City Commission Meeting (12/15/09)

City Commission Work Session (12/10/09)

City Commission Meeting (12/01/09)

City Commission Work Session (11/30/09)

City Commission Meeting (11/17/09)

City Commission Work Session (11/12/09)

Piping up

Are there any landowners out there who will be affected by the proposed TransCanada pipeline?

Have you had offers for easements on your land yet?

I'm interested to hear from anyone who is put out by this. It's a perspective my two-part story, which began today, doesn't yet capture.

Read more here: Part One

The bird is the word

Just a quick plug for my fellow Catholics at Sacred Heart, who are having their annual Turkey Dinner tonight.

Stop by, get some great food and donate some money to a good cause. It's well worth the while.

Short and sweet, yes, but I am trying to update the blog more frequently with shorter posts, so this is what ya get.

Garden of Drinkin'

Anyone have any problems with the beer garden last week?

Did you notice a higher level of licentiousness or drunken revelry than normal?

I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

A war of words

Among my many duties is creating the editorial page every day. It's not something I normally would promote here, but I have to drop a quick plug for tomorrow's page.

Thanks to The Hartford Courant, I've produced what I would consider the epitome of a perfect opinion page. It starts off with a column by Sen. Joe Lieberman explaining his stance on health care reform, the "public option" and the national debt.

That's followed by a nice cartoon that relates pretty closely to the subject matter ... and a pointed rejoinder penned by Bill Curry, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, who just lets Lieberman have it. Some choice selections:

• "Lieberman spouted lots of other twaddle, but space is limited. In a perfect world, we'd just call him up on the phone and explain matters. It would change nothing, as extreme cases of willful ignorance need stronger medicine than mere facts."
• "Cameras are like crystal meth for Joe and knowing they'd be there when he jumped ship hardly would deter him."
• "Ever since Democrats rebuffed his 2004 presidential candidacy over the slight matter of his rabid enthusiasm for invading Iraq, Lieberman has smoldered."

Ba-zing. I don't care what your political leanings are — that's just good, old-fashioned barb-writing there. Our Founding Fathers, some of whom wrote the nastiest and most excoriating things I ever have read, would be proud.

Anyhow, it's a good and thought-provoking page, in my opinion. Rarely do you get to show both sides of an issue that are so diametrically and directly opposed — and in such proximity, to boot.

So check it out.

City Commission Meeting (11/03/09)

An old TIF resurfaces

Wow, October is almost over and I haven't had a single blog entry this month that wasn't a live blog.

I'll try to do better next month. It's been insane around here — Arkalalah is our busiest week of the year (other than the Thurber trial, of course).

In the meantime, here's a quick little preview of my stories today:

I worked up a quick little thing on the streaker at last night's football game. You can read it here

And there's a story running today about the magic word — TIF — that popped up again at last night's work session.

Now that the hospital is squared away, it looks like the Three Comrades — McDonald, Snell and Warren — are ready to do what they were elected to do: reverse the decision by the Three Amigos to vote down a TIF district.

Stay tuned.

City Commission Work Session (10/29/09)

City Commission Meeting (10/20/09)

City Commission Special Meeting/Work Session (10/15/09)

City Commission Meeting (10/06/09)

City Commission Work Session (10/01/09)

This is the big week

So of course, the big news broke while I was gone on vacation.

Yes, the roundabout finally will open this week. Thursday, to be exact.

They're planning a big shindig at the site with KDOT representatives from Topeka.

But as has been par for the course, there's a severe weather threat for Thursday. I wonder how that will affect the event, which already has been postponed once due to weather delays.

For a project that was completed a month later than it was supposed to, due to excessive and persistent rainfall, it's an appropriately uncooperative ending, I suppose.

Round and roundabout we go

Well, I finally got in touch with KDOT.

Story runs today. Check it out at local news stands or on arkcity.net.

I'll give you a hint: Don't expect any ribbon-cutting ceremonies tomorrow...

Can it be hectic and slow at the same time?

The last few days have been pretty crazy around the newsroom, as we continue to balance coverage of Sgt. Tyler Juden's funeral and the city's response to his death against respect for the family's need for privacy in this trying time.

Monday especially was insane, as we juggled trading photographs between three newspapers, coordinating multiple people out on assignment, reacting to the change in destination for the Army flight carrying Juden's remains (originally scheduled to land in Strother Field, they later diverted to Ponca City), and so on.

So while everyone else works to cover that story appropriately, I've been busy taking care of other little things in the newsroom. Thus, no time to blog lately.

But at the same time, it's been kind of slow. The funeral is the only major story this week; not much else is going on.

A few tidbits for you to chew on until sometime more interesting happens:

• The latest entry from the Hall of Dead Stories: It seemed like plans to remodel the water billing office at City Hall were going to move forward after the recent incident with the man who was arrested there, but according to Director of Administration Lane Massey, that's not really the case. The plans are moving forward, however, just not at any kind of accelerated rate. There are other concerns driving them besides just security; handicapped accessibility is one.
• Apparently, a reader called yesterday and asked if I or another employee planned to live blog from the funeral. I hope no one is excessively disappointed that we did not do so. We have questioned ourselves constantly while covering this story: How much is too much? Me sitting in a memorial service clacking away on a keyboard (assuming I even could get Internet access in there, which is doubtful) seems like too much, doesn't it? Trials and public meetings are one thing, but there have to be some limits...
• No word yet on whether the bypass roundabout will open on schedule (Friday). I'll be calling KDOT later this afternoon to follow up on that.
  

No news is (not always) good news

There's a rumor floating around town that the Phelps clan out of Topeka has applied for a permit to protest at Tyler Juden's funeral.

Well, I called Steve Archer and Sean Wallace yesterday and here's what I found out:

1. They have not heard anything official from Westboro Baptist Church about protest plans. But that's because no permit actually is required for such a protest.
2. That said, it is fully expected that once the date and time for the funeral are announced, the Phelps group probably will announce their intentions to picket at that time.
3. It is likely they still will file a notice or request some sort of permit, even though it actually is not required. Several Phelps family members are graduates of Washburn Law School, and they know their legal rights forward and backward.

So, we have that to look forward to. Archer and Wallace did say they met with Patriot Guard members the other day to discuss arrangements. The Guard will escort Juden's remains home from Wichita, and Wallace said they will be treated as part of the funeral party (at the invitation of the family).

On a related note, Westboro sent a fax to us last night announcing their intentions to picket Daniel Cox's funeral in Parsons, so we probably can expect something from them soon re: the Juden funeral.

As usual, the fax is a despicable excoriation of America and the Patriot Guard. I won't reproduce anything from it here; suffice to say, these people are going to be a headache next week. I urge everyone in Ark City to just ignore them until they go away - they only want attention, and the best way to strike at them is not to give them the stage they crave so much.

City Commission Meeting (09/15/09)

A sad day

What a terrible loss for the Juden family and the Ark City community.

Bob Juden was my seventh-grade science teacher, and Tyler was in my sister's high school class, so my thoughts go out to them. All of us are connected in a town as small as this, and when one family suffers a loss, we all suffer as well.

I encourage everyone to fly their flags at half-mast, as the city is doing, to honor Sgt. Tyler Juden and his sacrifice.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming

Sorry I have been so remiss in blogging lately. I had a couple of days this week where I needed to work as quickly and on as little as possible, in order to avoid drawing any overtime pay.

And I will admit I haven't felt as compelled, of late, to post that much, because I wasn't sure if anyone actually was reading this yet. Now that I finally have received a few comments, though, I probably should pick it up a bit.

I really don't have any tidbits today, so I'll just promo my story tomorrow, which is a report on the Renaissance Festival held earlier this month. It largely was a success, although not necessarily in the financial sense.

Also, I'd like to offer my sympathies to the City Manager's executive secretary, Nancy Crain. Nancy apparently is stepping down from her position after being diagnosed with cancer. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

City Commission Work Session (09/10/09)

Much ado about nothing

Just a short blurb today, but I'll make up for it tomorrow.

There's a rumor floating around that the Kansas Avenue railroad overpass project has fallen through, or something to that effect.

I called City Manager Steve Archer today to ask him about it, but I was pretty sure I already knew what his answer would be.

In short, there's nothing to it. The project is proceeding as expected.

The start of construction was moved back to January, so perhaps that's where this rumor got started. This is pretty normal for KDOT lately, because they're swamped trying to get all of the stimulus projects done before the end of the year.

To make a long story short: The overpass will begin in January. Once the dirt ramps are built, they have to sit for six months with no settling before the bridge can be built.

Also, Archer told me the money that has been appropriated can't be spent on anything else anyway, so there's little to no chance KDOT would kill the project at this point.

Sacred cows

Well, as you might know from reading last night's live blog, local citizen Pearl Turner criticized the City Commission once more for their decision to allow an Arkalalah beer garden.

I didn't mention this in my story today for two reasons:

1. It occurred after the meeting was adjourned and thus technically was not part of the actual meeting.
2. Frankly, I think enough has been said on this topic already. There clearly is a segment of the town's population that won't be mollified by any justification for the event.
   

That said, something has been bothering me for a while about the whole beer garden debate, and I was reminded of it once again last night.

Obviously, there is at least a segment of the city that is unhappy about the idea - witness the complaints at the last few meetings and the letters to the editor.

But I wonder: Why they didn't voice the same disapproval for the beer garden that was held in the Agri-Business Building at last week's Renaissance Festival? It's not that one was inside and the other will be outside, because these same people objected to the serving of beer inside the Burford last year, as well.

The only explanation I can offer is that Arkalalah basically is a "sacred cow" in this town. The Ren Faire, being relatively new, doesn't stir the same emotions yet.

Anyhow, not everyone opposes the beer garden. Obviously, the commission is for it, and Mayor Jay Warren said last night that neither he nor the other commissioners have received any phone calls on the subject. Furthermore, a poll on arkcity.net last week showed 70-percent support for their decision (although our polls are unscientific, of course).

It will be interesting to see if any of the churches boycott like some did two years ago.

City Commission Meeting (09/01/09)

Mondays with Andrew

In general, I will try to post at least one blog entry a day, even if it's just a live blog from a commission meeting.

But I don't really have anything interesting to say today, so I think what I will do instead is preview the stories I am working on this week.

Tomorrow, I've got two: a City Commission meeting precede and an announcement of a delay in the roundabout construction project.

Wednesday, as usual, will be the City Commission meeting follow-up. If enough interesting things happen at the meeting, I probably will break that into two parts, but I don't think this week's meeting will be long enough to justify it.

Assuming there isn't a second part to that story, I don't anticipate having anything on Thursday. Of course, that's tentative - you never know when a house will burn down right before deadline, or something like that.

Friday, I hope to run my first sports story. I'm going to interview the new ACHS AD, Tige Stone, about his playing days at K-State. I'll also ask him about the philosophies he learned from K-State football coach Bill Snyder and how he plans to apply those principles to ACHS sports.

And Saturday, Foss and I hope to roll out an investigative story on all the fires there have been recently. He's following up on various investigations and I'm handling the statistical side. Should be pretty cool, if we can get it done on time.

So that's what's on tap for this week!

Fire, fire, burning bright...

Two houses, essentially unoccupied, both burned down in the Arkansas City area in a 24-hour period.

That's either a really strange coincidence or (hopefully not) something more sinister.

Come to think on it, there seem to have been an unusually high amount of destructive house/structure fires since I took this job. I remember one week earlier this year when there were at least four major fires in Winfield.

If I have some time in the next few days, I think I might go back and count the number of fires in the last six months or last year, and then try to see how that stacks up against the national average for cities this size.

There might be a story in it.

City Commission Work Session (08/27/09)

Enough is enough

Well, it took something to hack me off enough to finally get me to start this thing, and the ongoing road construction in the Ark City area sure did it.

If you're going to shut off a major artery such as the U.S. 77-U.S. 166 intersection east of town, here's a brilliant idea: Don't start working on all the other roads around it while the detour is still in effect!

I've been a defender of the roundabout and KDOT throughout this process. But the county and whoever had the brilliant idea to start repaving Country Club Road before the roundabout opens? Indefensible.

And of course, one major project wasn't enough for KDOT at one time. So they started a pilot-car zone on 166 all the way east to the county border - an overlay project that caused even more inconvenience to commuters who live east of town.

Since they knocked the bypass out of commission, violators of the marked detour (mainly large trucks) have caused the following unanticipated effects:

• The three-week closure of Chestnut Avenue, restricting access to Ark City from the east to just Madison Avenue.
• The closure of the bypass between Chestnut and Madison.
• Major road damage to Country Club Road and 91st Road, which trucks have been using to avoid the detour route.

Damage to side roads was to be expected; indeed, KDOT even took detailed notes on roads such as F Street and is going to repair them after the roundabout is finished.

All of these things I could live with (and I haven't even mentioned the speed limit drop by fiat on Madison). But why on earth would you start fixing the roads before the detour is over?

The decision to start repaving Country Club Road (and rather poorly, I might add) is pretty much the last straw for me.

I've tried to have patience with the process, but now I have to go east to 91st Road, south through Parkerfield and then west on Madison to get to work.

My commute used to take seven minutes; now it takes 20. And I only live a few miles out of town. I hate to imagine how people who live farther east feel.

Even when the roundabout is done, we have the Kansas Avenue overpass project to look forward to. It could be two more years before all this madness is finally finished.

Rant over.