THE TIME MACHINE

From past files of The Star News

10 YEARS AGO

December 3, 2009

The City of Medford will spend $450 to ask people to not feed the wildlife.

Aldermen voted 4-3 Tuesday night to approve using park maintenance funds to install the signs in the park. While the signs will ask people to not feed the ducks, there is no city ordinance banning people from feeding animals, so if people feed wildlife there is little the city will be able to do about it.

The issue isn’t so much with people feeding ducks in the park, but with the duck and geese manure left behind from large duck populations. The city has received complaints in the past about the amount of manure on the Riverwalk. As part of the city’s Smart Growth comprehensive land use plan, there was a call for control of the duck population in the parks and this is the first initiative to be brought to council from the plan.

25 YEARS AGO

December 7, 1994

After more than a year of “healing” to salve the wounds caused by a major disagreement over the building issue, the Medford Library Board is closing in once again on the question that caused the disagreement in the first place — whether or not to add on to the present library or build a new library on a different site.

First, however, the board must decide how big to make the library, and how large an area it will serve.

Using standards set by the state regarding shelf space, staff work space, etc., the board at its meeting last week narrowed proposed plans down to two — a 10,608-sq. ft. library, and another of slightly more than 8,000-sq. ft. in size.

50 YEARS AGO

December 4, 1969

The city of Medford’s share of Wisconsin’s 3 percent selective sales tax refunds has reduced the 1969 tax levy from $63.20 per thousand dollars assessed valuation to $58.93 on a thousand. The tax levy on a thousand dollar value shows an increase by $3.65.

Commonly known as the state forgiveness, the amount allotted to the city to relieve real estate and class B personal property tax this year figured at $42,937, an increase over last year by $3,869. Relief from class A personal property figured at 60 percent, the same as last year.

75 YEARS AGO

November 30, 1944

Miss Mildred Zimmerman, Medford high school home economics teacher, whose home is at Wausau, proved herself an able archer by shooting a doe with a bow and arrow. Miss Zimmerman shot the deer when she was hunting near Clam Lake in Bayfield county with Norval Hug on Sunday, Nov. 19, the close of bow and arrow season.

Though she had never hunted with a bow and arrow before, Miss Zimmerman states that she had taken archery in physical education courses when she attended high school and at Stout Institute. Hug also shot a deer that day but it fled and they were unable to track it.

100 YEARS AGO

December 3, 1919

The severe storm on Saturday with a foot of snow and 14 degrees below zero weather made many people who had read Prof. Porta’s prediction think that possibly he knew what he was talking about.

According to the Milwaukee Journal he makes the following statements: “Owing to the strange groupings of six mighty planets, such as has not been seen in a score of centuries,” Prof. Porta writes, “the United States in December will be swept by the most terrific weather cataclysm experienced since human history began.

125 YEARS AGO

December 1, 1894

To the Four Hundred, whose chief aim is to kill time as pleasantly as possible, and whose only trouble about money is that of going to the bank to get it, the problem of existence for the great mass of mankind has little interest, says the New York Herald. Even many who are not of the charmed circle the constitutes “society,” but who live in comparative comfort, pass their lives in ignorance of the fierce and unceasing struggle waged among that class of breadwinners who are forced to rely on strength without skill for their daily sustenance.