When residents of the City of St. Paul go to the polls on Tuesday, November 8th, on the ballot will be a half-a-percent increase in the municipality’s sales and use tax rate (raising the rate from one percent to 1.5 percent). Should the sales and use tax increase pass, the city would go forward with a the construction of a new, roughly $2,000,000 fire station. Proceeds from the sales tax increase, stressed St. Paul Mayor Joel Bergman during an interview last Thursday, would go solely towards paying for the proposed new fire station; the increase would terminate either on the first day on or after January 1, 2025 in which the indebtedness on the project is paid off or after twenty years, whichever is sooner.

A new law practice opened in St. Paul this month, offering those residing in Howard County and the surrounding area services often lacking in rural Nebraska. Harouff Law, P.C., L.L.O., which opened its doors this October at 715 Howard Avenue, serves clients in Howard, Hall, Merrick, Greeley, Boone, Clay, Custer, Fillmore, Garfield, Hamilton, Loup, Nance, Phelps, Sherman, Valley, Wheeler, and other surrounding counties. “I get to Buffalo every now and then. I try to stay within an hour,” said sole proprietor Katheryn Harouff, Esq. in an interview on Wednesday, October 5th. “Kearney’s a little bit further, but we’re from there, so I like to have excuses to go back.” Harouff specializes in many areas of law, particularly in areas in which rural Nebraskans can struggle to find representation close to home, including in family law; criminal defense; mediation; and juvenile law, often as guardian ad litem—a guardian appointed by the court to represent a client, often children in cases involving neglect or abuse. Aiding Harouff at Harouff Law is her legal assistant and daughter, Alexandra Lieb, who works semi-remotely, spending about three days a week in St. Paul, but otherwise working from her home in Papillion. While Lieb isn’t always physically in the office, she is, she said, “one-hundred percent always on call.”

On Monday, October 17th, after about two-anda- half years of universal mask requirements, the Howard County Medical Center (HCMC) put an end to the policy for most visitors and patients entering the St. Paul facility.