The Corps of Engineers has announced that the 21st annual Assisted Deer Hunt was held this past Friday through Sunday at Milford Lake. A total of 16 physically challenged hunters and 1 youth participated in the outing and harvested 9 antlerless and 2 antlered deer.

The hunters met Friday for an orientation meeting and were assigned volunteer guides who field dressed, loaded and transported the harvested deer for the hunter. A rifle sight in took place prior to the Friday evening hunt. On Saturday and Sunday the hunt began at 5 o’clock each morning with breakfast served by the Geary County Fish & Game Association.

Volunteers and sponsors support the event ranging from the Geary County Fish & Game Association and Milford State Park to Grandpa Boones Cabin and the Clay Center Locker Plant.

If anyone with mobility issues would like to apply for next year’s Assisted Deer Hunt contact the Corps of Engineers office at 785-238-5714.

 

The 1st Infantry Division Band will perform a pair of holiday concerts at the C.L. Hoover Opera House this week. They are scheduled Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Montana prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for a North Carolina man who pleaded guilty to killing an 81-year-old former sheriff.

58-year-old Donald Mack Gray Jr. has pleaded guilty in the June 10 stabbing death of William Joy of Billings. Joy was once sheriff of Big Horn County.

No sentencing date has been set.

Authorities say Gray wanted to return to North Carolina when he spotted Joy and forced him to drive at knifepoint. Prosecutors say he stabbed Joy after Joy tried to attract attention.

Gray also faces a murder charge in North Carolina where he’s accused of killing 59-year-old Tamra Ann Gibson of Asheville, North Carolina. Her body was found in Junction City in May, and her car was found in Laramie, Wyoming, in June. No charges have been filed in Junction City. The case was turned over to authorities in North Carolina.

Gibson was last seen in Asheville on May 22 and was reported missing on May 24. Her body was found May 28th between two buildings in Junction City but it was not until June that her identity could be determined.

High

41°

Sunny. Patchy freezing fog in the morning. Highs in the lower 40s. Southwest winds up to 10 mph.

According to Fort RIley social media the American Red Cross will host a blood drive at Fort Riley on Tuesday at the In & Out Processing conference room from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Walk-ins are welcome or you can schedule an appointment at redcrossblood.org.

The members of the Junction City Area Retired School Personnel were updated Friday on the project for a new public library in the community.

The current 35-year old library consists of 14,000 square feet serving a population of 37,000 people. The proposed project will increase the square footage and will make the library more proportionate to the size of its service population.

The new building will include more accessible technology , larger children and youth areas, additional meeting space and rooms for collaboration and additional space for library holdings and library staff. The estimated cost to build the new facility is $7 million. Funding for the project will come from a variety of sources including a community capital campaign, national foundation, federal grants and other federal funding sources including a portion of a community block grant that Junction City has already received.

To volunteer to help with the campaign and / or make a pledge contact Susan Moyer at Dorothy Bramlage Public Library by calling 238-4311.

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During the meeting of the Retired School Personnel musical entertainment was provided by Junction City High School’s “JC Singers” under the direction of Michael Brown.

TOPEKA –  The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) has posted the Kansas Annual Summary of Vital Statistics, 2017 online 

The annual report may suggest Kansas is facing demographic changes.

“The Annual Summary of Vital Statistics summarizes key demographic and health information gathered from vital event records registered in 2017,” said Lou Saadi, State Registrar and Director Bureau of Epidemiology and Public Health Informatics. “Since the data collected represents the entire population of the State, it serves as an excellent source for policy makers, program managers and the public to assess and study the health of Kansans.”

The report documents:

• slowing population growth and an aging population
• continuing declines in the number and rate of births
• total fertility rates below the replacement rate
• decreases in the rate of natural increase,
• decreases in marriage rates
• decreases in teen pregnancy

Other trends being noted for 2017 included:

• homicides in the state increased by 21 percent
• suicides increased by 6.3 percent
• unintentional injuries increased by 7.2 percent

Kansas’s total population as of July 1, 2017 was estimated at 2,913,123, an increase of 5,834 (0.2%) from the estimate of Kansas’s total population as of July 1, 2016 (2,907,289) released in 2017. The median age of Kansans in 2017 was 36.6 years, a 4.0 percent increase from the median age of 35.2 in 1998. The median ages for men and women were 35.4 and 37.9, respectively.

There were 36,464 live births to Kansas resident mothers in 2017. The most recent year with fewer live births was 1976, when there were 35,278 live births. The birth rate in 2017 was 12.5 births per 1,000 population, the lowest rate since Kansas began statewide recording of vital events in 1912.

The 2017 birth rate of 12.5 births per 1,000 population is the lowest birth rate on record. The rate is part of a birth rate decrease that began in 2008.

One element of the decline in childbearing in recent years is due to factors generally considered desirable: teen pregnancy rates have declined from 32.4 pregnancies per 1,000 young women in the 10-19 age-group in 1998 to 12.7 per 1,000 in 2017.

In 2017, the state’s rate of natural increase was 3.3 persons per 1,000 population, a decrease of 19.5 percent from 4.1 per 1,000 population in 2016, and the lowest rate of natural increase in the past twenty years. The rate of natural increase is the birth rate minus the death rate.  A negative value for rate of natural increase would mean the insufficient births are occurring to replace the number of people dying in the state. Over the past 20 years (1998-2017), the rate of natural increase has fluctuated between a maximum of 6.3 persons per 1,000 population (2007) and a minimum of 3.3 persons per 1,000 population (2017).

The Kansas total fertility rate (TFR) in 2017 was 2,053 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age. The Kansas TFR has been below the replacement rate of 2,100 for each of the last five years. Total fertility rate is the number of children who would be born per 1,000 women if women were to pass through the childbearing years bearing children according to the current distribution of age-specific fertility rates.

Deaths in Kansas, 26,725, represented a 2.3% increase from the 26,129 deaths in 2016. Increases in 2017 over 2016 were noted for selected causes:

• Suicide, 512 in 2016 to 544 in 2017, up 6.3 percent;
• Homicide, 148 in 2016 to 179 in 2017, up 21.0 percent;
• Unintentional Injury, 1,468 in 2016 to 1,573 in 2017, up 7.2 percent.

Heart disease with 5,636 deaths was the leading cause of death in 2017, followed by cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, unintentional injuries, and stroke.

In 2017, 17,274 marriages occurred in Kansas, a decrease of 3.8 percent from the 2016 total of 17,948 marriages. The Kansas marriage rate in 2017 was 5.9 marriages per 1,000 population. This rate was 4.8 percent lower than the 6.2 marriages per 1,000 population recorded in 2016, and was the lowest rate recorded for the state of Kansas in the last twenty years (1998–2017). For the entire period, Kansas marriage rates have been lower than U.S. marriage rates.

The annual summary does not attempt to determine causes for these trends, as it is a summary of events recorded by the KDHE Office of Vital Statistics. Factors impacting the state’s demography cannot be discerned from vital event records.

Kansas Information for Communities in a query tool the public can use to look at specific birth and death outcomes and prepare statistics.  The web location is https://kic.kdheks.gov/