2014-03-01 Progress C

Healthy @ 150

C What keeps a community alive, vibrant and thriving?

Infrastructure/Amenities They’re the agencies, organizations and government entities that provide the backbone of Ottawa and Franklin County, as well as a higher quality of life.

They offer a helping hand, enrich the local culture and work to keep residents safe and secure.

As Ottawa and Franklin County near the communities’ 150th birthday milestones, The Herald is taking a look at what’s kept the area healthy for nearly a century and a half

in the newspaper’s annual Progress edition.

The third of three special sections takes a glimpse at some of the infrastructure and amenities that help strengthen the community and its appeal, steering it toward a brighter future. It isn’t intended as an all-inclusive list, but rather a sampling of those who work to keep the heart of Ottawa and Franklin County healthy and beating.

Infrastructure. Amenities.

Progress 2014

Progress

Page S2

Weekender, March 1-2, 2014

Government collaboration key

By ABBY ECKEL Herald Staff Writer

A city and county entity working together to better the community is noteworthy, Jeff Seymour said.

The City of Ottawa and Franklin County have been the biggest contributors financially to economic development in Franklin County and continue to work together to find a spot for a new industrial park, Seymour, Franklin County Development Council executive director, said.

Keeping a city or county prosperous and growing isn’t just focused on bringing in new business and creating new jobs, it’s also about working with businesses currently in the county to make them better, Seymour said.

“I spend a lot of time helping existing businesses here grow in a lot of ways,” he said. “We’ve facilitated state dollars to help retrain the existing work force and create work force development programs, a lot of things like that.”

Bringing in new businesses is good because it helps to expand the tax base in the county, but that isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to do, he said.

“It’s like any business, what’s easier — to keep an existing customer or go out and recruit a new one?” Seymour said. “The economic development statistics show 80 percent of any new jobs in an economy come from existing business so it makes sense to work with them.

It’s important to go out and recruit new business because it helps broaden and strengthen the tax base.”

The City of Wellsville, Ottawa and Franklin County have all been working together with the Franklin County Development Council to bring employment opportunities to the county and figure out where and how to do that, Lisa Johnson, Franklin County administrator, said.

“The City of Ottawa and Wellsville have been working with the county through planning efforts of the Franklin County Development Council to try and bring new business and opportunity to the county, whether that be through work force development efforts made with Ottawa University and Neosho County Community College and [Franklin County] schools,” Johnson said. “We’re trying to bring businesses in to promote employment within the county. Beyond that goes back to the part of what the county is looking at in conjunction with the City [of Ottawa] is where are we growing and where is the next industrial park going to be, which will be necessary for any long-term sustainable growth.”

“What’s better than to have a dog park in the middle of a city park so not only can your pet be healthy, but the owners also can be healthy in that atmosphere?”

— Richard Nienstedt, Ottawa city manager retaining people to our community because that’s what they’re looking for in an amenity. What’s better than to have a dog park in the middle of a city park so not only can your pet be healthy, but the owners also can be healthy in that atmosphere?”

Though new home building hasn’t recently seen an uptick, Nienstedt said, the county and city continue to grow.

“Population figures for the last three censuses [have shown] an increase in population in the city — not by leaps and bounds,” he said. “The county was one of the few counties in the state at the last census that showed population growth.”

Many of the projects currently underway couldn’t have happened without involvement from community members, he said, and that says something.

“We could not do this if citizens weren’t actively engaged and actively involved,” Nienstedt said.

“Local governments don’t do a good job of that, but we’ve made a concerted effort with Mayor [Sara] Caylor providing leadership, Wynndee Lee and the parks department, and we could not do this without the involvement of citizens who have been with us from the beginning on a number of these issues.”

While many local youth might, at one point or another, mutter the phrase, “I can’t wait to get out of here,” Nienstedt said the city and the county have a joint effort to show the next generation of Franklin Countians that their hometown has more to offer than they realize.

“The Franklin County Development Council has stepped up and has been doing work force development the last few years,” Nienstedt said. “They’ve done the Day on the Job event partnering with Communities in Schools and city personnel have been there to help with that where we bus in juniors

and seniors [from Ottawa High School]. We’re partnering with other partners like the chamber, Franklin County Development Council, the school district and universities and community college are all working together to get young people to understand the opportunity that exists now and exists for them.”

150 years later Coming up on its 150th anniversary, the City of Ottawa can’t continue to move forward without knowing where it’s been, Nienstedt said, with new opportunities continuing to present themselves.

“I’m excited about the downtown because that is almost entirely a volunteer effort... and how that’s been transformed over the last several years,” he said. “This has been the busiest year in a long time for inquiries about retail and expansions and we’re excited about that.”

One thing Lisa Johnson said she’s excited about seeing come to fruition is the development of the former Neosho County Community College build-

ing at 226 S. Beech St., Ottawa, which later this year is expected to house the county’s sheriff’s and attorney’s offices.

“One project that’s inception is part of a larger project is what is the county going to do in terms of long term criminal justice needs,” she said. “We’re moving forward with the development of the Beech Street building which the county was able to buy from Neosho County Community College to reutilize a building already used for governmental purposes.

[The county] is looking at a long-term plan to allow the county to maximize facilities that already exist and minimize as much as possible of the public dollars spent on something that is a mandated function.

There were a lot of hurdles along the way in what direction to go in and what made the most sense.”

Looking ahead to Ottawa’s next 150 years, Nienstedt said he sees big things continuing to happen in the city and the county.

“Where we’re going to be in 150 years is, viable, sustainable — we will have grown,” he said. “I’d tell you I think I-35 from Ottawa to KC will be even more developed and a stronger connection along that I-35 corridor with Ottawa and we’ll benefit from it. These are exciting times.”

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Active, engaged community For a city to grow, it not only has to meet the needs of those currently living there, but also appeal to the needs of those it’s trying to pursue, Richard Nienstedt, Ottawa city manager, said.

“We’re upgrading our parks and making sure they’re in good shape and we’re getting ready to do a second upgrade on the playground up north, which a considerable part [of the money needed] has been raised locally,” Nienstedt said. “In the last few years we’ve tried to associate ourselves with some national programs and bring the information back to our community, like ‘Let’s Move.’”

A stable job market, good schools and safe neighborhoods all help to contribute to a better quality of life, he said, but it’s also the little extras that draw newcomers to stay and live in Ottawa.

“We know in the city we have a different population we’re trying to attract like younger families,” he said. “We’re focused on good parks. One of the reasons we’re putting in a dog park is because that also is a facet of attracting and

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Progress

Weekender, March 1-2, 2014

Page S3

Pastors renew focus: Respect, unity, health

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When churches and pastors come together, it forms a more spiritually healthy community, the Rev. Dale Stratton said.

“One of the things that make a healthy community from the spiritual standpoint is pastors and churches who genuinely care about the community and are willing to link arms and reach out together,” Stratton, Pilgrim Bible Church pastor, said. “[It is important to] bring our community to the awareness that we care about their needs physically and spiritually. Providing opportunities for our youth to be nurtured and let them know that they are a part of the church today, but that they are the leadership of tomorrow. It is important we invest in our youth.”

Stratton has more than 40 years in pastoral service, including five with Pilgrim Bible Church, 316 E. 12th St., Ottawa. He also serves as the vice president for the Ottawa Ministerial Alliance, which has a key focus of joining forces between churches for the betterment of the community.

“Basically, what the OMA was formed about is a platform for the ministers of the community to come together to fellowship to reach into the community,” Stratton said.

Revised mission The organization, formed in 1991, recently has gone through a few changes to better define how its members wanted to reach out to the community, Stratton said.

“I guess, long story short, three years ago we discussed that we need to redefine who we are and what we are about,” he said. “So, we began to meet with that specific purpose.

For the better part of a year we began to look at ourselves. During that time, we asked Larry Felix, CEO of Ransom [Memorial Hospital, 1301 S. Main St, Ottawa], to help guide us in that because he has a lot of experience. He met with us several times. Larry would not get into pastoral things at all, but rather stay totally on target of defining ourselves and what we want to be about and what we want to be doing. Out of that, among other things, was the focal point that, as churches, we need to reach out in our community to those who have need.”

Today, the ministerial alliance includes about 20

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The Rev. Dale Stratton, Pilgrim Bible Church pastor, stands recently in his church, 316 E. 12th St., Ottawa. Stratton is one of the driving forces behind the modern incarnation of the Ottawa Ministerial Alliance. churches and organizations within the community that are actively involved. The group organizes several events throughout the year for residents, including a community Thanksgiving service with the Rev. Tim Soule and the Westminster Presbyterian Church, 401 W. 13th St., Ottawa, playing host. About 200 people attended the Thanksgiving service in 2013, Stratton said, including about a dozen ministers who were involved. The group also organizes a National Day of Prayer gathering, a Life Chain event and several youth events, as well as activities to benefit Hope House, 304 S. Walnut St., an Ottawa food pantry, Stratton said.

“Of that, our largest single focal point is Hope House and helping to provide encouraging provision for their needs financially and material wise — food goods, clothing goods and one of the areas that most recently developed is there is short-term housing that has now come available for a modest period of time until they can get things pulled together,” he said.

“So part of the area there is to help underwrite the costs of those operations.”

Pastoral work Individual pastors who are involved with the ministerial alliance also strengthen the community through various works, Stratton said.

“Each of the churches has an area that they are more heavily involved with. the Rev. Leonard Cheasbro, [pastor at New Life Christ

Church, 526 S. Main St., Ottawa] and the Rev. Scott Dickinson, [pastor at Cherry Street Wesleyan Church, 933 N. Cherry St., Ottawa] both work prison-type ministries,” he said. “Leonard not only works here locally, but also has Bible studies in Lansing, Kan. There are churches that are heavily involved with youth and Ottawa Bible is one of those.

We ourselves have had a youth convention each fall.

“Rev. Charlie Adams from First Lutheran Church, [1320 W. 15th St., Ottawa], is now the chaplain over at the hospital. He has a list of pastors who he can call on to step in. He leads that, but several of us step in to assist him in that line because calls can come anytime of the day or night.”

Several churches in Ottawa, including Bethany Chapel, Westminster Presbyterian, First Christian, North Baptist and Trinity Methodist also serve meals free to the community on separate Fridays each week of the month, so there is never a Friday where hungry mouths go unfed in the church. Trinity Methodist plays host to a breakfast on the fourth and fifth Saturdays of the month.

“There is a meal offered for anyone who wants to come,” Stratton said.

With 41 churches within the city limits of Ottawa and several that are a part of the ministerial alliance, Stratton said it wasn’t easy during the redefining process with so many differing spiritual backgrounds, but each church found a mutual respect for one another.

“That redefinition and

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bringing us to relevance has just brought a tremendous bonding,” he said.

“It is extremely positive.

When we begin to look at ourselves, we kind of set a little bit of platform; A) We need to be unified; B) We need to be about, dare I say, the Master’s business ... So where are the areas from our diverse backgrounds theologically, where are the common grounds that we can come together on?

“Obviously within that context, one of the super highlights that we really focus on is respect for one another. Yes, this pastor in this church theologically is not in the very same channel that I am in or another is in, but we focus on respecting one another so we can have that unity. Having redefined ourselves and reaching out into the community has caused substantial growth.”

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Progress

Page S4

Weekender, March 1-2, 2014

Schools face ‘pressure we’re proud to bear’

By ABBY ECKEL Herald Staff Writer

Providing a good education to every student that passes through their doors is the No. 1 priority on every Franklin County public school superintendent’s list.

Some schools, like Wellsville, have a vision statement and set goals; other schools, like West Franklin and Central Heights, don’t have them formalized, but all share the same hopes for their students.

“Our No. 1 goal is to educate every child to their full potential,” Dotson Bradbury, West Franklin superintendent, said. “And to provide them the necessary tools so they can go post-graduation — whether that be a career or [technical education] field — with the job skills necessary for entry level employment or preparation if they choose military service or if they choose to go straight into the workforce, that they have those skill sets the world is looking for and necessary to be a successful individual.”

Providing a quality education to every student doesn’t just lie within the coursework assigned to students, but in the instructors, Jim White, Central Heights superintendent, said.

“We want to secure the most outstanding staff we can assemble to provide that education for the children to have outstanding facilities, infrastructure, to provide a safe, warm environment for the kids

while they’re at school,” White said. “And to continue to be moving forward with the development of technology which will improve learning opportuniStroh ties for the children.”

Expanding the curriculum at each facility is a top priority to make sure each Henn student is given as many learning options as possible to explore different areas of education, Bradbury said.

“One of the things that we do in Franklin County is that the superintendents meet once a month and a part of that is collaboration because we collectively can sometimes do more than we can individually,” he said.

“An example is through collaboration and with the assistance of Neosho County Community College we are offering more career and tech ed programs now than we were two years ago. We continue to have dialogue with Neosho County to provide more learning opportunities for students across the county.”

Broadening those learning opportunities gives students as much information as possible once they walk out the doors of the school, Jerry Henn, Wells-

ville superintendent said.

“One of the things that we’re working on now is looking at vocational programs — getting our students involved in vocational programs,” Henn said. “If we can do that, get them involved in those programs, we can help them through the process of becoming productive citizens in our community and we want that. We want our kids to leave or live here being productive within our community or within a community they choose to live.”

Schools have adopted the College and Career Readiness standards to make sure students are prepared for whatever they choose to do once they leave, Jeanne Stroh, Ottawa schools superintendent, said. At Ottawa, those standards are implemented upon first arrival in the district, she added.

“We really start as early as preschool because we know we have to support kids and their learning from the time they’re young, so by the time they get to high school, they have the skills and knowledge to get to the places they need and want to be,” Stroh said. “It starts on the first day of school and all along we prepare them.”

For students at Ottawa, the school offers varying stages of the College and Career Readiness standards with such offerings as career exploration and the Day on the Job event, Stroh said.

“At the middle school, we have career exploration and assessments they

do and we keep a close eye on all our kids so we don’t push them in a particular direction, but that they have the skills to choose whatever direction they want to go,” she said. “In high school we have some career and tech education programs we’d like to expand and have the facilities and work in partnership with Neosho County Community College and Ottawa University so our kids really have every opportunity possible. We offer a lot of advanced courses for kids planning to go to two year and four year colleges.”

While all of the schools agreed they’d like to increase the number of classes they provide, school funding is and has been decreasing, forcing schools to do more with less.

“What’s happened has been that our teachers are asked to do more with less,” White said. “I think we ensure that because of the pride and commitment of our teaching staff to provide lessons that are appropriate and challenging for students every day. Your teaching staff is really the key to the entire educational process.”

In 2008, the state funding per pupil was $4,400 and now is $3,838, Stroh said.

With the cost of everything else going up and school funding going down, it’s been a difficult equation to solve, she added.

“We’ve cut staff and programs just like every other district,” she said.

“What’s happening now is we’re cut to the bone.

Art guild paints cultural tapestry

By DYLAN LYSEN Herald Staff Writer

Fine arts aren’t just about aesthetics, but can help a community become more cultured and wellrounded, Daveen Holzapfel, Ottawa Art Guild president, said.

The art guild serves the community by helping artists find locations to feature their art, as well as help businesses and organizations find artists to decorate their walls, Holzapfel said. The guild includes 18 artists on its roster from across the community and now has artists featured in 14 businesses and organizations’ buildings. Holzapfel said the practice helps the health of the community because it helps develop a more balanced and nuanced culture.

“It helps Ottawa become more well-rounded and influential,” Holzapfel said.

“Because there is a lot of talent out there. And they express themselves in different ways. We have a metal worker who does fantastic work, and we have water color artists who have been here for years. We have oils and acrylic, there’s just a lot of art around.”

The non-profit’s mission statement says the guild is a group of artists who are serious about making visual fine art.

“As a non-profit organization, our mission is grounded in the belief that art is vital to the spirit, creativity and wholeness of human beings,” the guild’s mission statement reads. “We cultivate, promote and encourage growth through the arts in order to showcase and serve artists. It is our desire to foster arts education and appreciation for the greater community.”

Holzapfel said the best way for an artist to get his or her art more prominence in the city is to become a guild member.

The guild works with local businesses each month to hang their art. Artists typically are featured for the duration of the month, and interested buyers will be given the artist’s information to complete a sale.

Susie Jacob, with Goppert State Service Bank, 1250 E. Logan St., Ottawa, said the bank participates

in the program, displaying guild artists’ work in its building.

“I was an art major in college, so I love art,” Jacob said. “I like to go to the Big Brothers and Big Sisters auction each year and buy a lot of art I have in the bank too. A lot of people stop by and look at it. It’s a good conversation piece. They bring some awesome pictures out.”

Along with finding businesses to feature artists, the guild also is involved with the coming Swan Arts Festival, which is set for June 20-22 at City Park, 515 S. Main St., Ottawa, and plays host to an annual all-members art show and an artist reception that features all of the artists on the guild’s roster. That event is set for August at the Carnegie Cultural Center, 501 S. Main St., Ottawa.

On a personal level, Holzapfel said, art has allowed her son Travis, who lives with Asperger syndrome, to express himself through his art. Travis Holzapfel uses brightcolored gel pens to create pieces using only teardrop and circle formations.

“This is what has come out of him trying to express himself in different ways.

Of course, he’s tried stuff his whole life,” Daveen Holzapfel said. “But this seemed to work the best for him, and he came up with a different way of doing it. I have always painted and done crafts and done arts, and he tried to pick up on those things, but it just wasn’t there. Then he kind of started doodling himself, and came up with what he’s doing now, so it’s kind of amazing.”

The guild posts a biography by Travis Holzapfel’s art whenever his art is on display, Daveen Holzapfel said. The biography explains his love for art because of the ability to express his feelings on his struggle, she said.

“The art world has found a place in his heart to share his feelings and demonstrate how at different times and situations his mind accepts and expresses those feelings, and I think that’s true of every artist,” Holzapfel said.

“The art work expresses the feeling they have and

it’s an outlet. It’s very educational, actually.”

Guild members would like to get more artists involved, Holzapfel said, and those interested may attend a meeting for more informa-

tion. The guild meets on the second Saturday of every month at the Carnegie.

“We’re looking for more artists,” Holzapfel said. “I think they find it very interesting and educational.”

There isn’t anything that’s left. Sure it’s impacting kids. I think that we aren’t being honest with ourselves if we think it hasn’t impacted kids.”

The importance of a good education means not only good opportunities for the students who received it, but the opportunities students will create with it, Bradbury said.

“A well-educated population, in my opinion, is one of the reasons we have the democracy we have in our country today, and without a well-educated population,

you don’t have the many opportunities and privileges we enjoy,” Bradbury said.

Stroh agreed, saying, “When you have good schools, you have economic development in a community and a well-educated population. Then a number of great things happen — business thrives, employment goes up and there’s less crime and it’s just a better, more cohesive community. When schools do well, everyone does well which puts a lot of pressure on us, but pressure we’re proud to bear.”

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The community’s dedication to the future is reflected in Ottawa’s commitment to education. Excellent schools feature extensive facilities, diverse curriculum and a highly qualified staff, all aimed at developing each young person’s full potential.

Ottawa Schools are student-centered with high academic achievement expectations.

To support those expectations we maintain a strong focus on core academic programs, practical exploratory programs, technical preparation and co-curricular activities.

District curriculum is continually assessed, reviewed and revised as needed to be in alignment with state and national standards.

The Ottawa School District integrates technology into the curriculum. State-of-the-art interactive hands-on, minds-on SMART Boards in all elementary schools bring primary education to the cutting edge of technology and makes learning fun. Wireless air slates used at the secondary levels make learning more interactive for the students and allow teachers up-to-the-minute resources in classroom teaching.

One of our most valuable resources is the parental and community support our schools receive. With voters passing a school bond, the district has been able to build a new elementary school, renovate and expand an existing elementary school, add classroom space and renovate the athletic facilities at our high school and acquire land for future growth.

The Ottawa School District partners with the community to offer the best education possible for our students. Our mission is to give students a top-notch education with an emphasis on community service in order to reach their individual potential and become productive members of society.

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Progress

Weekender, March 1-2, 2014

Page S5

ECKAN targets poverty, community well-being

BY CLINTON DICK Herald Staff Writer

If the East Central Kansas Economic Opportunity Corp. disappeared, the impact soon would be felt by the community, Jake Howard said.

The organization, which was formed in 1966, is tasked with addressing poverty at a local level, Howard, ECKAN Franklin County Howard Human Service Coordinator, said.

“We are wanting to get into really working with people to get them to the position to where they aren’t needing assistance as much,” he said. “A lot of my clients do work and that is kind of a common misconception. A good majority of people in Franklin County are working — they just don’t make enough to get by. I would like to get into doing something to create more opportunities for people to make it.”

ECKAN is a non-profit community action agency. Community action agencies were created as a result of the 1964 war on poverty thanks to legislation pushed through by President Lyndon B. Johnson, Howard said. “[They were created] to basically address poverty using local entities to come up with solutions to alleviate and hopefully reduce poverty in communities,” he said. “It is much bigger than just a local deal. We are a part of the community action network across the nation, but we come up with solutions that come up with our area. A town or area in Kansas is a lot different than California or New York, so the idea behind the community action was to give local control to federal monies that go through the state and are then distribut-

ed to community action agencies throughout the state. ECKAN is one of those.”

Anti-poverty action While ECKAN’s central office is in Ottawa, 1320 S. Ash St., the agency itself covers several counties in the area, including Franklin, Anderson, Coffey, Osage, Lyon, Douglas, Johnson and Morris counties. About 20 agency programs help support the health of the community by fighting poverty, Howard, who has worked with ECKAN for three years, said.

“We do a lot of different things,” he said. “Our main office houses our Head Start staff. Head Start is a program that supports low income young children to make sure they get all the advantages of early childhood education.

“That office also houses our weatherization department.

Weatherization is essentially a program that goes in and makes people’s homes more efficient so they can save more money.

Weatherization also creates a lot of jobs within the community.

When we do work, we contract the work out, so a lot of our local businesses can take advantage of the work we are doing in homes.

It also helps the people who live there to not have to pay as much in utilities every month.”

ECKAN also helps with people struggling to afford rent, Howard said. Last year, ECKAN spent about $40,000 helping people with utilities and rent, which is a big part of what the agency does, he said.

“We usually set an appointment for an hour or so and have a discussion with the folks not only to help them with rent, but maybe to help them identify an issue they can address to make it so that they are less likely to need that assistance later, whether that be maybe a simple

budget or maybe they are needing employment or maybe they could utilize some of our food programs to help defer some costs if they are spending out of pocket,” Howard said. “We also have a housing department.

They oversee the Section 8 program, which is a HUD [Housing and Urban Development] program. It is essentially a subsidy for rent that helps people afford rent. I know just anecdotally working with people every day that rents have increased quite a bit and it is hard to pay that.”

Howard works out of the Don Woodward Community Center, 517 E. Third St., Ottawa, which is ECKAN’s community center in Franklin County. ECKAN has community centers in each of the counties it covers, and the Woodward center has specific functions for the agency, Howard said.

“We do a lot of things through here,” he said. “We have an emergency food pantry. We are the only food pantry that is open Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“In addition to the food pantry, we have a partnership with harvesters that we do retail recovery. What we do is we go to Walmart once a week and they have items that are nearly out of date, some damaged cans, eggs that are damaged ... it varies. We get food from them once a week and distribute that food out the same day we pick it up. We probably serve 100 to 130 households. It is still good. For instance, if they have a dozen eggs and they have one break, I’m pretty sure they get rid of the whole thing. So that is what we are getting, a slightly damaged carton of eggs and we go through and clean them out.”

The community center doesn’t just house food. It also is the place where people can come for assistance.

“In addition to our food programs, we do a lot of other

things,” Howard said. “We work with people. We call it case management. Basically we will work with our clients one-on-one to try to help them get to a better place in life. That may be helping them find employment, working on them with some skills that they might need for an interview.

We also work with people who are disabled. That might be just helping people maintain their independent living situation. “[We want to] help them become more self-sufficient. They would just need to come in here and visit with me,” he said.” They could always call and set up an appointment with me. If they are needing food or something like that, certainly, come right in.”

Health needs ECKAN has served 3,679 individuals and 1,316 families between October 2012 and September 2013, according to a 2013 ECKAN annual report. Of the more than 3,500 served, 94 percent have income at or below 125 percent of the poverty line; 51 percent have social security income; and 32 percent are employed or living on pension, the report said.

But ECKAN doesn’t just focus on poverty. The agency also is moving toward helping its clients become healthier physically as well, Howard said.

“Also, this year we were awarded a discretionary grant to access dental care,” he said.

“We’ve got a partnership with the dental clinic in Iola that is seeing our clients. We send them down with vouchers to help them cover the costs of their services.

“Part of the grant is also to provide nutrition education. A lot of the stuff we pass out at our food distributions isn’t necessarily the most healthy stuff, but we are trying to get into promoting healthy eating. I’ve done one nutrition ed-

ucation class with the extension office. It gets pretty valuable. We have one community garden we’ve been helping organize for the past two years and this year we are going to put a lot more effort into making that a bigger program.

We are going to incorporate some of that food back into our food distributions, which we’ve always done, but we are going to try to offer food preservation classes — canning, drying food, maybe some opportunities to learn about gardening.”

Aside from helping those in need within the community, ECKAN also benefits from community volunteer work. Howard said he typically gets about 300 to 400 hours of volunteer help per month.

“We have a lot of volunteers,” he said. “Most of them are from Ottawa, and we have organizations that volunteer for us too like COF, Walmart [Logistics], American Eagle Outfitters ... We have excellent support in the community.”

It’s crucial that non-profit organizations like ECKAN, which recently became a member of United Way of Franklin County, to be actively involved in making a community healthier, Howard said.

“I would say that it is vitally important, not only ECKAN, but at lots of the non-profits and service organizations to be involved in the community,” he said. “I think that ECKAN particularly provides people with not only things they absolutely need whether that is food or if we are helping with utility bills or whatever, but it also gives people a sense of community. All of our clients are low-income folks. I can see when they come through our food distributions that they are talking and they are learning about different things in the community. It is a way to get people together.”

Mental health mission adapts with modern challenges

By MEAGAN PATTON-PAULSON Herald Connections Editor

Many staff members at the Elizabeth Layton Center for Hope and Guidance could have gone into private practice, Diane Drake said.

They could have had fewer hours at work.

They could have made more money, perhaps.

But they didn’t, Drake, director of the Layton center, said, because they are passionate and committed about providing community mental health services.

“We have so many talented individuals who are committed to our community mental health center,” Drake said. “They bought into that vision and mission.”

It’s those staff members who are on the front lines to help treat patients, reduce crisis situations and reduce the stigma about mental illness, Drake said.

‘Grew very quickly’ The county’s first mental health center was opened in 1956 as the Franklin County Guidance Center.

“It started with the interest of people wanting to have counseling for kids and families,” Drake said.

Through the years, it changed locations several times and became a community mental health center in 1980.

“It grew very quickly in the early 1990s when state hospital beds were closed in Osawatomie,” Drake said.

Staffing also was expanded accordingly, Drake said. The center now operates at two locations in Ottawa, a main office at 2537 Eisenhower Road, Ottawa, and a secondary office at 204 E. 15th St., Ottawa. It also runs two offices in Paola, including its newest location, which was opened in 2012. That location was the first clinic in Kansas to offer both mental and physical health care.

Operations at the Paola center have been going well, Drake said, and admissions have been on the rise.

It’s also exciting, Drake said, because the mission integrates a person’s mental health care with care from their primary physi-

cian.

“We know our outcomes are better when we’re looking at what are the medical things that are causing or making mental illness worse,” Drake said.

“For instance, there’s a high chance of depression if you have diabetes. Or if you’ve had open heart surgery or a heart attack, there’s a higher rate of depression. ... That’s been one of our major goals, is communication with primary care physicians.”

The center is a community mental health center, Drake said, and has a contractual relationship with Franklin County. Being a community mental health center also means being licensed by the state and agreeing to provide certain functions, Drake said.

Those include: • 24/7 emergency services — A staff member needs to be on call at all times if someone has a mental health emergency.

• Outpatient services for children and adults — While treatment plans vary, this typically means one to two hours of treatment a week for a nonsevere issue.

• Specialized services for children and adults — This is community-coordinated care for people with severe and persistent problems. “The goal is to wrap the services around them to reduce the risk of hospitalization but also help them recover.”

• Consultation and education — Constant education in the community about mental health.

New ventures One of the most exciting things happening at the Layton center, Drake said, is the implementation of mental health first-aid classes.

It’s like CPR classes, Drake said, but for mental health, which Drake hopes will help break down the stigma about mental illness and prevent more community crises.

“When you look at the shootings that have happened around the country, when there have been dangerous situations ... if

you go back looking, those are people who fell through cracks,” Drake said. “Either their family didn’t realize they needed help or they dropped through cracks.

“What we’re trying to do is help people that have contacts in the community and might start seeing problems to see if now’s the time to get treatment.”

Those classes also are about keeping an eye on the community’s most vulnerable citizens, from Baby Boomers with a higher risk of suicide, to adolescents who might just need a listening ear.

Recently, employees in the Paola school district have undergone the center’s mental health first-aid classes, and local law enforcement officers are slated to do a course in March, Drake said.

Another relatively new practice, Drake said, is early intervention with children, working with kids as young as 2.

“It’s really interesting that depression and anxiety happens in children also,” Drake said. “I don’t think the public understands that kids can be anxious, and that can be misinterpreted.”

The center also offers a therapeutic preschool to get children kindergartenready.

“What we’re doing is helping them with social skills, emotional regulation and brain development,” Drake said, “and we’ve had 100 percent success in getting these kids kindergarten-ready.”

Other ongoing services include critical stress debriefing when community tragedies occur, to deal with the acute stress reaction emergency personnel encounter.

“Whether it’s a bank robbery or a murder or an accident where children get killed, whatever is traumatic,” Drake said.

“It’s helpful even if people refuse to talk, or are too nervous about talking, just to learn about others’ perspective is very healing.”

The Layton center’s Eisenhower location also offers a “Serenity Path,” a quarter-mile path that is open to the public during

daytime hours.

Some of the center’s clients use it during therapy sessions, and it is encouraged for members of the public to use for exercise — a key component of maintaining mental health wellness, Drake said.

“We really believe if people exercise, eat properly, get sun, don’t stay isolated, and do the healthy things humans are supposed to do ... if you get back to the basics, you are healthier and have an easier time recovering from depression,” Drake said.

‘More to do’ Budget cuts continue to be a struggle for the center, Drake said.

“At one time, 65 percent of our funds from the state were eliminated,” she said. “Some have been restored, but we’re still down. ... Just like other entities, we’ve really faced some significant cuts from the state budget, which means we have to be very careful with our resources. Our staff is trying to be as efficient as they can, with a front door that keeps getting pushed.”

Because of the cuts, the Layton center is down 16 to 18 staff members, Drake said, with the exception of a few employees who were added on with special grant funds.

The Layton center hasn’t reduced its hours of operation though, Drake said, which always is a consideration when facing budget cuts.

Some of the Layton center’s prices have increased, Drake said, to keep up with the financial need.

“We have to treat people who come through doors, but we also have to pay our people and the heating bills,” Drake said. “We have to take all our financial situations to heart.”

In May, Drake will celebrate 20 years with the Elizabeth Layton Center, she said.

And although she’s been in community mental health services in Kansas since 1980, there’s much more work to be done, she said, “We have so much more to do and are excited to help educate people about mental illness,” Drake said. “You and I are at risk of mental illness. There’s so many things to help people understand.”

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Progress

Page S6

Weekender, March 1-2, 2014

ORC exercises community recreation options

By CLINTON DICK Herald Staff Writer

Brandy Shoemaker sometimes wishes summer would last forever.

But it’s not just the snowy winter that drives her love of the summer season, she said, rather it’s Shoemaker the opportunity to work with and train the staff each year at the Ottawa City Pool, 310 N. Locust St. Shoemaker, who manages the pool for the Ottawa Recreation Commission, said she tells workers they won’t be working at the pool forever — no matter how much she or they wish otherwise.

“I actually love being able to work with the staff and to help to train them to further them for what they are going to do in the future,” she said. “The opportunity to actually teach them how to work and give them life skills is what I really enjoy. That is what I think our job is all about is investing in people and making their lives healthier and happier.”

Making memories Shoemaker, recreation manager at the Ottawa Community Recreation Center/Goppert Building, 705 W. 15th St., Ottawa, was born and raised in Ottawa.

After five years with the ORC, she said, she has an even stronger connection with the community. The best part of the job is seeing families bond together through the recreation the ORC offers, she said.

“It has been the little things ... that have kept me the happiest in doing my job every day,” Shoemaker said. “Seeing a kid make their first basket in basketball or seeing a kid who maybe was struggling with soccer that finally is able to play defense. Seeing families come in and be supportive watching dad play basketball or mom play volleyball. Even seeing grandparents come in to watch their grandchildren play. Those are memories that are created that make a difference in the kids’ lives and in the parents’ and grandparents’ lives. That is what, I guess

to me, is what being in a community is all about is giving those opportunities to make memories, and lasting memories at that.”

The ORC offers a variety of recreation programs throughout all seasons of the year for the community as well as housing workout equipment, an indoor basketball court and an indoor track at the Goppert Building.

As a former high school and collegiate athlete and coach, working at the ORC was a great fit for Shoemaker, who wanted to be involved with sports while giving back to the community, she said.

“I love being around sports and being around people,” she said. “Ottawa is a good community. So when this position opened up, it was a good fit. It was a good starting position for recreation and a good fit for me being in the community. I know a lot of people. There are a lot of good people in the community and a lot of good friends and family. Ottawa is a neat place to live.”

Shoemaker now oversees all of the ORC’s recreation departments while also personally taking care of such duties as managing the pool, handling advertising and marketing, overseeing the programming budget and maintaining the ORC website, she said.

“Primarily, I oversee all of our recreation departments and all of our programs,” she said. “We have three programmers that specifically program different areas. One is in charge of youth and adult sports. Basically, one is in charge of pre-K, special events, senior events and adult fitness and we have another one who is in charge of nature, teens and youth and our summer playground program.

There is definitely a lot of different areas beyond just the sports that we are a part of, which I think is one of the reasons I like the job so much. It is not the same thing day in and day out.”

The programs are aimed to get people in the community out and active, not always just through sports. For Shoemaker, there are several aspects that comprise a healthy community, one of which is being active within a community.

“It is physical wellbeing,” she said. “So being out, being involved and being active physically. I think it is also emotional, and I think recreation and connectedness within a community provides a lot of that. The other part is the mental well-being. We recently went to a conference and they showed us that there is a direct correlation between physical, mental and emotional well-being. It all goes back to physical well-being and nature. Right now, we are a society that sits in front of technology for seven to 10 hours a day, yet we get outdoors with nature 15-20 minutes a day. If there is more physical activity, getting outdoors in nature, sports or even just being involved with other people in some of our arts and crafts programs, that socialization factor they proved not only leads to a better emotional state and a better physical state, but a better mental state as well, so they cognitively learn better.”

Shoemaker wants to not only improve ORC’s current programming, but also to develop new offerings to continue to give community members the opportunity to stay active, she said.

“Being able to offer additional programs and additional leagues is important so we reach all aspects of the community because it is not just about sports, but a full recreation opportunity,” Shoemaker said, “And that can be anything from our quilting class, swimming lessons to our candy cane hunt and Easter egg hunt.

Every one of those is essential because we don’t always reach the same people every time.”

‘Do what you like to do’ Since its opening in 2011, the Goppert building has enabled the ORC to expand its services for the community, Tommy Sink, ORC director, said.

“I think we offer a vast amount of options to choose from to stay physically fit or get physically fit. The programs and, of course, the facilities available for those who choose to come ... those are probably the two big ticket

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items,” he said. “When we were still at the Don Woodward Community Center, [517 E. 3rd St.], all that was available there was the gym.

So, there Sink were programs like T’ai chi, jazzercise, the PATH ladies program ... we have that here [at the Goppert building], but we also have where you can come in on your own, because there we didn’t have cardio equipment, we didn’t have a track. Now, you can come any time of day that you want during the business hours and do what you choose to do and what you like to do.”

The ORC began charging fees — for those not involved in the ORC’s programs — for entering the Goppert building to use its facilities. After more than a month and a half after the fees’s implementation, the community seems to be warming to the change, Sink said.

“People understand that this building is built with taxpayers’ money,” he said. “A lot of people come in and say they don’t

have a problem with [the fees], but they are happy to see the fee to pay for equipment stuff that they use. That is why people like to refer to it as a ‘user fee’ because if you use it, everything inside of it, you need to pay for it. They like the fee for that purpose.”

The building has seen a significant drop in signins at the front desk since the fees were initiated.

The building averaged 76 sign-ins a day in January of 2014 compared to 240 a day in January of 2013, but Sink said much of that has to do with children who come to the building after school, but do not necessarily use the facility.

Also, this is the first year the ORC has partnered with Ottawa Middle School for intramural sports, including girls volleyball and boys and girls basketball. Those intramural sports have kept Goppert’s gym closed for the programs on certain days, which also has affected the number of sign-ins, Sink said.

“In 2013, we had a lot of traffic after school,” he said. “[The intramural programs] took about a threemonth shot there that the gym closed after school for intramural sports. So,

all those kids who were coming in in January 2013, the gym was not accessible for them in 2014. I think we will see a little more in numbers coming through the door as outdoors sports are starting up. Track will be starting up, baseball will be starting up and, of course, being outdoor sports, the gym will be more available for everybody.”

Regardless of the numbers coming through, the ORC collected $7,930.83 in fees during January 2014 to help offset equipment costs.

Sink said his job is to keep the doors open, and he is happy to see people using the facility, especially many of the community’s senior citizens.

“The PATH program, which is in partnership with Ransom Memorial Hospital, is a little more program oriented,” he said. “When I say seniors take advantage of the facility, I’m talking about the upstairs track and the cardio equipment. On a daily basis, we get a lot of folks coming in for that reason and to visit with each other when they walk. It is kind of a social event for the senior folks. Whatever they do, they are in out of the elements.”

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Page S7

Progress 2014

Neosho, OU eye education expansion

By DOUG CARDER Herald Senior Writer

Aviation and engineering might have something in common.

Leaders at Ottawa’s two higher education institutions — Neosho County Community College and Ottawa University — said they are looking at possibly adding those programs to their offerings.

Neosho, 900 E. Logan St., has been in discussions with Ottawa-based Hawkeye Helicopter about the possibility of offering pilot training, Tony Brown, assistant dean for outreach and workforce development at Neosho, said.

“I think they are very interested in seeing us offer an aviation program to train pilots that they could possibly hire in the future,” Brown said. “It’s something we are taking a look at.”

While the aviation proposal has not taken wing just yet, Brown said Neosho always is looking for ways it can expand and tailor its offerings to meet the needs of the communities it serves.

“Our welding certificate program is doing very well,” Brown said.

“The welding program is centered in Garnett, but we would like to emulate it here [in Ottawa], and we’re looking at possibly offering a HVAC program.”

Ottawa University is considering expanding its programs to include engineering, Terry Haines, provost of the university’s residential campus, 1001 S. Cedar St., Ottawa, said. OU faculty members are in the process of evaluating the program during the next several weeks to see if it’s the right fit for the university’s Ottawa campus, he said.

“Engineering is something we are very much considering,” Haines said.

Programs Haines, who also is the greater university’s provost and chief academic officer, talked about other recent program additions and expansions.

“We brought in nursing as an online program, and we’ve added marketing, business economics, actuarial sciences, and we’ve redesigned our MBA program,” Haines said.

“We have aspirations for a number of other programs in our research. We have a new marketing department that is doing careful analysis of the communities we serve ... we’ve been trying to be creative in such a way that we can best serve the communities we are nestled in.”

Founded in 1865, Ottawa University is a notfor-profit educational institution with a residential campus in Ottawa; adult campuses in Overland Park, Arizona (Phoenix, Chandler and Surprise), Indiana (Jeffersonville) and Wisconsin (Brookfield and Oak Creek), as well as Ottawa University-Online.

Neosho, based in Chanute, has built a strong nursing program with a state-of-the-art medical training facility at its Ottawa campus, Brown said.

Students who have been through the college’s nursing program work in all facets of the profession — from hospitals to clinics to assisted care facilities — throughout the region and the country, Brown said.

He relayed a story about a student who went through the Neosho nursing program and now works as a nurse in Texas. “[The nurse’s employer] said they were very impressed with the training

she received here and would like to have more nurses [from Neosho],” Brown said. “We are very proud of our nursing program.”

Brown Once students complete the introduction to nursing course at Neosho, the next step is the Haines foundations of nursing, Mary Lisa Joslyn, nurse course coordinator at the college, said in a previous interview.

“These are all the patient normals — this is what you expect with your patient — that’s the foundation in nursing [course],” Joslyn said.

“Then the students move on to a higher complexity, in nursing care of the Adult 1 and Adult 2. And then they end with their advanced med surge at the very end of the program — that’s all the abnormals, the very sick. And so we start with what’s normal and generally expected and then we add on with each semester.”

Upon completion of the two-year program, students would receive an associate’s of applied sciences in nursing degree.

The community college also offers a certified nursing assistant certificate program, Joslyn said.

“We are classified in Kansas as a bi-level program,” Pam Covault, Neosho’s nursing director, said. “When finished with the first level, students sit for the PN [practical nurse] national exam.

They have to pass that exam to continue in the program. We’re really a RN [registered nurse] program that has the PN option.”

Neosho’s teaching and learning center, with its banks of computers, groupings of comfortable couches and chairs around the fireplace, make for a cozy and inviting learning atmosphere, faculty and students have said.

Ottawa University’s education program always has been one of its strengths, Haines said.

“We have hundreds of graduates in this area and thousands in the region — teachers, doctors, lawyers, ministers and educators and government people that have left our doors and gone out and made a huge difference in the world,” Haines said. “I can’t visit a high school in this region without finding one or two or four or 10 graduates. We are nearly 150 years old, and education has always been one

of our strongest programs.

We have very supportive alumni, and if you put our tentacles out, you would find us in most professions.”

Community outreach Neosho and OU are about more than academics, Brown and Haines said. The institutions also want to play a vital role in the community through volunteer work and other outreach programs.

Neosho and OU also have made their facilities available to the community.

“We take the community part of our name very seriously,” Brown said.

“Serving the community is our mission and purpose.”

In addition to assisting with a number of volunteer projects in the community, Neosho’s modern auditorium is used by dozens of groups, Brown said. The auditorium has served as a gathering site for business meetings, annual meetings and other such events as the community’s monthly First Friday Forum, which features a different speaker each month.

Ottawa University recently has brought to campus such notable speakers as Arman Aardal, former Norwegian ambassador and OU alum; Barry Asmus, senior economist with the National Center for Public Analysis; and Phillip Anderson, leader in the Greenleaf Institute on Servant Leadership as part of its Hostetter-DeFries Endowed Cultural Event, Norwood L. Jones Convocation Event and Business Symposium.

The university puts on four theater productions per year, a Christmas vespers program, jazz invitational workshop and concert and OU jazz ensembles perform at downtown businesses.

Those are but a few of the events and workshops and speakers the university

hosts each year, Haines said.

Community outreach also is important to the university, Haines said.

Some of that outreach includes volunteerism, internships and job-shadowing experiences, he said.

“We are not a college just in Ottawa, we are a college of Ottawa,” Haines said. “What is so terrific about this community is that it is so embracing of our institution.”

New facilities The steel framework of the Gibson Student Center should begin to take shape in the coming weeks on the OU campus.

Then May 11, the day after OU commencement, the Mowbray Student Union is scheduled to be torn down to make room for the new Gangwish Library.

Once constructed, the 43,000-square-foot library and attached student center will serve the university community with stateof-the-art technology, student services, dining and conference amenities, Kevin Eichner, OU president, said.

The second phase, construction of the Gangwish Library, is scheduled for completion in late July or early August 2015, in time for OU’s sesquicentennial celebration, Eichner said.

The university, which was founded in 1865, is in the midst of planning activities to mark its 150th anniversary next year.

“When the library portion is completed, this actually feels like all one building instead of two buildings, and that was intentional,” Eichner said.

“The flow between the dining era and the lounge area and the library and the meeting areas and the student activity areas is going to be pretty much seamless. It’s going to be terrific.”

The new library and student center, which represents the largest single

building project ever undertaken by the university, OU officials have said, also serves as the centerpiece of the university’s $24.3 million Advancing the Vision Capital Campaign, Eichner said.

Funds raised during the campaign are slated to enhance facilities and strengthen academic programming, scholarships, the endowment, athletics and a number of other areas of the university, OU officials said.

Thus far, the university has raised about $21.3 million in cash and pledges toward the $24.3 million goal, Eichner said in a recent interview.

The university is intent on building the 21st Century classroom, taking full advantage of available technology, Haines said.

“We want students to have the kind of connection with the world they need and deserve on our campus,” Haines said.

“Instead of saying, ‘Well, you’ve got to go out into the world,’ we want to bring the world in.”

OU and Neosho’s commitment to education excellence and the betterment of the communities they serve are evident by their surging enrollment numbers.

Ottawa University recently reported its enrollment was at its highest point since fall 1975, touching more than 7,000 students throughout its network.

Neosho this year has been named the fifthfastest growing community college in the United States for its sized institution by Community College Week magazine.

“We were ranked 14th last year, and this year fifth,” Brian Inbody, Neosho County Community College president, wrote in a column published Jan. 20 in The Herald. “This also makes us the fastest-growing community college in Kansas again.

To make its ranking, Community College Week used national data called IPEDS collected by the U.S. Department of Education on a yearly basis.

“I am very proud of what we have done as a college to open our doors to more and more students,” Inbody said.

“Through our offerings at Chanute, Ottawa, online and our many sites at high schools, hospitals, as well as our new Eastern Kansas Rural Technology Center in Garnett, we keep expanding, reaching more and more students in the area.”

Neosho’s Brown said everything the college undertakes — from academics to outreach programs — is done with the community in mind.

“It’s really about serving the community,” Brown said. “If we can do our part to help make Ottawa and Franklin County a better place, it benefits all of us.”

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Weekender, March 1-2, 2014

‘I had no idea the library did that’

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On a chilly day in February, more than two dozen children jump, build and play with large blue blocks and balls in the Don Woodward Community Center, 517 E. Third St., Ottawa.

It’s cold outside, but inside, parents and children are free to let their bodies and imaginations run wild in a “Get the Wiggles Out” program.

Some build towers, racetracks and other contraptions. Some chase after balls.

But nearly everyone in attendance is getting healthier, either through social, physical or mental exertions.

“This encourages parents to interact with their children. Adults are interacting with each other and meeting people. Children are interacting with each other,” Shannon Leonard, youth services librarian, said, smiling and playing with other children.

The program, which was made possible by a grant awarded to the City of Ottawa’s Play Taskforce, is just one the Ottawa Library is part of that helps promote health, education and wellness.

It’s also a good example of how collaboration can play a key role in creating a more engaged and healthful community.

“The grant was initiated by the City of Ottawa’s Play Taskforce,” Leonard said. “It required partnerships, so they came to us and the [Ottawa Recreation Commission] to partner with us and use this equipment, and we said, ‘Absolutely. We would love to have this in our community.’ “[Collaboration] is a huge part of having a healthy community, because no one group can do it all,” Leonard said. “And so to offer our patrons play opportunities and reading opportunities and learning, whether it’s computers or cooking or gardening or whatever those things we want to educate people about, we have to reach out in our community and find the experts so to speak, to come and offer programs or free services to our patrons.”

‘Wildly successful’ In addition to “Get the Wiggles Out,” the Ottawa Library offers an array of programs to suit any given age, hobby or interest.

For kids, there are regular storytime, toddler time and baby sessions each week, in addition to special programming, like Lego competitions and even cooking classes.

“We’ve partnered with Harvesters doing a series of cooking classes, which has been great for kids,” Leonard said. “It not only teaches them cooking safety but also healthy eating. Last year they tried quinoa.

The Harvester’s lady brought kale, things that kids are not exposed to.

That has been wildly successful.”

Kayelee Staneslow, Ottawa, has brought her 3-year-old son, Anthony, to library storytimes and special events, including “Get the Wiggles Out,” and said she appreciates having a designated place and time for her child to roam around.

“It’s great for the kids to get out and do something, especially in the winter,” Staneslow said.

One of the things Leonard said she likes about the Imagination in a Box set, used during “Get the Wiggles Out,” is its ability to inspire creative play.

“A lot of what we’ve been talking about and even coordinating our storytimes is learning through play, rather than learning through a very specific, scripted, organized endeavor,” she said.

The library is in a unique position to foster that role, she said.

“We get to do the fun aspects of things that schools don’t have time for or can’t offer,” Leonard said.

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Bishop Green, 19 months, plays on a walkway made of blocks during “Get the Wiggles Out,” a program the Ottawa Library helps put on for the community, Feb. 21 at the Don Woodward Community Center, 517 E. Third St., Ottawa. In an attempt to reach out to more people in the community, the library has continued to offer programming aimed at all sorts of ages, hobbies and interests, organizers said. and even a special touch-screen computer for ages 3 to 5 at the library.

The library also has a partnership with Communities in Schools, playing host to the group’s afterschool participants, many of whom wouldn’t be coming to the library any other way.

Library staff also have reached out to local daycares and preschools to coordinate storytimes and activities, to expose kids to what the library has to offer.

“It’s amazing that we still hear from people like, ‘I had no idea the library did that,’” Leonard said. “It’s all about getting out there and infiltrating to people who maybe don’t know what we do.”

Outside the ‘library box’ For adults, programming can include anything from computer classes to job search skills, using social media or navigating an email account.

Recently, the library has been doing a series of musical history programs, including local musicians thumping out the beats of bluegrass, jazz or rock n’ roll.

“We’re trying to reach outside of that library box, and think it doesn’t have to be connected to a story, it doesn’t have to be connected to literacy,” Leonard said. “How can we be an asset to promote healthy living in our community in all aspects?”

The library is constantly looking to enhance its program offerings, Terry Chartier, Ottawa Library director, said, in some part to keep the entity viable in the community.

“We’re offering things the community needs and are looking for,” she said.

And if the numbers are any indication, people are interested in what the library provides, be it books, programming or some other service.

Last year, the library reported 183,170 total visits. More than 500 children participated in summer reading, and more than 600 adults participated in other programs.

The library boasted 11,258 cardholders last year, as well as 9,449 total program attendees.

The reasons people come in to the library are endless, Chartier said, but she’s happy her organization provides a place people can come to receive friendly help on nearly any subject.

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‘Our dream’ The library currently shares a building with Ottawa City Hall, 105 S. Hickory St. It previously was housed in what now is the Carnegie Cultural Center, 501 S. Main St. In late 2010, the library underwent a two-month, $250,000 renovation project, enhancing its aesthetics and efficiency, Chartier said.

The end result featured a revamped and more kid-friendly children’s section, a new, more organized circulation desk made out of recycled wood and a redecorated reference section, as well as a new young adults section, called “The Cave.”

Chartier, who was the business director for the library at the time of the remodel, said the renovations have provided a better workflow for employees, as well as a friendlier, more inviting space for community members.

“You walk in and it’s very nicely colored and lit,” she said. “We created a teen space, which has become very popular.”

In a community with no designated weather shelter, the entire library also offers a place people can escape the extreme weather elements, whether it be a harsh winter snow or a scorching summer day.

“People certainly use it for that,” she said. “ ... They can come here and have puzzles, magazines and newspapers, books, of course, and plenty of sitting areas.”

Late last year, the library gave the community a chance to give back, creating a “wish list” where people could purchase items or donate funds to be used at the library.

Out of that came more than $2,000 in donations, as well as two e-readers, which should be available for check-out soon, a Keurig coffee maker, chemistry equipment for this summer’s reading program, as well as several other items.

“We got a lot of very cool things off our list,” Chartier said.

Perhaps someday, Chartier said, the library could be in its own building.

“Of course that would always be our dream to have our own building,” she said. “It’s in the long-term plan, but it’s pretty distant.”

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Progress

Weekender, March 1-2, 2014

Page S9

Ransom program gives participants a gut check

By DYLAN LYSEN Herald Staff Writer

While many in the community do their part to keep Ottawa and Franklin County healthy and vibrant, few have such a direct impact on individual health as Ransom Memorial Hospital.

The hospital, 1301 S. Main St., Ottawa, offers to work with companies and organizations to motivate employees and community members to find a way to live a more healthful life, including the employees of the city itself.

Brenda Pfizenmaier, a clinical dietitian and certified diabetes educator at Ransom, said she joined the hospital staff 16 years ago to promote wellness.

She said the current program, now known as Well Life can be traced back to when she started working at Ransom, but was rebooted once the hospital was under the leadership of Larry Felix, chief executive officer, Dean Ohmart, chief financial officer, and Susan Ward, chief nursing officer.

“When Larry [Felix] came, he actually let us hire an exercise physiologist and we re-began the program,” Pfizenmaier said. “It was a visionary of Dean [Ohmart], Susan [Ward], and Larry [Felix].”

Since then, the wellness program has worked with several companies in the area to promote wellness through various courses, including Arvest Bank, and the Ottawa school district, as well as the The Ottawa Herald.

Ransom’s current project to promote wellness focuses on motivation to help people find the strength to become more healthy.

The wellness program began by

“If you eat junk food, you’re going to feel junky.”

— Brenda Pfizenmaier, Ransom Memorial Hospital promoting healthier living for the employees at the hospital so they could be more effective at their jobs, she said, but has evolved to promote wellness to everyone in the community. Pfizenmaier said the program has about 350 enrolled participants this year.

“We help encourage everyone, not just our employees, but everyone in the community to take care of themselves,” Pfizenmaier said.

Well Life The program begins with a full health assessment of participants so the hospital can understand each individual’s current status, Pfizenmaier said.

The first assessment checks the lipids and glucose count to see if the participant has diabetes or any type of heart problems.

After the health assessment, the fitness levels of the participant is gauged during the fitness assessment, which measures how many push ups and sit ups the person can do in a minute as well as his or her flexibility.

Participants then review the results with Pfizenmaier or Cheryl Allen, who also is a clinical dietitian and certified diabetes educator, and then asks for the person to come back once a month for blood pressure

checks, Pfizenmaier said.

The process allows for the program to monitor the progress of the participants health, she said, noting some participants have been involved for almost all 16 years she’s been at Ransom and have a large amount of data to track their progress.

“We not only look at what you are today, but where were you three years ago,” Pfizenmaier said. “We want to make sure we’re seeing progress, because a lot of times you don’t see progress like that, it’s a slow process.”

Brand new members to the program also receive a complete assessment on family history, exercising history, eating history and stress levels, she said.

“We try to motivate and figure out where they are in their life and work through those things,” Pfizenmaier said. “Let them recognize it’s OK to move yourself from the back burner and move you to the front burner.”

Motivation Pfizenmaier said the current wellness program focuses on motivation because the community already knows why they need to be healthy and what it takes to be healthy. The matter of being healthy comes down to taking the right steps to make a change.

“It’s about finding the motivation, the desire and the want and the accountability to take care of ourselves,” Pfizenmaier said.

To help motivate, the hospital offers three different discounts to healthcare premiums per month, depending on which level of exercising goal the participant reached. Throughout the year, participants track their exercising habits. If a participant exercises for 90 minutes a week for six months, they receive a $120 discount; for 150 minutes a week, they receive $240 discount; and 210 minutes a week receives a $360 discount.

“We know it takes at least 150 minutes a week in order to take care of your heart and prevent diabetes,” Pfizenmaier said.

“But we want to challenge them outside the box as well.”

Organizations that participate with the program don’t have to use the reward system Ransom offers. For the City of Ottawa, who has been using the program since 2008, the benefits are offered through the employer instead of through the hospital. The city’s program allows for employees to take the reward as cash, instead of as a discount on the healthcare premium, Melissa Fairbanks, human resource director for the City of Ottawa, said. Some employees might be insured through a spouse, she said, so the insurance benefits would not be an actual motivation.

The rewards program always comes with the possibility of someone taking advantage of the system, Pfizenmaier said, but the data provided by the participant allows the healthcare

professionals to be able to tell if someone was lying about how much exercising they actually accomplished.

“I just look them straight in the eye and say, ‘Tell me about your exercise,’” Pfizenmaier said. “That’s why the fitness testing every year is adamant, because if you did 20 push ups this year and then next year you did 10, even though you said you were exercising 210 minutes a week, that doesn’t coincide. So we try to put in ways to encourage people to be honest.”

A healthy mission Though Pfizenmaier’s time is in short supply, she said, she makes time when companies and organizations are interested in getting started with the hospital’s programming.

“Ransom Memorial Hospital allows me to go out and help wherever I’m needed,” Pfizenmaier said. “That’s also part of the program. No, it doesn’t have anything to do with Well Life, but the hospital allows for me to go out to help the community get healthy.”

Some of those lectures include simple tips to more healthful eating and going to the schools to teach kids about diabetes. The students are taught about sticky blood and what insulin is, and how its administered to the body.

“I let them test their blood sugar to hopefully find some motivation in that [to say to themselves] ‘I don’t need 42 ounces of pop every day,’” Pfizenmaier said. “[We’re] just educating the community how to eat healthy. If you eat junk food, you’re going to feel junky.”

Communities In Schools opens doors for at-risk youth

By DOUG CARDER Herald Senior Writer

High school dropouts make up more than 50 percent of the nation’s prison population.

Becky Nevergold shared that statistic to illustrate why it is so important to the Communities In Schools organization that every youth stay in school, she said.

Nevergold, a longtime educator and current executive director of Communities In Schools of Ottawa, said the organization can help give children the support they need — whether it be arranging a trip to the eye doctor, providing a pair of shoes or serving as a mentor.

Communities In Schools contributes to the health and well-being of the community by running after-school programs, sponsoring Day on the Job events, placing site counselors at schools to serve as mentors to students, as well as participating in many other programs for the betterment of students, Nevergold said.

Nationwide, Communities In Schools serves more than 1.4 million students and their families in 26 states and Washington, D.C., the organization said in a news release. Communities In Schools has become the nation’s leading dropout prevention organization, and the only one proven to both decrease dropout rates and increase graduation rates, according to the organization.

Locally, the Day on the Job program not only shows students what employment opportunities are available in Ottawa and Franklin County, but the number of business owners and professionals who participate in the event each year demonstrates to students that they live in a caring community, Nevergold, who plans to retire at the end of the school year, said.

Ottawa’s program is affiliated with Communities In Schools of Mid-America, a non-profit organization with local affiliates in Kansas, Tulsa, Okla., Omaha, Neb., and soon plans to expand to Missouri, the organization said in a news release. During the 2012-2013 school year, Communities In Schools of Mid-America served 27,493 students, the release said.

In January, the organization honored Communities In Schools of Ottawa,

the Ottawa community and the Ottawa school district with the organization’s inaugural awards for Communities In Schools affiliate, school district and community of the year.

“The mission of Communities In Schools is to surround students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life, and nowhere is this more exemplified than in this Ottawa community,” Malissa Martin, president and chief executive officer of Communities In Schools of Mid-America, Lawrence, said during the awards presentation.

Cassie Myers, Communities In Schools site coordinator at Ottawa High School, takes the organization’s mission to keep students in school to heart, she said.

Myers arranged for Cheyenne Drayer, an OHS senior, to receive some major dental work at the start of her junior year.

The pain in her teeth became so unbearable that Cheyenne couldn’t concentrate in class, she said.

“I hadn’t been to the dentist since I probably was eight,” Cheyenne said previously. “They told my mom I needed braces, and Mom said, ‘No,’ and I hadn’t been back to the dentist since then.”

But dental problems weren’t the teen’s only dilemma.

“After my sister moved out, I was kinda on my own — it was just me and my mom,” Cheyenne said. “My mom took advantage of her medication and whatnot.

I never knew, ‘When’s the next time I’m going to eat?

What am I going to eat? Is she going to wake up soon?’”

A local dentist agreed to fix Cheyenne’s teeth at no charge, and the teen’s brother and sister-in-law, Jason and Shauna Drayer, took custody of her.

Living in a new home environment and finding she had people in her corner, Cheyenne said she started to set goals and feel good about herself.

“If you looked at my transcript, you would see D’s and F’s my freshman and sophomore year,” Cheyenne said. “Last year, I got all A’s and one B, and I only missed an A by one point.”

To get its message out, the national organization has launched a TV, newspaper and web campaign called Change the Picture.

Cheyenne’s story, along with those of several other students, were filmed in Hollywood in late August and were turned into videos that can be found on the organization’s website, www.changethepicture.org Nevergold said stories like Cheyenne’s are all too real, not only in Ottawa, but throughout the country.

That’s why Communities In Schools serves an important role in the communities where the organization is located throughout the country. And Nevergold said she is proud of the Ottawa community for the way it has supported the organization.

“Communities In Schools can open doors for kids,” Nevergold, who has been director of Communi-

ties In Schools of Ottawa for the past seven years, said. “We believe we have had a hand in making a healthier community.”

The statistics bear out Nevergold’s point.

During the 2012-2013 school year, Communities In Schools of Ottawa provided prevention and intervention service to 1,854 Ottawa students — about 78 percent of the district’s population, according to the organization’s 20122013 annual report.

In the past seven years, Communities In Schools has grown locally from one program — Reach for the Stars after-school program — to more than 30 programs, Nevergold said. “[Communities In Schools of Ottawa] is the

most successful implementation of an independent CIS affiliate anywhere in the Midwestern part of this country in the last decade,” Communities In Schools of Mid-America’s Martin said.

Communities In Schools works in tandem with the school district to build a

solid educational foundation.

“I compare it to building a wall — the schools, teachers, administrators and staff are the bricks, and we are the mortar,” Nevergold said. “You need both to build a solid wall that is going to last for a long time.”

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Progress

Page S10

Weekender, March 1-2, 2014

Farm Bureau strengthens ag’s economic forecast

By DYLAN LYSEN

“If the farmer’s failing, that’s a lot of spill-over effect,” Dunn said, who plays host to weddings on her property to help pay for her farm.

“I even felt it here on my special event facility. The year farming wasn’t very good, a lot of farm families couldn’t afford to have their kids go to a wedding. They’d go to the courthouse.”

Herald Staff Writer

The Farm Bureau Association doesn’t just represent local farmers from the county level all the way to the national stage, Robin Dunn said. It also works to craft policies to protect local farmers, provides legal assistance and educates youth on agriculture and rural living, among other goals of the organization.

Dunn, Franklin County Farm Bureau Association president, said the bureau’s extensive work is to benefit local farmers as well as boost the community economy in the rural areas the bureau represents. Farm Bureau works to make agriculture as profitable as possible, she said, but in today’s economy, it can be a challenging mission.

“We’re a grass-roots organization,” Dunn said. “We start at the county level with every policy or development we have. That’s one of the things that makes us very strong. We start at the county level and work our way up all the way to the national level.”

Policy and politics Farm Bureau conferences every fall in Manhattan serve as an annual gathering where farmers can meet, discuss and develop policy. As the local president for Franklin County, Dunn makes trips to Washington, D.C., to lobby at the Capitol and meet with committees directly involved with agriculture.

“We all go to meetings ... and go lobby and try to convince somebody of our ways, and they don’t like to be convinced sometimes,” Dunn said. “They have us do a lot up there. We’re there for three or four days. We do intense training and talk about all the bills that are becoming issues and all the policy problems we could have. Basically just an ag advocacy group.”

Those bills include the re-

Education

Photo by Dylan Lysen/The Ottawa Herald

Students at Central Heights Elementary School, 3521 Ellis Road, Richmond, mix dough in a bag to make their own bread during a Bread in a Bag event organized by the Franklin County Farm Bureau Association and the Franklin County Extension Office to teach students where their food comes from and how to make food for themselves. cently passed Farm Bill, which protects farmers with crop insurance and other agriculture business benefits.

“Finally, that was a huge deal,” Dunn said. “And even the details of the Farm Bill are still being ironed out with risk management.

That is one thing Farm Bureau is lobbying for every day.”

At the state level, the association plans to be involved with Gov. Sam Brownback’s 50-year water vision plan, which was a hot topic during his State of the State address in January.

Brownback said without water, there is no future, which farmers in Kansas know all too well.

“Brownback has issued his new 50-year water policy, so Farm Bureau is going to go and we’re going to vote on what we believe is best for agriculture in his water policy,” Dunn said.

Farm Bureau also plans to be heavily involved with land-use value, she said, which dictates how much property tax a home-

owner would pay compared to how much property tax a farmer would pay for their land use.

“If I had to pay property tax on all of the acres I own right here, with land values being as high as they are, I’d never be able to farm it,” Dunn said. “Unfortunately, Kansas City has moved out here, my value out there in that field isn’t nearly as high as if someone had houses all over it.

“So ag land use, if I use it for ag, I’m taxed differently. My house and my out buildings are taxed like anybody else’s house, but when it comes to that field out there, if I had to pay taxes on that field, it would be astronomical. So that’s why we lobby for ag land use.”

Farm Bureau has a full-time employee in Washington who serves as a paid lobbyist, but all of the association members in Franklin County work as volunteers. The group’s policy and politics work help the community and farmers, she said.

Youth in the county might not understand what it takes to become a farmer, Dunn said, because farms aren’t staying in the family like they used to. Dunn’s farm has been in her family for four generations, more than 100 years, she said, but that’s not the case for a lot of farmers in Franklin County. Farm Bureau uses some of its efforts to try to teach youth the ways of agriculture, as well as rural living.

“People today are three or four generations removed from their family farms,” Dunn said. “A lot of people — I used to say kids, but it’s adults too — don’t even know what a farm is. So we try to educate them on how life used to be.”

The most recent project was a Bread in a Bag day at Central Heights Elementary School, 3521 Ellis Road, Richmond, in which Farm Bureau and the Frontier Extension Office teamed up to teach third graders how to make bread.

“The purpose of Bread in a Bag is to teach where an item of food comes from, some of the basics of nutrition,” Pat Vining, a Farm Bureau member and volunteer for the project, said. “By keeping the ingredients in plastic bags until the end of the process, students get to ‘mix’ and see the white and whole wheat flour plus other ingredients evolve into bread dough. A small loaf of bread is baked for each student and he or she gets to take it home, hopefully, with some newly-learned information about a food product from

field to table.”

Another important project, Dunn said, is sponsoring Day on the Farm, which is an event at Sylvester Ranch, 1906 Kingman Road, Ottawa, that brings Franklin County third graders to the farm for in-the-field education.

Dunn also plays host to her own day on the farm by inviting students to her property, she said.

Farm bureau also sends many young farmers and ranchers to conferences, as well as award academic and agriculture scholarships. Dunn said the organization also makes purchases at the county fair to support the youth and the local 4-H program.

Economy Through projects and lobbying, Farm Bureau aims to increase the profitability of farming, Dunn said. When farming makes money in a rural communities, like those in Franklin County, then the communities are healthier as a result.

“When the drought hit a couple of years ago, the economy wasn’t very good in town,” Dunn said. “Especially with a rural city like Ottawa is. I’m not going to tell you it will change Lawrence a lot, but it’s not a rural city. Ottawa, Baldwin City, Wellsville, if their farm’s failing, that’s a lot of spill over effect.”

When she was a young, Dunn said, children weren’t going off to continue their education through college, but staying home on the farm to work. Now it’s more profitable to continue an education and work elsewhere, she said.

Because of that, there needs to be an incentive or a niche farm.

“The family farmer doesn’t make a lot of money,” Dunn said.

“The pumpkin patches are a niche farmer. There’s a lot of them, but today’s farming is tough for a kid to start out and make it at farming. Sometimes that little niche in there helps them.”

Police shoot for healthy department, schools, community

By DOUG CARDER Herald Senior Writer

The Ottawa Police Department soon will be reaching out to the community in a new way.

“I recently received authorization to a start a police cadet program,” Dennis Butler, Ottawa police chief, said. “It’s a civilian position and we are targeting kids who are ready to graduate or have just graduated from high school but aren’t old enough to become police officers. This is going to be a halftime position, because I also feel strongly about furthering one’s education.”

Toward that end, Butler said, Neosho County Community College, 900 E. Logan St., Ottawa, has agreed to provide the cadet with a full scholarship for two years.

“We will select the cadet using the same process that we use to hire police officers, because we don’t want to invest time and money in training a cadet who then would not be able to become a police officer,” Butler said. “Our hope, of course, is that we would be able to hire the cadet to come to work for us.”

The department will soon be advertising for the cadet application process, targeting Franklin County high school graduates, Butler said. The cadet will undergo 20 hours of training per week at the department and must agree to attend classes at Neosho for two years, he said.

“This is a way for us to help develop local talent and give them opportunities,” Butler said.

Outreach efforts McGruff Club. DARE camp. Seatbelts Are For Everyone campaign.

Those are but a few of the ways the police department is reaching out to help make Ottawa a better place to live, Butler said.

“In policing, we work for the community — all the businesses, residents, visitors, city and county agencies,” Butler said.

“Because of the nature of

our work, we can’t always be as transparent as we would like to be, but we strive hard to work with everybody in a positive and productive way.”

Because police officers are empowered and authorized to restrict people’s liberties temporarily and make arrests and seize property when necessary, Butler said, sometimes that’s not always a positive experience.

“Even when people say unkind things, I stress we always need to listen to what they have to say,” Butler said. “We don’t shortchange the law enforcement profession by slowing down and listening to what people have to say and at least acknowledging what their concerns are. I think our officers are empathetic to the plights people are dealing with. And we try very hard not to label people.”

Community policing traditionally used to be characterized as a program in a police department with two or three officers or a unit devoted to community needs, Butler said.

But that’s not the approach police departments should be taking in today’s world, he said.

“We are all dedicated to community policing and helping people get the services they need,” Butler said. “For example, if a person calls with a question or concern, even if it’s not in our jurisdiction or not a core function of our department, I’ll get their name and phone number and I’ll call the agency for them. I’ll tell the agency to call the citizen and if [the person] doesn’t hear from the agency in the next day or two, I tell them to call me back. Hopefully this gets them to the right person the first time and they don’t experience the run-around.”

The Ottawa Police Department takes community members’ concerns seriously, Butler said.

“We had heard concerns about pedestrian safety downtown [in 2012], and instead of saying, ‘Be careful where you are going,’ we did look at it and came up

with an education campaign that included public service announcements and handing out fliers to remind people about their obligations as a pedestrian, a bicyclist and a motorist downtown to be safe.”

In addition to the traditional McGruff Club and DARE programs, the department has established a Seatbelts Are For Everyone campaign to encourage teens to buckle up when they drive.

Accreditation The Ottawa Police Department also is trying to achieve what only 4 percent of the 18,000 non-federal law enforcement agencies in the United States have accomplished — accreditation. The department is in the midst of a three-year process to become accredited through the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), Butler said. CALEA, created in 1979, is a private, non-profit organization that serves as the main accreditation source for law enforcement agencies across the U.S., he said.

“One of the most important reasons for seeking accreditation is that the standards set forth by CALEA are considered best practices in law enforcement,” Butler said. “By seeking accreditation, we are agreeing to operate our agency consistent with what are considered to be the best practices in law enforcement in the delivery of service.”

Those standards cover the full range of law enforcement services and procedures, Butler said.

“A lot of people, especially some in law enforcement, don’t understand what accreditation is and are skeptical and critical of the entire process,” Butler said. “It’s more than just getting a sticker to put on your car or a logo for your letterhead. That’s really an uniformed opinion of what accreditation is all about. Accreditation constantly forces you to inspect and audit yourself, and that’s a good thing.”

An accreditation team of three officers — usually commanders — who are trained by CALEA will come to the department to inspect policies and what the department has collected to prove it follows those policies, Butler said.

The team also will go on ride-alongs with officers, conduct interviews and hold a public forum in its assessment of the police agency.

The accreditation process analyzes more than just department policies, Butler said.

“It involves what people say about us and the service we provide, the way officers conduct themselves, how we manage our facilities and look to see if we are doing anything to compromise our ability to be an effective police department,” he said.

Butler is hopeful the department can achieve accreditation later this year or in early 2015, he said.

Sgt. Bobbie Hawkins, a 30year veteran of the Ottawa Police Department, is serving as the department’s accreditation manager.

“She is doing a great job,” Butler said.

Service Another member of the police force who has taken on extra duties and is serving a valuable role is Larabe Alexander, the department’s Community Services Officer, Butler said. Alexander originally was hired as animal control officer and has taken on other duties, such as helping with Special Olympics, organizing McGruff Club and DARE camp, serving as a DARE instructor, participating in Rotary Club and participating in the current Leadership Franklin County class, in addition to his animal control duties, Butler said.

Alexander also has been invited to join the national DARE board, Butler said.

“I think establishing the CSO position has been really invaluable to us,” Butler said. “Officer Alexander has been through the police academy and is

a certified police officer who also helps us with other assignments. He helps us provide better services to the community.”

The department’s volunteer unit — Volunteers in Police Service, spearheaded by volunteer coordinator Ron Hughes — is made up of private citizens who want to do something to give back to the community, Butler said. They assist with traffic control at events, hand out fliers and perform many other services, he said.

“VIPS really allows us to do a lot of things that I would have to pay a ton of overtime and [suffer officer] burnout to get done,” Butler said.

The Ottawa Police Foundation, which handles money donated to the department for such things as DARE camp and currently is covering about half of the expenses of the accreditation process — saving taxpayer dollars, Butler said, has served a vital role in supporting the department and is an example of a private-public partnership that benefits the community.

The department also works to build strong relationships with such organizations as the Willow Domestic Violence Center in Lawrence, the state Department of Children and Family Services and other social service agencies, Butler said.

The department also has strengthened its relationship with Ottawa schools

this year with the return of a school resource officer, who is based at Ottawa High School and is available to assist at other district schools, the chief said.

“Getting the SRO position back was a priority for me,” Butler said. “Officer [Tim] Ahrens has built good relationships, and the feedback I’ve received from administrators has been extremely positive.”

Having an SRO providing constant communication between the department and the schools provides the department with valuable information about what’s going on in the schools.

“I think it makes us a safer community, because things that brew in schools can sometimes spill over into the community when school is not in session, or things happen in the community and then it reaches a head in school or after school or at a sporting event,” Butler said. “I think having the SRO is one of the best things we can do to help [Ottawa] be a healthier and better community.”

Butler said the department is always looking for ways it can better serve the community.

“I never reach the point where I take a breath and sit back and think we’ve arrived, we’re the best we can be,” he said. “It’s just not in my nature. I’m always looking at opportunities and looking at events and thinking, ‘How can we do this better?’ Everything we do is about the community.”

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Progress

Weekender, March 1-2, 2014

Page S11

Developing a strategy vital to ensuring community’s growth

By MEAGAN PATTON-PAULSON Herald Connections Editor

The work behind economic development can seem like a mystery to some people, Jeff Seymour said.

Officials can dedicate months of work behind the scenes to recruiting and bringing a business to Franklin County, he said, only to have that business decide to locate elsewhere.

“There’s a lot of things we’re doing out there and working on, but until there’s this big success story, people don’t always know about it,” he said.

But it’s all part of the job, Seymour, Franklin County Development Council executive director, said, and it’s one worth doing to improve the overall economic health of the community.

John Coen, Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce president and chief executive officer, agreed, calling his organization a sort of “cheerleader” for the community.

“I think chambers of commerce are very necessary because they actually do the job and the work that falls to no other specific organization,” Coen said.

“We’re kind of a convener of all groups and an advocator for communities.”

The chamber and development council are two separate entities, with two separate boards of trustees and missions, but they share an overall goal of improving the health and well-being of the community, Seymour said.

“We both focus on that in a way that’s different,” he said.

But it wasn’t always that way.

Divide and conquer The former Ottawa/ Franklin County Economic Development group, commonly known as O/FCED, was an agency under the Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce until recently.

The chamber has been a continuous organization for more than 100 years, Coen said, with an official charter for 84 years.

The first economic development group in town was established in 1945 as Ottawa Industrial Development, Seymour said. Then it was repurposed and named O/FCED, or Ottawa/ Franklin County Economic Development, in 1985.

The two agencies split in 2012, after Tom Weigand, who was president/CEO of the Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce, announced his plans to leave the city to take the helm of the Junction City Chamber of Commerce.

Weigand also served as secretary/treasurer of O/ FCED. The division also came with a new name for O/ FCED: the Franklin County Development Council.

“We had been talking for the better part of a year about how we could do a better job of marketing ourselves and increasing awareness for our organization, and time and again our name was a bit of a hindrance,” Blaine Finch, former O/FCED board president and the organization’s interim director, said in June 2012 of the change.

“We wanted to get rid of the [O/FCED] alphabet soup.”

The development council’s board also hired its first-ever full-time executive director, Seymour.

A graduate of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Okla., Seymour previously served the Blackwell, Okla., community as the combined chamber of commerce and economic development organization executive director.

Coen, who was assistant vice president at Kansas State Bank in Ottawa, was chosen as the chamber’s new president and CEO. Looking back, Seymour said, that separation of the two entities, and the

creation of a stand-alone economic development agency showed that people cared about growing the community’s tax base and business presence.

“It was a real step forward for the community to say, ‘We want standalone economic development in the community,’” Seymour said.

Seymour also commended the work previous officials had done to pave the way for that change.

‘Our tax base’ The concept of economic development is simple, Seymour said.

“Without money, you can’t do anything,” Seymour said. “That’s kind of the short and sweet answer to it.”

For the city and county to provide needed services like fire and crime protection, road maintenance, parks and recreation, and a public library, just to name a few, it has to have funds.

“All of those things that go into our community, all of that’s based on our tax base,” Seymour said. “So if there’s no tax base, none of that exists. It behooves us to go increase our existing tax base to help the community continue to provide resources we want and we need.”

The economic development organization receives its financial support from membership dues and funds from the City of Ottawa and Franklin County.

The county and city each budgeted $60,000 for the development council, and about 70 investors provided other funds.

In return, the development council’s job is to attract new businesses and jobs to Franklin County, as well as broaden the area’s tax base.

While the chamber advocates and provides services for existing small and larger businesses, the development council actively works to bring businesses to the area.

Last year, development council programming included education for businesses on the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, retail recruitment projects and continuing its Communities In Schools involvement to ensure area high school students have the interviewing and soft skills they need to land a job.

Seymour also researches and writes grant appli-

cations to help build the county’s existing workforce or provide incentives for businesses to grow, he said.

While the development council appreciates the funding it receives, more is needed to accomplish goals on the horizon, Seymour said.

“If someone comes to the community and wants to locate here, we need to make sure that we have an appropriate place for them, it’s shovel-ready, and the whole process is as easy as possible for them,” Seymour said. “ ... Those all are things that require money to get our job done more efficiently.”

Some fresh offers for businesses to locate in Franklin County already are on the table, Seymour said, but he couldn’t predict whether those would come to fruition or not.

“There are some good things happening now,” he said. “Some good projects are looking at Franklin County. Whether those things end up locating here or not, I can’t say today. ... I do think there’s some businesses giving some hard looks to locate here in the community.”

Seymour expressed hope in getting a second industrial park secured for future economic growth.

“If we get that accomplished, that sets the stage for the next 40 to 50 years for economic development,” he said.

‘A wide spectrum’ Just as the term “health” has a definition of great width and breadth, Coen said, the Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce serves many purposes.

“We constantly have an eye on economic development, which is a huge spectrum, including job creation, workforce development, being a coordinator and promoter of events that actually bring people to the community to visit,” Coen said. “It’s a wide spectrum.”

The chamber has about 350 members on any given day, Coen said. It also is governed by a board of trustees.

Many people think the chamber is all about businesses, Coen said, but it’s so much more.

“We want to make sure the Ottawa community is prepared going forward with good paying jobs and reliable workforce and

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a reasonable amount of retail, recreation and a broad spectrum of housing,” Coen said. “All of those things contribute to health of community.”

A key purpose the chamber serves, Coen said, is to make sure organizations are not working on the same efforts without knowing it.

“We try to make sure we don’t have duplication of efforts,” he said. “We do some of that with our calendar, but more by having a presence in the community in lead organizations that are making plans so we try to hear those conversations.”

The chamber also plays host to annual overseas trips, which serve a twofold purpose, Coen said.

“We look at the trip as not only a way to reach out and learn about other communities, but it’s also one of our biggest fundraising efforts to support the chamber,” Coen said. “We view it as educational and broadening our community by experiencing other cultures.”

Sure, Ottawa and Franklin County have problems just like any community, Coen said, but the area is fortunate when it comes to the overall health of the community.

“There are communities in a big part of our state that are not healthy and are dying because their populations are dying and their economies are struggling,” Coen said. “And we don’t have any of that in Franklin County. We have different sorts of problems, but they are those that are fun to work on, and that’s kind of where the chamber fits in. We try to bring groups together.”

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Progress

Page S12

Weekender, February 22-23, 2014

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