Custer County Chronicle

Greetings! Today’s article is about Senate Bill 6—to transfer certain monies and create a fund to support capital and infrastructure projects necessitated by expansion of Ellsworth Air Force Base (EAFB). Boy, that’s a mouthful of a bill! What’s it about?
With the huge expansion at Ellsworth Air Force Base, the need for an additional public school in Box Elder is apparent. The proposed elementary school has a price tag of $60 million.

Our country’s national parks are often revered as “the best idea America ever had,” but today, those parks and other forms of public land in America are in worse shape than they were a month ago.
On Valentine’s Day, thousands of federal employees across the country who work on and for our public lands, were terminated with no warning, or even a reason for doing so. Some parks were told to fire their only EMT on staff, or their only locksmith.

Eighty years ago, on Feb. 23, 1945, the free world was inspired by a photograph of six Marines raising a U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi during the battle of Iwo Jima. The moment, captured by Joe Rosenthal of The Associated Press, has been reproduced many times—most poignantly as the model for the Marine Corps War Memorial at Arlington, Va.

At the crackerbarrel in Fall River County last weekend, I asked the question, “Who acknowledges that we need a new prison?” Practically everyone in the room raised their hand. My follow-up question was, “How many of you want to pay the $860 million price tag?” Absolutely no one raised their hand.