News

Benjamin Franklin once said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…” and Medicare has adopted this “weighty” idea. Medicare covers preventative services at 100% to prevent and/or detect diseases early when they are most easily treated. Diabetes is one such disease.

Thursday, March 17th: The Annual Patty’s Parade will be on Thursday, March 17th at 5:30 throughout Main Street, Downtown Montevideo. Friday, March 18th: IV Play live show at the American Legion Post #59.

The Fine Arts Center was one of the topics of discussion at Monday evening’s Montevideo School Board meeting. The board recently advertised a request for proposals, and the end result was one proposal submitted. The proposal was at a cost to the district of $189,000 for the deconstruction of the building. For perspective, the 2020 referendum estimated the cost of deconstruction at around $360,000. “It seems weird to get a bid for this property that actually costs money, but when you look at the big picture it’s actually a cost savings. Especially knowing that we have to do this at some point,” says Superintendent Wade McKittrick.

Please note that the Montevideo-American News now has a new phone number beginning Wednesday, March 16th. The new main office phone number is: 320-435-6300.

Earlier this month, Montevideo-based CURE (Clean Up the River Environment) hosted a webinar to spread the word about a new cooperative solar garden that’s currently in development in an area West of Clara City, to benefit Xcel Energy customers in both Yellow Medicine and Chippewa Counties among others. The cooperative solar garden is being developed by a company called Cooperative Energy Futures that only produces cooperatively owned community solar installations. “Rather than other models of community solar projects, they develop community solar projects as member-owned cooperatives,” explains CURE Energy Democracy Program Director Erik Hatlestad. Several years ago, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission required that Xcel Energy accept community solar projects such as this. “So you’ve seen a lot of different projects that have different kinds of ownership structures and different kinds of actual owners of the projects,” explains Hatlestad. “You’ll see a lot of those large companies, but we really believe as an organization that normal people, rural residents should be making more decisions about what the future of electricity looks like. So community solar is a really great opportunity for residents and renters, and normal folks to participate in clean energy when they might not have otherwise and be a part of a system that is democratically owned by people who are actually being served by it rather than a company from far, far away.”