Kansas has an interesting program to help community colleges raise money. It works like this: You or your business can make a donation to FSCC and earn a 60% tax credit. On top of that, you get the federal deduction for a contribution to a non-profit.

So a contribution of $1,000 would get you $600 back from Kansas. The credit is refundable, so you get the $600 even if you didn’t pay $600 in taxes. If you are at the 25% Federal Tax Bracket, the donation can get you $250 off your Federal income tax. So you can donate $1,000 to FSCC and have it only cost you $150. If you are in a higher tax bracket the savings can be even greater.

It is a great program because it lets people keep their tax money local. For a $150 out of pocket expense, you can keep $850 of tax money in our local community instead of sending it to the state and Federal government.

If you might be interested in this, give Gary Palmer a call at 620-223-2700 ext. 5830.  You can also take a look at this PDF for more details.

The pool and expansion at Buck Run are making progress. Here are a bunch of pictures of the work being done.

Today several people told me that the Scottish Rite Temple had “For Sale” signs in the window. I assumed that the signs were in the old Western building that is currently owned by Harvest Ministries. But when I went by, the signs were on the part that is owned by the Scottish Rite Temple–where the Kiwanis Pancake Feed and Beacon Soup Feed are held.

I called Diann Tucker at Stewart Realty to ask about it. She had been out of town and was surprised, but after checking with another agent called me back to say that the building is indeed for sale. The asking price is $1,000,000 and some of the personal property is negotiable.

Diann said that if they are able to sell the building, the Scottish Rite will most likely build a smaller facility.

The Lyon’s Twin Mansions Month of Brunch Giveaway has a winner. Jerrod Handly’s name matched the random number generated from www.random.org.  He is now in possession of gift certificates for weekly brunches for a month at the Lyon’s Restaurant.

A special thanks to Miss Pat and the Lyon’s Twin Mansions for sponsoring the giveaway. Don’t forget they are open for lunch 9 – 2 Tuesday through Sunday and they open an hour early (at 8am) on the weekends.

If you want to make sure your name is in the running for future giveaways, please sign up for our email list here.

Community Christian Church held an open house Monday from 10 to 1. Soup and refreshments were served. Below are a few pictures from the event.

Everything Pets had a ribbon cutting Saturday morning at 9:30. The store is owned by Dawn Bryant and is located at 605 S. National. They have large selection of pets and supplies with everything from snakes to flying squirrels to puppies.

Please stop by and welcome this new business to Fort Scott.

Jim Brown has quite a Christmas lights display at his house on 13 S. Margrave. His home is located just South of Wall Street behind An Octave Above. You can tune your radio to 100.5 FM and see nearly 8,000 lights running a custom made light show synced to the music. The music is on a 16 minute loop and he plans to run it from 6:30 to 9:30 every evening through Christmas.

Below is a video of the house. If you are reading this in an email, you may have to visit FortScott.Biz to watch it.

Christmas Lights 2011 from Jim Brown on Vimeo.

Two years ago at Thanksgiving Mr. Brown found DoItYourselfChristmas.com where people talk about how to do animated lighting synced to music. He bought the printed circuits and components and made all the controllers himself by soldering the components together.

Mr. Brown said the actual setup of the lights took about two days, but he has spent all of his spare time from the last two years creating the circuit boards and programming all the songs. There are 72 channels that can be independently turned on and off and dimmed from 100% to 0%. Mr. Brown said that programming a single song took about 20 hours. His personal computer controls the circuit boards that control the lights.  He programmed the songs using a free piece of software called Vixen.

He runs this off of a temporary electric service on a separate meter. After measuring it the first night, he calculates it will cost $0.60 per night. Mr. Brown said a static display would probably cost three times that because the animated display has many light off or dimmed at any given time.

Mr. Brown said to make sure not to forget to tune the radio to 100.5 because it just looks like a bunch of flashing lights with out the music.

If you live in Fort Scott, you definitely need to take some time to go by and see the light show.