As Mayor John Pritchard seeks a second term at the helm of city government, he is challenged in the April 4 election by downtown restaurant owner and operator Walt McAllister.We’re glad to have a contested race. It forces the incumbent to assess progress and allows the challenger to bring new ideas and perspectives to the forefront, which has been the case in this campaign.McAllister, owner of Q’s Cafe, shows passion and enthusiasm for downtown Galesburg and [...]
Register-Mail editorial: John Pritchard for mayor
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Register-Mail editorial: Gerald Reynolds for city treasurer
While no names will appear on the ballot for Galesburg city treasurer, two candidates are asking that you write in their name for the position on April 4.Gerald Reynolds, administrator for the Knox County Landfill, and Elisha French, an assistant program manager in the Illinois State Comptroller’s Office, are running for the part-time position.With the current treasurer, Marv Dahlberg, retiring in May, the city proposed looking at eliminating or reducing the [...]
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Register-Mail editorial: Wayne Allen is endorsed in Ward 6
Four years ago, we said it was time for a change in Ward 6. Wayne Allen was then running for his fourth term as city alderman, and voters chose him over challenger Bob Bainter and the candidate we endorsed, Bob Miller.Now, with 16 years as Ward 6 alderman, Allen is seeking another term. He’s met by two challengers: Torry Carnes and Chris King.Allen, 79, is retired from Butler Manufacturing. He’s served on many boards and was the driving force behind the [...]
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Register-Mail endorsement: Johnson, Scherpe for District 205
The good news in District 205 is that of the four candidates the editorial board interviewed, all would be good additions to the board of education.Five candidates are running for two open seats representing the portion of the district within the city limits. Going off the board are longtime board member Bob Lindstrom and Josh Gibb, the current board president and vice president on the board. Both took out petitions to run again but announced in January they were withdrawing their [...]
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Register-Mail editorial: Support Knox County mental health tax levy
On April 4 every voter in Knox County will have a chance to decide whether to set up a mental health board with taxing authority.The purpose of the board would be to make funding and service decisions for those in the county who need human services and to monitor those funds.The board would be made up of seven volunteer board members appointed by the Knox County Board. These mental health boards are common and exist in nearby Warren and McDonough counties as wells as the [...]
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Editor's Notebook: A rundown of R-M endorsements
After November's raucous presidential campaign and the weeks that have followed, it maybe easy to overlook the local election on Tuesday, April 4. That would be a mistake. There are many issues close to voters' hearts and pocketbooks, and, indeed, the future of our city and schools depends on making good decisions now that will enable a better future. We urge you to vote Tuesday, if you haven't done so already. Among many races throughout the county include Galesburg [...]
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Tom Martin: Pritchard, McAllister together best option
Mayor John Pritchard had a pretty sweeping victory Tuesday, taking 57 percent of the vote. But as you dig into the results, you see that a majority of voters in nine of the 26 precincts favored challenger Walt McAllister.McAllister’s support came in left-leaning precincts. Of the nine precincts that favored McAllister, all had a majority of Democrat voters in the 2016 primary election. And six of them were heavily Democrat (more than 60 percent of votes cast in 2016 primary). [...]
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Illinois Editorial: Let's look under the rock
Illinois taxpayers recently took another unnecessary financial beating in a questionable leasing deal for which they paid far too much in exchange for far too little.The questions surrounding the deal are these:— Is this government corruption as usual?— Or is it government incompetence as usual?The state of Illinois recently signed a $2.4 million, five-year contract to store old records from the Department of Human Resources. That's a lot of money to [...]
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Editor's Notebook: R-M lands internship position
The Register-Mail newsroom has a new face this summer. Mitch Prentice, a graduate of Knox College, has joined the team here for 10 weeks.This paid internship was one of two offered nationally by GateHouse Media, owner of 130 daily newspapers. We feel fortunate to have beaten out all those other papers for one of these two competitive internships.“Mitch Prentice … will work with Tom Martin and his exceptional crew in Galesburg,” Senior Director for Content [...]
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Editor's Notebook: Lead exposure series starts Sunday
On Sunday, The Register-Mail will begin a four-part series on lead exposure in Knox County. Knox County has the third-highest percentage of lead levels among children in the state. And the problem didn’t just pop up. Five years ago, one in five Knox County kids had potentially damaging amounts of lead in their bodies.The Associated Press brought the issue to light a year ago with its reporting of that the city's water tests exceeded federally recommended levels of lead in 22 of [...]
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Editorial: Small, rural hospitals face a bleak future
North Carolina Senate leader Phil Berger has been adamant: He will not support the Medicaid expansion that's provided through the Affordable Care Act. In fact, he's used his considerable power to block all attempts at expansion.And now, his hometown hospital in Eden, Morehead Memorial Hospital, has filed for bankruptcy. It's a Chapter 11 filing that will give the hospital some breathing room as it tries to reorganize its finances. The 108-bed hospital opened in 1960. It also operates [...]
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Register-Mail Editorial: Let's stop failing our children, address lead issue
We have a lead problem in Knox County.One in five children in Knox County had a dangerous amount of lead in their bodies as recently as five years ago. Out of a classroom of 25 kids, five kids were being harmed by lead. And while the numbers have improved somewhat since 2012 — from 20.4 percent above minimum lead levels to 12.8 percent — the county continues to have among the worst lead problems in the state. We ranked third in 2015, the most [...]
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Editor's Notebook: R-M to have new look Tuesday
The Register-Mail will have a new look starting Tuesday. Our company, GateHouse, has been working for months with award-winning designer Mario Garcia to create a new design for newspapers, including The Register-Mail, designed at the company’s Center for Newspaper Design in Austin, Texas.The new look with be more colorful, more modern and present a new type and style that’s easier to read. The content, from comics to local news, won’t change with this redesign. [...]
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Editorial: Stop playing politics with schools
Illinois politicians are playing chicken with our school funding, and the last thing we should do is pick sides. We need competency, effective leadership and politicians worried more about serving the residents of Illinois than their political parties, political power or re-election bid. For decades, state educators and politicians have called for a better formula for funding our schools. Illinois ranks last in the nation for equitable school funding. The disparity now is [...]
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Another View: Illinois' underlying problems not addressed
We have said repeatedly that it is inexcusable for the state of Illinois to operate without a budget. Therefore, we belatedly congratulate the state Legislature for putting a full-year state budget in place — finally — after 2 years.The budget is important in a number of ways, maybe most important for what it says to outsiders evaluating our state, whether as a place to do business or during the process of evaluating our creditworthiness. So for that small victory, we [...]
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Another View: Forecasters need some better tools
Yes, we know. Everyone gripes about the weather. And everyone gripes even more about our weather forecasts. How can they get it so wrong, and so often?Sometimes that's more than something worth griping about. That would be the case with Hurricane Matthew, whose flooding last year killed 27 people in North Carolina — a higher death toll than in all the other Matthew-stricken states combined. Three of those deaths happened in Lenoir County. Eleven of those deaths were in the Cape [...]
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Bill Knight: Foxconn’s con: the Big ‘If’
Corporate and government officials on July 26 announced that Taiwanese company Foxconn Technology Group would invest $10 billion in its first U.S. factory in Wisconsin, where 3,000 jobs could be created if it opens in 2020.The understandable impulse was to cheer (even if Foxconn has for years been criticized worldwide for its labor relations, including unrealistic production demands and forced overtime without pay).After all, that region recently lost hundreds of jobs when [...]
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Kathryn Lopez: Good news from the Middle East
"Aleppo awaits you" may not be the expected message for anyone tired of politics in the United States. The person saying this, Greek Catholic Archbishop Jean-Clement Jeanbart, doesn't even want to talk to you about the terrible things happening in the world if you aren't interested. "You have heard enough about the suffering in the world and the killing and the savagery ... I do not talk about it," he says early on during an interview.Just being the archbishop of Aleppo serves as [...]
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Register-Mail Editorial: Journalists not dividing this country
Don’t buy it. President Donald Trump this week said media organizations are responsible for what’s ailing our country.“If you want to discover the source of the division in our country, look no further than the fake news and the crooked media,” Trump told a crowd of cheering supporters Tuesday in Phoenix.Unfortunately, the media is reflecting the divisions in the country — catering to our political bents and therefore allowing us to deepen our [...]
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Another View: Trump family must be protected
The news that the Secret Service's budget for the year has already been exhausted covering the protection of the Trump family, a large group who travel a lot, raises some issues.The first question is not an issue. The president's family must be protected, particularly out in the open in a heavily armed country and dangerous world. Television footage of people with "open carry" firearms at the demonstration in Charlottesville, Va., is just one recent example. America has more than its [...]
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