The Fort Scott City Commissioners presented a framed certificate to City Attorney Bob Farmer for his 40 years of service to the community during their final October meeting Tuesday evening.

“Thank you, Bob, for all you’ve done,” mayor Cindy Bartelsmeyer said.

The commission also approved New Wave Broadband’s tower to be built near the lake, on property leased to the Kansas Parks and Wildlife, in order to provide internet coverage to that area.

Commissioner Jim Adams said he has heard from residents who live near the lake that they are excited about the tower coming to their area.

Already, New Wave Broadband is using Fort Scott’s three water tower locations to provide internet services to area businesses and residents within line of sight of those towers. The new tower will allow them to broaden their reach.

“One of our concerns has always been reliability,” Harry Lee of New Wave Broadband said, saying they frequently have backup systems in place in case something goes wrong and also strive to “over-provide” their services rather than not provide a strong enough signal.

Work on the tower will begin in the near future.

Director of Finance Jon Garrison also gave an update on the clubhouse being built at the golf course, asking that the commissioners allow him to look for a contractor to help complete the interior of the building so it could be ready by March.

“I think we need to speed that up,” Garrison said of the project, which would not be complete by the spring without other assistance. “I think it very critical to get the clubhouse done.”

With the exterior of the building complete, Garrison said it could serve as a winter project for a contractor. Projects remaining include the wiring, plumbing, insulation, sheetrock and painting.

The commission agreed that Garrison should meet with contractors to discuss what the remaining work would cost.

Bella Roma, an Italian restaurant that came to Fort Scott less than a year ago and shared a building with Fort Scott Inn, closed its doors on Oct. 5, a move that came as a shock to some employees and the owners of the Fort Scott Inn.

“We were actually surprised,” Fort Scott Inn owner Alex Desai said of the restaurant’s sudden closing.

Desai said he was out of town when the restaurant closed and he returned to find items from the building being packed up.

“I never got to truly speak to the owner himself,” Desai said, saying though his attempts to contact the restaurant owner Giovanni Elezi were unsuccessful, Desai was able to speak with the owner’s brother.

That brother said they had opened too many restaurants at one time, and slow business and not enough manpower led to their decision to close their Fort Scott, Iola and Nevada restaurant locations.

Desai said he has begun contacting others he believes may be interested in opening another restaurant at the same location.

The weekly Chamber Coffee event hosted by SEK Financial Thursday morning gave representatives from businesses in Fort Scott as well as some high school students the opportunity to learn about SEK Financial and what other businesses in the community are doing in upcoming weeks.

“We work with twenty-something different school districts,” representative Jim Sather said of SEK Financial located in the Industrial Park south of Fort Scott, but added they do much more than just working with schools, such as helping others through investments, insurance, IRAs, 401K plans, rollovers and other financial advice.

“We are able to stay plenty busy,” Sather said. “We love what we do.”

They have also held social security seminars, informing community members of Medicare and Medicaid facts. Businesses interested in inviting them to come speak on that or other financial topics can contact them.

“When we give advice, we just try to do the very best that we can here,” Sather said, saying their doors are open to those who would like to chat with one of their representatives.

Other announcements included:

• The new Bleeding Kansas and Civil War exhibits at the Fort Scott National Historic Site are almost ready as final inspections are completed.
• The Gordon Parks Celebration will begin next Thursday and will include videos, speakers, tours and other events such as a concert by a jazz band from Kansas City Friday evening.
• The Halloween Parade will make its way through downtown Fort Scott Saturday Oct. 24, at 11 a.m. Families and businesses are invited to participate.
• On Friday the 30th, the city will host a speaker who works with small businesses and will be discussing topics such as staying relevant to the changing customer and art as a business, giving business owners new ideas to help grow their company.
• Tickets for the Forks and Corks: Taste of Fort Scott event, which will be held Nov. 7, continue to be sold around the city.

Formerly Gene’s Heartland Foods, G & W Foods continued its Grand Opening weeks with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday afternoon, despite being delayed briefly when power in the store and the neighborhood went out.

“The store looks fabulous,” Chamber of Commerce executive director Lindsay Madison said. “So thank you already for your investment in the community. We are very excited.”

Chris O’Hara said this is the 24^th G & W Foods branch and the 10^th in Kansas, with others located in Arkansas and Missouri. O’Hara said they are appreciative of the “wide open arms” the community has put forward in welcoming the new store to the area.

O’Hara said most of the employees are the same from when it was Heartlands except for the addition of the new manager, Will Rayburn. Each of the employees introduced themselves as well as noting how long they had been with the store, ranging from a few weeks to 20 years.

“I’m looking forward to a lot of great years here,” Rayburn said.

The store provides United States Department of Agriculture choice beef, a wide variety of organic foods as well as custom meat smoking and cake decorating. Starting next week, store ads will include coupons and fuel gas-savers cards will be available within the next 10 days.

They also have the Partners for Education program which allows customers to give their G & W receipts to their school, who can then return them to the store for one percent of those sales.

“It can be a very good thing for the community,” O’Hara said.

The ribbon-cutting event also included free hot dogs and refreshments for participants. The store continues its training for employees and organization of the store itself.

During the weekly Chamber Coffee, the Fort Scott Family Dental hosts introduced themselves to other business leaders and also gave a vision for their goal in the community.

“It’s a great group of people here at Fort Scott Dental, which makes it worthwhile,” Dr. Tim Crawford said of his team, which has been offering services to Fort Scott for the past four years with Crawford living in the city for the past year.

Crawford said they hope to expand their current building, adding about 800 square feet, in the near future so they can see more patients. They currently offer a variety of services including dental implants, orthodontics, root canals, whitening and extractions.

“There’s very little that you can’t get done in our office,” Crawford said, adding they are always accepting new patients.

Other announcements included:

• G & W Foods will offer free hot dogs and refreshments Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. with their ribbon-cutting ceremony at 12:15.
• The third annual Triyakathon will start at 10 a.m. Saturday, with individuals or teams participating in running, kayaking and biking different portions of the trails at Gunn Park.
• The Forks and Corks: Taste of Fort Scott event, to be held Nov. 7, continues to look for live auction items, food vendors who would like to participate and  entries for the salsa contest.
• The Lowell Milken Center’s new building had its final cleaning done Thursday as it officially nears completion. Its doors will not open for a few months still as they now begin placing exhibits.
• The Highlands Apartments will hold an open house Tuesday, 5-8 p.m., welcoming those interested in seeing the apartments.
• Fort Scott’s Halloween Parade will make its way through downtown Oct. 24, with downtown businesses, and even those not located downtown, encouraged to participate.

In their first meeting of the month, the Fort Scott City Commission decided to enter into an agreement with Kansas Fiber Network, allowing the company to lay fiber optic cable through the city to provide internet access for local businesses.

The Kansas-based company with 25 employees and headquartered in Wichita will lay the cable along Indian Road from the west and then north on Horton Street and east on 18^th Street before again running north on Judson Street.

Debbie Edwards, the company’s business development executive, said right now they will not provide their services to residential areas, but instead target customers such as government, education, medical, anchor institutions and similar entities.

The Kansas Fiber Network currently serves more than 400 communities and continues to expand, but without becoming exclusive or impersonal as some other major providers might.

“What I really like…is that we have a really big network but a small-town feel,” Edwards said of the company, which she said is staffed by Kansans.

Fort Scott’s director of information technology Slayden Davis said he has been working with the company over recent months and said he would call their services a “major backbone for our neck of the woods.”

The quorum of commissioners, with Mayor Cindy Bartelsmeyer and commissioner Lucas Cosens absent, approved the agreement unanimously.

The commission also heard a report from Rebecca Brubaker, executive director of the Safehouse Crisis Center in Pittsburg, which provides refuge for battered women who may have suffered from domestic abuse or stalking.

The center serves seven Kansas counties, housing about 40 from Bourbon County each year while serving about 750 in total annually, helping them with immediate needs as well as trying to help them become self-sufficient.

The commission decided to donate $1,000 toward Safehouse’s $1.2 million campaign for a larger facility.

In executive session, the commissioners decided to extend their contract with city manager Dave Martin another five years while also giving him a two percent raise.