BEAVER CITY — All six city council members were present for the regular city council meeting on March 15, 2021. Also in attendance were Mayor Leighton Schmidt, who presided over the meeting, Teresa Youngquist (City Clerk), Grant Jorgensen (Utility Superintendent), Jackie Mayberry (Deputy Clerk), Doris Wentling (Beaver Bar), Alex Huntley (private citizen), and Guyla Mills (Valley Voice).

Women, Infants & Children Program (WIC) is the nation’s most successful and cost-effective public health nutrition program. They provide wholesome foods, nutrition education and community support for income-eligible women who are pregnant or postpartum, infants and children up to age five.

We were asking for precipitation. Precipitation we got! The Hill received 2 ¾” of rain, and many areas not too far away reported 3+ inches. That’s plenty for now. And we are grateful that it was in the form of rain vs snow! That would really have been a mess. Calving in the mud is bad enough.

Southwest FFA competed at contests on March 9th at the NCTA Campus in Curtis. Southwest FFA had several teams place well on the day.

Did you think I was gone for good? To all eight of you that read these each week (well, when I actually get around to writing them), I am sorry I have been absent so much lately, but I had something I wanted to say this week. A good number of our local high school students will depart for the State Speech Meet after competing at districts in the past week or two.

From March 21-27, 2021 we’ll celebrate National Agriculture Week in Nebraska. It’s a great opportunity to highlight the hard work our farmers and ranchers do to produce high-quality and crops they raise feed families in our state, across the nation, and around the world.

Last week and early this week, things continued to be busy around here. Committees were busy meeting in executive session, trying to advance bills so that senators could decide on what bill they would like to prioritize for the session. Each senator can prioritize one bill and each committee can prioritize up to two bills. Usually a senator does not like to prioritize a specific bill until they know it has the votes to get out of committee because if it does not and there aren’t enough votes to pull the bill out of committee then they have wasted their priority bill for the year. Having priority bill status means that those bills will be heard on the Legislative floor for debate before other bills that do not have priority bill status.

As a primary care physician, I walk with my patients as they face many of life’s challenges. Facing the diagnosis of dementia may be one of the hardest. Any chronic illness involves loss, but dementia threatens the loss of not only ability and independence, but of the very self.