Cap City

A cool concept devised by Native Americans will play a central role in the community garden at Butler Elementary School in Springfield this coming school year. Based on the idea of “companion planting,” Butler Elementary’s Three Sisters Garden will involve planting corn, beans and squash together, using each plant’s traits to improve growing conditions. The […]

Getting around Springfield without a car just got a bit easier. The Springfield Mass Transit District announced last week that they’ve integrated their bus schedules with Google Maps and several other online map services, making it simple to get directions for using public transportation. If you’re used to the old way of squinting at the […]

Attorneys for former employees of Jeffrey “I’m Broke” Parsons, who made and lost a fortune buying and selling precious metals and other valuables, may not read IT, but judges apparently do. Parsons owes more than $12 million to ex-employees who say they were cheated out of wages, but he has pled poverty and so has […]

There’s bad blood among the troops in the Sangamon County sheriff’s office. Deputy Travis Koester called the cops on June 2 to report that he’d just been confronted by Deputy Travis Dalby at a gym on Wabash Avenue. “If it isn’t work related, you need to keep my name out of your mouth,” Koester reported […]

A Springfield woman has been sentenced to prison by a Nevada judge for passing bad checks worth $160,000 at casinos. In April, the same woman was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison in an unrelated embezzlement case. Illinois Times covered the federal case in May. Susan Satterlee of Springfield will serve her 46-month sentence […]

Goodbye, eyesores. The Springfield City Council approved the purchase in June of 71 properties from Sangamon County to demolish the buildings for blight relief under a program started in 2012.  The city paid $45,369 total for the properties scattered throughout the city’s core and near east side. The purchase was made possible through what’s known […]

Springfield police handled a bizarre standoff earlier this month when a man wielding a baseball bat allegedly began attacking his neighbors. Gregory Bosie of Springfield was arrested on June 15, following an hours-long standoff with police at his apartment on North Fifth Street. According to a police report about the incident, Bosie put several of […]

Free admission to the state fair on its first night has been a longstanding tradition in Springfield. No more. This year, the Department of Agriculture plans to charge $5 to enter the fairgrounds on the evening of Aug. 11, the fair’s opening night (officially called Preview Night), which has long been known for a parade […]

One of the best things about working in journalism is getting to learn new things nearly every day. On June 10, we had a chance to look over our work from the past year at the Illinois Press Association’s annual awards convention, and it’s incredible how many different topics we covered in 2015. From homelessness […]

On June 2, a group of statewide public health professionals participated in a Rural Health Summit at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Springfield in an effort to decrease Illinois’ heroin and opioid death tally. Last year in Sangamon County, there were 31 opioid-related deaths, which included various prescription pills and heroin, according to the Sangamon […]