At about 7:15 p.m. on Sunday, October 23rd, a grassland fire that began about one quarter of a mile east of the intersection of 7th and Denton roads ultimately burned around 100 acres of mostly pastureland. Propelled by high winds, the fire had burnt a swath north, crossing 8th Avenue shortly before being suppressed by the nine area fire departments that had responded to the scene.

Nebraska’s General Election is under a week away, with poll workers across the state readying to man the ballot boxes come Tuesday, November 8th. However, according to Howard County Election Commissioner Brenda Klanecky, things are already busy in the Howard County Clerk’s office.

During the Howard County Board of Commissioners’ regular meeting on October 25th, Howard County Sheriff Tom Busch told the board that the sheriff’s office had a suspect in the Sunday, October 23rd grassland fire near the intersection of 7th and Denton roads, but that he “was trying to put the vehicle in the area before [the fire started].” The sheriff added that he was hoping local farmers in the vicinity near the time of the fire—at about 7:15 p.m.—would come forward with any suspicious activity they may have noticed. “Farmers and mailmen, I love them,” the sheriff said, “because they usually see things the other people don’t.” In other discussion last Tuesday, it was noted by Howard County Highway Superintendent Janet Thomsen that caution signs warning of slow-moving buggies erected on county roads in the vicinity of Liberty Road have been the subject of frequent theft. The roads superintendent told the board that the county had lost ten such signs to theft since the first of August and said she would be calling the Nebraska Intergovernmental Risk Management Association (NIRMA), the county’s insurers, about the issue. “I’m down to nine [signs],” she said. “[People] just keep taking them.” While Thomsen noted that “Hall County says they have a special double- nut way of putting signs on so you can’t get them off,” she added that she was skeptical that simply better securing the signs to their posts would entirely solve the issue. In one of the more recent thefts, she said, the culprits had seemingly “just ran over the post and took the post and the sign, too.”

The St. Paul Police Department recently received accreditation from the Nebraska Crime Commission (NCC), making the department among the roughly half of Nebraska law enforcement agencies to receive the designation.