Meet In CommonNews

Local news in and around Bath, IL

Journal Opinion · Bath, IL

Officers named in fatal shooting

BATH–Two New Hampshire State Police officers and a Lincoln Police officer discharged their firearms during the fatal shooting of Jeanne Seto near the intersection of Route 112 and Route 302 in Bath in October. https://jonews.com/wp-content/uploads/new_logo-1.jpg 0 0 JO News https://jonews.com/wp-content/uploads/new_logo-1.jpg JO News2026-11-03 18:22:192026-11-03 18:22:19Officers named in fatal shooting

Kirksville Daily Express · Williamsville, IL

Nearby: Williamsville, IL

Truman volleyball earns three first-team All-GLVC honors

Three Truman State volleyball players earned first-team All-Great Lakes Valley Conference honors Wednesday, giving the Bulldogs their first first-team selections since 2019 and their first under head coach David Gannon. Senior setter Tori Creason and junior attackers Autumn Erickson and Laci Neece were voted to the top squad by the league’s head coaches. Creason and Erickson both moved up after earning second-team All-GLVC nods last season, while Neece claimed her first career all-conference selection. Creason anchored the Bulldog attack throughout her senior campaign, tallying 992 assists across 94 sets — an average of 10.55 per set — while guiding Truman to a .220 team hitting percentage. The Shawnee, Kansas, native also added 278 digs, 56 kills, and 37 service aces. Earlier this fall, Creason surpassed 2,000 career assists and became the first player in program history to win the GLVC Setter of the Week award, capturing the honor twice.

Illinois Times · Springfield, IL

Nearby: Springfield, IL

Neighborhood solar fight and Springfield’s unpaid dispatch bill

The Sangamon County Board meeting got personal, financial and a bit awkward. Tamara Kuhn, a Lenhart Road homeowner, came with citations from peer-reviewed research to argue that a proposed neighborhood solar facility would cut nearby property values by thousands of dollars. She said she supports clean energy — but not a utility scale project across from people’s homes — and asked the board to weigh residents’ long term equity against outside profit. Later, Ken Pacha literally jogged into the meeting to press for a recall referendum for local officials. He tied the push for recall power to the recent landlord registry vote (which passed overwhelmingly at the polls), past controversy over county leadership and ongoing work around mental health and public safety — arguing voters should have a direct tool when officials lose community trust. Then came a tense moment over who actually pays for county dispatch services.

Quincy Herald Whig · Lincoln, IL

Nearby: Lincoln, IL

Quincy University senior named 2026 Lincoln Academy Student Laureate

QUINCY — Quincy University senior Megan Schill has been named a 2026 Student Laureate by The Lincoln Academy of Illinois, an annual statewide honor recognizing academic achievement, leadership, and civic engagement. Schill, a native of Grand Forks, N.D., was formally honored alongside 49 other outstanding graduating seniors from Illinois’ four-year, degree-granting colleges and universities during the academy’s 52nd annual recognition ceremony on Oct. 24 at the Old State Capitol State Historic Site in Springfield. Each recipient received the Abraham Lincoln Civic Engagement Award, a Lincoln medallion, a challenge coin, and a $1,000 stipend. “We at Quincy University are honored each year to see one of our graduating seniors recognized by the Lincoln Academy for outstanding academic achievement and character,” said Quincy University President Brian McGee. “Megan Schill, an impressive student and scholar, is our Lincoln Academy honoree for this year.

Norly News · Peoria, IL

Nearby: Peoria, IL

Civic Tech in Small Towns: Low-Budget Wins

Civic technology wins in small towns rarely start with software. They start with reuse. An open standard lets a town plug its complaint inbox into apps residents already carry. Code one city published runs in another after a few days of setup. The pattern is on the record. Bloomington, Indiana built an open source service-request system. Per Open311.org, it was redeployed in Columbus, Indiana and Peoria, Illinois. The catch is capacity. A town of a few thousand has no dev shop and no procurement office. Its budget rules out enterprise contracts. That is why workable civic tech for small towns borrows instead of builds, and why the borrowable parts matter more than the demos. The same delivery logic runs through benefits payment modernization in state and federal systems, and this site follows both threads in its civictech coverage. What an Open Standard Buys a Small Town Open311 is a spec, not a product. The GeoReport v2 format is its core. The project finalized it on March 11, 2011.

Tryon Daily Bulletin · Morton, IL

Nearby: Morton, IL

Pumpkins and Thanksgiving

Cooler mornings, falling leaves, and Thanksgiving anticipation; is there a better month than November? You will notice a different format this month. It’s just one sister cooking. Lucy has been recovering in rehab from a stress fracture in her back. But she’s doing well, and we hope she can be back home in time for Thanksgiving. But I have some delicious recipes for you. But first let’s talk pumpkin. The oldest evidence of Cucurbita pepo is pumpkin fragments found in Mexico, dated between 7,000 and 5,500 BC. One theory regarding the origin of the name “pumpkin” relates to the “Massachusett” word, used by the Wampanoag people, “pôhpukun”, meaning “grows forth round”. This term may have been used when introducing pumpkins to English Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony, located in present-day Massachusetts. In 2017, the United States produced over 1.5 billion pounds of pumpkins. According to the Illinois Department of Agriculture, 95 percent of the U.S.