The city of South Sioux City is about to embark on a notable project that will result in the first road that’s made of plastic in Nebraska, Iowa, or South Dakota.
South Sioux City City Manager Lance Hedquist told Siouxland Public Media that such plastic roads are expected to last longer, and are in place in many foreign nations. Here in the U.S., the closest such roads are in Wisconsin and Colorado.
The road will integrate asphalt with plastic, likely from millions of plastic bags.
South Sioux City Mayor Rod Koch said the road shows the innovative outlook that’s present in South Sioux City. Koch thanked the participation of the Nebraska Environmental Trust funding, which is just over $490,000.
The road will replace a gravel road that leads to the area of the Korean War Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, and the city’s dog park. An Omaha recycling business will provide the plastics, and University of Nebraska and Nebraska Department of Transportation officials will help with the road design.
Hedquist said the design will be settled in the spring months ahead, and the notable plastic road will be constructed either this fall or by spring 2025 at the latest.
Additionally, a Sioux City woman will be sentenced on multiple counts of voter fraud on April 1.
The jury in a federal trial found Kim Phuong Taylor guilty of 52 voter fraud counts in November. Now, her sentencing date has been set, the Sioux City Journal first reported Wednesday afternoon.
Prosecutors laid out a case about her illegally filling out election documents and ballots for members of the Vietnamese community, who had limited ability to read and understand English.
Kim Taylor is the wife of Woodbury County Supervisor Jeremy Taylor, and the jury ruled that she pursued unlawful means to help her husband, who ran for two electoral positions as a Republican candidate in 2020.
The prosecution called several witnesses who testified that the signatures on such voting materials as absentee ballot requests and absentee ballot return envelopes were not their signatures. A few people testified that they went to vote in 2020, only to be told they had voted, which was a huge surprise to them.
Jeremy Taylor has been named an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. Taylor plans to complete his four-year supervisor term through the end of 2024, although three of the other four county supervisors have urged him to resign.
In other news, the Biden administration on Wednesday formally nominated two South Dakotans to fill open seats in the state's federal court system that has been strained for two years.
South Dakota News Watch reported that both people are from Sioux Falls and are graduates of the University of South Dakota School of Law.
Camela Theeler is a state circuit court judge and former assistant U.S. attorney who also worked in private practice in Sioux Falls. Eric Schulte is a litigation lawyer with a firm in Sioux Falls, and a former president of the State Bar of South Dakota.
Their names will next go to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where committee members can question the nominees in a public hearing before reporting them favorably, unfavorably or without recommendation to the full Senate for a floor vote for confirmation.
Ahead of that committee work, their candidacies came after extended negotiation between White House representatives and the offices of Republican U.S. Senators John Thune and Mike Rounds. That arrangement reflected the political reality of appointing judges in a Republican-controlled state under a Democratic administration in a presidential election year, South Dakota News Watch reported.
