Becky Kiser – Page 75 – Hays Post Archive

🎥 City commission to vote on allowing Sunday liquor sales in Hays

Posted on January 25, 2017January 25, 2017

Hays City Commissioner Lance Jones raises the issue of Sunday liquor sales during the Jan. 5 work session.

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

Hays city commissioners are scheduled to vote Thursday on an ordinance allowing Sunday liquor sales within the city limits.

Commissioner Lance Jones brought up the issue in December. He supports the change as a way to help bring in more money to the city’s general fund, which is financed solely by the city sales tax.

Commissioners discussed the idea during their Jan. 5 work session. James Meier and Henry Schwaller both said they support Sunday liquor sales.

The ordinance, if approved, is subject to a petition and being overturned by an election as Hays voters did in 2005, after the Kansas legislature passed a statute the same year allowing cities to approve Sunday liquor sales.

“I’m in support of it,” Schwaller said. “I was when we considered it and passed it the first time.”

There were three groups speaking against the issue 12 years ago and Schwaller expects the same input this time around.

“The liquor store owners will not want to be open another day of the week. They find it inconvenient. Another group believes for religious reasons that it’s inappropriate to consume alcohol.

“The third group, that I received the most calls from (in 2005), were in 12-step (recovery) programs who said ‘if people want it, they’re going to get it anyway, so don’t allow it,'” Schwaller recalled, adding that he “didn’t understand their argument then and I don’t understand it now. I do understand why the others said they didn’t want to do it.

“But as I offered to the liquor stores then, they didn’t need to be open. If they wanted a day off, they didn’t have to be open on Sunday. They could opt in or opt out. And, folks for religious reasons could abstain.

“Nevertheless, I’m in favor of it,” Schwaller concluded.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” Vice-Mayor Meier concurred. “It’s perfectly legal. I don’t understand why it shouldn’t be legal seven days a week instead of six.”

Sunday liquor sales are allowed in incorporated areas of Ellis County, including Ellis and Victoria.

Tomorrow will be the first meeting for newly-appointed Hays City Commissioner Sandy Jacobs. She will be sworn into office by City Clerk Brenda Kitchen followed by the annual reorganization of the governing body.

For a look at the complete Jan. 26 meeting agenda click here.

100th year of Girl Scout cookie sales opens with new cookie

Posted on January 24, 2017January 23, 2017

By DARCY GRAY
Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland

Marissa Hill, of Wichita Girl Scout Troop 40307, was Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland’s top cookie seller in 2016 with 2,377 packages of cookies sold during her first Cookie Sale.

WICHITA – Kansas Girl Scouts are developing leadership and entrepreneurial skills through the Girl Scout Cookie Program, and this year, there’s a new Girl Scout S’mores cookie to celebrate 100 years of Girl Scout Cookies.

During Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland’s Cookie Sale, which starts Feb. 11 and ends March 19, Girl Scouts are learning essential life skills – goal-setting, decision-making, money management, people skills and business ethics – that stay with them forever.

A century ago, girls started participating in what would evolve into the largest entrepreneurial training program for girls in the world – the Girl Scout Cookie Program – through which girls learn skills to become effective leaders, manage finances, and gain self-sufficiency and confidence in handling money. The first-known sale of cookies by Girl Scouts was in 1917, when the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, did what Girl Scouts everywhere do: They had a great idea, got together, and took action to make it a reality. They decided to fund their projects by selling homemade cookies, and the idea spread.

Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland’s new S’mores cookie celebrating this centennial is a crispy graham cookie double-dipped in crème icing and finished with a scrumptious chocolatey coating. S’mores, which are vegan and free of artificial colors, preservatives and partially hydrogenated oils, are the ninth cookie variety.

Priced at the same $4 per package, with all proceeds staying in Kansas to support Girl Scouting, the 2017 Cookie Lineup includes: Thin Mints, Caramel deLites, Peanut Butter Patties, Lemonades, Peanut Butter Sandwiches, Shortbreads, Thanks-A-Lots, S’mores and the gluten-free Trios. Girl Scout S’mores cookies also complement the Girl Scout tradition of making s’mores in the outdoors, as the recipe for a s’more dates back to a 1925 Girl Scout Leader magazine and a 1927 Girl Scouts of the USA handbook.

Girl Scout Cookies not only help girls earn money for fun, educational activities, camping, and community service projects, they also play a role in transforming girls into G.I.R.L.s (Go-getters, Innovators, Risk-takers, Leaders) as they learn life skills that set them up for success.

Starting from the first-known sale in 1917, Girl Scout Cookies have gone on to become a part of American culture and history. Babe Ruth promoted the Million Cookie Drive during the 1924 World Series. Former First Lady Lou Henry Hoover inspired the first organized national sale of Girl Scout Cookies in 1933. Girls used cookie proceeds during that time to help communities cope with the debilitating effects of the Great Depression, and collected clothing and food for those in need. During World War II, when there was a global shortage of cooking ingredients, Girl Scouts sold calendars with images of girls engaged in wartime service activities. Then, they used some of their calendar proceeds to support the war effort through humanitarian actions like farm aid projects and victory gardens.

cookie-share-program — Cookie Share Program

The Girl Scouts’ commitment to giving back continues each year, as girls not only invest their cookie earnings into service projects across Kansas, they also give customers the option of sharing cookies with service men and women, their families, and local charities like the Kansas Food Bank. Through Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland’s Cookie Share Program, Cookie Sale customers can simply purchase a package of cookies and donate it. Since the Cookie Share Program began in 2010, Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland has distributed more than 117,500 packages of cookies to members of the military and local charities, including 23,000 “Cookie Shares” in 2016.

Make plans today to invest in local girls and your community by supporting the Girl Scout Cookie Sale. The Cookie Sale starts Feb. 11 across 80 Kansas counties served by Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland. Looking for a local Girl Scout, aka Cookie Boss? To find cookies, just enter your zip code at kansasgirlscouts.org, call the Cookie Hotline at 888-686-MINT, or download the free, official Girl Scout Cookie Finder app for iOS and Android mobile devices. Go to kansasgirlscouts.org to learn more.

First event celebrating Ellis Co. sesquicentennial is Sunday

Posted on January 23, 2017January 25, 2017

SUBMITTED

The 30th annual meeting of the Society of Friends of Historic Fort Hays will be held at 2 p.m. Sun., Jan. 29, in the Fort Hays Visitor’s Center.

The meeting will begin with a program by Dr. Leo Oliva who will talk about the Hancock expedition and Hancock’s War of 1867.

Hancock marched 1,400 troops, including the Seventh Cavalry under George A. Custer, from Fort Riley to Fort Larned, burned a Cheyenne and Lakota village in present Ness County, and crated a war where none had existed.

Fort Hays as well as Forts Harker, Larned, Dodge, and Wallace were involved in the conflict.

One of the decisions made on this expedition was to move Fort Hays closer to where the railroad was coming through. This move allowed Fort Hays to become a supply fort.

This year, 2017, marks the 150th anniversary of Fort Hays in its present location. 2017 is also the 150th anniversary of the founding of Rome, Hays City and Ellis County.

Sunday’s program is the first event of several celebrating the sesquicentennial.

The program is open to the public. There is no charge to attend the program and meeting.

After a break, a meeting of the Society of Friends of Historic Fort Hays will be held. The Friends members will hear the progress that has been made in developing the site and plans for this year’s sesquicentennial celebration.

For more information, call the Fort at (785)-625-6812.

Demolition of Ambassador Inn continues on the inside

Posted on January 23, 2017

Most of the current demo work at the Ambassador Inn is underway inside the building.

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

Demolition of the Ambassador Inn, formerly a Ramada property at 3603 Vine, is continuing.

Interior work started the last week of December, with heavy machinery beginning to bring the structure down the first week of January.

From the outside, it appears as if nothing much more has happened since then. But the project is continuing — it’s just not visible to outdoor onlookers.

According to Jesse Rohr, superintendent of the Hays Planning, Inspection and Enforcement Department, crews are currently “working inside to keep the dust and noise down.

“The building is a concrete shell,” Rohr explained last Thursday. “They’ll be using a concrete crusher in the process of taking it down and the city plans to purchase some of the crushed concrete to be used for better coverage in some alleyways.”

Debris on the east side of the motel Friday afternoon.

The hotel, which was once a leisure hotspot in its glory days as a Holiday Inn Holidome, has fallen into disrepair in recent years, with numerous code violations recorded.

With the hotel facility gone, the property is expected to be more marketable.

Hays public works director is finalist for job as city administrator in Willmar, Minn.

Posted on January 20, 2017January 20, 2017

Hays Public Works Director Greg Sund talks about snow routes during a December city commission meeting.

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

Hays Public Works Director Greg Sund is a finalist for the position of city administrator in Willmar, Minn.

According to a news story published online Jan. 19 by the West Central Tribune in Willmar, Sund is one of five finalists for the position who will be interviewed next month in Willmar.

Sund was hired as the Hays public works director in July 2015. He also served as the first county administrator for Ellis County from 2010 to 2015.

“I’m interested in getting back into city management,” Sund said Friday morning, “and this opportunity came up.”

The job would also put Sund closer to family.

“My son lives in Minneapolis, about 100 miles east of Willmar. I also have a daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter in Minot, North Dakota, about seven hours from Willmar,” he said.

The population of Willmar is nearly 20,000 and situated in the south-central part of Minnesota.

“It’s a nice-size city in a good location,” Sund said.

“This is tough, though,” he added. “I really like Hays.”

In February 2014, Sund was a finalist for the city administrator position in Hood River, Ore.

Dense Fog Advisory remains in effect until 10 a.m.

Posted on January 20, 2017

NWS

URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DODGE CITY KS
1248 AM CST FRI JAN 20 2017

TREGO-ELLIS-RUSH-HAMILTON-KEARNY-STANTON-GRANT-MORTON-STEVENS-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF…WAKEENEY…PFEIFER…HAYS…LA CROSSE…
SYRACUSE…LAKIN…DEERFIELD…JOHNSON CITY…ULYSSES…ELKHART…
HUGOTON
1248 AM CST FRI JAN 20 2017 /1148 PM MST THU JAN 19 2017/

…DENSE FOG ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 AM CST /9 AM
MST/ THIS MORNING…

* TIMING…THROUGH MID MORNING FRIDAY.

* VISIBILITY…AS LOW AS A QUARTER MILE OR LESS.

* IMPACTS…HAZARDOUS TRAVEL CONDITIONS DUE TO POOR VISIBILITY.
FREEZING FOG COULD CAUSE SLICK SPOTS ON ROADS AND SIDEWALKS
WHERE TEMPERATURES ARE BELOW FREEZING.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS…

A DENSE FOG ADVISORY MEANS VISIBILITIES WILL FREQUENTLY BE
REDUCED TO LESS THAN ONE QUARTER MILE. IF DRIVING…SLOW DOWN…
USE YOUR HEADLIGHTS…AND LEAVE PLENTY OF DISTANCE AHEAD OF YOU.

🎥 Jacobs appointed to fill vacant Hays City Commission seat

Posted on January 20, 2017January 20, 2017

Newly appointed Hays City Commissioner Sandy Jacobs shakes hands with other commissioners Thursday night. She will be sworn into office Jan. 26 to fill the unexpired term of Eber Phelps.

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

“We could have tossed a dart and been just fine.”

Hays Vice-Mayor James Meier, his fellow city commissioners and even candidate James Leiker all agreed Thursday night there could be no wrong choice among the six candidates vying for the unexpired term of Eber Phelps.

“This has been gut-wrenching decision,” added Commissioner Lance Jones, who said he “met personally with everybody who put an application in. And, James is right. There is not a bad selection out of this group. Everyone was qualified for this position.”

During last night’s special session, the candidates, Bill Ring, Sandy Jacobs, Marty Patterson, James Leiker, Brad Pendergast, and Ron Mellick, first delivered short remarks about their desires to serve as a city commissioner.

A motion was then made by Meier to appoint Sandy Jacobs to the position, seconded by Jones, and then unanimously approved. Commissioner Henry Schwaller participated in the special session via phone. Although Schwaller said he “would like to see (former city commissioner) Ron Mellick reinstated, I’ve known Sandy for years and I know she’ll do a fine job.”

Jacobs is the executive director of Heartland Community Foundation in Hays and an active community volunteer. She is a retired bank executive with more than 40 years of financial experience and said that’s “a skill set I can bring to the table with the challenges I see and the budget issues in the near future.”

“The strongest thing I’ve done in my career and through my volunteerism and what is in my soul, is that I want to work to ensure sustainable economic growth for this community.

“My passion lives and breathes in the city of Hays and the citizens of Hays. I think that’s what it’s all about,” Jacobs concluded.

Jacobs will be sworn into office Thu., Jan. 26, during the next regular commission meeting. The unexpired term of Phelps, now the 111th Dist. state representative, expires in January 2018.

The commissioners encouraged all the candidates to run for in 2018. According to City Manager Toby Dougherty, there will be three seats open on the city commission.

City to consider final plat of Creekside Estates, formerly Arbor Valley Estates

Posted on January 19, 2017January 19, 2017

creekside-final-plat — (Click to enlarge)

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

A short agenda faces Hays city commissioners for their work session tonight.

The work session will immediately follow a special session at 6:30 p.m. in which a replacement city commissioner will be named to fill the unexpired term of Eber Phelps. That person will be sworn in at the Thu., Jan. 26 regular meeting.

The sole item for review during the work session is the Creekside Estates Addition Final Plat as requested by the property owners.

Originally platted as Arbor Valley Estates, the property located south of 27th St. west of Hall St. is annexed into the city and is zoned for residential development. Total area of the plat is 12.17 acres.

The plat includes 12 lots ranging from 0.6 acres to just over 1 acre as well as right-of-way dedication for the extension of Englewood St. If approved, the street, water, and sewer infrastructure will be extended and constructed to city standards.

On December 19, 2016, the final plat was reviewed and approved unanimously by the Hays Area Planning Commission.

Click here to see the Jan. 19 work session agenda.

🎥 Replacement city commissioner to be named Thursday

Posted on January 18, 2017January 20, 2017

A replacement Hays city commissioner will be named Thursday to fill the unexpired term of Eber Phelps. — A replacement Hays city commissioner will be named Thursday to fill the unexpired term of Eber Phelps (right).

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

One of the candidates applying for the Hays city commission seat vacated Jan. 9 by Eber Phelps has withdrawn his name.

According to Hays City Manager Toby Dougherty, Matt Lyon notified the city by email last week that he was withdrawing as a candidate due to unforeseen circumstances that would not allow him time to devote to the position.

The successful candidate is to be named by city commissioners in a special session Thursday night at 6:30 p.m. in Hays City Hall. A commission work session will follow the special session. No action can be taken in a work session, thus the need to call a special meeting for the candidate selection.

State statute requires the appointment of a replacement commissioner within 10 days of the seat being vacated. The process is not defined by the state; it’s left up to a city’s commissioners.

“There’s no public vetting. There’s no public meeting. There’s no requirement for public statements although I know some commissioners have met with the applicants individually, but there’s no state requirements,” Dougherty explained. “The statute is pretty broad on this. It doesn’t state a process, just a time line.”

The new commissioner will be sworn in at the next regular meeting, Thu., Jan. 26.

“The commission will reorganize at that meeting. They typically reorganize every year, where the mayor and the vice-mayor get selected. There won’t be any ‘moving,’ though, because this reorganization already happened a few months ago, with Mayor Shaun Musil and Vice-Mayor James Meier taking over.”

The commission reorganization was different in 2016 because of changes in state municipal election laws. Dougherty said the Jan. 26 reorganization will “put them back on track so now every year in January they’ll do the reorganizations.”

Phelps’ unexpired term is up in January 2018. He is now serving as the 111th District state representative.

🎥 City: No residential collection of downed tree limbs

Posted on January 17, 2017January 17, 2017

Property owners are responsible for any tree limb cleanup following the weekend ice storm.

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

“We were lucky, and we got moisture, which is nice.”

Hays City Manager Toby Dougherty was breathing a sigh of relief Tuesday morning following Sunday’s ice storm.

Although 7,539 Midwest Energy customers remained without power at 1 p.m. today, all Hays customers were online. There were 9 rural customers east of Hays still without electricity .

The major streets in Hays were treated with brine Friday by Public Works employees in anticipation of the weekend storm.

“Brine is just a salt/water mixture that creates a layer that helps prevent anything from freezing on the street,” Dougherty explained.

“Brine is an application that works very good if it doesn’t get too cold and we don’t get a lot of rain with it that washes the brine off. We put a lot of brine down, saturating the streets. As soon as it started icing, the crews were out putting down a granular salt/sand mixture down.

“We were lucky in that a lot of the moisture came down as rain (1.13″) overnight Sunday into Monday morning. That prevented temperatures from getting as cold as predicted (by the National Weather Service.) At 4:30 a.m. Sunday, it was raining pretty heavily and 34 degrees. If the rain had stopped earlier, we probably would have had just a solid sheet of thick ice on all the roads. Monday morning, the residential streets were a little slick but the arterials were all open.”

One-half inch of ice did coat sidewalks and trees.

City crews are picking up tree limbs on city right of way and city property only. — City crews are picking up tree limbs on city right-of-way and city property only.

Some big limbs came down, but Dougherty said the city is picking up only what is in the city right-of-way or on city property.

“We typically only pick up tree limbs in residential areas when it becomes a matter of concern to the health and welfare of the residents.

“When we had the windstorm (July 13) and there were lots of limbs blocking curbs and blocking streets, and others that were about to fall on passersby, and the sheer volume would take private haulers months to get rid of, that’s when the city gets involved.”

Dougherty knows there was some tree damage around town, but called it “very minimal and very localized, from what it could be.”

He encouraged residents to call the Parks Department at (785) 628-7375 for a list of qualified private tree removal specialists in Hays.

Tree limbs can also be taken to the Ellis County Landfill at no charge.

🎥 Midwest Energy: Melting ice causing more problems

Posted on January 16, 2017January 17, 2017

Courtesy photo — All photos courtesy Midwest Energy

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

The service area for Hays-based Midwest Energy covers territory from Reno County near Hutchinson, all the way northwest to the Kansas/Colorado border in Rawlins County. That’s 41 counties where MWE provides electricity and/or gas to its customers.

“And most of them have been in some kind of outage-type scenario because of the ice storm that blew through this weekend,” MWE Communications Manager Mike Morley said late Monday afternoon.

Morley and his Midwest Energy colleagues monitor the weather forecast carefully when severe weather is predicted and try to anticipate where the worst damage will be. They assign crews and hold some crews on reserve if there’s going to be a particularly bad outage.

“That’s what we did with this storm,” Morley said. “We held a couple crews back and also brought in some contract crews and had them standing by in Great Bend. So when the trouble started on Sunday afternoon, we sent the Midwest crews first. They worked into Sunday evening. And then today, Monday, it’s just gone crazy. As the ice has melted, it’s brought down lines all over the service area.

“All the Midwest crews are out. We’ve got a dozen contract crews helping us. It looks like we’re going to be working on this for several days before we’ve got the system back up to normal.”

Midwest Energy brought in contract crews from Ward Electric and PAR Electric to help repair this storm’s damage.

“They have more specialized equipment which can help put up the large transmission poles,” Morley said, “and they’re helping out in the southern part of our service area where we have several transmission lines down.”

An OMS-Outage Management System-indicates where certain circuits have opened and alerts Midwest Energy that “somewhere in this general area, there are 300 to 400 customers who are out.

“So the first thing we do is send out crews to patrol the lines, looking for obvious things like breakage on a cross-arm, maybe a tree that’s laying on some wires, or even a pole that’s broken off. Once we find that, we make the repairs as quickly as we safely can, then patrol the rest of the line and then we energize that line,” he explained.

There are 50,000 electric customers in the Midwest Energy system. As of late Monday afternoon, about 8,500 of those customers were without power.

Ice is the culprit.

An inch of ice on a power line on a 300 foot span between two poles adds about a thousand pounds of weight to that section. A pole with wires going both directions adds two thousand pounds of weight–a ton–per line on the cross arm.

“Fortunately, the cross arms are designed to stand up to a fair amount of ice,” Morley said. “Where it becomes problematic is when the wind blows. The lines begin ‘galloping,’ whipping up and down just like a jump rope. That’s what happens to the system. It basically shakes itself until it breaks.”

More problems will occur as the temperatures warm up.

“When the ice begins to melt, particularly on tiered poles where there are transmission lines on the upper part of the pole and distribution wires on the bottom, as the distribution wires melt off that weight, it’s gonna shoot up–just like a rubber band–and vibrate back and forth. As that weight comes off, the lines will snap up and hit some of the heavier lines above.

“That gives us what we call ‘blinks,’ where your lights cut in and out for just a second.”

All the utilities in Kansas sign into mutual aid, according to Morley.

More than an inch of freezing rain falls in Hays

Posted on January 16, 2017January 16, 2017

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

An official 1.13” of freezing rain fell in Hays Sunday during the daylight hours.

According to Joe Becker at the K-State Agricultural Research Center, a half inch of ice glaze on exposed surfaces with a thin layer of water on top was still making it treacherous to walk outside Monday morning.

Sunday’s high in Hays was 31°. The low temperature was 27°.

An Ice Storm Warning for Ellis County remains in effect until noon today, with rain, sleet and snow in today’s forecast.

Click HERE for the extensive list of latest cancellations and delays.

Trego County ice (Courtesy Kathleen Fabrizius)

Six Hays residents vying for vacant position on city commission

Posted on January 13, 2017January 13, 2017

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

Six people, including a former Hays city commissioner, have filed for the city commission seat vacated recently by Eber Phelps, who is now serving as the 111th District State Representative.

Phelps’ term on the city commission expires in January 2018.

The candidates are:
Sandra Jacobs, executive director of Heartland Community Foundation in Hays. Jacobs is a retired bank executive with more than 40 years of financial experience. She has served on the Downtown Hays Development Corporation Board and the board of directors of the Ellis County Coalition for Economic Development.

James Leiker, is a self-employed business owner who served on the Hays school board from 2011 to 2015. Leiker also was a member of Public Wholesale Water Supply District #15 and the Ellis County Wellhead Commission.

Ron Mellick, owner of Ron’s Floor Covering. Mellick previously served eight years as a Hays City Commissioner from 2007 to 2015.

Martin Patterson, an employee of Production Drilling, Inc. Patterson is a former board member and vice-president of Hays USD 489.

Brad Pendergast, an employee of the Docking Institute for Public Affairs, Fort Hays State University. Pendergast has a master’s degree in public administration from Wichita State University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from FHSU.

Bill Ring, Ellis County Public Works Director and former Ellis County Emergency Manager. He recently moved into Hays from a home just outside the city limits. Ring also has experience in law enforcement and as a volunteer firefighter.

The Hays city commission will hold a special meeting Thu., Jan. 19, at 6:30 p.m. in City Hall, 1507 Main, to fill the vacant commission position. The appointment will be for one year.

The commission work session will follow the special meeting.