Regional Media Podcast Network

Janna joined us this morning to talk about some great events coming up this week and a few down the calendar.

The Mayor and Scott were in to talk about a few points from the city council meeting, and an update on some ongoing projects throughout the city.

Award winning dietitian Sara Umphleet from OSF Saint Luke Medical Center joined Wake Up Tri-Counties on Monday, July 3rd with tips on how you can shop healthy this Summer. This beautiful time of year brings people back outside and leads many to think about how they would like to lose weight. In our conversation today, Sara offers several great tips for shopping and eating healthy this summer, including grilling healthy and how to make healthy food even tastier. Sara Umphleet was our guest on Wake Up Tri-Counties on WKEI on Monday, July 3rd, 2023.

Princeville's very own, 92 year old wonder, Dean Troutman is in the final leg of a trip back home to Princeville. But this isn't any other journey, this is a 350 mile walk from Princeville to Monroe, Wisconsin, and now back to Princeville by way of Kewanee, among other stops. In Kewanee on Thursday, June 29th, Dean Troutman collected donations for St. Jude's Children's Hospital and was kind enough to stop by our studio in Kewanee to talk about raising nearly $20,000 for St. Judes in what is his fifth charity walk of at least 350 miles. You can donate to Dean Troutman anywhere you see him and his friends walking. You can catch him tonight at the AmericInn in Kewanee and make a donation there. And, he's headed to Wyoming for holiday celebrations on Monday, July 3rd, before making the final miles walk back to Princeville.

The Mayor of Galva Rich Volkert was our guest on Wednesday morning on WKEI to discuss this week's Galva City Council Meeting. On the agenda, the City of Galva has finally closed a little used railroad crossing following a study that showed it was hardly ever used. It's been a two year effort by the City of Galva to close the crossing. Hometown Consulting gave a presentation to the City of Galva on Monday night. The company is consulting with the City of Galva on downtown re-development programs and offered several ideas that they have gleaned from speaking with residents and assessing Galva's downtown area. And the Mayor addressed the change of the fireworks date from the traditional July 4th date to July 8th. The decision was based on the staffing shortage at the company that provides the fireworks. They were not available on the 4th of July and so the new date for Galva fireworks is July 8th at dusk.

Sparks is joined by Western Illinois University Football Coach Myers Hendrickson to talk about the upcoming season, takeaways from the Craddock Spring Game, and the team's Hanson Heroes projects around the community.

The Kewanee City Council met on Monday night and held a relatively short meeting. During the meeting, the three members of the City Council on hand were enough to approve several items on the agenda including a new fiscal year budget. Budget meetings had occurred for the past several weeks and thus there were no issues in pressing forward, even without Mayor Gary Moore and Councilman Chris Colomer, each of whom was unable to attend Monday's meeting. Councilman Komnick also detailed a new ordinance that limits the number of times Kewanee residents can host yard sales. The goal of the legislation is to prevent residences from turning their lawn into a season long store. Under the new law, homeowners may only host 3 Yard Sales in a year.

The Internal Revenue Service wants business owners to beware of companies using aggressive tactics while promising access to grant funds related to COVID-19 relief. Lauren Winebrenner with the IRS spoke to Wake Up Tri-Counties on Tuesday to talk about how not all businesses qualify for the grants being pushed by these aggressive companies that make promises about eligibility. The reality is, you can go directly to IRS.gov and find out about your businesses grant eligibility and you can do so without having to pay an outside company to help you. Thus, if your business does qualify for a grant, you won't have to spend part of it on some unnecessary third party. Lauren Winebrenner talked about this topic and several others from the annual IRS Dirty Dozen tax scams and how to avoid them.