Without fanfare, Dr Randy Rhine was officially hired Tuesday by the Nebraska State College System Board of Trustees as the 11th president at Chadron State College.

Rhine had been Interim President since the retirement of Dr Janie Park last May and was named as the choice to be permanent president by Chancellor Stan Carpenter in November, but that action had to be confirmed by the trustees. Even though Rhine was certain the trustees would do so, he says it felt good when they did.

Board of Trustees chairman Cap Peterson of Wayne calls Rhine “an excellent choice for president” who will make the school “an even stronger institution than it is today.”

Rhine began his career in education with 2 years as director of Adult Basic Education for the U-S Department of Agriculture in his native Arkansas, then spent 12 years in a variety of posts at the University of Arkansas in the Division of Continuing Education.

He went to Montana State University-Billings in 1996 as Dean of the College of Professional Studies and Lifelong Learning…working under Dr Park, who was a vice-president.

He joined her again at Chadron State in late 2005…just a few months after she began her presidency, and became Vice President of enrollment and student services and director of college relations the following year.

No date has been set for Rhine’s formal inauguration as president, but it’s expected to be later this year.

Triple A, which calculates gasoline prices in all states on a daily basis, listed the average price of gas in Nebraska Monday at $3.10 a gallon, with $3.01 a gallon in Grand Island the lowest price in the 7 metropolitan areas it checks in the state.

That’s sky-high compared to Chadron, where a gas war at 4 convenience stores has prices down to $2.56 a gallon for cash and $2.58 with a credit card.

Corey Pourier…co-owner of Big Bat’s Shell, the station with the same price for cash or credit…says January has been a slow month, leading one of the others to start dropping prices to bring in customers and make up for the lost margin on in-store sales. The other stores have lowered their prices to stay competitive.

Pourier says the increased demand for gasoline has caused his company some problems. They normally purchase their gas from a wholesaler 90-miles away in Rapid City, SD, but that market’s been tight because of the sharply increase demand in the oil boom areas of North Dakota.

Pourier…whose father is the namesake founder of the company…says the closure for maintenance of the Wyoming Refiners plants in Cheyenne and Newcastle have also tightened supplies of gasoline.

As a result, Big Bat’s has had to scramble at times to get shipments, at least once going over 220 miles each way to a dealer in North Platte and paying 20-cents a gallon more than in Rapid City.  Pourier says it’s tough for the company to know where it’s going to get fuel and how much that gas is going to cost.

As for the Chadron gas war, Pourier has no idea when it will end. He’s just telling customers to enjoy it while they can.

     The Chadron City Council had one of its longest-ever workshop sessions last night, spending over  4-1/2 hours getting updates and details on about a dozen issues…some pressing, some longer-term.

Mayor Karin Fischer expected a long meeting since 12 different items were on the agenda, and wasn’t upset or disappointed it ran as long as it did.  Council members were upbeat at its end, and Fischer says the depth and breadth of the discussion was exactly what she’d hoped to see.

Paris Fisher…the newest councilman and no relation to the mayor…liked the information presented and the interaction between council members and staff  so much he suggested holding similar meetings on a regular basis, possibly as often as every 3 months.

About a quarter of the night was spent on the massive renovation and expansion of Chadron’s downtown stormwater drainage system and how to pay its roughly $4-million dollar cost. City Manager Wayne Anderson said Chadron LB-840 Reauthorization Committee is recommending funding the project by asking voters to renew the half-cent economic development sales tax that sunsets next year.

The panel proposes that 80% of the proceeds…about $320,000 a year…go to pay off bonds for the storm sewer project and the remaining 20% go to community development and better projects. That’s roughly the same split as in the current LB-840 program…which helped fund the new Chadron Community Hospital.

During last night’s occassionally emotional discussion, councilman Dr John Gamby…who’s returned to the council after a 2-year hiatus from 20-years of service…objected to the size and options for the project, saying that “others in the business” were telling him the city was getting “screwed over” by the engineer…the Leo A Daley firm of Omaha.

Gamby proposed letting the LB-840 tax expire…saying a renewal would “go down in defeat”…and instead using half of the city’s basic 1-cent sales tax for the drainage project. Gamby said the base tax…approved in the early 1980s…was to fund street work and lower property taxes, but had failed to do either.

Anderson offered a fact sheet showing the city’s sales tax and property tax numbers over the years…with the tax rate going up from a little over 64-cents per hundred the first year of the sales tax to 71-cents in 1995, then dropping to about 34-cents in 2000 before settling in between 29 and 37-cents before the council upped the rate to 42-cents two years ago.

Anderson warned that putting half the sales tax toward the project would require either a 16-cent increase in the property tax rate or cutting spending about $320,000 a year. He also listed nearly 80 jobs created by businesses that received LB-840 loans or grants and 16 community betterment projects totaling nearly $174,000 that were funded by the sales tax.

Anderson said he plans to ask the city council at one of its next meetings to approve sending the LB-840 proposal to the voters at a special election in late March or early April. He also said he’ll ask for a referendum later in the year on a proposal still being developed for a joint project with Chadron State College to enclose the city’s outdoor swimming pool with added amenities as a replacement for the now demolished Armstrong pool.

Anderson emphasized that the $3-1/2-to-$4-million dollar cost estimate is very rough since the city’s chosen consultant has yet to determine what the public wants in the new building, what is feasible, and the best way to achieve that. Anderson also said professional grant writers have already offered their services…free of charge…so there’s no way to know how much or what type of funding will be requested from Chadron residents.

Two indictments have been handed down by a Scotts Bluff County grand jury  that has concluded its investigation into the July 11, 2008 death of two year old Juliette Geurts of Gering. 

KNEB Radio in Scottsbluff reports the indictments filed in Scotts Bluff County District Court by special prosecutor Jim Zimmerman charge the boyfriend of the child’s mother, Dustin Chauncey, with child abuse resulting in death (a penalty of 20 years to life in prison if convicted), involuntary manslaughter (1 to 20 years in prison if convicted) and furnishing false material to authorities to impede their investigation (up to a year in jail if convicted).

The child’s mother Charyse Guerts, is charged with being an accessory to a felony (up to five years in prison if convicted) and furnishing false material to authorities to impede the investigation (up to a year in jail if convicted).

Geurts, Chauncey and another male were in the Gering home when Charyse reported she found Juliette dead in her crib. The case has been investigated as a homicide after the autopsy showed the child died of blunt force trauma.

The grand jury had been meeting since Wednesday of last week. Juliette’s aunt Monica Hall, who had been critical of the investigation, organized a petition drive that was successful in getting enough signatures to convene the grand jury.