentious, but that kind of meeting and the work that this (collaborating council) is doing is what we need” to control costs, he said.

French said he’d been in touch with Iona County, Mich., and learned that the jail was able to cut $100,000 in health and human services costs by making changes similar to the ones Barron County is addressing.

Fitzgerald said that deputies are scheduled for a week of training this September in ways to assess and han-dle people who commit crimes and have psychological issues.

Babler also mentioned that the county’s justice system may qualify

Site preparation—Todd Pecha, far right, vice president of Bloomer-based A-1 Excavating, talks to a work crew member at the construction site for the Superior Silica Sands frac sand processing yard near Poskin on Friday, June 29. Heavy equipment showed up at the site last week to begin preparing the property for the new facility.