11/21/18

BOOKED: Amy Luttrell of Hoisington on a Barton County District Court warrant for failure to appear. Bond set at $120.00 of 48-hours in jail.

RELEASED: Amy Luttrell of Hoisington on a Barton County District Court warrant for failure to appear. Posted $120.00 bond.

11/22/18

BOOKED: Amanda Decker of Great Bend on Barton County District Court case for contempt. NO BOND

BOOKED: Courtney Veitenheimer on a Great Bend Municipal Court warrant for failure to adhere to bond. Bond set at $3,421.51 CASH ONLY or 84 days in jail.

11/23/18

BOOKED: Brandon Maxwell of Great Bend on a Barton County District Court case. Serve Sentence.

BOOKED: Ubaldo Ramierez of Great Bend on a Barton County District Court case. Serve Sentence.

BOOKED: Rodney Drake of Great Bend on a Barton County District Court case. Serve Sentence.

BOOKED: Tucker Roach of Great Bend on a Central Kansas Community Corrections case. Serve sentence.

BOOKED: Ouray Gray of Great Bend on a Barton County District Court case. Serve Sentence.

BOOKED: Aaron Pohlman of Ellinwood on a Barton County District Court case. Serve Sentence.

11/25/18

BOOKED: Rosio Holguin on a Great Bend Municipal Court case for battery DV. Bond set at $1000.00

RELEASED: Rosio Holguin on a Great Bend Municipal Court case for battery DV. Posted $1,000.00 bond.

RELEASED: Brandon Maxwell of Great Bend on a Barton County District Court case. Served Sentence.

RELEASED: Ubaldo Ramierez of Great Bend on a Barton County District Court case. Served Sentence.

RELEASED: Rodney Drake of Great Bend on a Barton County District Court case. Served Sentence.

RELEASED: Tucker Roach of Great Bend on a Central Kansas Community Corrections case. Served sentence.

RELEASED: Ouray Gray of Great Bend on a Barton County District Court case. Served Sentence.

RELEASED: Aaron Pohlman of Ellinwood on a Barton County District Court case. Served Sentence.

HODGEMAN COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating two suspects on drug charges after a weekend traffic stop.

Just after 7p.m. Friday, a deputy conducted a traffic stop south of Jetmore, according to a social media report from the Hodgeman County Sheriff.

“The occupants in the vehicle were acting nervous while the deputy was speaking with them.”

After Sheriff Jared Walker arrived on scene to assist, both subjects were removed from the vehicle. During a search, deputies found a large amount of illegal drugs and cash in the vehicle.

Both subjects in the vehicle were arrested for possession with the intent to distribute drugs and held on a $75,000.00 dollar bond.

As we all just celebrated Thanksgiving, let’s take a moment to give thanks for some events this past week in agriculture.  Harvesting of fall crops was finally able to resume for many producers although weather today and this coming week doesn’t look very promising.  Wheat was planted and with some luck will at least germinate and be able to vernalize.  Soil moisture for wheat is the best it has been for many years and with a full soil profile, there is promise for the 2019 winter wheat crop and planting this spring.  Hopefully everyone was able to enjoy the holiday.  Now on to today’s topic – Education and Agriculture.

As the fall field work starts to wind down, producers don’t hibernate but tackle another task, continuing education.  There are producer meetings put on by a variety of public and private organizations throughout the year but winter is typically the peak time for producer meetings.  Seed, chemical, and various companies in agriculture, co-ops, federal and state agencies, K-State Research and Extension, grower associations, and others hold meetings on a variety of topics.  The purposes vary from introducing new products and farming techniques/technologies to economics and potential new rules, regulations, and farm programs.  The reality is producers in agriculture, if they want to be profitable and stay in business, must continuously keep learning and adapting.  This is especially true in these very challenging economic times with Kansas farm bankruptcies increasing dramatically.  And this need trickles down even further.

There is a chronic shortage of help in agriculture, whether it is trained or not.  While many of these jobs don’t require a four-year degree, they benefit for a two-year degree or certificate.  You have probably read in this column before these jobs pay well, have good benefits, and if you work hard and are willing to keep learning can easily be a career as companies don’t want to lose good employees.

For some, due to a variety of reasons, including a lack of funds, full-time employment, and a variety of other good reasons, simply can’t obtain even a certificate.  However, they would benefit greatly and incur greater job/career opportunities with targeted learning.  That is where institutions like Barton Community College, other community colleges and technical schools can help.  It can be amazing how much the right class or classes can make in a person’s employment and income opportunities.  Often they can obtain reimbursement from an employer if they successfully complete the course and it makes them a more valuable employee.

For example, Barton Community College offers Class A CDL training evenings and weekends.  If someone is interested in obtaining a license in crop application, crop protection is offered one morning a week for three hours.  If you want to know more about the proper care, feeding, and handling of horses, horse science meets Friday mornings at ten a.m.  In an ever changing world, education, even if only a targeted class or two can greatly impact a person’s future.

Giving Tuesday rolls around once again November 27 as a challenge to support local charities. In Barton County, that means Golden Belt Community Foundation will be posted up in Great Bend and Hoisington accepting donations to your charitable organization of choice.

The Kansas Oil & Gas Museum in Great Bend will be participating in Giving Tuesday with an open house. Museum Curator Danielle Feist says there will also be an “unselfie challenge.”

Danielle Feist Audio

The open house happy hour at the museum will be from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Patrons can view the renovations that are taking place at the facility at 5944 10^th Street to upgrade the building’s flooring, walls, ceiling, and lighting.

Danielle Feist Audio

Giving Tuesday locations include the Golden Belt Community Foundation in Great Bend from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Hoisington Chamber of Commerce, Larned Chamber, Golden Valley in Rozel, E-Z Mart in La Crosse, White’s Foodliner in St. John, and Paul’s Grocery in Stafford will be open from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to receive donations.

USD 428 Director of Teaching and Learning Tricia Reiser says the Great Bend school district has between 80 and 85 students considered migrants. A migrant family moves from one place to another, oftentimes for work.

If a parent has to move a lot because of work, taking their children around from school to school can be difficult. USD 428 has a migrant program to help with those challenges. Reiser says the migrant program and its families meet once a month in the evening at the different school buildings throughout town.

Tricia Reiser Audio

The state audited USD 428’s migrant program in October and determined the district has exceeded expectations.

Reiser added there is not as much movement with their students and migrant families, but methods of tracking migrant students when they do leave has improved over the years.

Barton County Sheriff Brian Bellendir is asking residents to just stay home Sunday. High winds causing zero visability, snow drifts and hazardous driving conditions are making travel difficult if not impossible in most area’s. Bellendir says US 56 Highway between Great Bend and Ellinwood has been closed due to the conditions.

Brian Bellendir Audio

Several power outages have been reported throughout the area. If you are served by Midwest Energy, call 1-800-222-3121 to report an outage. If you are served by Wheatland Electric, call 1-800-662-4246.

Bellendir also encourages the public not to call 911 to ask about power outages or road conditions. Call your utility for power outages and call 511 for road conditions. By calling 911 you are tying up dispatchers from handling actual emergencies.

In the Russell area, a warming center has been established for those people who may not have power or heat. If you need a ride or know someone who needs a ride to the warming center, call 785-483-7805.

The Russell Police Department is reporting broken poles, broken trees on power lines and lines slapping together due to the wind and snow. If you see a broken pole, downed powerline or downed trees, you are asked to call 785-483-7805.

A Blizzard Warning remains in effect until 3pm this afternoon. The latest snowfall prediction from the National Weather Service is calling for between 3 to 5 inches of snow in the Great Bend area.

By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University

“Herd about Kansas?” I saw that phrase – with “heard” spelled “herd” as in a herd of cows – on a cap which displayed a picture of a cowherd. The cap was colored in black and white splotches like a Holstein milk cow. That cap is the type of eye-catching item which might have been used in the early 1990s to recruit dairies to western Kansas.  This jointly-supported recruitment effort has not only sparked remarkable economic growth, it has been part of the spirit of regional cooperation.

In previous weeks, we’ve learned about leading dairymen in three different regions of the state. The dairy industry has grown significantly in this state, particularly in western Kansas.

In the early 1990s, community leaders in western Kansas recognized that there were opportunities to grow and attract the dairy industry.  The Western Kansas Dairy Coalition was formed.

Joann Knight of Ford County Economic Development was involved at the beginning.  “Dairies were getting squeezed out of California,” she said. The bountiful feed production and wide open spaces of western Kansas made this seem like a perfect location to relocate. Community leaders came together to jointly recruit to the region. By pooling their efforts, these communities could send one big, effective display to a trade show, for example, rather than having multiple communities send several small, ineffective ones.

Note that I just said that milk production was being `squeezed out’ of California and that the recruitment efforts should be `pooled.’ Isn’t that udderly funny? Okay, enough milk jokes.

Apart from the dairy industry, visionary leaders in western Kansas were concerned about the future of their communities and the region in general. Among those who saw the need to work together for mutual benefit were the late Steve Miller from Sunflower Electric Power Corporation; Carol Meyer, who was at the Chamber of Commerce in Garden City at the time; and Lyle Butler, then-president of the Dodge City Chamber of Commerce.

In May 1994, some 85 people attended a meeting to discuss the economic challenges of the region and to consider how a regional organization might help. They agreed to help plan a regional organization. This resulted in the western Kansas Rural Economic Development Alliance or wKREDA. wKREDA provided a unifying force for all of western Kansas.

Eventually, the dairy coalition came under the organizational umbrella of wKREDA, which helped organize the recruitment efforts.

For example, a wKREDA delegation went to the big dairy expo in Tulare, California and the New York farm show. This raised the visibility of western Kansas as a potential site for dairies to relocate.

Carol Meyer remembers being part of the dairy recruitment team. “Every week we went somewhere and met with dairy managers to learn about what they needed,” Carol said.  Bankers and rural electric cooperatives agreed to put up funds to help the new dairies.

The effort worked. In 1994, the first dairies from California began to move to Kansas. At the New York farm show, wKREDA representatives met the McCarty family which would eventually relocate their dairy farm to Kansas also.

This was genuine rural economic development. The new dairies stimulated jobs, construction, growth in school enrollment, and other economic activity. The McCartys’ first Kansas dairy was located near the rural community of Rexford, population 232 people. Now, that’s rural.

Today wKREDA continues to work on dairy growth along with other issues benefitting western Kansas. For example, wKREDA provides economic and community development education for its members, builds relationships with various agencies and partners, and provides political representation to policymakers in Topeka and Washington. wKREDA represents 55 counties which have chosen to pool their resources for mutual benefit. Christy Hopkins, Greeley County economic development director, is the current president of wKREDA.

For more information, go to www.discoverwesternkansas.com.

Have you Herd about Kansas? We commend Carol Meyer, Christy Hopkins, and all those previously and currently involved with wKREDA for making a difference with dairy recruitment and regional cooperation. Working together, they were able to make themselves heard.

And there’s more. Growth in dairy production has led to value-added opportunities in dairy and other industries. We’ll learn about that next week.

James Potter, a Sunflower Diversified Services client, spoke for himself and his peers when he said “we loved the whole thing.” Potter was referring to the recent Disability Mentoring Day (DMD) mini-conference in Great Bend where local groups shared information about community-employment resources for people with developmental disabilities and delays. But Potter and his peers were not the only ones who were impressed with the event, said Cody Harris, Sunflower’s community employment specialist.

“We have heard a lot of positive feedback – locally and statewide – because local entities worked so well together on our comprehensive agenda,” Harris said. “Since word has circulated about this quality event, we have already gained additional sponsorships for the 2019 DMD.”

Several local businesses and other entities joined the three Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) in sponsoring the conference. The MCOs are Aetna Better Health of Kansas, UnitedHealthcare and Sunflower Health Plan. They help people with special needs have access to medical care.

Statewide accolades came from Martha Gabehart, executive director of the Kansas Commission on Disability Concerns, who congratulated Harris and his team.

“I had no idea how far our first news release would travel,” Harris commented.

In addition to Sunflower individuals, people who rely on Rosewood Services and The Center for Counseling & Consultation participated in the DMD conference. Barton Community College helped organize the event and supplied facilitators for breakout sessions; Harris was the event coordinator.

“In our breakout sessions, we talked about topics such as job readiness and personal hygiene,” Harris noted. “Applicants have to get out there and demonstrate they are willing and able to work. We supplied information to help them do that.

“We did not use a lecture format,” he added. “Instead, each of the sessions was interactive. We talked with the people in the audience, not at them. I hope we opened some eyes about community-employment possibilities.”

Harris said Tami Allen, keynote speaker, did a great job when she talked about “Charting a Trajectory Toward a Good Life.” Allen is program director at Families Together in Garden City.

Allen said her keynote discussion was “an interactive presentation designed to help participants understand what they want and what they don’t want for a good life. We discussed what steps to take as they aim their trajectories toward the things they want out of life.

“Participants mentioned good health, employment and happiness as ingredients for a good life,” she continued. “Things to avoid included loneliness and bullying.”

Allen also noted that event organizers “came together for a meaningful conference. It was a pleasure to work with Cody Harris and his committee. He was enthusiastic and energetic about the opportunity to provide this unique event to people with disabilities.

“And he is already extremely excited to make it even bigger and better next year. I was impressed with the energy and encouragement throughout the conference. I was honored to be a part of it.”