News

By Reed Anfinson
Publisher
Swift County Monitor-News

“It is still COVID, COVID everywhere,” Dr. Cindy Firkins Smith, vice president of rural health at Carris Health, told the Swift County Health Services Governing Board Monday night.

There were 104 COVID-19 positive patients throughout CentraCare’s system Monday morning. “That is a huge number,” she said. SCBHS is affiliated with CentraCare and its Carris facility in Willmar.

While the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Minnesota is decreasing, it is a trend yet to be felt in much of rural Minnesota, she said. “The patients we have in our hospitals are really critically ill and they are spending a long time in the hospital...”

For more on this story, and to keep up on all the latest in area sports, subscribe to the Swift County Monitor-News print edition or our PDF internet edition. Call 320-843-4111 and you can get all the local news and sports delivered to you!

By Reed Anfinson
Publisher
Swift County Monitor-News

Swift County Treasurer Ron Vadnais has formally notified the county board of commissioners that he will not seek re-election to an 11th four-year term in 2022.

By Reed Anfinson
Publisher
Swift County Monitor-News

As work began on remodeling the Swift County Law Enforcement Center basement, the construction company ran into plumbing lines that went through a load-bearing wall that was a footing for the building.

 “It was a concrete structure that couldn’t be moved,” Commissioner Eric Rudningen, District 5-Kerkhoven Township, told fellow commissioners at their Oct. 19 meeting.

The structural challenge wasn’t in the building plans nor the remodeling schematics for the building, he said. There were also some air handling and ductwork issues that caused additional changes to the original remodeling plans...

For more on this story, and to keep up on all the latest in area sports, subscribe to the Swift County Monitor-News print edition or our PDF internet edition. Call 320-843-4111 and you can get all the local news and sports delivered to you!

By Reed Anfinson
Publisher
Swift County Monitor-News

The Benson area’s first frost came early Saturday morning when it fell to 30 degrees. Frost covered windshields and sat lightly on the green grass. Coming Oct. 16, it tied for the fourth latest frost on record. The records go back to 1952.

The latest first frost recorded in the Benson area was in 1963 when it held off until Oct. 27. The second latest frost was recorded in 1994 when it came Oct. 25.

Though the area saw its first frost, it was not necessarily a killing freeze. Many plants that were outside overnight still look healthy. That may not be the case later this week when morning lows are forecasted to fall into the upper 20s Thursday and Friday...

By Reed Anfinson
Publisher
Swift County Monitor-News

Swift County has already seen its highest monthly count of COVID-19 cases for 2021 and there are still 11 days to go in the month.

As of Monday, the county has posted 100 cases of COVID-19 compared to 88 in April and 85 in September. The county’s record high for cases came in November 2020 when 368 were recorded. November 2020 saw 184.

Swift County has seen 19 deaths from COVID-19 but the majority of them were in November and December last year. There were six deaths in November 2020 and eight deaths in December 2020. The county has only seen four deaths so far in 2021 with the most recent one recorded Sept. 8...

For more on this story, and to keep up on all the latest in area sports, subscribe to the Swift County Monitor-News print edition or our PDF internet edition. Call 320-843-4111 and you can get all the local news and sports delivered to you!

By Reed Anfinson
Publisher
Swift County Monitor-News

Swift County plans to focus the $1,797,084 it has received from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act of 2021 on local government needs.

Since May, the county’s American Rescue Plan Committee has been creating a list of proposed areas of expenditure for the funds. It gave the county board of commissioners their preliminary list at their Oct. 5 meeting.

There was once significant change from an earlier plan to contribute up to $100,000 to a multi-million project to improve broadband service in the City of Appleton through a partnership with Federated Telephone. Commissioners were told that because the city is getting funds from another federal source, it doesn’t qualify to get the ARP funding...

By Joe Wood

According to the Minnesota State Health Department, heart disease is the second-leading cause of death for Minnesotans, following cancer as number one. Most heart disease is preventable, as is true specifically for myocardial infarctions, simply known as “heart attacks.”

Deaths from heart disease in Swift County is about 260 per 100,000, a statistic that suggests that every year 24 people in Swift County will die from a heart attack. One way healthcare providers can prevent these tragic events is by monitoring their patients’ cholesterol and triglyceride levels.

By Reed Anfinson
Publisher
Swift County Monitor-News

As of Oct. 1, Brady Lee is the new owner of the McKinney’s on Southside bar and restaurant business in Benson.

He purchased the business from Scott Vick who held the lease and operated the businesses for the past 13 and a half years having taken on the venue in 2008.

Vick would name the bar portion of the business Scotty’s, with the dining side remaining McKinney’s on Southside...

For more on this story, and to keep up on all the latest in area sports, subscribe to the Swift County Monitor-News print edition or our PDF internet edition. Call 320-843-4111 and you can get all the local news and sports delivered to you!

By Reed Anfinson
Publisher
Swift County Monitor-News

Swift County is on a rapid pace to exceed the number of COVID-19 cases it recorded last month and, perhaps, see a 2021 high.

Last month, the county recorded 85 cases of the deadly disease, three short of the 88 it saw in April. It has already added 77 cases through the first 11 days of October.

Swift County’s peak number of cases came in November 2020 when it recorded 368. December brought another 184 cases. But then case numbers began to fall. By June just four cases were reported and in July only seven. Then the highly infectious Delta variant began to spread in the state and there has been a steady rise in cases since...

For more on this story, and to keep up on all the latest in area sports, subscribe to the Swift County Monitor-News print edition or our PDF internet edition. Call 320-843-4111 and you can get all the local news and sports delivered to you!

By Reed Anfinson
Publisher
Swift County Monitor-News

Some of the original ditch systems constructed to drain water from farmland in Swift County go back to the very early 1900s. At the time, the landowners who benefited from the ditch systems were assessed a levy based on how much they benefited from the drainage systems in the watershed.

However, over the decades new ditches were dug, new tile lines were put in, and pattern tiling evolved to take water away more efficiently from farmland making it more productive. In a fair number of instances, while new farmland was benefiting from the ditches, it wasn’t being assessed.

New Swift County Drainage Inspector Kody Fossum would like to see that change. At the Tuesday, Oct. 5, county board of commissioners meeting, Fossum said he was planning on putting in for a redetermination of benefits on all the joint, judicial, and county ditches across the county...