Ash Street west of US 77 in Junction City will be opened to traffic and the detour removed on Monday. The intersection will still be controlled by the temporary traffic signals as the permanent signals still require work.
The information from KDOT was provided by Geary County Emergency Management.
Due in part to an accident with the temporary traffic signal at McFarland Road and US 77 on Friday, the new signals there will remain in flash mode in conjunction with the stop signs ( 4-way stop condition ). They will flash until work can be completed to activate them. Tentatively, the contract hopes to have both the Ash and McFarland signals up and fully functioning by this Thursday ( Nov. 3 ).
Striping is scheduled be completed on US 77 by Wednesday ( Nov. 2 ), and traffic on US 77 will be flagged around that operation.
Also, the traffic signals at K-18 and Spring Valley Road have been put in flash mode ( yellow on K-18 and red on Spring Valley Road ). Those signals are scheduled to flash until Wednesday ( Nov. 2 ) at which time they will be fully activated. Spring Valley Road north of K-18 is scheduled to be open Monday ( Oct. 31 ) and the detour removed.
The preliminary damage estimate from a Friday evening fire at the Lynn Langvardt residence has been placed at approximately $75,000. Paul Froelich, Dickinson County Fire District One Chief, provided that early estimate–“depending on what the insurance company would do, probably about $75,000.” The residence, located in Dickinson County about six miles west of Junction City, was insured.
There were no injuries. The residents were not home at the time of the fire.
Concerning the cause of the fire, Froelich stated, “At this time we believe it was caused by a candle in the back bedroom.”
Froelich said the initial 911 call by cellphone went into Geary County so rural firefighters from that department responded. Once Geary County firefighters neared the blaze the Dickinson County Fire District One personnel were then contacted.
When they arrived on the scene Froelich said there was a working structure fire, with a back bedroom fully involved in fire. “And it had breached the roof at that time. Geary County was doing exterior attack to try and hold it while we were enroute. And as soon as we got there we started the interior attack and got the fire out. And we were on scene until about 11 p.m that night.”
Froelich praised the cooperation between the two firefighting departments. “The thing I like to let people know is how well our departments work together. It’s nice to know that on those county line calls like that it doesn’t matter whether they’re calling us for help or we’re calling them for help we know they’re going to be there.”
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Dickinson County Rural Fire District and Geary County rural firefighters responded to the Lynn Langvardt family residence approximately six miles west of Junction City Friday evening.
There were no injuries. The residents were not home at the time of the fire.
According to Geary County Emergency Management the fire was at the back of the house in a bedroom area. That area was destroyed and there was major heat and smoke damage throughout the house.
Again there were no injuries. The fire call was received by Geary County about 7:45 p.m.
Brigham Bailey, Aggravated battery, Obstruction or impeding of lawful activities, Arrested 10/20.
Grandview Plaza, KS – On October 16, 2016 at about 422 pm, an ambulance was dispatched to 802 Janice Street, Grandview Plaza, Geary County, Kansas for a 2 month old female infant who was not breathing.
The infant was transported to Geary Community Hospital for treatment. She was later transported by helicopter to Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, Kansas for additional treatment of those suspected injuries.
The Grandview Plaza PD initiated an investigation into the cause of the suspected injuries. The Grandview Plaza PD was assisted in various ways by members of the Geary County
Sheriff Office, Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) and the Junction City PD.
During the investigation, 33 year old white male and Grandview Plaza resident Brigham Bailey was placed under arrest for Aggravated Battery and Interference with Law Enforcement on October 20, 2016. He was escorted to the Geary County Detention Center where he was booked, processed and confined without bond pending first appearance in the Geary County District Court.
Grandview Plaza Police Chief Shawn Peirano
No further comments will be made at this time. Additional information will be released
when deemed appropriate.
Local and state Republican Candidates will host a Meet and Greet on Wednesday, November 2nd rom 5:00 – 8:00 pm at Coach’s Bar and Grill in Junction City.
‘To Build or Not to Build’ – that’s not just the million dollar question, it’s the $85 million dollar question charged to the Junction City High School Steering Committee.
Mick McCallister, Mayor Junction City Photo Courtesy of City of Junction City, KS website
The committee met Thursday evening and toured the existing high school facilities and bore witness to the undeniable infrastructure issues – the building is over 58 years old.
Mick McCallister, Junction City Mayor, suggested switching the high school and middle school locations, noting that all options should be considered before the committee.
“If there is a better option of putting the high school on the outside of the boundaries of the city…well, we need to look at the option,” said McCallister. “I don’t know if that option has been looked at, I don’t know if it can fit that site.”
McCallister felt that it was a bad idea to put the middle school in that location, and since most high school students drive to school, switching the locations may be a viable option.
“What I saw tonight was an old structure that needed a lot of work; could it be fixed – yes it could be fixed, could it be expanded – yes it could be expanded, but if we’re going to do something and do it on a grand scale and we can work the financing and the money piece out to where it’s not going to cost taxpayers money, then we need to give the community the best possible building we could give them,” said McCallister who added that [we] still needed to look at whether renovating or building new is the best possibility.
The Mayor mentioned another idea that has been brought to his attention on more than one occasion.
“I’ve had more than a couple of constituents ask where this land is going to come from, and what was thrown out there was, ‘well why wouldn’t they take all of these 1940s and 1950s homes from Jefferson to Jackson, from 8th to 14th…buy the properties…we’ve got plenty of land bank lots, they could build new and they’d be in a newer home, and these older 70 and 80 year old homes could be demolished’,” said McCallister. “It was a concept that, I don’t know if it has any traction or if it even has any merit; but it sure would be a good piece of property for 120 acres.”
Concepts for JCHS range from a new high school on the same site, renovating the current building, and a new high school at another location.
These option, amongst others will continue to be reviewed by the Steering Committee; no final decisions have been made at this time.
A toy drive will be held on Wednesday, November 2nd at the Walmart Supercenter on Chestnut Street in Junction City.
Toys and donations will be accepted from 5:00 pm until 8:30 pm for children aged birth to high school. Volunteers with large boxes will be setup outside of Walmart.
All toys will go to children in Junction City, Grandview Plaza, and Fort Riley (including USD 475 students). The group plans to provide toys for up to 400 local children.
Students and parents have submitted lists to teachers asking for three items that they’d like to receive for Christmas (suggested items from the list below).
If you donate a toy, please do not buy stuffed animals (children may have allergies) and if your toy requires a battery, please donate the required batteries with the toy.
Flint Hills Harley Group #1508 riders will also be outside of Walmart with their motorcycles to take pictures with children.
The Toy Run will be on Saturday, November 5th and will benefit local children as well.
Donated items can be taken to the Flint Hills Harley Davidson Group at City Cycle Sales located at 1021 Goldenbelt Blvd. in Junction City.
Sandwiches and light refreshments will be served on Saturday, November 5th.
Harley Davidson owners that are part of the Loyalty Program will receive 200 customer points on their accounts if they donate.
Donations will be accepted until December 23, 2016.
Some of the requested items include:
anything “Frozen” related
jewelry, earrings (any age)
make up kits, nail polish, hair products, body sprays (teens)
MANHATTAN — Stories of small towns and the average Americans who live in them are as important to national history as significant events, according to a Kansas State University historian who wants to learn more.
Flint Hills Discovery Center
Kansas State University students and Bonnie Lynn-Sherow, associate professor of history and director of theChapman Center for Rural Studies, will facilitate a Share your Stories weekend 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.Nov. 12 and noonto 5 p.m. Nov. 13 at the Flint Hills Discovery Center‘s “Going Home: Hidden Histories of the Flint Hills” exhibit. The students and Lynn-Sherow, curator of the exhibit, will use a student-made sound booth — called the Story Store — to interview people and record stories about their hometown.
“We want stories from everyone about going home,” Lynn-Sherow said. “They don’t have to be from Kansas. They can be from anywhere in the entire world. We want to know their experiences and what home means to them.”
Stories collected during the weekend will be uploaded to the Library of Congress with National Public Radio’s StoryCorps app but exhibit visitors may use the Story Store to record and upload their own stories throughout the duration of the exhibit.
“There is this terrible sense of urgency that drives us to do this work,” Lynn-Sherow said. “As people are getting older, each day we lose more resources; it’s really frightening. Every obituary means another person who can no longer help us understand this valuable part of history.”
The exhibit — open through Jan. 8, 2017 — features seven nearly forgotten towns: Broughton, Bodarc, Chalk Mound, Cedar Point, The Kaw Village at Little John Creek, Maple City and Volland. The Chapman Center’s online archive includes detailed stories of these towns and dozens more — and its work is far from done.
“We are never going to finish finding all the stories,” Lynn-Sherow said. “There are about 8,340 Kansas places that existed at one time between 1850-2000 that are no longer on Kansas map.”
The student historians at the Chapman Center use “Quick Reference Guide to Kansas: Lost-Found-Missing Towns and Places with Selected Trivia and Truths” by Melvin Bruntzel, Willard, as a guide to all the towns in Kansas. They also define a nearly forgotten town using a checklist of services that active towns should have, like a post office, grocery store, a viable school or a church, which is often the last thing to go, according to Lynn-Sherow.
“People will continue to go back to their hometown church,” Lynn-Sherow said. “They will keep those congregations alive. Their final act of going home is to be buried in a cemetery next to the church where they grew up. Sometimes even the church is gone and all that is left is the cemetery. They may have lived somewhere else their entire adult lives and yet they still go home.”
Mark Chapman, Kansas State University alumnus and donor, inspired the exhibit because he expressed concern that people would forget his hometown of Broughton, near Clay Center, after the Army Corps of Engineers condemned it for flood control in 1966. In response, the Chapman Center collected several years of student research about the town and made it into a full-length book by MJ Morgan, the center’s research director. The book is available at the Discovery Center.
“After Mr. Chapman’s unexpected death in 2014, I wanted to honor his amazing gift to the students of Kansas State University and to the region he cared so much about,” Lynn-Sherow said. “The exhibit is dedicated to him and to the partnerships that have been forged between the students and local community members, who are featured in two student-produced films in the exhibit.”
The exhibit also features aerial footage of Broughton from Kansas State University Polytechnic Campus faculty in the unmanned aerial systems, or UAS, laboratory, which will be a new partnership and research tool for the center. In addition, visitors can listen to a soundscape of what going home would have sounded like before automobiles. According to Lynn-Sherow, every bit of the research that went into these towns and the exhibit is from the students’ priceless work.
“It creates fantastic intergenerational engagement opportunities,” Lynn-Sherow said. “The people we interview love it because someone is listening to their stories. Students love it because they are discovering history on a more personal level while learning critical research skills.”
As part of its mission to the history of rural Kansas, the Chapman Center digitizes important records, fragile films and photographic images for students to use in their research and to share with the public in an online archive. More than 100 Kansas State University students in various disciplines have contributed to the online research archive.
Junction City High School will host a College Planning Conference on Thursday, November 3rd in the Shenk Gymnasium.
The conference will be from 2:00 – 3:35 pm; Seniors begin at 2:00 pm and Juniors will join at 2:45 pm. Parents are welcome to attend.
Representatives from over 50 public and private colleges, community colleges, technical and trade schools, and military recruiters will be available to visit with students and parents.
The goal of the conference is to give students the necessary tools to make informed decisions about their future. Each representative will have information for the students.
For more information contact Margie Pinaire, JCHS Scholarship Coordinator at 717-4063 or margiepinaire@usd475.org.
Geary County Commission 2nd District Candidate Forum-1st Half Hour
Geary County Commission 2nd District Candidate Forum-2nd Half Hour
There was sharp disagreement between the candidates for the 2nd District Seat on the Geary County Commission, Charles Stimatze and Larry Hicks, during a candidate forum on 1420 KJCK, The Talk of JC.
One issue revolved around how to decrease or keep the property tax levy stable. The Geary County property tax levy has increased more than 19 mills over the course of the last three years.
Stimatze pushed Hicks on that issue, saying it’s not the county department heads fault. “I’m saying it’s the commissioners that have to do the tough questions. They have to go to the department heads and say hey, cut five percent, cut ten percent, cut three percent, not them coming to you ( the commission ). That’s not their job. Your job as a commissioner is to say here, this is what we need, do it, and if they can do it that’s great, but if you guys as the commissioners need to do more you may have to do more.”
Hicks countered by asking, “How do you do more with less. I don’t understand your question. What are you trying to say? Stimatze said “You’ve got to cut it.” When asked by Hicks where, Stimatze said he didn’t know and did not have all the information. He was unsure at this point if he would cut, but said across the board figure out what would work the best.
Later in the forum civil legal matters allegedly involving Hicks in District Court entered the conversation. A caller questioned him about court documents posted against Hicks that could possibly pose an issue with his job as county commissioner. “How do you expect to balance the budget, but having those personal financial things come involved in your work? Hicks responded, “Personal financial issues have no impact what-so-ever on my ability to govern, and I’ve done that as well as I possibly can over the course of seven-and-a-half years. I’ve done a lot of things to help improve the services of Geary County and the taxpayers, and those personal matters are just that, they’re personal matters that are being dealt with by me.”
Stimatze then stated, “I think if you have some personal financial issues it makes it harder to….if you can’t manage your own budget how can you manage a million dollar budget or plus, or county budget.” Hicks responded by saying he didn’t know anyone who hasn’t had personal challenges at all at any level. Hicks had indicated he assumed the discussion was about civil legal matters. Stimatze said Hicks knew what the caller was talking about, but Hicks stated he had no idea what the caller and Stimatze were talking about.
Other topics in the forum ranged from possible communications issues between the governing body and other county department heads and elected officials to the recent review of the chamber of commerce master agreement.
Ash Street west of US 77 in Junction City will be opened to traffic and the detour removed on Monday. The intersection will still be controlled by the temporary traffic signals as the permanent signals still require work.
