Today a vibrant group of Fort Scott businesspeople met at Medicalodge, one of the area’s skilled nursing and rehabilitation centers, to enjoy the hospitality of Deborah Madison and the Medicalodge staff.

New members were introduced, and Aaron Nuss of Names and Numbers announced that the company now has a presence in the city to serve customers in the immediate area.

Medicalodge has been observing “Nursing Home Week” with activities all week long. Tomorrow will be “Farm Day,” and  the facility will have a petting zoo available to residents as well as any children in attendance.

Deborah Madison mentioned also that Medicalodges will be holding a benefit drive-through dinner Friday May 17th with the proceeds going to Relay for Life.

Jackie Warren stepped up to speak about her experience at an Extension Office Conference, and brought to attention the great things that are being done by the Chamber of Commerce in Fort Scott and all of the activities that the Chamber of Commerce does, especially in comparison in areas where the same kinds of organizations are not quite as involved in the community.

In news from FSCC,  congratulations are in order for FSCC Baseball Coach John Hill and the FSCC Baseball team as they have had a very successful season, in addition to being in the top 6 with regard to team GPA in the nation.

A few upcoming events with regard to the Bourbon County Fair were also mentioned. Two new events that will be added to the Bourbon County Fair this year. The first event is the “Big Bale” contest in which contestants decorate the provided hay bale. Anyone can participate (church youth groups, 4-H groups, etc), and cash prizes will be awarded to the winners. The deadline for registration for this contest is July 1st. Applications are available here at the Bourbon County Fair website.

A second event added this year is a baking contest sponsored by King Arthur Flour, the nation’s oldest flour company established in 179o. For everyone who registers for the contest, King Arthur Flour will provide one (1) bag of flour. There will be cash prizes for contest winners, and the deadline to apply is June 1st. Applications are available here at the Bourbon County Fair website.

Deborah Madison then thanked everyone for attending the Chamber Coffee event and also thanked everyone who had helped work on the Medicalodge building after the storm, as well as the staff at Medicalodge: “Team care–that’s what it really takes to keep this place running.” Madison also mentioned that the job is 24/7–it is not similar to working on a bridge, in which case the project has a definite end point. However, Madison did mention that Medicalodge staff members do their best to “build a bridge” with regard to establishing relationships with their clients.

Old Fort Antiques and Collectibles might be Fort Scott’s newest addition to downtown business in the area of flea markets, but its owners, Bud Hall and Josh Jones, have been in the business for several years.

As a visitor walks into the store located at 2 S National Ave, that visitor would immediately be met with the friendly smile of owner Bud Hall. Hall just happened to be examining and cleaning up one of his finds–collectible coins. A look around the store reveals a variety of rustic antiques and beautiful furniture. An antique gasoline pump stands guard by the side door, while vintage clocks keep time in the corners. No doubt this location, formerly the Downtowner Motel, is seeing some of these antiques for a second time in its career serving downtown Fort Scott.

Old Fort Antiques and Collectibles runs by allowing vendors space to display their merchandise. This allows the store to carry a wide range of available goods, including collectibles,  coins, furniture and appliances. According to Hall, the store opened at the beginning of March, and by April, a waiting list was in place for vendors. The store does, however, plan to offer more space very soon as they are cleaning out what was the kitchen area of the building.

When asked about what he enjoys most about owning a business downtown, Hall says, “I think just dealing with the people. I’ve been a salesperson for most of my life.” In addition to the fact that he loves working with people, and he says that his business loves “to buy and sell. We also love to deal in coins–gold and silver. We are always looking for new merchandise, and we would really like to get more into selling appliances.” He also mentioned that they are willing to barter with those who prefer that. The store will soon have a credit/debit machine to allow customers to buy with cards if they prefer to do so.

With its convenient location and hours, wide variety of merchandise and friendly staff, Old Fort Antiques and Collectibles is the place to visit for antiques and collectibles or that piece of furniture or appliance you’ve been needing.

Although Gunn Park is beautiful year-round, spring is an especially enjoyable time to be in the park enjoying its historic buildings, many lakes, wildlife, flowers and of course, the company of friends and family. Crews have been mowing to keep the grounds neat and tidy, and the lakes are stocked with trout, so don’t forget your fishing license!

A bit of history from fscity.org:

“June 3, 1910 – W.C. Gunn gives Fern Lake and the Stewart Farm to the City of Fort Scott for a park.

The first shelter house of stone was built in 1910 on the first lake (Fern Lake)

There was a large wood theater building on the other side of Fern Lake with a seating capacity of 800. During special events such as July 4^th, the street cars would take as many as 10,000 people to the park in one day.”

If you’ve driven by Espressly For You recently, you may have noticed the sign saying that it is closing. The good news is that the store has been purchased by Mike Giordano and he’ll be taking over on Tuesday February 20th.

Mr. Giordano is a Fort Scott local. He said they plan to be open from 6 to 2 and may consider staying open later for a dinner special on Wednesdays. Be sure to stop by and Welcome Mr. Giordano in his new endeavor.

Ron Estes will be at Buck Run on Friday at 8:30 am to talk about unclaimed property.

Today Dave Martin announced that Fort Scott won the Take Charge Challenge where communities competed to make energy efficient improvements. The award comes with a $100,000 grant that will be used to replace public lighting in Fort Scott with more efficient technology. Mr. Martin will be talking more about it on his Thursday morning radio program.

The Arcadia Christian Church held a cookout for the community on Friday evening. Organizers said they estimated 100 to 150 people came through during the evening. Hotdogs and marshmallows were cooked over the small fire and a grill helped keep a supply of food for those less skilled at cooking over the flames.  Attendees were entertained by youngsters doing acapella  Justin Bieber impersonations on a small sound system and a tractor and trailer provided hay rack rides.

Patty Love won our iPod Shuffle giveaway! We generated a random number from random.org and the number matched Patty’s email address in our list of subscribers.

I took Patty the iPod this morning. She was excited to win, said that now she has to figure out how to use it. She wasn’t too worried because she has a daughter who can help her.

Congratulations Patty! Enjoy your new iPod.

FortScott.biz will be doing some more giveaways in the next few months. Be sure to signup for our emails so you’ll be entered in the upcoming contests.

The winner of this contest has been contacted, but stay tuned for more giveaways.

FortScott.biz has a subscription option where you can get daily emails with all of the new stories for that day. To help bring more attention to this feature, we are giving away an iPod Shuffle to one subscriber.  To sign up, all you have to do is to subscribe.

The contest will run until October 11th, 2011. Here are the rules:

• You have to be subscribed to the list to enter. That means you’ll need to type in your email address and then confirm the subscription.
• You can enter from this link or using the form on the right hand side of the page.
• You’ll need to come to Fort Scott to claim the prize. If you live in Alaska, this might not be cost effective for you.
• The winner will be announced and have their picture posted to the site. This probably isn’t a good contest for people in the witness protection program.
• If you are under 18, you’ll need a guardian to accept it on your behalf.

Fort Scott Community College hosted a Home Energy Savings Workshop presented by Westar Energy on Tuesday night. The presentation looked at different ways to make homes more efficient and was followed by a workshop where attendees could practice applying caulk and foam.  Attendees were given a packet containing a caulking gun, foam, weather stripping and other weatherizing supplies.

Some facts from the meeting:

• Sillplates and wall outlets account for 45% of the are infiltration in a typical home.
• Most houses have air infiltration that is equivalent to a 3 foot by 3 foot hole cut in the wall.
• Fort Scott is currently leading the contest for a $100,000 prize among communities competing for making energy efficient upgrades.
• Through the end of September, you can get a home energy audit for $100 through a special government program. (And it helps with points toward the contest.)
• The money that Kansas had available for loans to make energy efficient improvements has been reassigned, but there is a possibility that it may come back.
• Many devices still pull power when plugged in, but not turned on. This is called phantom power.
• A typical TV and cable box uses $3.50 per month in phantom power.
• Phantom power can account for up to 35% of an electric bill.
• CFL bulbs contain mercery. However, when you account for the mercery produced by the additional electricity requirements of a standard bulb, CFLs result 5 to 6 times less mercery than standard lightbulbs over a 8,000 hour period.
• Home Depot and other stores offer CFL recycling so the mercery, plastic and glass gets reused instead of ending up in a landfill.
• Westar has a program where they will install a free electronic thermostate, but there are reception problems in Fort Scott at this point. If those are resolved the program will become available here.

According to the Association of Kansas County Treasurers, payments on overdue taxes are first applied to the most current tax bill.

If one wants to pay delinquent years Kansas State Law (KSA79-2401A) requires that the most current delinquent year be paid first. Example: If a homeowner had taxes owing for 1993, 1994, and 1995 the full amount for 1995 must be paid before payment for the 1994 etc., or of course, the homeowner can pay all the years at once. (source)

If true, this would mean that once you got behind on your taxes, you’d be required to pay everything you owe to keep the property from being sold at the sheriff’s sale. In other word’s you wouldn’t be able to be consistently behind on your taxes. Once you get behind you’d have to get completely caught up to prevent a sale.

I asked Susan Quick (Bourbon County Treasurer) about this and she said it didn’t sound right. She said, Bourbon County has always let people apply payments to any year. In some cases, people want to pay the current year first in order to keep their name out of the paper.

I read through KSA79-2401A a few times, but Terri Johnson (Bourbon County Attorney) was kind enough to take a look at it and explain it to me. It turns out that the Association of Kansas County Treasurers is in error. It appears they copied nearly word for word a section from the Johnson County website that says the same thing. They aren’t the only site to copy Johnson County. Linn County’s site says the same thing.

If you read through the statute, you’ll see that the Johnson County site is correct, but only for Johnson County. Everywhere else requires the payments to be applied to the oldest delinquent taxes.

It seems a little odd that there is a state law saying, “do X” but if you are in Johnson County “do the opposite of X.” I’m surprised it makes an exception to the opposite in one particular county. Terri Johnson pointed out that at some point in the past the law applied to both Johnson and Wyandotte counties, but Wyandotte was later removed. At this point it is unclear what was driving this difference in state law.

As far as Bourbon County goes, the law says that people can’t choose how to apply delinquent payments so the current policy should be changed. However, since the law basically says that people need to act in what is usually their own best interest, it is unlikely that the policy has had any significant variation from the law.

There was some updated information from the treasurer (Susan Quick) today. According to the auditor (Terry Sercer) the interest charged on overdue taxes is to be simple interest. Based on this change, many of the calculations in the previous articles on this site are inaccurate.

I also obtained a copy of the report on the last Tax Foreclosure Sale that was held January 27th 2010. The sale brought in $8,087.00 but cost $13,322.50 for a total loss of $5,235.50. However,  an additional $68,342.34 was collected in taxes right before the sale. This means that even though money was lost on the sale itself, there were considerable funds collected from people who went ahead and paid taxes so the property wouldn’t be sold.

The $13,332.50 consists of the following charges:

• $6768.00 – Justin Meeks, Attorney
• $720.00 – Gilbert Gregory, Guardian Ad Litem
• $2,680.00 – Linn County Abstract Co.
• $2,656.50 – Tribune
• $498.00 – District Court Fees

Today Susan Quick said that she had rectified the situation with the 2005 taxes mentioned at the bottom of the previous article, by paying an additional $375.60 in interest and the ad fee of $17. Unfortunately, because of the way the software works, it won’t show up in the online tax website.

When I dropped by the court house this afternoon, Terry Sercer was sitting at a desk conducting the audit.