The Geary County Sheriff’s Department has reported that Deputies responded to U.S. Highway mile marker 161 at 6:30 a.m. Thursday for a non-injury motor vehicle accident.
Peter Johnson, Longford, was traveling southbound in a 2003 GMC Sierra when a deer entered the roadway causing front end damage to the vehicle.
The Junction City Commission has authorized an expenditure of $18,300 for new heating, ventilation and air conditioning system design at the Junction City Police Department.
Police Chief Dan Breci said the current 31-year old system is starting to fail. “Just this summer we have had several large issues with the system that have caused the temperature to rise in the building, making it very uncomfortable for those within. The Police Department is a 100% temperature controlled building due to security requirements so we can not open windows to allow fresh air or air flow.”
The future HVAC system project will have a cost estimated in the area of $300,000. Asset forfeiture funds will pay the entire cost, and not taxpayer dollars.
A one cent sales tax will be on the ballot in Junction City in November. It will continue the current sales tax that began January 1, 2011 but is due to expire on December 31, 2020.
City Manager Allen Dinkel said it collects approximately $3.5 million per year for city debt relief. ” It takes more than sales tax to pay off the debt level we’re paying, because we’re paying about $11 million a year in debt, or debt payments with interest included. ” Dinkel added in the past five years or four-and-a-half years that he has been in Junction City the city’s general debt has decreased from $114 million to about $76 million.
The sales tax issue will be on the ballot in November so a special election will not have to be held next summer to continue the tax.
Dinkel told the Junction City Commission that the bottom line if the one cent sales tax does not pass is that the City would have to find $3.5 million per dollars per year. That would mean either cut services dramatically or raise property taxes by up to 21 or 22 mills.
The city manager also noted that if they get to the 2025 or 2026 range the City will be in a lot better shape.
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If you have an interest or talent that you would like to share with Geary County 4-H members during the next 4-H year you can volunteer your time as a county-wide project leader. Call the Extension Office at 238-4161 on or before Oct. 1. That subject and a number of other topics are covered in the Geary County 4-H newsletter.
Each 4-H Club in the county needs to select two youth and two adults as 4-H Council Representatives. Those who are selected will help make decisions about the county 4-H program. The next council meeting will be Oct. 7 at 7 p.m. at the 4-H / Senior Citizens Center. The council will review the fair, elect officers and assign committees for the coming year.
The annual 4-H Achievement celebration has been set for the evening of Saturday, Oct. 26.
The inaugural meeting of the 2021 Dickinson / Geary County 4-H Interstate Exchange group will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 10 at 6:30 p.m. at the Chapman Community Center in the 500 block of Marshall Street. Youth 13 years and older as of January 1, 2020 are invited to attend.
The Geary USD 475 Board of Education has given their approval for asphalt improvements to the parking lot on the north side of the current Junction City High School building. The project, which carries a cost of $32,600, was included in the budget.
Temporary repairs were completed last spring and now it’s time for permanent repairs.
According to information released at the monthly school board meeting, the work will begin as soon as possible and should not take more than a week. The district would like to have it completed before the first home football game on Sept. 13.
By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.
When a bank and a school both close, what is to be done with the two buildings? Today we’ll learn about a rural community which seized the opportunity to convert a former school into a library and a former bank building into a museum. These actions help preserve and promote the history of the community’s citizens.
Verl Coup is director of the Talmage Historical Museum. He grew up near Talmage and lived here his whole life, other than during his service in the Army. Verl was a long-time rural letter carrier. He started collecting artifacts of the Talmage community.
“When the older people would move to the nursing home, they knew I was interested in history so they would pass some of their things along to me,” Verl said. “Otherwise, when they pass, their money and artifacts go to the big city.”
One day in 2010, he got an important call. “A lady who used to live here said the bank was closing and they would give us the building and most of the furniture,” Verl said. Sure enough, the Talmage branch bank closed and the building was donated to the Talmage Historical Society to become a museum.
“My wife (Kathy) was happy to get all these things out of our house,” Verl said with a smile. Kathy now volunteers at the museum. A local farmer left an endowment to support the new use for the building. In December 2010, the new museum opened its doors.
“The museum highlights the stories of the people from here,” Verl said. The old bank building was organized into various displays. The teller area has places for various area families to display their family trees and photos. The bank offices have been organized into different types of rooms.
For example, there is the school room with various artifacts from school buildings and classes through the years. I had to laugh when I saw the hairstyles, eyeglasses, and short basketball shorts of yesteryear.
There is the picture room with lots of images from around the county, and a place for photos of farmers and their equipment. The vault has safety deposit boxes which are used for storage of pictures and memorabilia. There’s a veterans area, a memorial wall where people can honor someone with donations that help sustain the building, and much more.
Artifacts continue to be donated. One morning Verl found a box left anonymously on the front step. Among the contents was a homestead certificate signed by President Chester A. Arthur.
The grade school in Talmage had closed in 2000 and then served as a church for a time. It has now become the Talmage Library and Events Center. Shawni Sheets, a board member of the Talmage Historical Society, is director.
The Talmage Library and Events Center is located up the street from the museum. In addition to the library’s own collection, the Manhattan Public Library loans a rotation of books to the library every two months. As one might guess, the former school building has a kitchen and dining area. The big gym is available for recreation, and an additional game room has pool, foos ball, ping pong, and exercise equipment. The facility is for rent by donation. Shawni Sheets said that many volunteers have donated books and other resources.
In spring 2019, the Dickinson County Community Foundation conducted a Match Day where donations to various worthy projects in the area were matched and doubled. “By noon that day, we had matched our $10,000 goal,” Verl said. “The community support is there.”
It is impressive to see such remarkable, repurposed facilities in a rural community like Talmage, population 99 people. Now, that’s rural.
For more information, go to www.talmagekansas.com.
When a bank and a school close, what is to be done with the buildings? In Talmage, they are being re-used in creative ways. We commend Verl and Kathy Coup, Shawni Sheets, and all those involved with Talmage for making a difference by repurposing and maintaining these buildings in ways that benefit the community. They could school other communities – you can bank on it.
Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at https://www.kansasprofile.com. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit https://www.huckboydinstitute.org.
The work has been under way to install a new hearing assist loop at the C.L. Hoover Opera House. It will allow patrons with hearing aids to pick up the direct audio feed of Opera House programs in their hearing aids.
According to Opera House Co-Director, Joe Markley, no other headphones or receivers are required. The new installation created 198 seats on the main floor that will serve patrons with hearing aids. The system is fully ADA compliant.
Any patrons with questions are encouraged to call the Opera House.
Funding for the project has been provided by Memorial gifts for Sylvia Walker, gifts by Friends of the Opera House and Match Day money from the Greater Geary Community.
The USD 475 Board of Education will meet in a retreat Saturday at Acorns Resort and Conference Center.
The new Junction City High School project will be one of the discussion topics on the agenda, explained the school district’s chief operations officer, David Wild. “The Board is going to have the opportunity to look at some value engineering proposals, some scope changes, to continue to reduce the cost on the project before we settle on a final contract price.”
Wild would like to cut $6 million or possibly more to reduce the cost of the project. He said when he interviewed for the job he was asked how would control costs on the project and at the same time obtain what the district wanted. “It’s very simply by making sure that you price everything in a competitive market that you might want. Now we can work our way down from that bid structure, and eliminate the things we decide we really don’t want or don’t need and we’ll work our way down.
The retreat begins at 8 a.m. on Saturday.
MANHATTAN — U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo will deliver the first Landon Lecture of the school year at Kansas State University, the 190th presentation in the distinguished lecture series.
Pompeo will speak at 10:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 6, in McCain Auditorium.
The lecture is free and open to the public. Security measures require that all attendees pass through metal detectors when entering McCain Auditorium. The clear bag policy used at K-State sporting events will be in effect for this lecture. Details on the security logistics can be found on the Landon Lecture website, k-state.edu/landon. Bag check provisions will be available for bags not meeting the clear bag policy.
Doors to the auditorium will open at 9:30 a.m. Due to the additional security measures for this lecture, all attendees are asked to allot sufficient time to be seated by 10:20 a.m.
“Mike Pompeo got his start in government in Kansas, serving as a three-term congressman for the state’s 4th District after running two successful businesses in the state,” said Linda Cook, chair of the Landon Lecture series and the university’s chief of staff and director of community relations. “Now, as secretary of state, he serves as the chief foreign affairs adviser to President Trump, traveling the world to meet with foreign governmental leaders and carrying out the president’s foreign policy.”
Pompeo became the nation’s 70th secretary of state on April 26, 2018. The State Department includes the Foreign Service, Civil Service and U.S. Agency for International Development. He will be the fourth secretary of state to deliver a Landon Lecture, following Henry Kissinger in 1996, George Schultz in 1986 and Edmund Muskie in 1980.
Before becoming secretary of state, Pompeo was director of the Central Intelligence Agency from January 2017 to April 2018. From 2011-2017, Pompeo represented Kansas’ 4th District, which includes the city of Wichita and surrounding areas. He was a member of the House Intelligence Committee as well as on the Energy and Commerce committees and the House Select Benghazi Committee.
Pompeo came to government service after serving in the military and the business world. He graduated first in his class at the United State Military Academy at West Point in 1986 and was a cavalry officer patrolling the Iron Curtain before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He also served with the 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry in the Army’s Fourth Infantry Division. After leaving active duty, Pompeo graduated from Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
In his business career, Pompeo founded Thayer Aerospace, where he served as CEO for more than a decade. He later became president of Sentry International, an oilfield equipment manufacturing, distribution and service company based in Wichita.
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