Parkway Church of God at 1111 State Street is hosting a mixed quartet from God’s Bible School and College in Cincinnati, Ohio. The concert is this Wednesday July 16th at 7:00 pm.

At 7pm on Thursday, there was a meeting about the need for a new jail in Bourbon County.

Sheriff Bill Martin gave some background on the jail. He said the jail was built in 1977. It was made to house 27 inmates, 4 of them females. Average of 35 housed in jail now. The jail is so small the they can’t segregate prisoners as needed, so they have to send them somewhere else. In 1977 the goal was to rehabilitate prisoners. Courts would do things like order them to get their GED if they had not high school diploma.

Bill Martin would like to put in a 110 bed facility in order to try to make money by having other counties house prisoners in Bourbon County. He says the jail is the biggest liability to the county due to attempted suicides.

Someone from the audience asked why there were successful suicides now when there had not been in the past. The Sheriff said it was because “the climate of the inmate had changed.” He said that in 1977 you’d never think of people committing suicide in the jail.

He said that half of the people who are in the jail are not guilty.

Sheriff Martin listed the following problems:

• Showers are rusting
• Plumbing is leaking
• Bathrooms are small
• Heating is inefficient
• Cameras are in the right place
• Some windows are cracked
• It is possible for males and females to communicate through the walls
• Intercom system is old
• No sprinklers

Artie Lucas of Goldberg Group Architects said a study done by his company projects 90 inmates in 10 years. They passed out schematic diagrams of various jail designs.  He said their design that would house 110 inmates would only require 15 full time employees which is the same number of people who are running the current jail. A question was asked why it takes 15 people to staff the current 27 bed jail. Mr. Lucas didn’t know.

The Sheriff from Cherokee County (population 21,000) said that Bourbon County paid  them $130,000 to house prisoners. He said he wasn’t worried about losing income from Bourbon County because there would be other people needing them to house inmates.

There was concern that housing inmates would cause their families to move to town. The Sheriff from Cherokee County said this isn’t the case because the jail would just be a temporarily holding facility and Bourbon County would be able to reject anyone they didn’t want to house from another institution.

The current cost per meal at the jail is $3 per day. Other jails said their cost is closer to $1 per meal.

People asked a Commissioner from Cherokee County if the income from housing inmates covered the debt of building their new jail. He said it wasn’t, it is being paid for with a .5 cent sales tax.

The numbers in the handouts seemed to indicate that the jail could pay for itself by housing inmates from other counties. Former Sheriff Grey said he has never seen a jail pay for itself by housing out of county inmates. The Commissioner from Cherokee County agreed.

The loan amortization schedule in the proposed plans show yearly payments for $421,579 per year on a $6 million loan for a 110 bed facility.

Starting in September, Lynn Chaney of Little Luxuries, LLC will offer knitting classes to the public. According to Chaney, the classes will cost $20 per person for a 6-week session, and the classes will meet once per week. Chaney mentioned that students will need to bring their own materials. When asked about the inexpensive price for the classes, Chaney said, “I like to keep my prices down here,” and explained that she wanted to keep the classes affordable to anyone in the area who had a desire to learn. Chaney will be closing her shop downtown, but Common Ground Coffee Co. has offered to allow the knitting classes to meet in their building.

When asked about the beginnings of her knitting work, Chaney said that she took up the hobby in 1999. Chaney said, “I taught myself to knit . . . and it went from there.” Chaney said that she had several people ask her to teach them to knit, and from those queries came the idea to hold knitting classes in the area.

In addition to her knitting courses, Chaney takes special orders for knitted goods. During the interview, she was working on a beautiful pastel yellow baby blanket.

While her store at 13 N. Main is still open, Chaney also has several antiques to sell, including a unique writing desk made in 1919.

As a result of the August 12th tax sale, several property owners were prompted to pay back taxes. County Treasurer Susan Quick presented numbers she had tallied at today’s County Commissioners’ meeting. According to Quick, $262,104.17 was collected on tax sale properties after charges were filed in court. According to county officials, the number of properties redeemed by payment of back taxes came to a total of 16. The addition of $46,075.57 in penalties brought the total amount of revenue from back taxes to $304,317.34 before expenses were taken out. Those expenses include a $60 per parcel charge from Security 1st Title. Collected fees equaled $5,472.

“The real benefit in having these sales . . . we had some properties that were $25,000 in taxes paid up this time. We need to pursue delinquent taxes. By the time it gets to where we can sell it, taxes have not been paid for 4 years,” said Commission Chairman Allen Warren. “The 16 that were redeemed brought in a lot of money.” County Attorney Terri Johnson agreed. “A lot of properties were redeemed after the process started,” Johnson said. Warren explained that last year, the county started an “aggressive program” to deal with delinquent properties.

•  After a 15 minute executive session, Commissioner Barbara Albright moved to transfer Bobby Reed to the title of Jail Administrator at a salary of $37,205 per year, and that Julie Miller step into the Director of Security position at a salary of $32,205.89. Commissioner Harold Coleman seconded the motion. Both positions are exempt from overtime, according to county officials. According to County Attorney Terri Johnson, both Reed and Miller had been doing extra duties to fill these positions even before their job titles changed at today’s meetings. The position of Program Director formerly held by Miller will remain unfilled. In addition, Reed reported that a joint effort between departments had brought the number of jail occupants and number of inmates housed out to 49 and 6, respectively. According to Assistant County Attorney Valorie LeBlanc, one of the 6 inmates currently being housed out will be released August 24th. Reed said that he thought the department was “doing very well” at preventing overcrowding.
• Hubert Thomas came to the meeting with County Road and Bridge Director Jim Harris to discuss repairs on Grand Road. “Looking at the project, it’s a big project,” said Commission Chairman Warren. “The landowner should be commended for calling it to our attention.” Warren explained that Brad Blythe, the landowner, had offered to work with the county by moving both of his fences in order to give the county room to work. The commission asked Thomas to come up with an estimate for the project. Thomas gave a preliminary rough estimate of $21-22,000 to repair the road and install a new culvert. Thomas explained that the 1,600 acres of rocky ground that drains into the current culverts sends an overwhelming amount of water toward the road. “No wonder it went over,” Warren said. The commission and Harris are looking into making the project a T-Works project, in which case the county would be reimbursed for the cost of the repair work. “That’s where we’d like to get the financing for it if possible,” Warren said. Commissioner Barbara Albright asked if the road were safe in the meantime. “It’s passable,” Thomas said, explaining that the damaged area of the road had been blocked off.
• Bids have come in on repairs to the A/C units on the courthouse. Design Mechanical put in a bid of $25,998.00, while CDL put in a bid of $37,061.80. However, after looking over the specifications for work to be done on each bid, Warren said that he would like County Custodial Supervisor David Neville to review the bids to make sure that the two bids were comparable in scope of work. Warren said that he wanted to make sure the commission would be “comparing apples to apples.”
• Richard Perry brought a road concern to the meeting. “We had so much rain that it tried to take [a culvert] out,” Perry said. “It wouldn’t take too much to fix it.” Perry said that lots of gravel had been washed out around the culvert, and that he would have semis hauling his corn harvest through the area around 160th soon.
• Public Works Director Jim Harris brought an update on road work done in the past week. “We did a lot of rock hauling this week,” Harris said. Harris said that the plan for work on paving roads was to start paving the second lane on 18th Street/Kansas Road on Monday. Harris expected that the job would be finished in as little as 2 days. Commissioners also discussed with Harris the reclamation work to be done at the Blake Quarry. The project will include the construction of a 5-wire fence.

As school starts, students are getting ready for another year of learning. However, most teachers, school administrators and support staff have been preparing all summer for several changes.

One change students will notice immediately is the addition of 14 new faces. “There are 14 new-to-the-district teachers,” USD 234 Superintendent Diane Gross said. “That’s a larger number than most years.” Gross mentioned that the district does have a “pretty veteran staff,” but that the district is “excited about the possibilities and the enthusiasm” that new teachers bring with them.

Another change students will see in the coming year is a change in state standards. Kansas  adopted the Common Core standards on October 12, 2010, and full implementation is expected during the 2013-2014 school year, according to the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Of the standards, Gross said that teachers in the district had spent “quite a bit” or in-service time in the past year working with the standards in grade level teams or departments. Gross said that the teachers had worked toward a grasp of what the standards ask the students to do, and that the next step is to identify what teachers need to do in delivering content to help students succeed according to those standards. “It’s really about asking students to engage in higher level thinking and processing skills,” Gross said. Gross said that once teachers are comfortable with the standards, they will have greater latitude to teach depth of knowledge in their subject area. “I think it’s a positive thing for teachers as well as students,” Gross said.

In addition to work related to Common Core, Gross said that the district is training teachers in a Literacy First program. Because only 40 teachers can go through the program at a time, Gross explained that half of the Fort Scott Middle School and half of the Fort Scott High School teachers are going through the intensive, year-long training at the moment. “We’re establishing a consistent, coherent instructional framework,” Gross said. Gross indicated that though teachers may already be using some of the strategies outlined by the training, the conversations among teachers that occur may allow for sharing of ideas and a greater awareness of instructional practices.

A third change for the district comes in the form of changing extracurricular activities at Fort Scott Middle School. “This year we’re going to be adding interscholastic sports at the Middle School,” Gross said. Gross explained that the middle school will still offer some intramural activities for students who do not wish to compete outside of their own school.

A final change students, parents and the community will see in the school calendar during 8 months of the school year is an early release day. “We have some very focused time that is built into our calendar,” Gross said, to allow teachers collaborative time to work on instructional practices.

When asked about budget cuts from the state, Gross indicated that the school would find ways to keep the quality of education in the district high. However, as a result of a steady decline in enrollment, Gross said that the district had analyzed the staffing needs of each school. Through number crunching and discussions involving the staff and administrators, the district has determined what adjustments need to be made in staffing. “We lost two positions in each building, if my calculations are correct. They all ended up being people who were retiring or looking for a job elsewhere,” Gross said. In addition to evaluation regarding numbers of staff, Gross said that district buildings were slated for analysis by engineers. According to Gross, the district refinanced bonds and has set aside the funds to do a “major engineering analysis” of the school buildings. The school should get that report during the second semester, Gross said.