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.