Local citizens met at FSCC for a Fort Scott Visioning meeting to discuss some of the future plans, projects and needs in Fort Scott.

After an introduction Chris Allen sang with his guitar while a video played showing pictures of some of the projects backed by the Fort Scott Visioning Committee including the expanded facilities at Buck Run, the new pool, and the Pennies for the Park world record.

Angie Bower, a Public Square Colleague, spoke about how Public Square Communities work to help develop communities. Their efforts are trying to bring the four elements of government, education, human services and business to the table to work together.  Fort Scott has been involved in the process with Public Square since 2005.

Fort Scott has been accredited by Public Square twice. The first time was in 2009 and the second was in 2011. This is a peer review process where other communities assess the things being done in Fort Scott.

Clayton Tatro talked about some of the teams in Fort Scott like the Youth Action Team, the Good Neighbor Focus Team and the Riverfront Project. He discussed the need to start thinking about what the next stage is in developing “visioning 2.0”. He also reviewed some of the successes made by local teams toward their goals.

Mallory Shelton, a senior from Fort Scott, talked about a project the involved talking to high school students to ask about their view of the future of the Fort Scott community. She said that the students wanted to avoid feeling like they were “stuck” in Fort Scott, but have it to come home to. There were comments about how safe and open Fort Scott is and how that is a good place to raise a family.

The students mentioned a need to have some type of place to go in town like a bowling alley.

The people present broke up into three groups for break out sessions to discuss projects that would benefit Fort Scott. There were a number of suggestions including:

• Putting a coffee shop downtown.
• Trying to address education in letting young people understand what they can do if they are willing to work hard.
• Some type of youth gathering place other than just the Keyhole.
• The need for better Internet infrastructure.
• The need to try to tie assistance to people based on the ability to work in order to steer the community toward a proper balance.
• The possibility of creating more second story living downtown.
• Trying to better sell the benefits of the community to senior citizens.
• Options for using tax funds to fix up or encourage owners to fix up downtown buildings.

The annual Knights of Columbus fish fry wrapped up at the end of last month. The event was held in Kennedy Auditorium at St. Mary’s Catholic School and drew large crowds on each Friday.

Below are some photos from this years event.

The rain didn’t dampen the spirits of over 100 people who attended the grand opening ceremony for the James B. Tedesco Skatepark. City Manager Dave Martin, Mayor Jim Adams and Nate Lyons from the Fort Scott Skate Park Committee spoke.

Mr. Martin said that last year the city had some money left in the parks budget and asked the commissioners if they could use that toward the skate park. The commissioners agreed and around Christmas, Mr. Adams called to say that someone was willing to donate $25,000 to the project to help get it built.

The donor was Steve Tedesco who owns Running Fox Petroleum which has a number of wells in the Fort Scott area. The Skatepark is named after his late brother James.

Mr. Martin encouraged the city’s youth to take care of the facilities.

After the ribbon cutting, Evan Dohtery did a skateboarding demonstration. Evan is a very talented skater from the Kansas City area. You can see some videos of him skating in other places here.

A box of helmets was donated by the Tony Hawk Foundation and they were being handed out to youngsters who didn’t have any head protection.

There are over 100 pictures from the event shown below. If you click on one of the thumbnails you can view the full image. Clicking on the full size image will take you to the next image in the slide show.

According to Jamie Armstrong (President of YPL), the annual Soupline raised over $3,000 for the Beacon. The Young Professional’s League helped coordinate the event that involved volunteers from YPL, local churches and the community.

Below are some photos from this years event.

The Skate Park will be dedicated on April 7th at 1:00 pm. Please make plans to join the community for this event.

Fort Scott Christian Heights is holding a Family Fun Night and Open House on Friday, March 30th from 5 to 7 pm. (We originally said the open house would be on March 20th. The correct date is the 30th as shown now.)

The public is welcome and there will be activities for the kids as well as an opportunities for parents to find out more about the educational opportunities offered at Christian Heights.

Below are some photographs of school activities from this last year.

Each year the community raises money for the Beacon by putting on a soup line. This year  it will be held on Thursday March 29th from 11am until 7pm at the Scottish right temple. Please make an effort to be there to help support this important organization.  You can join the event page on Facebook and then share it with your friends to help spread the word. It may not seem like a big deal, but if everyone took a few minutes to invite a handful of their friends, it could make a very big difference for the Beacon this year.

The event is being coordinated by the Young Professional’s League and tickets can be purchased from members, from Country Cupboard or at the door.

Below are some photographs of last years event taken by Kenny Felt.

Scott Musgrove and several other workers from Who Skates of Maine were busy finishing concrete on the new skate park on Friday. Mr. Musgrove said that the concrete work should be finished in the next week and said he expected the grand opening to take place in April.

The skate park will be called the James B. Tedesco Memorial Skate Park in memory of a relative of a large donor.