COMING EVENTS
PARKSTON
Weekly
Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon will meet Friday at 8 p.m. at the Avera St. Benedict Health Center Meeting Room. For more information, call 928-3182.

Thursday, December 13
Hutchinson County V.F.W. Post 3298 will hold its next meeting at 7 p.m. at the Parkston National Guard Armory in the Guard classroom. For more information, or if you want to be added to email list, please call Post Commander at 605-630-0771.

TRIPP
Wednesday, December 12
The Tripp-Delmont School Board will meet at the Tripp Attendance Center at 6:30 p.m.

AREA
Weekly
Alcoholics Anonymous will meet Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Ethan Methodist Church basement. For more information, contact Jean at 928-7266 or Joe at 227-4303.

Tuesday, December 18
The Hutchinson County Commissioners will meet in the Courthouse in Olivet at 9 a.m.

December sobriety checkpoints announced
State Department of Public Safety officials want you to celebrate the holidays, but be careful in doing so.
To discourage people from trying to drive after having too much to drink at a holiday celebration, the department has planned 19 sobriety checkpoints during the month. The checkpoints will be held in 15 different counties.
Monthly checkpoints are funded by the South Dakota Office of Highway Safety and conducted by the South Dakota Highway Patrol. The checkpoints are designed to discourage motorists from drinking and then driving.
Checkpoints will be held in the counties of: Brookings, Brown, Beadle, Brule, Butte, Charles Mix, Clay, Codington, Lincoln, Meade, Pennington, Roberts, Spink, Stanley and Yankton.

Winter sports underway
Now that the Parkston Trojans girls and boys baskeball teams and wrestling team have started play, the winter sports now are all in action.

Daugaard’s last budget offers increases in education, state pay
With an estimated $53 million increase in revenue for fiscal year 2020, Governor Dennis Daugaard proposed a series of spending increases for education, state salary policy and medical providers during his budget address.

Loan funds help Parkston Rural Fire Protection District finance new fire hall
Southeastern Electric Cooperative received funding from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Economic Development Loan and Grant Program to provide a zero percent interest loan of $300,000 to the Parkston Rural Fire Protection District.

Employee recognition
Avera St. Benedict honors employees celebrating 245 years of service to patients and residents.

Gymnasts win Wagner Invitational
The Parkston-Ethan-Hanson gymnastics team continued their strong showings with a first place in the Wagner Invitational, December 8.

Parkston, Tripp-Delmont/Armour basketball teams start season
The Parkston Trojans and Tripp-Delmont/Armour Nighthawks all started the new season with mixed results.

USDA payments aid farmers hurt by trade war with China
South Dakota farmers recently received $19.4 million in payments from the federal government to offset losses due to an ongoing international trade war that has devastated two major agricultural industries in the state--soybeans and hogs.

Area farmers recognized in the 2018 South Dakota Soybean Yield Contest
Soybean farmers from Minnehaha, Hutchinson and Moody Counties are the winners of the 2018 South Dakota Soybean Yield Contest.

SDSU Extension encourages families to discuss aging
As you think about yourself as an older person, what do you see?

The government tries yet again to regulate tobacco products
The Food and Drug Administration just announced it would once again try to regulate tobacco products.

NRCS South Dakota announces EQIP program signup deadline December 21
United States Department of Agriculture officials announce December 21 as the batching date for applications for the popular Environmental Quality Incentives Program administered by the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service.

OPINION
Carefully sharing time with those we love
There's certainly magic in the air as December unfolds. Yet, also in the air are those unseen viruses that can cause influenza and other seasonal illnesses.

Tripp Star-Ledger


Scenes from Hometown Christmas
The second annual Tripp Hometown Christmas drew large crowds for all the events this past weekend.

Science is her specialty
At Tripp-Delmont, there are a lot of new staff that are joining the students learning experience and journey.

Fall sports come to an end
As the nice, warm weather came to an end, so did the fall sports at Tripp-Delmont.