WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., issued the following statement today upon learning of the death of Glenn Mull; his wife, Elaine; their daughter, Amy Harter; and granddaughter, Samantha Harter.
The Mull family was traveling to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Trade Show in Nashville, Tenn., when their Gulfstream 690C crashed during a landing attempt Monday.
“My heart goes out to the entire Mull family during this difficult time,” Moran said. “Glenn was a devoted husband, father and grandfather. Both he and his wife Elaine were well-known for their generous spirit and commitment to improving Pawnee County. Glenn, Elaine, their daughter Amy and granddaughter Samantha will be greatly missed.
“I ask all Kansans to join me in keeping their family and friends in our thoughts and prayers during the days ahead.”
Over the last several years, cattle producers have found spring oats to provide excellent spring pasture and hay. With the growing popularity of spring and fall oats, and thus supply and demand, oat seed may not be as inexpensive as it once was. Or as easy to find if you wait too long, none the less with reasonable fertilizer inputs, it can provide an excellent bridge for producers short on available pasture in the spring. Sure it has got to rain and we all know that is a gamble, but farmers and ranchers have to gamble or you wouldn’t be in the business.
Stacy Campbell is Ellis County agricultural agent with Kansas State Research and Extension.
Oat pasture should be treated the same as winter wheat pasture in terms of stocking rates and time to initiate grazing. Since grain production is not practical or recommended under grazing, producers should treat oat pasture as a graze-out program or remove it when ready for the next crop. Oats are easily controlled by a variety of herbicides, such as glyphosate and atrazine. The length of effective grazing is a function of stocking rate and weather. Rotational grazing may extend the window for effective pasture production. Oat pasture is also being used successfully in sheep production.
Properly stored, oat hay also provides a high-quality feed source. For hay, late boot to early heading is the optimal timing to balance quantity with quality considerations. Harvested at the dough stage, hay should have an approximate TDN of 56% with 10% protein, both on a dry basis. A nitrate test is recommended. Prussic acid levels should not be a concern.
Silage is another option for spring oats. Oats should be harvested for silage from late milk through early dough stages. Expect silage with a TDN of approximately 60% and 9% protein on a dry weight basis.
Cultural practices
Before planting oats, check the herbicide history of the desired field. Oats are especially sensitive to triazine herbicides. If planting oats for pasture and are considering applying an herbicide for weed control, carefully check the pesticide label for grazing restrictions.
Optimal planting date in northwest Kansas is from the first week of March through the end of March. For most of the state, planting is recommended from late February through mid-March. However, adequate pasture is practical after the optimum planting date. To maximize pasture production potential, it is necessary to plant as early as possible. The flip side to that is the potential of some frost damage to oats in the spring as well.
A seeding rate of two bushels per acre is recommended. Under good soil moisture or irrigation, three bushels per acre may be preferable for grazing. When grown for hay or silage, fertility recommendations are similar to those for grain production; however oats can have a lodging problem with excessive fertility and precipitation, probably not a concern this year. This year a more conservative fertility approach is probably best, maybe around 30lbs/acre of N. If it starts to rain more might be broadcast later. As always, a soil test is recommended.
Oats may be successfully planted no-till, and conventional till when moisture is adequate. No-till is more successful in fields that have been under no-till for a period of years, and riskier in “opportunistic” no-till situations. In either case, a fine, firm seedbed is necessary for optimal production. Under adequate soil moisture conditions, a seeding depth of ½ to 1 inch is preferable. Oats may be planted at depths greater than one inch under dry conditions; however, oat seedlings are less vigorous than wheat and can experience difficulties emerging at deeper planting depths, especially after crusting rains.
To facilitate planting and maximize forage production, winter annual weeds should be controlled either mechanically or with a burndown herbicide prior to planting. Weed control is best achieved through a good stand with rapid growth.
If you need any further information on growing oats contact your local K-State Research and Extension Office.
Stacy Campbell is Ellis County agricultural agent with Kansas State Research and Extension.
St. Mary’s CYO will be hosting its Pan Fried Chicken Dinner on Sunday, February 23. Buffet Style Dinner includes Pan Fried Chicken, Homemade mashed potatoes & Gravy, corn, green beans, coleslaw, dinner rolls and dessert. Will be serving from 10:00 until 1:30 or until food runs out(come early) at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Ellis. Price is $5.00 for kids 5 to 10 and 10 and above $10.00. Everyone Welcome!
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — TransCanada Corp. says it has a waiting list of U.S. oil shippers who want to use an onramp to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
The Canadian company announced three years ago that it secured contracts to move crude from the oilfields of North Dakota and Montana. The proposed $140 million Bakken Marketlink pipeline would meet with the Keystone XL in eastern Montana.
TransCanada says oil producers in North Dakota and Montana have turned to trains while the Keystone XL has been debated. The company says the domestic oil shippers still have contracts and are committed to moving their product by pipeline.
The proposed Keystone XL cleared a big hurdle last week when the State Department raised no major environmental objections to its construction.
WICHITA (AP) — Southwest Airlines received $2.52 million in subsidies from the state’s Affordable Airfares program to help underwrite losses from its service out of Wichita.
Southwest Airlines began service in June from Wichita. The carrier, which has daily flights from Wichita to Dallas, Chicago and Las Vegas, received the subsidies for service it provided during July, August and September.
Southwest is eligible for up to $6.5 million each fiscal year to help underwrite losses on its Wichita service.
Chris Chronis, Sedgwick County chief financial officer, told the Wichita Eagle that Southwest hasn’t applied yet for funds for service after September.
Kansas allocates $5 million a year for its Affordable Airfare program, which was formed to provide more flight options, competition for air travel and more affordable airfares.
Students at Fort Hays State University planning on careers in dentistry will collect dental care products as part of the National Children’s Oral Health Foundation America’s ToothFairy Smile Drive, designed to raise awareness and collect oral care products for at-risk children and teens.
February is National Children’s Dental Health Month. Student volunteers from FHSU’s Pre-Dental Club are leading activities locally.
With participation from 3,900 Walmart locations, the America’s ToothFairy Smile Drive will promote oral health for families across the nation. Local community members can visit their local Walmart to drop off donated oral care products for local at-risk youth in the America’s ToothFairy Smile Drive box and pick up their free Kid’s Activity Packs, including ToothFairy Kids Club free membership cards, ToothFairy 101 educational activities for children, and coupons from Walmart, Crest and Oral-B.
Patrons donating to the America’s ToothFairy Smile Drive can share their experience by snapping a selfie and using the hashtag #SmileDrive2014 on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
Donated toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss and rinse will benefit the KVC Wheatland Psychiatric Hospital, Hays, said, Leigh Reynolds, Hays senior and president of the Pre-Dental Club.
For more information on these activities, contact Reynolds at (785) 259-7102 or by email at [email protected].
National Children’s Oral Health Foundation, known as America’s ToothFairy, was formed in 2006 as an aggressive response to eliminate pediatric dental disease by providing community programs with comprehensive resources to deliver vital educational, preventive and treatment services to children most in need.
America’s ToothFairy is dedicated to raising awareness of the No. 1 chronic childhood illness: pediatric dental disease, facilitating the delivery of comprehensive oral health services and eliminating this preventable disease from future generations.
OSAWATOMIE — Two multiple murder cases have been tied to men who were brought by police to the state hospital here because of their threatening behaviors but were released several days later after hospital officials deemed them no danger to themselves or others.
Clad in an orange jumpsuit, David Bennett hears various charges against him, including four counts of first-degree murder, for allegedly killing a young Parsons mother and her three children. Bennett was sent to Osawatomie State Hospital a few weeks before the slayings after police said he made threats of murder and suicide on Facebook. Hospital officials released him after concluding he was not a danger to himself or others. His alleged killings and two others in Eureka by another former state hospital patient have prompted many to question the adequacy of the state’s system for dealing with the mentally ill. Photo courtesy KWCH-TV.
The ensuing tragedies have left many wondering what went wrong and whether the state’s mental health system and the way it works with law enforcement is adequate.
Prosecutors said the two cases — which left families sundered and emotions raw in the small towns where they happened — were unusual only because of the levels of violence involved and their proximities in time and place.
“You can go just about anywhere in the state and find cases that involve people who’ve been in one of the state hospitals and (subsequently) committed violent crimes,” said Riley County Attorney Barry Wilkerson, who also is president of the Kansas County and District Attorneys Association. “I’m not saying they’re all homicides, but, yes, they are violent crimes.”
Wilkerson, a veteran prosecutor, said laws and policies that allow some patients to leave the hospital too soon or without proper local follow-up have long troubled him.
‘Stabilize them and turn them loose’
“The mental health system we have in Kansas is underfunded,” he said. “There aren’t enough in-patient places for people to go anymore. So, now, instead of taking the time and committing the resources to really treat people, we stabilize them and turn them loose. It just doesn’t make any sense. If someone’s been declared a danger to themselves or others, and then all we do is stabilize them, I wouldn’t say that’s enough.”
The man first brought to the hospital was 35-year-old Kevin Welsh of Eureka. Police brought him to Osawatomie in late August 2013 after he was charged with kidnapping 26-year-old Catherine Scheff and her two young children. Scheff was a former girlfriend of Welsh’s.
Welsh spent 11 days at the hospital and then was briefly returned to jail. There, he posted bail and was released on Sept. 10. Three weeks later, he shot Scheff and her parents at the parents’ home in Eureka.
Scheff survived multiple wounds, but her father, 54-year-old Keith Kriesel, and mother, 52-year-old Sheila Kriesel, were killed.
Welsh died two weeks later in a shootout with agents from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
The second man was 22-year-old David Cornell Bennett Jr. who was taken to the hospital after being picked up by Parsons police on Oct. 30, 2013 for what they described as murder-suicide threats posted on Facebook.
Bennett now is charged with the first-degree murders of 29-year-old Cami Jo Umbarger of Parsons and her three children, ages 9, 6, and 4.
‘We don’t go a day without talking about her’
Their bodies were found the Monday before Thanksgiving after Umbarger — who was known as a reliable employee at Good Samaritan Center, a Parsons nursing home — failed to show for work.
“She’d talked about how he’d been stalking her,” said Joanna Wilson, the nursing home administrator. “It was like he’d become obsessed with her.”
The murders were hard on the close-knit staff and still are, Wilson said.
“We don’t go a day without talking about her,” she said. “I haven’t gone an hour without thinking about her, day and night. Many of the staff are the same way.
“When Cami started working here seven years ago, her first child was a baby,” Wilson said. “She had two babies while she was working here, so in a lot of ways those kids were raised here. Everybody knew them. What we’re going through now is horrible.
“I know that the rights for mentally ill patients are very strong and that those rights stem from years and years of them not having any rights and being put away when they didn’t need to be,” Wilson said. “But when things like this happen, I wish, of course, that they’d found some way to keep him.”
According to recent news reports, Bennett is now in the Labette County Jail on $5 million bond, awaiting trial for the murders and related charges including rape and the threats that got him sent to Osawatomie State Hospital.
Details about the treatments and evaluations that Bennett and Welsh likely received at Osawatomie remain sealed from public view because of patient confidentiality rules and gag orders placed by prosecutors and courts.
State mental health officials and others involved declined to comment on any specific aspect of either case.
How the process works
But state officials and others agreed to describe the system, its rules and processes, as they apply in general.
John Worley, director of clinical services at Osawatomie, said evaluations of patients being considered for release, as a matter of routine, would take into consideration any dealings the patient had with law enforcement.
“They look at the major issues to be addressed for stabilization to allow discharge from the hospital,” Worley said, referring to teams comprised of nurses, psychologists, therapists and social workers.
“They’re asking things like: Is this individual a danger to (himself or herself)? Are they talking about killing themselves? Do they have a plan? Have they made an attempt? Do they have a history of making attempts? And, likewise, are they a danger to others? Have they made threats? Have they acted on those threats? Do they have a history of arrests or being involved with law enforcement?”
Each final discharge decision is made by one of the hospital’s staff psychiatrists.
Typically, patients are released with a three- to five-day supply of medications. A refill prescription is sent to the pharmacy of their choice. They also are given an appointment with a local community mental health center.
‘You do your best’
But it isn’t always easy to figure out how troubled a patient might be, Worley said.
“Forty-nine percent of our admissions involve patients who’ve had no prior contact with the mental health system,” he said. “So, essentially, we have no prior history on them.”
And many patients’ conditions are masked by “co-occurring disorders,” usually drug and alcohol abuse. “It can be an incredibly complex picture to try to unravel,” Worley said. “But you do your best.”
The majority of patients are treated and released to return to their homes, assuming they have one.
According to the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, which oversees the state hospitals, only about 5 percent of the patients released are facing some sort of criminal charge that requires them to be returned to a jail.
Generally, though there are exceptions — once a patient is released from the hospital or from the hospital and then jail — there is nothing authorities can do to compel a person to continue treatments.
“The vast majority of (community-based) behavioral health care in Kansas is voluntary, and that’s as it should be,” said Matt Atteberry, executive director of the Labette Center for Mental Health Services in Parsons. “I say that because in this country, all of us, I think, value personal liberty. But what does that mean?
“In Kansas, it means an individual has the right to decline services at a mental health center just like they have the right to decline care at a doctor’s office,” he said. “So absent very specific court orders ordering people into care, it’s a completely voluntary thing. And even with a court order — which is rare — how enforceable is it?
“People like to think that because someone is an expert in behavioral health, they can somehow compel someone to do whatever it is we want them to do,” he said. “But a community mental health center is not a law enforcement agency. We have no more ability to make someone seek care at our facility than the donut shop can make someone come in and eat donuts.”
‘This is about resources’
And there is the separate but related issue of having enough resources to adequately treat those willing to be treated.
“We’re never going to have a perfect system,” said Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe. “But, really, this is about resources. We’re going to have to house these people somewhere. But as it is now, we have limited hospital-bed space, which is why the Johnson County Jail has become one of the largest — if not the largest — mental health facility in the state.”
The demand for mental health services, he said, has outstripped the abilities of the state hospitals and mental health centers to meet them.
“There are people who have a serious mental illness who, given the resources, are able to live successful and productive lives in the community,” Howe said. “That’s as it should be, but for that to happen those resources have to be there and they have to be adequate.”
“Those of us in law enforcement would say those resources are inadequate,” Howe said. “And they’ve been inadequate for a long time.”
KDADS officials said they don’t track how many state hospital patients are convicted of violent crimes after release.
But the Kansas Department of Corrections keeps track of how many of its inmates have been diagnosed with a mental illness. Agency officials recently announced that 38 percent of the state’s prison population had been diagnosed as mentally ill.
Since 2006, the number of mentally ill inmates in Kansas prisons has increased 126 percent, according to corrections department officials.
WINFIELD (AP) — A south central Kansas teacher has pleaded not guilty to having unlawful sexual relations with a student.
Twenty-four-year-old Ashley Marie Eck, of Augusta, also waived her right to a preliminary hearing during a court appearance Monday in Cowley County.
Eck was a teacher at Winfield High School. The Winfield Daily Courier reports a police investigation began shortly after graduation in May of last year.
She remains on administrative leave from the school district. If convicted, Eck would face a sentence of not less than 31 or more than 136 months in prison, a fine of up to $300,000 and post-release supervision.
City of Hays officials are asking residents to remove vehicles from snow routes, in anticipation of the city declaring a snow emergency later Tuesday.
At this morning’s press briefing at City Hall, Public Works Director ID Creech and Hays Police Chief Don Scheibler said the city is making calls to get the vehicles removed from the snow routes.
Scheibler said there have been several minor vehicle accidents as of late Monday morning.
Check Hays Post for continued updates on the weather situation.
By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT Hays Post
At Monday night’s Ellis County Commission meeting, commissioners voted against sponsoring the 2014 Western Kansas Legislative Briefing in Washington in March. The group sponsoring the event had asked Ellis County to sponsor $500 for the event. The briefing offers local officials a chance to speak with congressional representatives and staffs on local issues.
Commissioners Swede Holmgren and Dean Haselhorst both voted against sponsoring the briefing, asking for more information on the organization, Commissioner Barbara Wasinger was not present at the meeting. Haselhorst wanted to know how many counties pay the sponsorship fee.
“It is a good opportunity to get to know congressional staff,” County Administrator Greg Sund said.
Sund also said he worked a bill through Congress in the past and the staffer was a tremendous amount of help — and this is a good way to keep in touch with local staffers.
Sund pointed out the city of Hays has been extremely active, so Ellis County is represented.
The commission approved the design engineering contract with Kirkham Michael for the design of a replacement bridge located 3 miles west and 2.7 south of Antonino.
Commission also approved the construction engineering agreement with BG Consultants for the East Highway 40 road improvement project
