Archives

Residents of Toledo and Vader, your first round of surveys are being mailed on Monday by Econometrica, Inc. Your help is needed in order for your city to be eligible for grants through HUD. This is free money for your city; sewer, streets, parks are all affected by CDBG grants.

The City of Vader and the City of Toledo has been included in a pilot program by HUD through the Department of Commerce to provide an income survey that will hopefully show more accurate income data than the data being currently used by HUD.

The current HUD income data (individual household's income levels in the jurisdiction) has an extremely high error rate 85-95%. This inaccurate HUD data has caused several small communities to lose the ability to qualify for Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding because it shows that the city's percentage of Low-Moderate Income (LMI) households is below HUD's threshold of 51% LMI households. This loss of funding has been a devastating blow to Toledo and Vader and the other small communities affected by the inaccurate data.

How many times in your life have you felt like you were all alone, empty inside, or that you were facing a problem that no one could comprehend?

You are not the only one. There are countless times in life where we buy into this lie that what we are going through is personal to only us, that no one has ever encountered a problem such as ours; therefore, I can speak to no one about it. This may sound like an aggressive statement, but that is a literal attack from the enemy of your soul to keep you from sharing with others and finding power in confession.

Leaders of the Raymond and South Bend School districts have met recently to discuss upcoming Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) rule changes and some of the challenges associated with declining turnout for football. The districts are considering having a "combine", or a "cooperative" high school football program, beginning in the 2020 season.

The WIAA recently decided to allow districts bigger than the 2B classification to use their free and reduced lunch percentages to justify competing with smaller schools, potentially pitting 2B school districts (such as South Bend and Raymond) against much larger rivals. If the two districts request to play as a combine, they would remain much more competitive at the 2B level.

Raymond has a new liquidation store located in the downtown area and residents are enjoying amazing deals. The store has been open since last fall but wanted to get into the swing of things slowly. Now they want the word out they're open and they have great deals daily.

Former Raymond HS track and field superstar Karlee Freeman appears to be picking up right where she left off at Raymond...setting records!