The latest blue green algae results for Milford Lake from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) from Monday, August 29th are as follows:

• Zone A: WATCH; Use caution when contacting lake water
• Zone B: WARNING; Avoid contact with lake water, the algae level is unsafe for people and animals
• Zone C: WARNING; Avoid contact with lake water, the algae level is unsafe for people and animals

The public should be mindful of the notices posted in each zoning area.

Blue green algae may suddenly appear or disappear or move as the wind shifts so boaters are asked to use caution and move to clear portions of the lake.

The Junction City Area Chamber of Commerce has a new logo (pictured to the right) and a slew of new members to celebrate it with.

Dennis Beson, Chamber of Commerce CEO says that Chamber of Commerce membership totals have steadily increased since last August.

“When I got here there was 298 members, and now we’re sitting at 342 members,” said Beson.

Beson, having been CEO for a little over a year, credits the growth to the work that has gone in to maintaining and improving the quality of life and business partnerships in Junction City.

“What we hope is that we’re creating an environment where people realize that there is an entity and an organization out there working to try to improve growth and economic development,” said Beson.

And that work to improve “growth and economic development” doesn’t end with the increase in Chamber of Commerce members.

“We’re continuing to work on economic growth in all areas that we can; and trying to bring businesses and contact any people that come to town to welcome them as a business community,” said Beson.

Part of that welcoming for local business owners is knowing that your voice is heard.

The 6.1 property tax mil levy increase adopted in the 2017 Geary county budget didn’t garner the warmest reception but Beson says that he will always have an open door to discuss possibilities and concerns.

“It’s always going to be my position as a Chamber Director to make sure that the voice of the businesses is being heard; so of course, any business members that would like to come in and talk with me and work on some strategies that we can to collectively, and in a partnership way work with the county and city on any issues, I’m always open to that,” said Beson.

The Junction City Area Chamber of Commerce is located at 222 W. 6th Street and can be reached by phone at 762-2632.

For more information visit:  https://www.junctioncitychamber.org/

 

A recent state audit found that some law enforcement agencies were taking advantage of vague state forfeiture laws in Kansas.

The audit alleges that proceeds were used to pay for salaries and other operating expenses.

Tony Wolf, Geary County Sheriff was not thrilled with the state’s findings.

“I think it’s one of [the state’s] attempts to start trying to take away that money from the local entities,” said Wolf.

Wolf argues that with many of the “lucrative” crimes, the best way to hit them is financially – and he said that this is something practiced at a local, state and federal level.

“When we were all children and we got in trouble, what did our parents do – they took something from us; and that’s exactly what this basically is,” said Wolf. “If you’re involved in crimes – a lucrative crime, such as drug dealing – we take away what hits them most – their money.”

Wolf said that we hear about these practices everyday in the federal government.

“The federal government talks about trying to stop ISIS and things like that; what is the first thing that they want to do – they want to go after their money and their funding,” said Wolf.

Wolf argues that “this is kind of a domestic situation of a terrorist entity with drug dealing, and drug trafficking; what do you do – you go after their money, you hit them where it hurts them, you go after their funds.”

The state forfeiture laws as they are support law enforcement at all levels being able to deter crime by taking the illegally acquired assets.

“When we make that stop, we determine that the money that individual has or the items that they have are being used to further their criminality, that’s what we do – we seize it,” said Wolf.

Note:  This article does not intend to insinuate that Geary County was cited in the audit. This is the Geary County Sheriff’s response to the information released.

At 11:43 pm on August 28th, the Junction City Police Department and emergency medical personnel responded to a call at room 123 in the Budget Host Motel in Junction at 820 S. Washington Street.

Upon arrival, contact was made with the victim whom received a single stab wound to the chest.

Karlie L. Jones, 19, of Wichita was identified as the victim and transported to Geary Community Hospital after being treated on the scene.

During the investigation, 22 year old Luis Caicedo-Mosquera of Grandview Plaza was identified as the suspect and an arrest was made on suspicion of Attempted Murder at 3:36 am Monday, August 29th.

Law enforcement officers have learned that the victim and suspect had been communicating over the internet in reference to adult escort activities.

Caicedo-Mosquera was detained at the Geary County Detention Center on a no bond status pending a first appearance in Geary County District Court.

This incident is still under investigation.

 

A total of 4,095 youth in the Junction City community were served meals during the Summer Picnic Parties sponsored by Live Well Geary County.

The program, which utilized food provided by the Kansas Food Bank in Wichita, provided nutritious meals to children from low income families during the summer time period when schools were not in session.

Six lucky children who participated in the program were the winners of a bicycle and helmet. Those were presented by Live Well officials on Saturday in Heritage Park. There were a lot of volunteers for the Summer Picnic Parties, explained Marty Rombold. “Churches, organizations stepped up. Daily from May 31 to August 12 they would pull out tables, pre-packaged food from the Kansas Food Bank that had nutrituously balanced meals along with milk. And they dragged it out in our Kansas heat setting up so that kids could stop by at any of those six locations from twelve to one every day ( M-F ).

The youth who received a bicycle and helmet included Trevall Coleman, Jaxen Pressgrove, Jo’sya Gomez-Sharp, Aaron Adam, Ian Quigley, and Jeremiah Engel.

 

 

The crime rate is still high in Junction City, but since August 1st it has gone down considerably.

Junction City Police Chief Dan Breci said that there are a number of factors contributing to that.

“There was a 41% increase through June in our crime rate, but as of August 1st it’s dropped to 24%; so if you could correlate that between some soldiers leaving in the last month, you might make a correlation – but I wouldn’t,” said Breci. “It fluctuates – one person could go out and commit 50 burglaries, break-ins to cars, shoot out windows – something bad, and that can really spike the numbers.”

Breci was a guest on ‘JC Now’ Friday morning on 1420 AM – The Talk of JC where he discussed the crime rate, and the numbers that he calls “staggering”.

“The numbers that are always really surprising to me is about the number of arrests; you know, through July or August 1, we’ve arrested 1221 adults and 174 juveniles, and that’s up about 18% from last year…to me for our small community, to me that’s pretty staggering,” said Breci.

Breci said there has been criticism of the JCPD and that “if you look at the numbers of the people we arrest, I think we are very effective at doing our job.”

Breci said that the public doesn’t worry about dogs barking or someone speeding, they want to know they are safe and their families are safe.

“Do we go catch those bad guys – that’s how we’re judged,” said Breci.

With a loss in approximately 2300 military personnel on Fort Riley, the $10.5 billion Flint Hills region economy is in the midst of losses of about six percent in the overall economy.

Charlie Perham, Project Manager, said that the expected impact garnered enough concern to require an impact analysis.

“The Flint Hills Regional Council was prudent enough to seek an OEA (Office of Economic Adjustment) Grant, and they used that grant money to conduct this analysis,” said Perham.

The findings were startling – in a $10.5 billion Flint Hills economy, the military accounts for about half of that; this means that any additional losses in troops to Fort Riley could have very significant impacts on the region.

“Fort Riley is an operational base, so they have a lot more soldiers but a lot less research and development dollars, so at maneuver bases like this it is a direct correlation between when you lose soldiers, you’re losing impact to the economy,” said Perham.

The study covered the Flint Hills region, which covers seven counties, but Perham’s team only researched and studied the five with the most military impact – Geary, Riley, Clay, Pottawatomie, and Dickinson.

Perham said that the Flint Hills strength is also a major weakness.

“With such a high employment rate in the area, the general trend would be that…we’re going to have to incentivize that person to come work for us, so that means a little bit more pay, or benefits or things like that….when communities around the country see high employment rates, the trailing indicator is that wages start to go up,” said Perham.

But the opposite is happening here – Perham and his Deputy Project Manager Matt Schwab agreed that many of the business owners in the Flint Hills communities were unwilling to increase wages or benefits – citing it was “how they’ve always been”.

But, Perham said that in order to counteract any future (which none have been indicated) reductions at Fort Riley, the communities must work together to keep veterans and retirees in the region.

“As the fiscal pressure at the national level and the state level increases, meaning there’s less money to try to do the same amount of things or more things, what that means is – each individual community is going to have less resources,” said Perham adding that the large number of small, rural communities in the Flint Hills can not stand on their own economically.  “What is regionalism at it’s most basic level – it’s teamwork; it’s working together and pooling your resources for a common goal. The common goal here is to grow the economy; so you grow the economy by recognizing what are the most important factors and now you have a third party analysis that says the defense industry here is half of the economy – so that’s the elephant in the room, so you all are going to work together to try to protect that and then you all continue to work together to really grow everything around that.”

Perham adds that the common interest, or investment, that is Fort Riley should bring all of the Flint Hills communities together; but in his team’s research the two largest communities on either side of the military base seemed to want to do anything but.

Allen Dinkel, Junction City Manager said he’s willing to extend olive branches to everyone in the region.

“I think regionalism is important because we survive together as a group…I think every community can’t do everything, one community can maybe do some things a little bit…I think we need to embrace that a little bit to keep people in the whole area,” said Dinkel.

One interesting thing to note is there are approximately 16,000 veterans in the Flint Hills region and only 3600 retirees.

The Matrix Design Group team agreed the number of retirees was small  and somewhat surprising; even more surprising perhaps is where the majority of retirees choose to live.

Most of the 3600 retirees in the area live in Dickinson county – by far. Riley county was second and Geary third of the five counties studied.

What does this say about the Geary county which houses Fort Riley.

“I wouldn’t call living in Dickinson county leaving the area, from the county line to Chapman is only a few miles [but] that speaks on how we need to handle maybe some of our political business from encouraging people to live in the county, be it zoning, be it fees…and to build housing, how do we push that across;and I think that’s something we’ll need to work on in marketing,” said Dinkel.

If nothing more than informing the community of the presence and impact that Fort Riley has in the region, the Matrix Design Group’s presentation was detailed and lengthy.

There are no current projections for additional personnel reductions, but the figures showing the possibilities were staggering.

The Matrix Design Group’s presentation in it’s entirety will be available next week on https://flinthillsciar.com/. Some of the information is available today on the site, the final findings will be published with complete data accessible to the public on the above website within a month.

Saint Xavier in Junction City is beginning a capital fundraising campaign for school improvements.

Saint Xavier School Principal Shawn Augustine said the fundraising goal is $650,000 to $800,000.  This is being worked on through both the parish and the school. “We did a feasibility study for that about one month ago.  Had a team come in and study how that would work, and figure what kind of money we would raise.”

Augustine talked about some of the projects officials would like to accomplish. “The roof being the start. ” He noted the school had started fundraising for an air conditioning project on the Bradley Gym with auction donations in recent years. “We’re hoping that maybe even before the auction this coming April that we may be able to have the funds to even install that, and have it up before the auction begins.”

There will be two teams to work on the campaign. They include a Building Team and a Campaign Team. Augustine noted the Building Team will look for areas where improvements are needed. A list of what needs to be accomplished and the cost will be compiled. Donations will then be sought to toward that.

The feasibility study was done by Betty Johnson and Associates of Lawrence.

The plan is to have the campaign completed by the end of November.

 

KJCK AM, The Talk of JC, will host the 1420 Radio Auction on Thursday from 8:30 – 10 a.m.

During specific 15-minute time frames listeners can call the station at 238-1420 to bid on items ranging from Ben Kitchens Painting including the painting of two rooms which includes supplies and paint valued at $750, to a Munson Prime beef bundle valued at $250.

Some other items to be sold at auction include a 360 Kayaking kayak river trip for four people valued at $150, a Platinum Spa package from The Mane Thing Salon & Spa, $305,  four $50 gift certificates to Coach’s, and a $100 value car wash basket from Champions Car Wash.

The items in the auction will change every 15 minutes.

Tune in to The Talk of JC at 1420 AM Thursday morning to participate in the auction.

The Junction City / Geary County Drug Operations Group assisted by the Kansas Department of Corrections State Parole Office, Tuesday, executed search warrants at 820 South Washington Street, Room 116 at the Budget Host Motel, and at 2204 Brookbend in Junction City.

The search warrants culminated after a two-month long investigation into the alleged distribution of crack cocaine within the area.

Authorities report two people were arrested. They include:

–Derrick Lamont Woods, 43, Junction City, on suspicion of two counts each of Sale / Distribution of Crack Cocaine Within 1,000 Feet of a School Zone, Unlawful Use of a Communication Facility to Arrange the Sale / Purchase of a Controlled Substance and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, plus one count each of Possession of Crack Cocaine with Intent to Distribute, and No Kansas Drug Tax Stamp,.

–Toriania D. Griffin, 43, Junction city, on suspicion of two counts of Unlawful Use of a Communication Facility to Arrange the Sale / Purchase of a Controlled Substance and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, plus one count each of Sale / Distribution of Crack Cocaine within 1,000 Feet of a School Zone, Sale / Distribution of Crack Cocaine, Conspiracy to Distribute Cocaine, Possession of Cocaine with Intent to Distribute, Possession of Marijuana, and No Kansas Drug Tax Stamp.

The Drug Operations Group seizure of approximately 14 grams of crack cocaine, 17 grams of powder cocaine, marijuana, $3,000 in U.S. currency, and a 1999 Lincoln Town car.

The Drug Operations Group is a joint task force composed of members of the Junction City Police Department, Geary County Sheriff’s Department and Grandview Plaza Police Department.