Saturday, December 18, 2010

Top Stories, December 18th

Four Injured In Three Separate Snowmobile Accidents

12/18/10 - Two injuries were reported, one serious, is a car versus snowmobile accident. It happened Friday night just after 8pm on State Highway 60 at Goodland Road in the Town of Rubicon. The Dodge County Sheriffs Department says Daniel Wirth of Hartford was operating the snowmobile. The 21-year-old was struck when he crossed in front of the path of an eastbound passenger car on Highway 60. That car was driven by 24-year-old Matthew Stark of Watertown, who was taken to Hartford Hospital for treatment of injuries. Wirth sustained serious injuries and was taken by helicopter to Froedtert Hospital. The accident remains under investigation by the Dodge County Crash Investigation Team.

12/18/10 - A snowmobiler was injured in the Town of Fox Lake last night. The Dodge County Sheriffs Department is reporting that 42-year-old Michael Steiner flipped his snowmobile on Fox Lake around 9pm. Steiner made his way to the Boathouse Pub on Chief Kuno Trail. He had a leg injury and was treated and transported by Fox Lake EMS.

12/18/10 - A third snowmobile accident was reported to the Dodge County Sheriffs Department just before midnight Friday. Officials with Hartford Hospital notified authorities that 29-year-old Ryan Dunn of Hartford had sought treatment. Dunn reportedly struck a well pipe on private property on Resthaven Road in the Town of Rubicon.

Quad-Graphics Announces Buffalo Layoffs

12/18/10 - Wisconsin’s largest printing company continues to scale back some of the out-of-state operations it acquired in the recent past. Quad-Graphics said today it would eliminate 95 of the 500 jobs at its printing plant in suburban Buffalo in New York state. Spokeswoman Claire Ho said some of the work will be moved to other parts of the country to improve Quad’s overall efficiency. The Buffalo area plant makes mostly books. Quad assumed ownership of the facility when it bought World Color Press of Canada in July. Quad-Graphics is based in Sussex and is one of Dodge County’s largest employers. It has more than 40 printing facilities in the U-S. The firm is engaging in a long-term process to move hundreds of out-of-state jobs to Wisconsin.

Canadian Bank Buys M & I

12/18/10 - Wisconsin’s largest home-grown bank is about to be owned by Canadians. The B-M-O Financial Group of Toronto said Friday it would buy Milwaukee’s Marshall-and-Ilsley Corporation for four-point-one billion dollars. The sale will involve an exchange of stock – and B-M-O plans to raise 800-million-dollars in equity before the deal is expected to close next July. The World Economic Forum has rated Canadian banks as the strongest over the last three years. They’ve been expanding in the U-S in places where banks have gotten stuck with defaults on home loans. M-and-I has had eight straight quarterly losses, while B-M-O’s Bank-of-Montreal has seen its profits grow for six consecutive quarters – the longest among Canada’s major lenders. The C-E-O of the Canadian group, Bill Downe, says the acquisition of M-and-I will “transform” its competitive position in the U-S. He said it would provide a strong entry into a number of attractive American markets – plus expansions in Wisconsin and Indiana. M-and-I’s chief executive, Mark Furlong, will stay on as the C-E-O of the firm’s combined U-S personal and commercial banking business. That’s based in Chicago. He said the transaction was good news for M-and-I’s shareholders, customers, and employees – as well as the communities it serves.

Lazy Lake Dam Improvements Complete

12/18/10 - Improvements on the Lazy Lake Dam have been completed. Earlier this year Fall River received a $1.3 million dollar Community Development Block Grant from the Department of Commerce to improve the Lazy Lake Dam and relocate a sewage lift station. Engineers told the Board this week that the work on the Dam has been completed. The Village is anticipating work on the second part of the project -- relocating the lift station out of the flood plain -- could start as early as April.

Squad Car Swerves, Strikes Pole

12/18/10 - A Dodge County Sheriffs Department squad car was damaged after a deputy swerved to avoid hitting a car that darted out into traffic and drove into a pole. It happened yesterday (Thursday) morning around 9:30am in the Village of Lomira. Patrol Captain Molly Soblewski says a vehicle driven by an 81-year-old Lomira man was traveling westbound on Main Street when it pulled in front of the squad car, which was traveling southbound on Highway 175. Soblewski says the deputy took evasive action and swerved into the ditch and was unable to stop before striking a pole. The accident resulted in $8000 to $10,000 in damage to squad car. There were no injuries. The Wisconsin State Patrol is investigating and the Lomira man faces possible citations.

Fort Atkinson Meat Plant Workers File Lawsuit

12/18/10 - Four union employees of a Jefferson County meat plant are suing their bosses. The workers at Jones Dairy Farm in Fort Atkinson say they should be paid for the time they spend putting protective equipment on-and-off at the beginning-and-end of their work days. Attorney Douglas Phebus says up to 200 present and former employees could be affected by the case. The Wisconsin State Journal says the lawsuit is similar to those filed against Kraft-Oscar Mayer in Madison and Tyson Foods of Jefferson. A judge ruled in favor of the Oscar Mayer employees, but Kraft has appealed the decision to U-S Supreme Court.

Unemployment Down, Job Losses Up

12/18/10 - Wisconsin lost 52-hundred jobs last month, all but about 400 in the private sector. But the state also reported a lower unemployment rate – down two-tenths of a percent from October to seven-point-six on a seasonally-adjusted basis. The conflicting figures are the result of two different surveys the state takes each month. State Workforce Development Secretary Roberta Gassman said the unemployment rate is the lowest since January of 2009. But Wisconsin still has 150-thousand fewer jobs than before the recession started. That includes a net loss of 67-thousand factory jobs. The state did add 26-hundred manufacturing jobs in the last month, while most of the losses were in service-related industries. Wisconsin has added just over 24-thousand private sector jobs in the last year – short of the 60-thousand a year that Governor-elect Scott Walker will need to keep his campaign promise to create a quarter-million jobs by 2015. Marquette economics professor Abdur Chowdhury says it will be an uphill task, considering the current state of the economy.

Oshkosh Museum Receives Donation

12/18/10 - The Oshkosh Public Museum has received a surprise gift that could shape its future. Fred and Marion Durow left two-point-nine million dollars for the museum after they died. The couple spent a lot of time there in the 1930’s, especially admiring its collection of decorative arts. The Durows later moved to California and amassed a fortune. Besides the money, Fred Durow gave the museum 12 pieces from his own collection, including some rare German steins. Director Brad Larson says it’s the largest bequest ever received by the Oshkosh museum, which gets mostly public funding. It has over four-thousand glass and ceramic pieces, but Larson says most have never been catalogued. He says the museum is thinking about hiring a curator of decorative arts – and the museum’s board will discuss that in January. Larson said the gift is intended to acquire and maintain items in the decorative arts collection. It can also be used for capital construction.

Talgo To Convert Production Factory

12/18/10 - Train-maker Talgo says it will not have to build a separate maintenance facility which it plans to operate in Milwaukee. The firm says it will remodel its current production factory instead – and it could save tens-of-millions of dollars in the process. The plant is due to close in 2012, after it makes four trains for a line in Oregon plus two for the Amtrak Hiawatha line from Milwaukee-to-Chicago. Talgo plans to move its train production elsewhere, now that the Milwaukee-to-Madison high speed project has been scrapped. The federal stimulus funds that Governor-elect Scott Walker rejected included 52-million-dollars for Talgo’s maintenance facility. And the outgoing Democratic chairmen of the state Legislature’s finance committee asked Walker this week how he’ll pay that cost, plus funding that was lost for commercial railroad track maintenance. Walker’s transition team says it will be handled in the next state budget. D-O-T officials say they won’t know until early next year how much the maintenance facility will actually cost. Talgo says it will keep 60 employees in Milwaukee to run the operation.

Deer Donations Down

12/18/10 - A statewide program in which deer hunters help the hungry is getting its lowest donations ever. Laurie Pike of the state D-N-R says about 28-hundred animals have been donated to the state’s 11-year-old effort to provide fresh venison to Wisconsin food pantries. Last year, the total was 39-hundred – and that was an all-time low as well. But just because the food pantry donations have declined does not necessarily mean that hunters are less generous. Lee Dudek of Green Bay’s “Hunt for the Hungry” program says lots of hunters have given more deer to friends and neighbors who are unemployed. He said he was gratified that his program – which serves 11 counties in northeast Wisconsin – had a slight increase in donations as of a few days ago. But in Eau Claire, only 500 pounds of venison have been given to the “Feed My People” food bank. That’s way down from the 10-thousand pounds of previous years. Hunters can still donate to that program by processing their deer by January 10th.










































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