Meg Heaton
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Meg Heaton has been a reporter with the Hudson Star Observer since 1990. She has a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and Native American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
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- Member for
- 5 years 6 months
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After almost two years of touch-and-go leadership at the Hudson Police Department, the new chief of police says he is here to stay. Late last week the Police and Fire Commission offered the job to Sgt. Marty Jensen, a 21-year veteran of the department, and he accepted. Jensen is the HPD's third chief in two years. He was among the applicants in the summer of 2006 after the retirement of Chief Dick Trende. Former Whitewater Chief Jim Coan got the job then but only lasted a few weeks.
The Hudson School District has filled the new position of human resources manager with a face that will be familiar to many students and parents. Before accepting the position in October, Debra Weisert worked in the district as a social studies teacher at Hudson High School and as a counselor at Hudson Middle School. She has lived in Hudson since 2001. Weisert said her experience in education as both a teacher and counselor is valuable in her new job.
I wouldn't work for free but the Star-Observer does have a fringe benefit that kind of amounts to a bonus every day, namely Willis Miller. I mention this because he has been absent of late, a condition that has occurred so rarely in the over 60 years he has been with the newspaper that things just seem a bit off around the place. Willis is recovering from pneumonia at Hudson Hospital and he is making progress, but it could be quicker -- from a purely selfish point of view. It was Willis who convinced me to apply for a job as a reporter at the newspaper 18 years ago.
Hudson Police Department veteran Sgt. Marty Jensen is the department's new chief. The Hudson Police and Fire Commission offered the job to Jensen who accepted at meeting early Friday morning. Jensen, a 21-year member of the HPD was chosen over one other candidate, The Jeff Cummins, police chief of Glencoe, Minn., a city of around 6,000 about an hour west of Minneapolis. This will mark the third time since spring of 2006 that the commission has chosen a new police chief. Eric Atkinson has been acting HPD chief since the resignation of Andrew Smith last August.
The Hudson Police and Fire Commission have scheduled a meeting early Friday morning to make a decision on who will be Hudson's next chief of police. The commission is considering two candidates -- HPD Sgt.
Nine months to the day after Hudson and New Richmond high schools were vandalized, eight of the 14 Hudson High School graduates accused in the case pleaded guilty and heard their sentences. After first rejecting a plea agreement presented by special prosecutor Rich White of the Eau Claire district attorney's office, Judge Scott Needham came up with his own sentence following the guilty pleas of Benjamin Luehrs, Samuel Wegleitner, Michael Perucca, Aaron Ludgatis, Travis Melcert, Andrew Olson, Jacob Walczak and Michael Vanness on 1 count each of misdemeanor criminal damage to property.
Jennifer Veenendall knows firsthand what it is like for children living with autism -- both for the students who are autistic and for their friends and peers in classrooms they share. Veendendall, a school-based occupational therapist in the Twin Cities, has written a book she believes will help promote an environment of acceptance and understanding of the students she works with everyday.
Picture this -- the Hudson Lakefront Library sharing a corner with The Phipps Center and the beautiful St. Croix River. For members of the Hudson Library Foundation and a growing number of supporters around the community, the idea seems like a perfect fit.
What happened when a group of middle school boys got what seemed like a wrong number on one of their cell phones could serve as a warning to other children and their parents. As a result of the incident that took place over several weeks in North Hudson in December, a 20-year-old Somerset man, Hector Antonio Linarez-Mata, has been charged with unlawful use of a telephone-harassment with obscenity, exposing genitals to a child and disorderly conduct, all misdemeanors.
The Hudson High School 2007 yearbook has been selected as the grand prize winner in the Best of Volumes competition conducted by Lifetouch Yearbooks. The award was presented to longtime yearbook adviser and teacher Deb Lee and her staff at last week's School Board meeting by a Lifetouch representative. Along with a framed collage of some of the best of last year's pages, the yearbook will receive $350.