By Jason Crane Aurora Chief of Police Keith Cross and Deputy Chief of Police Matt Thomas presented an Aurora Police Department (APD) public safety technology update at the Committee of the Whole meeting, Tuesday, Nov. 21. The presentation outlined the ways the APD is leveraging technology to build a safer
Mayor of Aurora, Richard Irvin, second from right, joins Aurora Housing Authority executive director Ralph Jordan, left, and his team to distribute free Thanksgiving meals to residents of Aurora public housing.
Illinois State representative Stephanie Kifowit (D-Oswego) is set to attend the annual Tradeswomen Build Nations (TWBN) Conference in Washington, D.C., December 1-3. The Conference will bring together thousands of women from across various industries to learn, share, and connect. Tradeswomen Build Nations is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering women
By John & Nisha Whitehead Americans have become easy prey for hackers, scammers, snitches, spies, and con artists. But don’t be fooled into thinking the government is protecting you. To the contrary, the U.S. government is selling us (or rather, our data) to the highest bidders. By the way, those
By Hannah Meisel As Illinois faces shortages of health care practitioners and mental health professionals, the State agency in charge of licensing for those and more than 100 other industries has struggled to keep up. The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has failed to meet its goals to
By Jason Crane Mayor of Aurora, Richard Irvin and the Aurora City Council honored Board members from the Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley for its 75th anniversary at the Tuesday, Nov. 14 City Council meeting. The Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley is a collection of individual
By John & Nisha Whitehead We are one year out from the 2024 presidential election and as usual, the American people remain eager to be persuaded that a new president in the White House can solve the problems that plague us. Yet, what is being staged is not an election.
Receiving mail from your hometown while on active military duty is a welcomed surprise. For those stationed away from home during the holiday season, that surprise is even more special. The City of Aurora’s annual Gifts from Home program honors active military personnel from Aurora by providing them with a
A special unveiling Thursday, Nov. 9, in Aurora, brought tears to the eyes of some of the veterans in attendance. East Aurora School District 131 assembled a group of veterans, educators, students, and community supporters to unveil the new Veterans Memorial Monument, located at the main flagpole in the East
By Jerry Nowicki Illinois received another credit upgrade Tuesday, the same day a legislative committee once again scrutinized governor JB Pritzker’s administration for its handling of unemployment claims during the COVID-19 pandemic. The upgrade came from Fitch Ratings, the last remaining holdout of the nation’s three major credit reporting agencies
By Jason Crane The Aurora City Council joined with the global community in an International Day of Mourning to reflect on the lives lost internationally and recommit to unity, peace, and understanding at the Committee of the Whole meeting, Tuesday, Nov. 7. Tuesday, Nov. 7 was the one-month anniversary of
The Oswego Village Board approved, Tuesday, Nov. 7, a special use and preliminary/final planned unit of development to allow for the construction of an outdoor, 24,000-seat cricket stadium on 33 acres near Orchard Road and Tuscany Drive.
Illinois State representative Stephanie Kifowit (D-Oswego) is set to participate in the annual Climate Emergency & Energy Security D.O.E Summit, co-hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), scheduled to take place November 15-16, 2023, in Washington, D.C. The summit, organized by the Energy Outreach and Policy Alliance (EOPA), will
By John & Nisha Whitehead We have arrived at the dystopian future depicted in the 2005 film V for Vendetta, which is no future at all. Set in the year 2020, V for Vendetta (written and produced by the Wachowskis) provides an eerie glimpse into a parallel universe in which
By Peter Hancock Elementary and secondary students in Illinois showed consistent improvements in their reading and math scores while the State’s high school graduation rate reached a 13-year high for the most recently concluded school year. Those are some of the conclusions from the most recent annual statewide school report
October 26, 2023Dear editor; Overflowing reserves ($53MM); obstinant refusal to properly recognize and appropriately utilize interest income windfall ($14MM); constantly increasing share of state sales, income, gambling, and marijuana taxes increase (multi-millions); reprehensibly wasteful spending (at least $3MM); and even inaccurate redefinition of elementary generally accepted accounting procedures . .
By John & Nisha Whitehead We are approaching a reckoning. This is the point, which the poet W. B. Yeats warned, when things fall apart and anarchy is loosed upon the world. We have seen this convergence before in Hitler’s Germany, in Stalin’s Russia, in Mussolini’s Italy, and in Mao’s
Trick-or-treating at Aurora City Hall offers a quick, one-stop-shop for families to celebrate the holiday amid the cold temperatures. The 7th annual Halloween at Aurora City Hall event from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 31, will welcome hundreds of children and families to downtown Aurora before they head
By Peter Hancock Vowing to make Illinois the top state in the Nation for child-care accessibility, governor JB Pritzker unveiled a plan Tuesday, Oct. 24 to consolidate all the State’s early-childhood programs and funding into one new State agency. “Early Childhood program governance has to be unified in its focus
Illinois State representative Stephanie Kifowit, D-Oswego, is sponsoring a resolution in the Illinois State House of Representatives to declare December 26 as Cold War Veterans Recognition Day in the State of Illinois. The resolution HR0443 is set to be considered during the fall veto session, aims to honor the valiant
