EDMOND — Site preparation is underway with a fall 2026 opening projected for the 62-acre sculpture park at the northwest corner of 2nd Street and Coltrane Road along historic Route 66. Fundraising is also underway by the two nonprofit organizations involved in the project, The Uncommon Ground Sculpture Park Inc. and Edmond Fine Arts Institute. Their goal is $92 million. “It takes a long time to build out a park and it takes a long time to fundraise,” Melissa Pepper said during a recent tour of the site. “We are full steam ahead.” The fall 2026 opening aligns perfectly with the centennial celebration of Route 66, said Pepper, who was hired as executive director of the park nonprofit five months ago. She previously worked for the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, Girl Scouts Western Oklahoma, OETA and Myriad Botanical Gardens. The park initially will feature 43 art pieces – from 27 donors and matching funds from the Edmond Visual Arts Commission – with additional sculptures installed over time, Pepper said. “We want there to be an art surprise around every bend,” she said. “This is Oklahoma’s only true dedicated sculpture park,” she said. “I like to say that art is the star of the show and then the supporting characters are nature and play.” With its location along Route 66, Pepper said this will be a regional park that is expected to attract visitors from near and as far away as 200 miles. It will be slightly smaller than Scissortail Park in Oklahoma City (70 acres) and Gathering Place in Tulsa (66 acres). Features will include event venues, playgrounds, three stocked ponds with fishing docks, a dog park, and trails for walking, hiking and biking. Natural elements include Spring Creek, which runs through the property, heavily wooded acres and a stately 140-year-old pecan tree. Plans call for preserving as many trees as possible and planting additional native trees. Restaurant pads along 2nd Street will provide future establishments with a backyard view over the ponds and into the park. The property was purchased four years ago by the French Family Charitable Foundation from a family who had lived there since the mid-60s and raised Arabian horses. Part of the original horse barn will be retrofitted into a pavilion for activities like corporate picnics. Another area will feature an outdoor stage for everything from big concerts to local theater productions, Pepper said. Anchoring the park will be the new two-story 38,000-square-foot Edmond Fine Arts Institute building. FAI offers educational enrichment in visual and performing arts for adults and children. “This opportunity came up and it was just a perfect fit for us,” Executive Director Shannon Price said. “Quite frankly, we’re at capacity. We have maxed out our building (downtown) and the number of students that we can serve. Annually we have about 4,000 students that are on a waiting list.” Melissa Pepper, executive director of The Uncommon Ground Sculpture Park, talks about some of the pieces that will be displayed in the park during a recent tour of the property. (Staff Photo by Kathryn McNutt) The new facility will include a theater space, three galleries, and sculpture and technology spaces on the first floor. Upstairs will be an event center that can seat about 300 people or host indoor art festivals, Price said. “The goal is to elevate the level of artists coming to Oklahoma,” she said. The two nonprofits have combined their fundraising efforts “so we can cross the finish line at the same time,” Pepper said. Of the $92 million goal, $72 is for the park and its structures and $20 million is for the FAI art and event center. To date, $30 million has been raised, Pepper said. They are seeking federal and state grants and donations from corporations and individuals. The park also will be selling individual and family memberships with VIP perks for parkgoers. Admission to the park will be free. The project was stalled for a year before the property owner and the city reached an agreement. The French Family Charitable Foundation agreed to develop the public art park and donate it to the Park Conservancy Trust upon completion. The Edmond City Council agreed to provide $10 million – drawn from five reserve funds – to pay for public infrastructure at the site and to pay for 70% of the ongoing operations, maintenance and programming of the park up to $899,000 annually. The city also agreed to make improvements to Coltrane Road, subject to the availability of funds. Rand Elliott Architects is designing the park structures and MA+ Architecture is designing the art and event center. Lingo Construction is the general contractor for all construction.Poland's prime minister visits defensive fortifications on border with Russia
Lidia Thorpe suspended after racism row with Pauline HansonIt was back in May that a report came out regarding another to rival the likes of the Steam Deck and ROG Ally. It said the company was working on a new addition to the Legion Go lineup, this time aiming to offer a more budget-friendly option for portable gaming fans. added some details to the leaked hardware, which attached the Lenovo Legion Go S name to the product and a smaller screen over the original. Today, came through with a first look at the upcoming device via some leaked renders. As seen below, the renders show that the S hardware will be sporting a white shell, leaving the original Legion Go's black offering intact. Lenovo looks like it's going for a more rounded-out ASUS ROG Ally-style look for the new handheld, too, smoothing out the straight edges seen on the regular Go. As anyone familiar with the Legion Go will point out, though, the glaring difference seen in the renders is the lack of detachable controllers. The original version lets players slide out the side controllers, similar to a Nintendo Switch, and use it separately from the screen — which has its own built-in kickstand. The right controller could even be used as a vertical mouse once detached. If the renders are accurate, having built-in controls would make the Legion Go S similar to almost all other high-end gaming handhelds in the market. As for Internals, the S is rumored to ship with a chip from AMD's Ryzen Z2 Rembrandt (Zen 3+ and RDNA2) platform. Retail pricing information for the S version has not leaked just yet, but it's expected to debut at a much lower price than the standard Legion Go, which goes . regarding Lenovo's future handheld plans also revealed that the company is working on a next-generation Legion Go model as well. Not much has leaked about this version, but it could feature much higher-end , bumping up the performance and efficiency over the original. As with all reports, take this with a grain of salt. We will have to wait for an official announcement to see what exactly Lenovo has planned for its future in the handheld gaming hardware space.
NoneNoneAAP legislator Naresh Balyan was arrested here on Saturday in connection with an extortion case lodged last year, police said. The MLA from Delhi's Uttam Nagar Assembly segment was called to the Delhi Police's Crime Branch office in R K Puram for questioning and was later arrested, they said. The development came hours after the BJP alleged that Balyan was involved in extortion activities and questioned why AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal has not taken action against him. The Aam Aadmi Party defended Balyan, claiming that his arrest was illegal. The MLA had refuted the BJP's allegations and said he would lodge police cases against those who "spread lies" about him. A police official said that an audio clip of a conversation purportedly between Balyan and gangster Kapil Sangwan, currently based abroad, had gone viral on social media. The conversation involved discussions about collecting extortion money from businessmen, he said, adding further investigation and interrogation was underway. AAP MP Sanjay Singh alleged that since Kejriwal has started raising the issue of law and order and rising crime in Delhi, the BJP and the central government are "trying to harass and conspire against his party leaders". "Balyan has been arrested under this conspiracy and the charges against him are baseless," Singh claimed. "The BJP leaders have played a fake audio despite the High Court's order against it. Balyan himself complained to the police about multiple threats received by him from the gangster Kapil Sangwan," he claimed.
Patriots safety Jabrill Peppers, accused of domestic violence, cleared to practice and playThis 32-inch Android tablet on a rolling stand surprised me - and it's $120 off for Black FridayFOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — The NFL removed New England Patriots safety Jabrill Peppers from the commissioner exempt list on Monday, making him eligible to participate in practice and play in the team’s games. Peppers missed seven games since being placed on the list on Oct. 9 after he was arrested and charged with shoving his girlfriend’s head into a wall and choking her. The league said its review is ongoing and is not affected by the change in Peppers’ roster status. Braintree, Massachusetts, police said they were called to a home for an altercation between two people on Oct. 7, and a woman told them Peppers choked her. Police said they found at the home a clear plastic bag containing a white powder, which later tested positive for cocaine. Peppers, 29, pleaded not guilty in Quincy District Court to charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and possession of a Class “B” substance believed to be cocaine. At a court appearance last week a trial date was set for Jan. 22. “Any act of domestic violence is unacceptable for us,” Patriots coach Jerod Mayo said after the arrest. “With that being said, I do think that Jabrill has to go through the system, has to continue to go through due process. We’ll see how that works out.” A 2017 first-round draft choice by Cleveland, Peppers spent two seasons with the Browns and three with the New York Giants before coming to New England in 2022. He was signed to an extension this summer. He played in the first four games of the season and missed one with a shoulder injury before going on the exempt list, which allows NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to place a player on paid leave while reviewing his case. AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
Hyperchanging Tech Markets Demand Smarter Procurement and Agile Evaluation, Says Info-Tech Research GroupTesla, Nvidia among Friday's market cap stock movers
Evaluating human gait and posture is a clinically effective method for the early diagnosis of diseases involving gait afflictions, such as adult spinal deformity (ASD). Researchers at University of Tsukuba, Japan developed a method for classifying ASD based on the characteristics of the associated gait disorders using deep learning of gait videos and images, focusing on the cyclic motion during walking and the symmetry of movements. The findings are published in the journal IEEE Access . Patients with ASD have altered gait patterns because of the spinal deformity; hence, gait analysis may be effective for diagnosis. However, the conventional methods of gait analysis may be inadequate for studying the characteristics of posture and movement during walking, which are essential for diagnosis. Recently, deep learning technology using video images has been used. Using this technique, researchers have developed a new method to accurately capture the rhythm and symmetry of body movements during walking, which may be used to classify the periodicity and postures adopted by the lower extremities and the body during gait. They tested this method using walking videos of 81 patients and achieved a correct response rate of 71.43%, which was more accurate than the conventional method (66.30%), and confirmed its effectiveness for diagnosing ASD. In the future, this technique may allow real-time analysis of moving images in clinical settings to enable instantaneous confirmation and rapid diagnosis of ASD. More information: Kaixu Chen et al, PhaseMix: A Periodic Motion Fusion Method for Adult Spinal Deformity Classification, IEEE Access (2024). DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3479165
MAPS Investors Have Opportunity to Lead WM Technology, Inc. Securities Fraud Lawsuit
LONDON (AP) — A suspected Chinese spy with business ties to Prince Andrew has been barred from the U.K. because of concerns he poses a threat to national security. A British immigration tribunal upheld the decision on Thursday in a ruling that revealed the Chinese national had developed such a close relationship with Andrew that he was invited to the prince’s birthday party. Government officials were concerned the man could have misused his influence because the prince was under “considerable pressure” at the time, according to the ruling. British authorities believe the Chinese national, whose name wasn’t released, was working on behalf of the United Front Work Department, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party that is used to influence foreign entities. The government determined that the businessman “was in a position to generate relationships between senior Chinese officials and prominent U.K. figures which could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the Chinese State,” according to the tribunal's decision. In a statement from his office, Andrew, also known as the Duke of York, said he accepted government advice and ceased all contact with the Chinese national as soon as concerns were raised. “The Duke met the individual through official channels with nothing of a sensitive nature ever discussed,′′ his office said. “He is unable to comment further on matters relating to national security.” Prince Andrew, the younger brother of King Charles III, has been repeatedly criticized for his links to wealthy foreigners, raising concerns that those individuals are trying to buy access to the royal family. Andrew’s finances have been squeezed in recent years after he was forced to step away from royal duties and give up public funding amid concerns about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein , the American financier and convicted pedophile who committed suicide in prison in 2019. British intelligence chiefs have become increasingly concerned about China’s efforts to influence U.K. government policy. In 2022, Britain’s domestic intelligence service, known as MI5, warned politicians that a British-Chinese lawyer had been seeking to improperly influence members of Parliament for years. A parliamentary researcher was arrested in 2023 on suspicion of providing sensitive information to China. The 50-year-old Chinese national covered by this week’s ruling was described as a man who worked as a junior civil servant in China before he came to the U.K. as a student in 2002. He earned a master’s degree in public administration and public policy at the University of York before starting a business that advises U.K.-based companies on their operations in China. He was granted the right to live and work in the U.K. for an indefinite period in 2013. Although he didn’t make Britain his permanent home, the man told authorities that he spent one to two weeks a month in the country and considered it his “second home.” He was stopped while entering the U.K. on Nov. 6, 2021, and ordered to surrender his mobile phone and other digital devices on which authorities found a letter from a senior adviser to Andrew confirming that he was authorized to act on behalf of the prince in relation to potential partners and investors in China. The letter and other documents highlighted the strength of the relationship between Andrew, his adviser and the Chinese national. “I also hope that it is clear to you where you sit with my principal and indeed his family,” the adviser wrote. “You should never underestimate the strength of that relationship. Outside of his closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on.” The letter went on to describe how they had found a way to work around former private secretaries to the prince and other people who weren’t completely trusted. “Under your guidance, we found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house in Windsor,” the adviser wrote. Andrew lives at the Royal Lodge, a historic country estate near Windsor Castle, west of London.Mount Hope Mining prepares for ASX listing
NoneCanada’s top sailor says he’s confident our navy can stop Russia or China if they send ships through the strategically vital Northwest Passage without asking for permission. “We wouldn’t need the allies to come to our aid. We could deal with it ourselves,” said Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee. “We have the capacity to deploy our ships up there right now to stop them.” The country’s new Arctic and offshore patrol ships only carry a 25-mm cannon, but Topshee said that could quickly be supplemented with other weapons. “They’re not intended to be front-line combatants,” Topshee said of the warships, dubbed AOPS (Arctic and offshore patrol ships). “They have everything they need for the missions that we anticipate that (they’ll) do. Were we to get into a wartime environment where we felt ... they could come directly under threat, then there’s the capacity to install other weapons in sort of an ad hoc manner — very similar to how you would defend an army forward operating base.” During an interview Sunday at the Halifax International Security Forum, which focused heavily on Arctic sovereignty, as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine, Topshee was quick to point out neither Russia nor China has gone through the Northwest Passage without first getting Canada’s blessing. “It would be really nice to believe that Russia would comply with international order, but their illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine tells us that they have no interest in complying with international law and I can’t trust anything Russia does until they withdraw from Ukraine and restore the full territorial integrity of Ukraine,” he said. “Until that changes, we’re not going to trust Russia with anything and we’re going to regard them with great suspicion and make sure we monitor everything they do.” But it’s not worth the expense of adding more weapons to the AOPS now because the threat doesn’t warrant it, he said. “On both coasts we’re experimenting to make sure that these ships would have legitimate wartime roles if they needed to.” On the east coast, the navy is focused on making sure the Arctic and offshore patrol ships have a full suite of mine counter-measures. “The ship itself will never go into a minefield — 7,000 tons is not the type of thing you put into a minefield. But is a perfect platform for all of the sensors and effectors that you would deploy into a minefield to find the mines and disable the mines, working in concert with our clearance divers.” On the west coast, the AOPS are more focused on anti-submarine warfare. The navy’s experimenting now with towed arrays that can detect submarines from thousands of kilometres away. “That way you’ve got a ship that’s not got the weapons to defend itself, but it’s looking for a submarine that’s so far away the submarine doesn’t even know it’s being hunted,” Topshee said, noting the ship could feed information to the Royal Canadian Air Force to help it attack the sub. While arrays can’t be towed in ice, he said the navy is eyeing sensors that could be rapidly deployed on the ocean floor and autonomous vessels that can patrol for submarines under the ice and report back quickly on what they find. While the navy’s keen to use the Harry DeWolf-class ships to hunt subs, they still can’t embark with Cyclone helicopters. “Right now, it’s got a hangar, it’s got a flight deck — that’s the easy part,” Topshee said. “The complicated piece is that, in order to be able to land that helicopter on the deck, secure it on the deck and then bring it into the hangar — there’s a couple of changes that have to be made.” Canada plans to purchase 12 modern, non-nuclear submarines to replace four diesel-electric subs acquired from Britain. Topshee hopes to see the first of the new sub fleet operating early in the next decade. Their mission: “leaving Esquimalt Harbour, sailing up through the Aleutians, the Bering Strait, into the Beaufort Sea, patrolling for 21 days and then returning home and doing the entire thing submerged and undetected.” The challenge will be finding crews willing to head north repeatedly. “Sailors love going to the Arctic the first time. They see Northern Lights, they see polar bears, they see ice. It’s fantastic,” Topshee said. “The unfortunate thing is, that’s all it is, all the time. And, so for many of them, it’s like ‘OK, this is getting old.’” That’s why the navy is sending its Arctic and offshore patrol ships south after spending summers up north. “The Margaret Brooke next year is going to circumnavigate South America and will likely be the first Canadian navy ship (to) visit Antarctica,” Topshee said. Because the Chinese go to both poles, we want to understand what’s happening in both polar environments Topshee was surprised when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mused recently that the new subs could be nuclear-powered. Canada explored the idea twice, in the 1960s and 1987, but cost and the U.S. refusal to share some technology made the scheme “not viable,” according to Topshee. The navy’s “already twenty per cent short of the personnel we require” and nuclear subs would require about six times as many people to sail and maintain as conventional subs, he said. “In a perfect world, where I’m unconstrained by resources and I have every sailor I required in the navy and a bigger navy, I would absolutely look to see whether or not nuclear submarines would make sense, but those are the preconditions to even be able to imagine considering it.” Canada’s navy is paying close attention to how Ukraine has successfully used drones to attack Russian warships. “Everything we see the Ukrainians doing in the Black Sea — we are taking a look at that and saying what of that is relevant to us? How do we make it work? And then, more importantly, at the same time, how do we counter it? So, if we can figure out a way to defeat a ship with a drone, we also want to be able to make sure that we ourselves can defeat that drone because we know our adversaries are going to use it against us,” Topshee said. The drones Ukrainians “have used very effectively to attack the Russian fleet in Sebastopol ... look a lot like the drones that we’ve been using for targets,” he said. The navy has employed Hammerhead drones for about 15 years to simulate incoming targets. “So, could we take that same thing and instead of using it to test our own ability to fire, load it full of explosives and send it in?” However, weather and communications problems can make it tough to operate drones in the Arctic, Topshee said. “Can it really manage down to –40 C?” he said. “Battery performance tends to go downhill quite quickly in all those environments.... A lot of our stuff is very, very brittle. How well can you manipulate this stuff wearing heavy mittens and gloves?” The navy has taken delivery of four of the Harry DeWolf-class warships, number five is in the process of being commissioned into service, and the sixth one will be launched in the coming weeks at Irving Shipbuilding’s Halifax yard. The Canadian Coast Guard is also in line for two of the vessels. Topshee calls those icebreakers, though he concedes they’re not heavy icebreakers. “They break four-and-half feet of ice,” he said. “They operate across the Arctic (with) incredible capability that we use to make sure we have full control (and are) aware of everything that’s happening in the Arctic. We can execute sovereignty and security functions anywhere we go, and the threats are growing. China’s in our Arctic every year. Russia is routinely in the approaches to our Arctic. We are seeing an increase in shipping through the Arctic.” What we are lacking, Topshee said, is heavy icebreakers that can operate up north in the middle of winter. “That’s the capability that we really need to make sure that ... there’s never any challenge to our sovereignty or security — that we can go there even in the worst of weather conditions.” Topshee doubts the Northwest Passage will ever become a major shipping route. If anything, recent ice changes linked to climate change make it more unpredictable to navigate than ever before, he said. “The Arctic gyre works in a counterclockwise manner. It piles up old ice inclusions on the western approaches to the Arctic. And because the ... ice extent is quite low, it’s much more unpredictable where the old ice will wind up and it can wind up complicating passages.” Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. 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While Chatham-Kent administration and council were able to decrease the previously approved and revised tax increase almost in half, you can’t blame rural residents if they feel they’re bearing the brunt of the cuts as council will be eliminating dust suppression on rural roads and changing the application of gravel on roads from an average of once every three years to four years combined for about $2.3-million savings. The municipality is also beginning plans to divest Clearville Park, located on Clearville Road at Talbot Trail, which is owned and maintained by Chatham-Kent. After two nights of deliberations last week, council approved a tax increase of 4.99% for 2025, which equates to about a $100 hike per $100,000 residential assessment value. The first multi-year budget (2024-27) was passed last November with a 5.53% tax increase for 2024. The council also approved an 8.17% hike for 2025, 7.7% for 2026, and 7.3% for 2027, but these proposed increases will be reviewed and adjusted each year. Administration notified council late in the spring the approved 8.17% increase was up to 9.4%. However, when budget deliberations began on Nov. 26, the increase was lowered to 5.96% thanks to several savings found by the Executive Management Team and a surprising $2,051,265 in funding from the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund. Council voted 13-5 in favour of accepting the 4.99% increase at last Wednesday’s second night of deliberations. Ward 3 East Kent Councillor Morena MacDonald was among the 13 who voted for the 4.99% increase. The others were Ward 1, West Kent’s Melissa Harrigan and Lauren Anderson; Ward 2, South Kent’s Trevor Thompson; Ward 4, North Kent’s Jamie McGrail; Ward 5, Wallaceburg’s Carmen McGregor and Aaron Hall; Ward 6, Chatham’s Conor Allin, Brock McGregor, Marjorie Crew, Amy Finn and Alysson Storey; and Mayor Darrin Canniff. East Kent’s John Wright was one of the five opposing voters, along with South Kent’s Anthony Ceccacci and Ryan Doyle, North Kent’s Rhonda Jubenville and Chatham’s Michael Bondy. “It’s good that it’s under five percent, and I would have voted for it if they hadn’t cut Clearville Park,” said Wright. One of the savings administration proposed was divesting Clearville Park, which is owned and operated by the municipality. The property includes a trailer park, campground, parkland and a boat ramp. The 2025 Operating Budget report stated the municipality takes in $243,600 in revenue from rental fees but pays $188,635 in expenses plus another $55,025 in transfers to reserves, so there is no profit or loss. The budget update also anticipates $252,825 in both revenue and expenses for 2025. However, in the long term, Clearville Park will need $4,200,000 in capital improvements over the next 10 years. Wright is upset that the administration was pushing through this plan to divest the property without any input from council or the general public, namely from the seasonal renters. “This is their residence for some of them,” Wright said. “Some live here for six months and then go down to Florida or Arizona for the rest of the year. You can’t just kick them out.” Wright believes this divestment plan should have been discussed at a Council meeting instead of included in the budget. “We didn’t know, there was no public notice ... ‘let’s just sell it,’” Wright said. “There’s still too many unanswered questions.” Chatham-Kent CAO Michael Duben said the intention is to see if a private operator is interested in purchasing and operating the facility. The decision to sell the property or what to do with it if no buyer can be found would return to council. Wright said it wouldn’t be right to sell the property because the land was donated to the former Orford Twp., which the municipality inherited at amalgamation. Wright added, “The public park on the other side of the trailer park has been a park since 1816; it’s one of the longest-running parks in Chatham-Kent.” McDonald agreed with her Ward 3 partner. “Obviously, I don’t want to see that park go; it’s one of my favourite places,” McDonald said. “It would be good to get the residents’ thoughts on it.” Wright entered an unsuccessful motion to remove the divestment of Clearville Park from the budget, which was defeated 11-7. McDonald, Carmen McGregor, Finn, Jubenville, Storey, and McGrail agreed with the Ward 3 Councillor. Wright said he intends to bring the issue back for review and to seek public input at a future council meeting. Council also voted in favour of eliminating dust suppression service on rural roads, which resulted in $1.35 million in savings—a full percentage point—from the budget. Ward 5 Councillor McGregor entered an unsuccessful motion to put the money back into the budget to maintain the current dust control measures. “I think it’s lessening our service to our rural residents,” McGregor said. McDonald and Wright agreed. “I don’t think it was a good idea to remove the service without knowing more,” McDonald said. “I received some concerns so I figured it would be good to get more information on it.” Wright said he constantly gets complaints from residents about the dust on the roads. “And they’re going to get so many more complaints,” he said. Edward Soldo, General Manager of Infrastructure and Engineering, said the application of a brine compound is ineffective because it gets washed away after one or two rains. “From a staff perspective, it’s not an effective use of dollars, given its limited impact, Soldo said. He said municipalities across Canada have already eliminated dust suppression methods. “There’s a lot of different solutions people have tried, but it just doesn’t keep the dust down,” Soldo said. “At the end of the day, we’re a rural agricultural community; you’re never going to eliminate dust.” McGregor’s motion was defeated 11-7 as Wright, McDonald, McGrail, Harrigan, Jubenville, and Finn voted to maintain the service. Ceccacci entered a successful motion extending the application of gravel on roads from an average of once every three years to four years. A total of $1 million will be allocated to the Gravel Road Conversion Program, while the remaining $650,000 will be used to lower the 2025 tax rate. Administration said gravel roads would still receive their scheduled maintenance, but the $1 million savings will double the budget for converting them to tar and chip surfaces. Carmen McGregor, Jubenville, McGrail and Wright voted against the motion. “Our back roads are just going to take more of a pounding,” Wright said. The budget increase of 4.99% for 2025 includes investments in existing municipal services at 1.88%. In the absence of provincial and federal funding, 2.35% is allotted for investment in social issues, such as homelessness and housing costs. The budget update also includes $4,069,961 in infrastructure spending, allowing for increased spending on future improvements to infrastructure such as roads, drains, bridges and recreation facilities. The approved budget does not close libraries, rural service centres, arenas, or community supports. “Both Council and staff are putting in a great deal of effort to strategically balance inflation, societal challenges, and lack of upper-level government funding while ensuring infrastructure and services are maintained and improved for the residents of Chatham-Kent going forward,” said Mayor Canniff. “This increase, which is much lower than we originally anticipated, will help us maintain our extensive infrastructure and help address our community’s increasing need to invest in social issues that are becoming increasingly common throughout cities Canada-wide.” McDonald said she “learned a lot” in her first budget since taking over from Steve Pinsonneault, who vacated his Ward 3 seat to join the PC Party in the Ontario government in June. “It was great to hear from councillors who had been here much longer than I’ve been, and it was good to see how the process works, said McDonald. “We came in lower than last year, but we’re still facing a lot of pressures.”
Perhaps thinking outside of the box can spark Manchester City back to lifeNone
Oshae Baker: A Skyhawk Legend Who Left His Mark on UT Martin FootballSmart scores 25, leads Grizzlies to 131-111 win over Pistons