Francis and 5th streets in downtown St. Joseph will reopen Friday.

According to the City of St. Joseph, the contractor has made progress in the demolition of the Pioneer Building, and has
indicated the streets may possibly open yet Thursday.

The streets have been closed since the fire on November 21.

The sidewalk on the north side of Francis has already been opened up for public access, and businesses have resumed full operations.

“We are extremely pleased the businesses in the immediate area are able to reopen,” said Mary Robertson, communications manager for the
city of St. Joseph. “They have been closed since the fire on November 21, and their businesses have been affected as a result of inaccessibility by the public.”

Fire investigators will be on scene beginning Tuesday, December 27, to start the investigation into the cause of the fire. Once the fire investigation has concluded, the contractor, on behalf of the property owner, will resume complete demolition of the structure. During the course of the remaining demolition and clean-up of the debris, the contractor may request temporary lane closure permits to remove the debris from the property.

For the first time in St. Joseph history, a second drawing of a Shop St. Joseph ticket resulted in a grand prize. 

John and Mae Osborn of Savannah got their winning ticket during a trip to Sears to shop for their grandkids. Mae said she was very excited when they realized they won Wednesday night.

“He (John) picked me up off the floor last night,” Mae said.

The couple said they don’t have any plans yet for the $10,000. Mae said they plan on discussing it.

“I haven’t been told what I’m doing with my half,” John said. “I’ll find out.”

Natalie Redmond is the Vice President of Membership with the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce. She said it’s been a good 10th year for the Shop St. Joseph Program.

“It’s been kind of an epic year for us,” Redmond said. “We’ve had the most merchants, 110 merchants, we gave out the most tickets, 1.2 million and it’s the first time we’ve ever had to go to day two for the winning ticket numbers so it’s definitely been a year of firsts for us, but a great year.” 

Mae works at the Buchanan County Sheriff’s Department and John said he works at Midwest Mobile Radio in St. Joseph.

“We have customers that come in and they support my business that I work at and it’s nice that we’re able to come back out into the community and shop and support the community,” John said. “It just shows that you need to shop locally. I’ll be honest with you, I never thought we’d win anything like this and here we are.”

The Chamber said second chance prize numbers will be displayed today, so shoppers are urged to keep their tickets because they could still be a winner.

The grand prize Shop St. Joseph winning ticket number 0363520 has been claimed.

A check presentation will be at 9 a.m. at Sears in the East Hills Shopping Center.

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The Dec. 21 winning number for the Shop St. Joseph Holiday Program is:

0363520

The shopper with the winning ticket has 24 hours to come forward to claim the $10,000 prize. Shoppers are urged to keep their tickets because if the winner hasn’t come forward by 5 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 22, another number will be announced. This process will continue at 5 p.m. until a winner comes forward with the correct ticket. Exclusions include Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day.

“This is the first time in the history of our program that a winning ticket wasn’t brought forward on the first day,” said Natalie Redmond, Vice President of Membership for the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce. “This is why it’s so important to keep and check your tickets. You never know when someone else might miss their opportunity to win $10,000 because they didn’t keep their tickets.”

Merchants distributed more than 1.2 million tickets this year.

“It makes sense that not all of those tickets will be checked when the announcement is made,” Redmond said. “We have been fortunate in years past to always have been able to award the grand prize right away.”

The winner MUST call the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce at (816) 232-4461 during business hours or (816) 261-3610 after business hours to arrange a time to verify the ticket. He or she MUST come to the Chamber office at 3003 Frederick Ave. before 5 p.m. Thursday to claim the prize. The person with the winning ticket should come to the Chamber to have the ticket verified, not a member of the media. Media members cannot verify a winning ticket.

The winner must be 18 or older. Proof of age, Social Security number, home address and place of employment (if applicable) is required to claim the prize. Chamber of Commerce staff, Chamber officers and their immediate family members (dependents living at the same address) are not eligible to win the grand prize. Participating business owners, managers and employees are eligible to win, with the exception of tickets distributed through their own place of business (including other participating locations).
The winner will be responsible for any applicable taxes.

One winning number per each second-chance prize were also drawn. Those numbers will be announced after the grand prize ticket has been verified.

Two certified public accountants worked with Chamber staff to provide oversight of the program. Roughly 1.2 million tickets were distributed this year through the 110 participating merchants. This is up from 96 merchants in 2015.

This is the 10th year for the local holiday shopping program. The program’s goal is to keep holiday spending in the local economy, so sales tax collected goes back into helping St. Joseph and Buchanan County projects.

New number drawn CLICK HERE.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
(Update 3:52 p.m.) – Shortly before 4 p.m. the winning ticket had still not been claimed. Kristi Bailey with the St. Joseph Chamber said they anticipate posting another number around 5 p.m. If they Chamber released a second grand prize number it would be the first time in the program’s 10 year history.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The winning ticket is still out there in the Shop St. Joseph Program.

The St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce said it’s asking everyone to check their tickets.  The winning ticket number 0815080 came from JCPenney.

Even if you didn’t shop at JCPenney, shoppers are strongly encouraged to keep their tickets because if a winning ticket is not brought forward by 5 p.m. today another randomly drawn number will be announced.

This process will continue at 5 p.m. on until a winner comes forward with the correct ticket. Exclusions include Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day.

The winner MUST call the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce at (816) 232-4461 during business hours or (816) 261-3610 after business hours to arrange a time to verify the ticket. He or she MUST come to the Chamber office at 3003 Frederick Ave. before 5 p.m. Wednesday to claim the prize. The person with the winning ticket should come to the Chamber to have the ticket verified, not a member of the media. Media members cannot verify a winning ticket.

The winner must be 18 or older. Proof of age, Social Security number, home address and place of employment (if applicable) is required to claim the prize. Chamber of Commerce staff, Chamber officers and their immediate family members (dependents living at the same address) are not eligible to win the grand prize. Participating business owners, managers and employees are eligible to win, with the exception of tickets distributed through their own place of business (including other participating locations). The winner will be responsible for any applicable taxes.

One winning number per each second-chance prize were also drawn today. Those numbers will be announced after the grand prize ticket has been verified.

Two certified public accountants worked with Chamber staff to provide oversight of the program. Roughly 1.2 million tickets were distributed this year through the 110 participating merchants. This is up from 96 merchants in 2015.

This is the 10th year for the local holiday shopping program. The program’s goal is to keep holiday spending in the local economy, so sales tax collected goes back into helping St. Joseph and Buchanan County projects.

A counterfeit $100 bill has showed up in the St. Joseph Salvation Army’s Red Kettle Campaign.

“At first glance it looked real, until a closer view revealed Asian type markings, and then I realized it was printed on paper and not cloth as is done with real currency. It is a great disappointment,” said Major Abe Tamayo with the Salvation Army.

The agency said the bill will be turned into the Saint Joseph Police Department.

“In a time of real need we receive phony money,” Tamayo said. “We are at 50 percent of our $349,000 goal, with our campaign running through mid-January. Kettles are out through Christmas Eve at 5 p.m.”

Capt. Jeff Wilson with the St. Joseph Police Department said currently police have not seen a major influx of counterfeit bills but that are still some cases out there. He said in this type of situation a report will be made and detectives will investigate. They also report counterfeit bills to the Secret Service.

“They can take the bill sometimes and the Secret Service can possibly track it back to something that they’re investigating,” Wilson said.”

However he said, in this instance investigating the bill could be difficult if it was dropped in a Kettle.

(News release) – The winning number for the Shop St. Joseph Holiday Program is:

0815080

The shopper with the winning ticket has 24 hours to come forward to claim the $10,000 prize. Shoppers are urged to keep their tickets because if the winner hasn’t come forward by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 21, another number will be announced. This process will continue at 5 p.m. on weekdays until a winner comes forward with the correct ticket. Exclusions include Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
The winner MUST call the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce at (816) 232-4461 during business hours or (816) 261-3610 after business hours to arrange a time to verify the ticket. He or she MUST come to the Chamber office at 3003 Frederick Ave. before 5 p.m. Wednesday to claim the prize. The person with the winning ticket should come to the Chamber to have the ticket verified, not a member of the media. Media members cannot verify a winning ticket.
The winner must be 18 or older. Proof of age, Social Security number, home address and place of employment (if applicable) is required to claim the prize. Chamber of Commerce staff, Chamber officers and their immediate family members (dependents living at the same address) are not eligible to win the grand prize. Participating business owners, managers and employees are eligible to win, with the exception of tickets distributed through their own place of business (including other participating locations).
The winner will be responsible for any applicable taxes.
One winning number per each second-chance prize were also drawn today. Those numbers will be announced after the grand prize ticket has been verified.
Two certified public accountants worked with Chamber staff to provide oversight of the program. Roughly 1.2 million tickets were distributed this year through the 110 participating merchants. This is up from 96 merchants in 2015.
This is the 10th year for the local holiday shopping program. The program’s goal is to keep holiday spending in the local economy, so sales tax collected goes back into helping St. Joseph and Buchanan County projects.

A special report released earlier this week observing areas, including the City of St. Joseph with higher cases of lead poisoning than Flint, Michigan took reporters about two months to complete.

Michael Pell is a Data Journalist with Reuters.  Pell said he began investigating elevated lead levels in children in September with his colleague Joshua Schneyer after covering a story in East Chicago, Indiana.

“The Mayor had to evacuate a housing complex over the summer because of a concern about lead exposure,” Pell said. “If you looked at just the census tract that contained the housing complex on the former industrial site, the Superfund site the percentage of kids with elevated lead levels was much higher than the surrounding areas and the census tract was one of the highest percentages with kids with high lead levels in the state of Indiana.”

Pell said because of that they found that larger testing data sets on county and city levels were obscuring problems in specific neighborhoods. That’s when they decided to submit an open records request to each state for lead testing broken down to the census tract level or by zip-code.  In the end, he said their efforts resulted in data collected from 21 states.

“St. Joseph stood out to us,” Pell said. “There were three census tracts where at least one in five children tested had elevated blood lead levels and there were seven census tracts where 15-percent of the kids tested had elevated blood lead levels.”

In St. Joseph from 2010 to 2015 Pell said around 8,000 children were tested and of those, around 900 tested positive for elevated lead levels.

In November, Pell made the trip from his home in New York to St. Joseph.  That’s when Pell said they spoke to Dr. Cynthia Brownfield who not only works with children with lead problems as a pediatrician with Mosaic Life Care, but also lives in a neighborhood with high levels.

“We spoke with her about some of the tensions in the community between those who want to preserve the historic buildings and also community health,” Pell said. “When you have houses that have been painted god knows how many times, over a nearly 100-year period, with lead paint that puts a lot of lead not just on the walls but every time it chips off, it flakes off or it gets sanded off it puts it in the soil around the house, possibly in the carpet, on the floor, everywhere.”

The Reuters report found nearly 3,000 areas across the country with recently recorded lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint. Pell said they decided to compare the numbers to Flint based on the public response after children there were exposed to lead in their drinking water.

“People were outraged by Flint.  It captured the imagination of the country and even outside of the country,” Pell said. “Just last week congress approved $170-million in aid to Flint.  Money talks.  That’s how concerned people were. Even in a bipartisan area they could get that approved for the city of Flint.  Now on the other hand, the CDC’s total budget for assistance to the states for lead remediation is $17-million.  So congress approved in one swoop 10 times the amount that the CDC has for the entire rest of the United States.”

“The thought process was; if you were outraged by what happened in Flint that there are other neighborhoods where your outrage factor should be even higher,” Pell said.

St. Joseph was one of the most toxic places in Missouri for lead levels.  However, Viburnum was found to be the worst in the state.

“One of the critical factors there was that Viburnum was a mining town,” Pell said. “For decades there probably wasn’t the best procedures to make sure lead was not escaping the facility.”

Pell and Schneyer visited a total of four communities around the country.  To view the report in full CLICK HERE.

 

An Outdoor Interpretive Signage project is now on display at the Pony Express National Museum.

A news release said the purpose of the project is to reach visitors 24 hours each day and continue to convey the story of the Pony Express.

The museum in St. Joseph acted as a pilot site and received a grant from Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area (FFNHA) for this program. Two signs have been developed; one has been placed outside of the entrance to the Museum and the second has been placed outside the entrance of the Pony School, a reproduction one room school house from the 1860s.

The museum said the signs encourage links between the Pony Express Story and FFNHA. This project compliments the work of the Heritage Area in several ways including explaining the importance of communication to California during the Civil War and telling visitors to the museum how the Pony Express and its trail was a vital artery for pioneers going west as well as delivering the mail in only 10 days.

The Museum is open daily from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. on Sunday. Admission rates are $6 adults, $5 seniors, $3 youth, and $1 children 4-6. For further information about programs and events call (816) 279-5059 or visit the museum website at www.ponyexpress.org.