Schools, local government offices, services and many businesses closed as a winter storm entered the region Thursday.
Every school in Ross, Pickaway, Fayette, Pike, Highland, Fairfield had closed for the day, while Jackson County schools started in session Thursday, but are dismissed early.
All area sports activities for Thursday cancelled.
The National Weather Service added an Ice Storm Warning for the region at 11:23am, going through 7am Friday going along with the Winter Storm Warning for the entire state. Many of the TV meteorologists are saying they “can’t remember this happening in decades, possible as far back as the 1978 Blizzard.”
The Ice Storm Warning covered a line with Ross, Fairfield and Highland Counties to the north, going south to the Ohio River and into Kentucky.
Most area counties went to snow emergency status, including Level 3 for Ross, Pike, Fayette, Pickaway, Highland, Jackson, Hocking and Fairfield counties.
WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY IN EFFECT UNTIL 10am FRIDAY MORNING. ICE STORM WARNING IS CANCELLED. Light snow continuing. Additional snow accumulations of up to one inch. Portions of Central, South Central and Southwest Ohio and Northeast and Northern Kentucky.
Friday A chance of snow, mainly before noon. Cloudy, with a high near 21. North wind 9 to 14 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.
Friday Night Mostly cloudy, with a low around 0. Wind chill values as low as -12. West wind 3 to 6 mph.
Saturday Mostly sunny, with a high near 21. Northwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the morning.
(Columbus)—Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has announced that $14.9 million in American Rescue Plan (ARPA) Supplemental Block Grants funds will be used to help strengthen Ohio’s statewide mental health and addiction care services system, specifically in the areas of youth prevention and early intervention services.
“We know that 75% of substance use disorders and mental illness begin before the age of 25, and prevention and early intervention strategies are vital to building resilience and opportunities for long-term health,” said Governor Mike DeWine. “These dollars will make key investments in substance use disorder and mental health prevention programs and treatment services to help Ohioans live their best and healthiest lives.”
“Through close partnerships and collaborations with our community partners, these investments will be targeted in ways that facilitate more responsive, agile, and effective interventions supporting lifelong health and recovery for all Ohioans,” said Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (OhioMHAS) Director Lori Criss.
The funds will be distributed over the next four years and are broken down as follows:
Primary Prevention
$5M ($1.25M per year) for community coalitions and youth-led programs to address marijuana and alcohol prevention. These funds will be awarded on a competitive basis with a goal of reaching up to 250,000 individuals over the next four years.
$5.4M to support public health campaigns designed to enhance the perception of harm of alcohol and marijuana use.
Coordinated Specialty Care for First Episode Psychosis
$2.3M to fund two pilot First Episode Psychosis Coordinated Specialty Care Virtual Teams in year two and six additional teams in years three and four. Using telehealth to expand services, specialists at the Ohio State University Early Psychosis Intervention Center (EPICENTER) will provide medication management, psychotherapy, and family support and education. Individuals with first episode psychosis will access specific coordinated specialty care services through their local community mental health center (i.e., case management, education and vocational support and on-site nursing and medication management). EPICENTER will provide training and ongoing consultation.
$1.8M to mitigate losses for uncompensated care at 17 existing First Episode Psychosis/Early Serious Mental Illness teams in the following counties: Allen, Athens, Auglaize, Butler, Clermont, Coshocton, Cuyahoga, Delaware, Fairfield, Fayette,Franklin, Gallia, Greene, Guernsey, Hamilton, Hardin, Highland, Hocking, Jackson, Lorain, Lucas, Mahoning, Meigs, Montgomery, Morgan, Morrow, Muskingum, Noble, Perry, Pickaway, Pike, Portage, Ross, Stark, Summit, Trumbull, Vinton, Washington, Wood.
$307,926 for the purposes of adopting Healthcare, Outcomes, Network, Education (HONE) developed by Yale University to better collect outcomes on Ohio’s First Episode Psychosis clients.
As part of the ARPA block grant funding, OhioMHAS is also this month releasing $2.98 million in COVID mitigation funds to Ohio’s Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Boards (ADAMH) to be used by boards and community behavioral health providers for COVID testing, PPE purchases, contact tracing, healthy environment maintenance, and other efforts to prevent spread of COVID-19, as well as for behavioral health services for individuals in short-term housing who are at elevated risk of contracting COVID. These are one-time allocations to Ohio’s ADAMH boards for local distribution.
“We know our front-line providers continue to struggle with the effects of the variants of COVID-19, and these funds will help them continue to provide critically needed services safely,” added Criss.
(Waverly) – People in and around Pike County will soon have a new place to learn how to stay safe on the water. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) is building a new Boater Education Center at Lake White State Park.
“I’ve loved seeing more Ohioans on our lakes and rivers over the past few years, rediscovering an appreciation of the water,” ODNR Director Mary Mertz said. “While boating can offer quality family time, new boaters mean more people need to learn the ins and outs of operating these vessels. We are excited to be able to provide that with this new education center.”
The new building will include a 2,020 square-foot park shelter with storage rooms, restrooms, patios, and a pavilion area. The building will host education courses for new boaters and will be available for community use. Classes will include topics such as operating safely, legal requirements, water sports, and what to do in a boating emergency. Anyone operating a boat in Ohio powered by more than 10 horsepower must provide proof of boater education. ODNR offers study guides to help people meet those requirements.
The new center is expected to be complete in the spring of 2022. Total cost is estimated at $852,400.
(NWS)- A Winter Storm Warning has been issued for parts of southern Ohio this weekend.
National Weather Service Logo
The National Weather Service placed the Warning from Noon Sunday through 7am Monday (1/16-17/22).
Heavy snow is expected with total snow accumulations of 3 to 6 inches, with locally higher amounts. Some brief mixing with sleet or freezing rain is also possible, with little to no ice accumulation expected. The counties impacted are Fairfield, Ross, Pickaway, Hocking, Adams, Pike, Scioto and Athens counties.
A Winter Weather Advisory is listed for Fayette, Highland, Clinton and Brown counties, which are expecting 2-4 inches of snow with some brief mixing with sleet or freezing rain also possible. Little to no ice accumulation expected.
Northeast Kentucky and West Virginia counties will also be impacted by this storm, which could also produce ice storms in the Carolinas and Virginia along the I-95 corridor, which was hammered by heavy snow two weeks ago.
This could change as the storm moves closer to our region.
(Athens)– The Jackson County Health Department is working in partnership with Ohio University to train and deploy 13 community health workers to address public health concerns and impacts of COVID-19 across 11 counties.
The project was made possible through a $4.5 million grant which was secured with the help of the Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health. The grant will train workers in Athens, Gallia, Hocking, Jackson, Lawrence, Meigs, Perry, Pike, Ross, Scioto and Vinton counties.
The Alliance was created in October 2017 as a partnership between OHIO and the University of Toledo and is made up of Ohio University employees. Rick Hodges, director of the Alliance, said projects like this are what the organization was created to do.
The organization seeks to tackle problems at the local level using community members because they have a better understanding of their problems than outsiders. For Southeast Ohio, these problems are wide-reaching and complex.
Melissa Kimmel is an Executive in Residence with the Alliance. She said Southeast Ohio residents have health factors which put them more at risk of catching COVID-19.
“Our communities in Appalachia tend to have a higher rate of chronic illnesses and those factors make COVID-19 more impactful,” Kimmel said. To address this, the Alliance is training these community health workers to work on the front lines and improve health literacy in the region.
A community health worker is a community member who receives training in advocacy and brokerage for health care resources and health changes. The key factor that makes community health workers a fit for this project is the fact they come from the community.
“Sometimes people don’t necessarily trust health care and authority in the region, and these are people who speak like them and look like them being trained and returning to their communities to make them healthier,” Keri Shaw, an associate professor at Ohio University, said.
Kevin Aston, health commissioner with the Jackson County Health Department, said these workers are key when it comes to health measures like vaccinations.
“There’s no shortcut to building trust,” Aston said. “Folks who have interacted with me and my staff before the COVID emergency have been much more receptive to listening to what I and my staff have to say because we’ve spent time building those relationships.”
Community health workers can facilitate those connections. The grant gives community members the chance to receive credible health information from their neighbors rather than outsiders.
There is not a complete lack of community health care workers throughout Southeast Ohio, but Shaw says there is room for growth. Several county health departments currently employ community health care workers, but greater challenges limit health care accessibility. Hodges said the phenomenon of community health workers is a new, but severely needed.
“This answers a need we’ve had in health care for a very long time,” Hodges said. “The lack of it has contributed to poor outcomes and I think the presence of community health workers is going to improve them significantly.”
Those greater challenges Shaw mentioned include things like the age of the population, a resistance to seeking outside assistance, transportation, poverty, food options and housing issues. Due to these challenges, health care is not always accessible for Southeast Ohioans and COVID-19 only further complicated the issue.
“I live in a suburb of Columbus, I have great health insurance and I can walk into any provider of my choice within an hour if I need to and get great care,” Hodges said. “People who live in Appalachia who don’t have access to good insurance or face issues like transportation don’t have those choices. There are good primary care providers in Appalachia, but if you can’t get to them, it’s an additional barrier.”
Shaw, Hodges and Kimmel all stressed that the perception good health care is simply absent from the region or people in Appalachia just don’t make good health care decisions is patently false. The problem is the lack of access and that’s what the grant seeks to address.
To implement the project, Ohio University chose to work with the Jackson County Health Department because it is uniquely positioned to best meet the goals of the grant.
“Jackson County is a good fit to house this because the location is central to other counties in the area,” Kimmel said. “There’s a regional understanding of health that has been cultivated and the relationships between other health departments and Jackson County were already in place.”
While the $4.5 million will more than double the budget of the Jackson County Health Department and come with a large influx of staff, the Alliance is confident it’s a responsibility the department is equipped to undertake.
Aston added that the regional relationships will help his department transition into the grant smoother, and while he will be busy, he’s more than ready to take on the challenge.
“The challenging part is that there’s still a pandemic going on,” Aston said. “Public health is still really busy with the pandemic and it’s hard now, but it’s going to get easier … there should be an adequate span of control for the work that’s going to happen.”
The team working on the grant is taking a “strength-based approach,” which means highlighting what certain communities do well and replicating it throughout the area.
Currently, applications for the community health worker applications are being reviewed. In the next month or so, interviews will begin. The team expects hires to be completed by mid- to late November and then training will begin soon after.
Aside from the program’s immediate goals, the Alliance is hoping it has long-lasting effects on health care in Southeast Ohio.
“I hope there is an embrace of health literacy, proactive health behaviors and I would really like to see a reduction in the stigma associated with Southeast Ohio,” Kimmel said.
Shaw added that she hopes to see an increase in trust of health departments and public health. She also hopes that there is an increased understanding of the important role community health workers can play.
There’s also hopes among the Alliance that this grant and programs like it will lead to an increased presence of Medicaid providers in the area, which is currently among the challenges factoring into public health in Appalachia.
Aston said he hopes the grant leaves Southeast Ohio in a position to achieve better health outcomes across the board. Factors like substance use, exercise habits and diet all feed into bad outcomes. Aston hopes increased health literacy can curb those outcomes.
Beyond those goals, Aston wants to spread the word about not only Jackson County Health Department, but all health departments in the area.
“I want people to know local health departments care about the citizens they serve, and I’m happy to have another ally on my team,” Aston said. “Sometimes I’ve heard public health officials maligned, but our hearts are in the right place and I’m happy we’re going to get some extra help and hopefully build some trust.”
(Chillicothe) – State Route 220 in Pike County will be closed until further notice between U.S. 23 and North Street inside the village of Waverly due to potential hazardous debris from a structure.
(Photo: State Route 220 Closed in Pike County/ OHGO)
The road will remain closed until the structure can be demolished, tentatively scheduled for mid-December. During this closure, traffic will be detoured via local routes.
Questions regarding this closure should be referred to the Village of Waverly at 740-947-5162
The USDA Farm Service Agency is taking applications for the Grasslands provision of the Conservation Reserve Program through August 20th.
CRP Grasslands is a working grasslands provision of CRP that allows landowners to offer hay and/or pasture acres that will remain in forage production for a 10-15 year period.
While there are benefits for hay and pasture, the program can also apply to fields simply being maintained as grass cover.
Acceptable offers will receive an annual rental payment for the acreage enrolled and be eligible for cost share assistance of 50% on fence, water systems and certain management practices. Small livestock operations receive added points in the ranking factors to encourage participation in the program.
Acres are currently available in the Scioto River Watershed Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. This option offers up to double the rental rates for enrolling eligible acres in the Scioto River watershed which covers most of our coverage area.
For more information, contact the Jackson-Vinton-Scioto-Pike FSA Office at (740) 286-5208/extension 2 or (740) 259-3075/extension 2.
The Pike County community is encouraged to attend a Saturday, August 14th event that will give residents and especially children, an opportunity to meet and and get to know local first responders.
The Hero Meet & Greet will be held at the Waverly Downtown Gym parking lot from 11am- 2pm.
This event gives children the opportunity to sit in the driver’s seats, and even honk the horns of emergency vehicles. Children may have the opportunity to pie a Police Officer in the face or dunk a Firefighter in water.
In an “every-penny-counts” campaign, every little bit makes a big difference.
That was the case over the weekend when 9-year-old Ethan Holbert raised $1,652 with his lemonade stand for the Garnet A. Wilson Library’s building campaign.
Ethan’s lemonade stand gained support as the afternoon his campaign continued throughout the day Saturday. Photos courtesy Amanda Holbert via Facebook.
Natosha Massie, Director of the library told Litter Media “Ethan’s an avid reader. He and his mom saw the sign for our building project and said he wanted to help.”
Massie says the library has been working towards a goal of $3.4 million and over the last few years has managed to raise $1.1 million. The pandemic has slowed fundraising efforts, but Massie hopes Holbert’s event will help re-energize the campaign. “He raised it all in just five hours work… it’s pretty amazing!”
The library purchased three acres of land behind the Waverly Kroger and the Pike County Service Center along Ohio 335 to be closer to Bristol Village for its residents. That’s where Holbert saw the sign which led to an inquiry by his mother Amanda to ask how they could help.
Mayor Greg Kempton waived the permit for Ethan to set up a tent and sell lemonade, which drew the interest of many passersby, including Kempton and the Waverly Police Department. By the end of the day, he Holbert had a sizable donation for the library.
9-year-old Ethan Holbert with Waverly Mayor Greg Kempton. Photo courtesy Amanda Holbert.
Ethan’s mother, Amanda said he though he might get $200 and was astonished with the final tally. “We are very proud of him. The fundraiser definitely exceeded our expectations!”
Earlier this year, the National Endowment for Humanities offered a matching grant to the library for the building project, which is great news. Massie says the library needs to raise $900,000 to receive the match. Unfortunately, the timing of the matching grant offer doesn’t permit back-dating the fundraising and only includes about $30,000 of the monies already raised. But the mission continues.
Massie was named Director in January of 2020, then came the pandemic. It’s been a long 18-month wait to resume promotion of the campaign… and a Saturday afternoon under a roadside tent by a Waverly Elementary student may be just the kickstart the campaign needed.
An excited Holbert shared his story with the congregation at Morgantown CCCU Sunday morning “At the library, they have a thermometer for totaling the money” said Holbert “and now they’ve got more”.
Since this photo was taken, an additional $50 was donated to raises the total to $1,702. Photo courtesy Amanda Holbert.
Following an incident late Monday evening, the signals at the intersection of S.R. 104 and S.R. 32 are currently down (Tuesday).
Traffic on S.R. 32 is being maintained, but S.R. 104 remains closed in both directions on either side of S.R. 32, with no access to or from S.R. 104.
Pike County ODOT crews are continuing work to clear the intersection of debris.
Plans for a short-term traffic pattern change at the intersection are currently being developed until the signals can be repaired. More information about this short-term pattern change will be forthcoming as plans are finalized.
ODOT District 9 will continue to communicate changes to the situation regularly to keep the public apprised of new developments.
