The Scott County Record

An enthusiastic student section has fun at the sub-state basketball tournament

34 Pages • Four Sections

Volume 22 • Number 31

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Published in Scott City, Ks.

$1 single copy

Administrators wary of block grant funding

A proposal to fund public schools with block grants for the next two years is on the fasttrack to approval in the Kansas Legislature.

It is expected to be voted on by the House of Representatives on Thursday and possibly be on Gov. Sam Brownback’s desk for his signature shortly after gaining approval in the Senate.

Block grants would replace the funding formula that has been used to determine funding for public schools for more

USDs penalized for increasing enrollment than 30 years. In addition to basic state aid based on enrollment, that formula also earmarks money for schools based on other factors such as at-risk students, English as a Second Language (ELS) students, transportation, etc.

None of those factors will be used to determine block grant funding. Districts will get a predetermined amount of money

USD reserves enough to offset state cuts

which doesn’t fluctuate with changes in enrollment.

While area school administrators are still trying to weigh the impact of block grants, most see that the plan will result in less funding.

The Scott County school district will lose about $12,000 in general state aid and another $76,300 in LOB aid in the 2015-16 school year.

State figures show that Scott County, like many other districts will receive more money with block grants. USD 466, according to the state, would get a boost of $126,764. The Wichita County school district would receive an additional $60,389.

Administrators criticize the state’s calculations, referring to them as accounting gimmicks.

The block grant figures include funding for KPERS that is “pass-through” money, collected by the district and transferred to the state as part of the employee retirement plan.

“That’s money which is going into the retirement program, not into the classroom,” notes Supt. Jamie Rumford of the Scott County district.

“This isn’t anything new,” adds Wichita County Supt.

Keith Higgins. “They’ve been (See GRANT on page two)

state tournament madness

There is no doubt that Kansas schools will be hit with state funding cuts before the end of the current school year.

The only question is, “How much?”

Supt. Jamie Rumford remains optimistic that the Scott County (USD 466) school district has enough cash in its contingency reserve to absorb cuts in the short term.

Rumford advised the board of education on Monday that the district has been able to rebuild its contingency reserve fund to about $200,000.

“We can use this to get by until we reach the end of our budget year (June 30),” noted Rumford.

(See RESERVES on page two)

GWMD meeting to showcase water modeling

There has been considerable discussion and debate about the declining Ogallala Aquifer and how the aquifer’s life would be impacted by various reductions in consumption.

A newly completed groundwater model now takes the guesswork out of those long-term projections.

That model, along with technology that’s available to assist in reduc-

Scott Community High School fans show their support for the Beavers during first half action in the Class 3A state tournament in Hutchinson on Thursday afternoon. The SCHS boys were playing Cheney in the opening round. For complete results of the game check page 19 in this week’s Record. (Photo by Larry Caldwell)

(See GWMD on page 18)

No support for ‘fixes’ to state budget crisis

Carolyn Simpson makes a comment during Rep. Don Hineman’s town hall meeting in Scott City last Friday morning.

(Photo by Larry Caldwell)

06 Main, St. Scott City • 620-872-2090 www.scottcountyrecord.com

Scott City fans show support at sub-state tournament Page 11

Everyone is in agreement that Kansas is in a serious budget crisis.

The solution, well that’s the million dollar question. Or maybe the billion dollar question.

Most of the recommended fixes aren’t getting a good reception from area residents who attended town hall meetings by State Rep. Don Hineman (R-Dighton) that were held in Scott City and Dighton last Friday.

Proposals coming out of Topeka that would eliminate the sales tax exemption for farm machinery, change the appraisal method for agricultural land and reduce state aid for public schools are among

those that concern taxpayers and local elected officials.

Hineman noted that the current budget dilemma goes back to the massive corporate and personal income tax cuts that were approved by Gov. Sam Brownback and a majority of state legislators in 2012.

“At the time, I felt it was too much, too fast and now we have no choice but to enact harmful cuts,” says Hineman. “Expenses have to match revenues and that hasn’t happened.”

As difficult as it’s been for the legislature to find a way to balance the budget this year, the big-

406 Main, St. Scott City • 620-872-2090 www.scottcountyrecord.com Opinion • Pages 4-6 Calendar • Page 7 Lawn/Garden • Pages 8-9 Youth/education • Page 11 LEC report • Page 12 Health care • Pages 14-15

Deaths • Page 16 Church services • Page 17 Sports • Pages 19-26 Farm section • Pages 28-29 Classified ads • Pages 31-33 Storm season • Page 34

Beavers are once again sub-state basketball champions Page 19

(See CRISIS on page 10)

The Scott County Record • Page 2 • Thursday, March 12, 2015 District

2014-15 General State Aid

2014-15 LOB State Aid

2014-15 KPERS

2014-15 Total

2015-16 General State Aid

2015-16 LOB State Aid

2015-16 KPERS

2015-16 Total

Scott City

5,512,219

272,550

559,676

6,344,445

5,500,648

196,210

701,551

6,471,209

+126,764

Leoti

2,971,945

217,054

156,282

Healy Dighton

Loss or Gain

305,091

3,494,090

3,015,767

382,430

3,554,479

+60,389

690,440

76,643

767,083

701,188

96,072

797,260

+30,177

1,694,044

160,750

1,854,794

1,719,782

201,499

1,921,281

+66,487

General state aid numbers do not include special weightings or virtual education funding The “gain” for districts is from the increased funding for KPERS which is pass-through money in the district. It does not represent money which goes into the classroom or can be used for other general operating expenditures. For example, KPERS funding in the Scott County district for 2015-16 is $141,875 higher than in 2014-15. Without the KPERS pass-through appearing on the books, the district will actually see a $15,111 cut in state funding for 2015-16.

Grant

(continued from page one)

trying for years to make KPERS and even LOB (local option budget) money look like state aid.

They finally figured a way to do that.”

meet the needs of at-risk students,” says Rumford.

“If the grant dollars are frozen that’s going to put some limitations on us. It will mean that classroom numbers will continue to No Extra Funding get larger and that our “We are anticipating an staff will be asked to do enrollment increase next extra duties, which many year, but with block grants already are doing.” we’ll get no extra funding,” Rumford advised Good and Bad News his board on Monday eveThe Wichita County ning. district has been hit with If the plan is approved, good and bad news with the district’s block grant respect to state funding. funding will be locked The good news is that, in at the same amount following a state audit, for the next two years the district is eligible for while the Brownback an additional $42,000 in Administration and state state aid because of added legislators remake the enrollment in vocational state’s school finance programs, ESL enrollplan. ment, etc.

If no permanent forHowever, because of mula is approved after state budget cuts, not only two years, the legislature will the district not realwould then have to decide ize the full $42,000, but how to fund schools at they will lose an added that point. $19,000. But it gets even The absence of addi- worse for the district. tional money as enroll- When preparing their ment climbs is an ele- budget a year ago, they ment in the plan that has were told by the state to brought criticism from expect $173,000 in LOB school administrators and aid. The state has now cut the Kansas Association of that aid to $156,000 for School Boards (KASB). the current school year.

“An increase in stu“We’d already received dent enrollment typically the $173,000. Now we’re means additional money being told in the middle for salaries, the ability of our budget year that we to hire more staff and to have to return $17,000,”

Reserves Coming off a $1.2 million shortfall a year ago, Rumford and the board had hoped to use this year as an opportunity to begin rebuilding its reserves.

However, one proposal being considered by the state would cut $61,000 from this year’s budget and another would reduce state funding by $136,000.

At the present time, it

says Higgins.

The lost LOB aid, along with the $19,000 cut in the general fund, means the district will have about $36,000 less than it expected when the budget was drafted. The district’s contingency fund is maxed out at $315,722, which the board will have to begin drawing upon in order to meet expenses for the remainder of the school year.

The future doesn’t look any brighter for the district.

Under the block grant plan, the district’s general fund revenue will increase by just $12,000 in 2015 to $3,015,000 - and another $26,000 the following year.

That will be expected to cover the increased cost of utilities, fuel, employee benefits, insurance and salaries.

“How do you give 100 people any kind of a raise with a $12,000 (budget) increase?” asks Higgins.

“It’s a slap in the face.”

Right now, says Higgins, “we’re just trying to make ends meet.

I’ve frozen spending except on the bare necessities.”

grant program say a feature designed to help districts is the “extraordinary need” fund which will have $4 million in the first year and increase in following years. Districts which have “extraordinary needs” such as higher enrollment, a sharp decline in property valuation or which meet program guidelines in other areas can apply for a portion of this money.

“If we have a need in Scott City, then we have to hope that whoever makes the decision of where the money goes sees our need as greater than the needs of other districts that are applying for the money,” Rumford says. “It will get very competitive and that concerns me.”

And who will determine the recipients of this limited amount of money?

“Who will decide that my hurt is worse than your hurt?” wonders Higgins.

Republican supporters of the block grant proposal said it would provide schools a stable source of revenue and flexibility in handling their expenses.

Brownback called for a block grant plan, saying the current school finance formula was too comExtraordinary Need plicated and designed to Supporters of the block thwart accountability.

But Democrats and some moderate Republicans say the bill didn’t provide enough funding, hurt all districts - especially poorer ones - and that future cuts were probable because of the state’s dire revenue situation.

School officials and education organizations, including KASB, from across the state testified in opposition to the bill, while the bill was supported by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, Kansas Policy Institute and Kansans for Liberty.

When the legislative session started, the state faced a $600 million revenue shortfall. Deep budget problems appeared after Brownback signed huge income tax cuts into law in 2012.

The block grant plan originally had no sunset date, but Rep. Troy Waymaster (R-Bunker Hill) added an amendment that would make the block grant expire after the 2016-17 school year.

After that, there would be no school finance formula and legislators would have to decide how to proceed. But supporters of the bill said they hoped that within that period, they could come up with a new way to fund schools.

(continued from page one)

appears the state will do one or the other, but not both.

Rumford is optimistic the district will finish the year with a positive balance in its reserve funds.

Favorable Audit The district received some good financial news when the state completed its enrollment audit and

found that the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) students had increased more than was anticipated in the original budget.

This added enrollment will provide the district with another $53,000.

This $53,000 is guaranteed money and will offset whatever funding cuts the state decides to enact, says Rumford.

Have questions about the Scott Community Foundation? call 872-3790 or e-mail: scottcf@wbsnet.org

What’s for Lunch in Scott City?

Sun. - Sat., March 15-21

Majestic Theatre 420 Main • 872-3840

Hours

Lunch • Tues., Wed., Thurs., Fri. 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Evenings • Thurs., Fri., Sat. 5:30 -10:00 p.m.

What’s for Supper?

Wed. • Smothered steak with mashed potatoes and gravy.

Thurs. • Spaghetti dinner with side salad.

Fri. • Catfish dinner.

102 Main St. • 872-5055

1211 Main • 872-3215

5Buck Lunch 11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Tues. • Open faced prime rib sandwich with french fries.

The Broiler

• Chili Cheese Dog • Bacon Cheeseburger • 3 Piece Chicken Strips

Includes Fries, 21 oz. Drink and Small Sundae

1304 S. Main • 872-5301

6

$

49

Buffet

Mon. - Sat. • 5:30 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Sun. • 5:30 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Mon. • Chicken fry Tues. • Hamburger steak with mushrooms and onions Wed. • Fried chicken Thurs. • Mountain oysters Fri. • Seafood specials

11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Sat. • Prime rib

Breakfast specials every night.

The Scott County Record

Community Living

Page 3 - Thursday, March 12, 2015

Kansans: walk tall, walk strong

Mr. and Mrs. Seth Scheuerman

Pflughoeft-Scheuerman speak vows in Ellsworth Taylor Pflughoeft and Seth Scheuerman were united in marriage on Dec. 6, 2014, at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Ellsworth.

Parents of the couple are Mike and Toni Pflughoeft, Ellsworth, and Randy and Cindy Scheuerman, Scott City.

The bride wore a strapless, fitted empire waist dress of ivory lace and beading.

Matron of honor was Mychel Dolezal, sister of the bride, Ellsworth.

Bridesmaids were Kelsey Boyles, friend of bride, Great Bend; Andrea Scheuerman, Scott City, and Alyssa Scheuerman, Newton, both sisters of the groom.

Best man was Travis See, friend of the groom, Wichita.

Groomsmen were Brett Witaker, Hays; Wesley Powell, Fort Collins, Colo.; Marc Ramsey, Scott City; and Justin Kuntz, Abilene, all friends of the bride and groom.

Flower girl was Mykenna Dolezal, niece of bride,

Ellsworth. Ring bearer was Jace Miller, friend of groom, Scott City.

Candle lighters were Haylee and Katelin Hoch, cousins of bride, Wilson.

Organist was Preston Sauers, friend of bride, Geneseo, and violinist was Lydia Penningroth, cousin of groom, Urbandale, Ia. Guestbook attendant was Casey Connelly, cousin of bride, Boulder, Colo.

The bride is a 2006 graduate of Ellsworth High School and a 2011 graduate of Kansas State University, Salina, earning a bachelor’s degree in aviation science. She is employed at Northwest Printers.

The groom is a 2005 graduate of Scott Community High School and a 2009 graduate of Ft. Hays State University with a degree in ag business. He is currently employed at Joe Bob Outfitters.

The couple honeymooned in Colorado and is at home in Hays.

Quick, easy cleaning tips In the Kitchen Circle Your Way Around: Always begin on the right side of your stove, then move clockwise around the room. The stove is typically the dirtiest part of the kitchen, so ending with it keeps you from spreading dirt and grease. (First, soak drip pans and knobs in warm soapy water. By the time you’ve worked your way around, they’ll be easier to clean.)

Love Your Oven: Keep the heart of your kitchen clean by lining the bottom with a nonstick ovenliner. It can be wiped with a paper towel, put in the dishwasher, and reused over and over.

It’s time to gather your friends together and make plans for Walk Kansas 2015! This year’s theme is “Walk Tall, Walk Strong, Walk Kansas!”

The eight-week healthy living program starts on March 15 and continues through May 9.

Scott County and K-State Extension are local sponsors.

All you need is five other friends who have similar fitness goals to form a Walk Kansas team, choose a challenge, and then walk. You can choose to walk across the state (150 minutes per person, per week), walk across and back (four hours per person per week) or walk

around the state (six hours per week, per person).

The minutes your team spends walking each week translates into miles walked across Kansas.

The Walk Kansas website will once again track your team’s progress for you, and each week participants will be emailed a newsletter with tips and recipes to help keep you motivated.

Healthier Living The hope is that by par-

Recipe favorites . . .

Kentucky Banana Pudding

Prep: 20 minutes

Cook: 20 minutes

Ingredients 1 cup white sugar 1/4 cup cornstarch 1 egg, beaten 1 (12 fluid ounce) can evaporated milk 1-1/2 cups milk 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1 (12 ounce) package vanilla wafers 4 banana, sliced Directions In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the sugar, cornstarch, egg, evaporated milk and regular milk. Mix together well and stir until thick. Remove from heat; add vanilla and mix well.

In a large bowl or casserole dish, arrange a layer of cookies. Pour pudding mixture over cookies and top with a layer of sliced bananas. Refrigerate until chilled.

Yield: 8 to 12 servings

ticipating in Walk Kansas, individuals will want to continue maintaining a more active lifestyle.

In addition, the program offers education and encouragement to eat healthier foods and drink more water rather than sugary drinks.

Walking just 30 minutes a day, seven days a week, can have a huge impact on your health - from helping to lower your blood pressure to reducing your risk for diabetes.

And walking is the least expensive and convenient physical exercise you can do.

Walk Kansas is also encouraging participants

to include your pets in your walks to increase their fitness.

The cost to participate is $7. Shirts are extra.

Enrollment packets are available at the Extension office. You can also print them off from our website at www.scott.ksu.edu.

The captain’s packets will have a more detailed list of Walk Kansas clothing that can be ordered.

This year’s t-shirt colors include coral, sports gray and purple. Get your team rounded up today and get ready to walk tall and walk strong with Walk Kansas.

Call the Extension office (872-2930) for more information.

The Scott County Record

Editorial/Opinion

Page 4 - Thursday, March 12, 2015

editorially speaking

Fast-track:

State lawmakers rush to disaster with ed funding

Given the history - and subsequent failure - of Gov. Sam Brownback and conservative lawmakers with eliminating income tax revenue, one would think that the next time lawmakers embarked on a major policy decision they might proceed with a little more caution.

Not hardly. Less than a week after revealing the numbers behind a block grant plan to fund public education in the state, the legislature is poised to turn that proposal into policy.

Lawmakers claim the current school finance is “too complicated.” They have a much simpler idea: underfund schools with a set amount of money that doesn’t provide for higher enrollment, at-risk students, transportation costs, etc.

Who needs fair when simple will do?

If that isn’t enough of a formula for disaster, the legislature has put this plan on a fast-track before critics have been able to organize enough opposition. Details of the bill were released Friday, a hearing was held Monday before Appropriations and on Tuesday the measure was approved.

Most lawmakers can’t decide what they’re having for lunch that quickly.

Education funding accounts for half of the state’s budget and conservative lawmakers are ready to throw caution to the wind with a plan that hasn’t been fully analyzed.

“This path is full of peril,” warned State Rep. Don Hill (R-Emporia). Hill said that while the current finance formula could be improved, it was based on “solid reason and logic.”

But that doesn’t matter. Conservative lawmakers were frustrated with the complexities of the current finance plan.

It would appear we’re on the fast-track to a simple plan for simple minds.

SCHS scheduling: New starting time won’t guarantee responsibility

When Scott Community High School students enroll for the 2015-16 year they will have the option of choosing between two starting times to their school day - 7:45 a.m. or 8:45 a.m.

Whichever option they choose, students will attend the full seven-hour day. The same class offerings would be available to all students. And it would be done at no additional cost to the district.

The reason for the change? A number of students don’t make it to school on time. In most instances, these are being identified by the administration as at-risk students. Some of these are students who work after school and may not get home until after 10:00 p.m.

We understand that times have changed. We emphasize with those students who are working in order to help their families to make ends meet.

Those young people are missing out on what it means to be a young person and enjoy the experience of high school.

Perhaps the strongest selling point in the longer school day is the opportunity it gives students to enroll in an extra class or an additional elective that the seven-hour schedule otherwise wouldn’t have permitted. There will, undoubtedly, be a handful of ambitious students who will take advantage of this.

However, this isn’t the primary group this change is meant to benefit.

Neither will it benefit student-athletes who must still report for practices at the same scheduled time.

And, according to the administration, it doesn’t necessarily benefit all students who are employed.

Many of those will opt for the earlier starting and dismissal times so they can get to their jobs quicker.

So, while there are slices of the student population who will benefit from the change, the primary beneficiaries of the later starting time will be those students who are repeatedly late or have unexcused absences.

We can appreciate the administration’s good intentions and their attempt to reach out to this part of the student population. Better to show these students that we care rather than to allow them to slip through the cracks.

But if the goal of education is to prepare these young adults for the next step in their lives, they also need to learn they have certain responsibilities that include showing up for school, or their job, every day and on time.

There are tough choices to be made in life.

One may have to hold down a job while attending technical school or college. One may even need to hold down two jobs for a time just to make ends meet.

We hope this policy accomplishes its desired goal for those students it is most designed to help. We also hope those students learn that life is rarely going to be so accommodating.

Lawmakers create own reality Never has the divide between east and west, fact and fiction, reality and delusion been greater in Kansas.

Overcrowding in our state’s mental institutions? Are you kidding?

We solved that problem by relocating patients into the Statehouse.

How else do you explain a governor who insists that the pain isn’t that great even as the state is chin-deep in red ink?

It’s as if Gov. Brownback and ultra-conservative lawmakers in the state are competing with each other to see who can come up with the most outlandish ideas before Kansans finally take notice and demand that they get back on their medications.

The initial signs should have been evident in 2012 when Brownback and fellow inmates decided that it was possible to cut hundreds of millions in state tax revenue and that somehow . . . by magic . . . this money would instantly be replaced by new corporations and new businesses who, by the way, wouldn’t be paying income taxes

either.

And there was one other little item these whizbang economists didn’t think about. They figured only about 191,000 business owners would have their tax burden removed, but the number of businesses filing for the tax exemption in 2013 climbed to 280,737. On top of that, there were an additional 55,055 farm returns - bringing to 333,000 the total number of corporations who saw their tax load erased.

Yes, they forgot there are farmers in Kansas.

Well, not exactly.

Eastern Kansas lawmakers decided that farmers should be paying more taxes on their farm ground, so are now proposing to do away with the use-value method of appraising ag land and replacing it with a system that will increase land values statewide by an aver-

age of 473 percent.

And they want to eliminate the sales tax exemption on farm equipment . . . nothing else . . . just farm equipment.

These lawmakers have accomplished what we believed was impossible. They are making the Westboro Baptist Church members look like the sane ones in Topeka.

Still not convinced?

Oh, don’t worry, there’s more.

Conservative lawmakers confess they are confused by numbers, especially school finance numbers. The school finance formula that decides how much money should go to districts around the state is more than they can wrap their minds around.

They want something simple. They want to give school districts a flat amount of money which they like to refer to as grants. That’s because grants sounds so much better than stealing, or robbery, or underfunding. The legislature understands the meaning of those (just ask KDOT), but as far as lawmakers

are concerned, the school finance formula was created by Einstein and written in some lost Mayan script.

Their simple plan is to give each district a set amount of money that doesn’t take into consideration increased enrollment or students with special needs (at-risk, English as a Second Language, etc.).

If enrollment goes up, you have to pack students a little tighter into classrooms.

If it drops, your state money stays the same.

Eliminate the KPERS pass-through funding and the numbers look even bleaker for districts. What appears (on paper) to be a slight increase in funding for some districts actually turns into a budget cut in 2015-16. In Scott County, for example, the district will have $15,111 less state money with which to pay for any increases in utilities, fuel, insurance and wages.

The good news is that Scott County isn’t unique.

We’ll be able to share our pain with nearly every other school district in the state.

(See REALITY on page six)

Gov promotes tax cut delusion Which is greater: Sam Brownback’s delusion or Rex Sinquefield’s arrogance?

Both were on full display in St. Louis last week, based on an account by reporter Jonathan Shorman of the Topeka Capital-Journal, who sat in on the Kansas governor’s presentation to the Show-Me Institute, a think tank bankrolled by Sinquefield.

Brownback spent about an hour telling his audience that everything is fine in Kansas, despite a budget deficit approaching $1 billion over a two-year period, thanks to reckless income tax cuts.

“The yelling about it is far greater than the pain that’s here,” he said.

Easy for him to say.

Meanwhile, back in Topeka, lawmakers were hearing from parents and educators trying to save

Where to Write

another view by Barbara Shelly

the Parents as Teachers program from the chopping block.

The president of Kansas State University in Manhattan was issuing a statement about a proposed $3.1 million budget cut to his institution.

School superintendents worried about paying bills. Highway officials have expressed concerns about the long-term health of Kansas’ infrastructure and financial experts have criticized Brownback’s money-saving schemes for handling pension funds.

No pain no gain, right?

That might make sense if anyone was seeing a gain. Brownback told Sinquefield’s free-market group that the purpose of

Gov. Sam Brownback 2nd Floor - State Capitol Topeka, Ks. 66612-1501 (785) 296-3232

wrecking the state’s budget is to reverse population decline in Kansas.

But private job growth in Kansas continues to lag the nation and region. And Kansas continued to lose population in the first year of the tax cuts.

None of that mattered to Sinquefield, who told Shorman: “People on the left who like to criticize me, I say gloat now and gloat fast because your gloating days are soon going to be over when Kansas starts really growing and joining the ranks of the no-tax states, that’s going to be the killer argument. This is a live experiment that everybody gets to watch right now.”

Oh yes, the live experiment thing again.

It must be great fun for Sinquefield to watch from his perch in Missouri. Not so much fun if you’re try-

Sen. Pat Roberts 109 Hart Senate Office Bldg.

Washington, D.C. 20510 (202) 224-4774 roberts.senate.gov/email.htm

ing to run a school district in Kansas.

Sinquefield, who bankrolls Missouri candidates lavishly, said he expects the two leading candidates for governor, Republican Catherine Hanaway and Democrat Chris Koster, to participate in the experiment.

“If Catherine Hanaway gets elected, we’ll move at a Kansas pace because she said the income tax has to go,” he told Shorman.

“And Chris Koster, the Democratic nominee, has told me that the tax on businesses and passthroughs, which right now in Missouri with the new law when it takes effect will be 4.5 (percent) said it should go to three immediately. And he’s a Democrat. So the air is ripe in Missouri for big tax cuts.”

(See DELUSION on page six)

Sen. Jerry Moran 141 Hart Senate Office Bldg.

Washington, D.C. 20510 (202) 224-6521 www.house.gov/moranks01/

The Scott County Record • Page 5 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Pentagon is breaking the bank $1.5T price tag for F-35 fighter program

by Ryan Alexander

The Pentagon is breaking the bank with the F-35 joint strike fighter program’s $1.5-trillion tab.

Say you really want a sports car, a vacation, a big new house, or some other fancy thing you can’t really afford. You know that if you buy it, you’ll bust your budget. It would mean a ramen noodle diet and a threadbare closet from now to eternity for you and your family.

So maybe you daydream a little.

Or hope to win the lottery. What you don’t do - if you’re responsible - is mortgage everything you own to acquire that one thing you want.

Well, that’s not how things work for the Pentagon.

In its budget request for the next fiscal year, the Pentagon has made clear that it’s ready to break the bank for the fancy thing it really wants - the F-35 joint strike fighter program.

This platinum-plated spork of an

aircraft is intended to replace the F-16, F-15, F/A-18, and A-10 jets now in use by the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marine Corps.

But it’s hard for anyone to argue with a straight face that the Pentagon can afford to spend $1.5 trillion on a single aircraft program, as the Congressional Budget Office predicts this obsession will eventually cost.

It’s hard for most of us to even visualize $1.5 trillion. A trillion is a thousand billions or a million millions.

But let’s put just the Pentagon’s latest procurement request for the F-35 into perspective.

The U.S. military wants to buy 57 F-35s in fiscal year 2016. That’s 19 more than the 38 they got in the previous year’s bill.

If you count just the procurement of those airframes and spare parts alone, you’re looking at $9 billion. The total

behind the headlines

Pentagon request for procurement is $108 billion.

So that means fully 8.5 percent of all Pentagon spending to buy systems from A to Z - from Apache helicopters to Zumwalt destroyers - is devoted to a single aircraft program. It’s staggering.

There are more ways to slice the budgetary salami. If you look at overall aircraft procurement and research and development costs, you’ll see that 35 percent - more than a third of the total - is dedicated to the F-35’s mammoth tab.

If you break it down by service, you’ll find that over a quarter of the Navy’s “combat aircraft” account for 2016 goes to the F-35. And for the Air Force, it’s 100 percent. Yes, every dime.

This much is clear: The Pentagon particularly the Air Force - is mortgaging the future of not just other aircraft programs, but all Pentagon procurement, to buy this exorbitant plane.

I sure hope it works, because that’s one pricey, lonely egg in that basket.

Look out, the Supreme Court’s black-robed gang of far-right ideologues is rampaging again.

The Supreme clan is firing potshots at the Affordable Care Act. Caught in the crossfire is the court’s own integrity, along with the health of millions of innocent bystanders.

In an attempt to override the law, these so-called “justices” have jumped on a wagonload of legalistic bovine excrement called King v. Burwell.

This case is a very rickety legal vehicle. It sprang from a frivolous lawsuit financed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a front group for oligarchs

like the Koch brothers, Big Oil, Big Tobacco and Big Pharma.

The chairman of the group bluntly described the suit as a raw political assault on Obamacare: “This bastard has to be killed as a matter of political hygiene,” he howled. “I do not care how this is done, whether it’s dismembered, whether we drive a stake through its heart,” or “whether we strangle it.”

So much for the lawsuit’s intellectual depth. The lawyers on this case fabricated it on a nitpicking interpretation of only four words in Affordable Care Act’s 906 pages of text.

They claim that now widespread health insurance subsidies constitute an illegal, backdoor bribe to “force” every state to allow people access to a federal

who testify on Capitol Hill and lock them below the Capitol crypt until they agree to more suitable policies.

Jim Inhofe, Republicania’s environment minister, could undo recent efficiency improvements at the Capitol Power Plant, and the Capitol Police could become Republicania’s military, under the command of John McCain as defense minister.

Darrell Issa could serve as Republicania’s own J. Edgar Hoover, and Orrin Hatch could become its spiritual leader (the breakaway republic could abandon church-state separation and everything else in the Bill of Rights except for the Second Amendment).

Thus could Republicania become a happy little city-state - a Luxembourg on the Anacostia.

There is a potential problem with this model, because Republicania would refuse to levy any taxes. But it appears that Cotton, the recently elected senator from Arkansas, has figured this out, (See NATION on page six)

(See HEALTHIER on page six)

Ryan Alexander is president of Taxpayers for Common Sense

benefit they otherwise couldn’t afford.

They want to eliminate federal health subsidies to people who live in states that have refused to set up their own exchanges.

The lower courts rejected that rightwing tommyrot. Nonetheless, the gang of Supremes grabbed the case as a chance to wreak their own brand of ideological havoc on a law some of them personally dislike.

By taking this case, these Republican judges have openly become partisans, thrusting the Supreme Court itself into the forefront of the GOP’s war on making health care more widely available and against Obama himself.

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker and author

Forming a breakaway nation GOP pursues its own foreign policy The New York Daily News branded Senate Republicans “TRAITORS” in large type across its cover Tuesday, saying, “GOPers try to sabotage Bam nuke deal.”

That’s not quite right. It’s true that 47 Republican senators did their level best to bring us closer to war by writing a letter to Iran’s mullahs, attempting to scuttle nuclear talks with the United States. But Republicans aren’t exactly subverting the United States. It’s more as if they’re operating their own independent republic on Capitol Hill. Call it the State of Republicania.

Its prime minister, John Boehner, invited his Israeli counterpart, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to criticize U.S. foreign policy last week before a joint meeting of the Republicania parliament. The American president

other voices

by Dana Milbank

wasn’t consulted.

Mitch McConnell, the Republicania home secretary, wrote an op-ed last week in the Lexington Herald-Leader explicitly urging states to refuse to implement a major new power-plant regulation issued by the U.S. government.

And now we have Tom Cotton, Republicania’s young foreign minister, submitting “An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” counseling Iran’s leaders that any agreement reached by the United States but not ratified by Republicania could be undone “with the stroke of a pen” (assuming the next president comes from Republicania).

But why stop there? Ted Cruz, serving as Republicania’s justice minister, could instruct the sergeant at arms to apprehend administration officials

by Jill Richardson

Cereal’s gone full circle since the invention of corn flakes by nutrition guru John Harvey Kellogg.

Kellogg ran a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. An advocate of vegetarian eating, he sought an easy way for patients to consume healthy breakfasts of whole grains. The humble corn flake fit the bill.

Think you recognize the name from the box of Corn Flakes at your local supermarket? Actually, it was John’s brother - Will Keith Kellogg who popularized the Kellogg’s brand.

The business savvy Will Keith Kellogg, who succeeded in turning cereal into an American breakfast staple, initially worked together with his brother - until they fought over whether to add sugar to the recipe.

John Harvey Kellogg vehemently opposed adding sugar, but sugar sold cereal.

And, ironically, so did the family name. Will Keith Kellogg branded the product Kellogg’s Corn Flakes to capitalize on his brother’s reputation as a health expert - even while adding unhealthy sugar to the product over John’s objections.

Today, most popular breakfast cereals are a nutritionally worthless amalgam of sugar, refined grains, and preservatives, perhaps with some artificial coloring mixed in to make kids like it.

Even at its best, as Melanie Warner reveals in her book Pandora’s Lunchbox, the manufacturing process often destroys the vitamins in cereal ingredients. Manufacturers then add them back via fortification.

Here’s how I think of it: Refined grains + fat + sugar = cookies.

Breakfast cereals are basically lowfat cookies. And you don’t eat cookies for breakfast, right? Including a smattering of whole grains, as some companies do with cereals (and cookies), doesn’t help much.

Fortunately, many Americans are starting their days with better food.

While we haven’t given up cereal altogether, we’ve stopped eating it in amounts that keep companies like Kellogg’s financially healthy. In the last quarter of 2014, Kellogg’s morning foods division experienced an 8-percent drop in sales, the division’s seventh straight quarter of decline.

For some of us, that’s because we’ve switched to not-terriblyhealthy alternatives, including graband-go items like granola bars or Pop Tarts.

But a growing number of us have shaped up our diets. We’ve rediscovered old mainstays like oatmeal, yogurt, and eggs. These days, for example, oatmeal sales are up 3.5 percent, and egg sales are up seven percent.

Despite the decades-long fear of fat we’re still overcoming, the fat and protein in these foods play a crucial role in our diets: filling us up.

Ditto for fiber, especially the fiber naturally found in whole foods - as opposed to the chicory extract, also known as inulin, added in large quantities to foods like fiber bars.

Fat, protein, and fiber take longer for our tummies to digest, and that’s why they keep us full. A breakfast of refined carbs and sugar spells an empty stomach a short time later.

Court is riddling ACA with potshots

by Jim Hightower

Americans choosing a healthier start to their day

The Scott County Record • Page 6 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

TPP could spell bad news for global food systems

by Anna Meyer

Food is more than just what we eat. It connects us to each other and our environment. And how we treat it is of tremendous importance to our democracy.

Right now, the future of our food is being decided behind closed doors.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade and investment deal being negotiated by the United States and 11 Pacific Rim countries, treats food as just another global commodity to be traded and exchanged. This approach completely over-

looks its vital importance to human life.

President Barack Obama is calling on Congress to give him “fast track” authority to move along the TPP quickly, as well as a similar pact with the European Union. This would empower him to hastily conclude the deals without giving Congress time to review or revise them.

Leaked documents show that the treaties, which together cover nearly three quarters of the global economy, raise several major red flags for food safety.

Delusion Nation

For example, they’d let American companies import food without extensive safety reviews - even when the exporting countries have far lower safety standards than the United States.

Two of the partner countries to the TPP, Vietnam and Malaysia, already have a bad history of exporting catfish, crab, and shrimp that have been pumped full of unapproved antibiotics and veterinary drugs that threaten human health.

With an already strained inspection system, an increase in risky

imports would almost certainly lead to an increase in foodborne illnesses.

These treaties could also expose Americans to toxic chemicals and pesticides that have been banned here but continue to be sold and used abroad.

They could further lead to the removal of country of origin labels, making it even more difficult to hold responsible parties accountable for disease outbreaks, and roll back the growing movements to label genetically engineered foods and promote more locally sourced fare.

And that’s just what we know so far.

The Obama administration has argued that making these sacrifices would be a boon for American jobs. Yet The Washington Post quickly debunked this assertion, predicting a zero-percent increase in jobs.

What makes these agreements particularly alarming is that a small group is negotiating them in secret, with private sector lobbyists serving as “advisors” to the negotiators. The public has not been consulted at all, and the mainstream media has virtually blacked out pub-

lic demonstrations on the issue.

Members of Congress have not even seen a draft of either pact, despite holding press conferences to demand access.

So why would they pass “fast track” and forfeit the right to make revisions? Such a hasty decision would jeopardize the food systems that sustain people around the world.

Food is life. Shouldn’t Congress do more to protect its citizens and the food they consume, not less?

Anna Meyer is the Food Campaigns Fellow at Green America. GreenAmerica.org

(continued from page five)

(continued from page four)

Hanaway is on record as saying she wants to eliminate the state’s income tax, although as far as I know she hasn’t offered much in the way of suggestions about how Missouri would recoup the loss of 70 percent of its net general revenue.

I hadn’t heard anything about Koster supporting a further decrease in the income tax on so-called “pass through” businesses - those whose owners declare the profits as their personal income. (I’ve made inquiries with his office and will update if I learn anything.)

But either way, Sinquefield is sounding pretty cocky about the prospect of importing Kansas-style misery to Missouri. And Brownback, desperate for a friendly audience, persists with the delusion that the big turnaround in Kansas is right around the corner.

Barbara Shelly is a columnist for the Kansas City Star. She can be reached by email at bshelly@kcstar.com

Healthier (continued from page five)

So, to the many out there starting their day with steel cut oats, whole grain toast with butter, plain yogurt mixed with berries and a drizzling of honey, or good old fashioned eggs: Way to go!

It’s about time we returned to our healthier roots. Ditching the sugary invention that captivated us for the last century is a great step in that direction.

Jill Richardson is the author of “Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It”

too: He’ll get military contractors to bankroll the new nation.

On Tuesday, the day after his letter to Hezbollah’s masters became public, Cotton provided a clue about his motives: He’d had a breakfast date with the National Defense Industrial Association - a trade group for Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and the like.

You’re not allowed to know what Cotton said to the defense contractors.

The event was “off the record and strictly nonattribution.” But you can bet it was what Dwight

Eisenhower meant when he warned of the militaryindustrial complex.

The defense industry contributed more than $25 million in the 2014 election cycle and spent more than $250 million lobbying over that time period, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

For the defense industry, this is a good investment: If Senate Republicans blow up nuclear talks, it makes war with Iran that much more likely - and nobody would benefit as much from that war as military contractors.

Alternatively, Republicania could raise

Kim Jong-un feels snubbed by absence of letter from GOP

by Andy Borowitz

PYONGYANG (The Borowitz Report) - The North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un said on Tuesday that he feels “snubbed” by the decision of 47 Republican senators to write a letter to Iran but not to him, the official North Korean news agency reported.

In an unusually forthcoming interview with the Korean Central News Agency (K.C.N.A.), Kim said it was “hurtful” that the Republicans would send a letter to one of the United States’ most longstanding enemies while “totally snubbing” another.

“Let’s just call it what it is: they’re playing favorites with enemies,” Kim said. “I try not to take things personally, but it’s hard to see them sending letters to Iran without feeling a little bit hurt.”

Kim said that over the past two days he had his aides checking his mailbox on an hourly basis in hopes of finding a letter from the Republicans, but now he has “pretty much given up hope.”

“Honestly, I thought I’d at least rate a text or something, but . . . ,” he said, his voice trailing off.

“I don’t like to beat myself up, but part of me is like, ‘What does Iran have that I don’t have?’” he said. “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like, when you actually get nuclear weapons, people start taking you for granted.”

Andy Borowitz is a comedian and author

revenue for their citystate by charging visitors for tours. That’s a viable option, because nothing at the National Zoo is quite as exotic as Cotton, who after just two months on the job has led his colleagues to break with more than two centuries of foreign policy tradition.

Cotton, appearing on CNN on Tuesday morning, maintained that his effort was not political.

“Nor do I believe this letter is unprecedented,” he said - although the Republicania national archivists have not found a precedent.

Perhaps they will come up with an open letter from American legislators

Reality The bad news is that we’ll be sharing our pain with nearly every other school district in the state.

We can only assume that this is good for Kansas because the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and the Kansas Policy Institute are in support of grants for education.

That’s kind of like getting a character reference from Charles Manson and Ted Bundy.

From an economic development perspective, apparently when people are looking to relocate their families they prefer those states who underfund their schools, have crowded classrooms and can’t attract teachers because their salaries are frozen.

And that’s where we feel rather foolish as we look upon the Kansas landscape. Where we worry about the future of our state, there are lawmakers who see nothing but bright skies, singing meadowlarks, buffalo who only want to rub up against

written to King George III in 1783 warning him that the efforts of Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams might be undone with the stroke of a quill.

They may uncover an 1898 cable from American senators to Maria Christina, the Spanish queen regent, cautioning her that many of them would remain in office “decades” after President William McKinley was gone.

Or maybe they will uncover a letter from senators to Joseph Stalin in 1945, educating him on the constitutional separation of powers before he

(continued from page four)

your shoulder and coal plants that pour plumes of clean vapor into the clear Kansas skies.

Maybe we worry too much. Maybe that comes from living in the real world where tax policies can’t be manufactured out of whole cloth that are based on nothing more than wishful thinking and a truckload of pixie dust.

And we’re seeing the real impact those policies are having on our fellow Kansans.

Perhaps what bothers us most isn’t that the inmates have taken over the State Capitol building.

It’s that we allow them to make laws the rest of us have to live by.

Even Charles Manson would agree, that’s just plain crazy.

Rod Haxton can be reached at editor@screcord.com

negotiated with Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta.

But Republicania archivists are unlikely to locate such documents, because they were never written.

Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), one of just seven Republican senators not to sign Cotton’s letter to the ayatollahs, said she thought it “more appropriate for members of the Senate to give advice to the president” and U.S. negotiators.

Spoken like a true American - which, in the corridors of Republicania these days, is nigh unto treason.

Dana Milbank is a Washington Post staff writer and author

The Scott County Record • Page 7 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Legislative hotline is available

Kansas residents can access information on state government, legislation, public policy issues and more by calling 1-800-432-3924.

Calls are answered by reference/research librarians at the State Library of Kansas and kept confidential.

Lines are open weekdays 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Callers can also leave brief messages to be delivered to legislators as well as request copies of bills, calendars, journals, committee agendas, voting records, and other legislative documents.

In addition to calling the hotline, residents can also text questions to 785-256-0733 (standard text message rates may apply), instant message at www.kslib.info/ ask-a-librarian, or visit the State Library.

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Saturday

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Spring Break

Moonshiners @ Park Lane, 6:00 p.m.

GWMD No. 1 annual mtg., @ Wm. Carp.

Bldg., 1:30 p.m.

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SCHS dodge ball tournament @ Shallow Water, 9:00 a.m.

Potato bar @ VIP Center, 5:00 p.m.

Seeds of Hope cancer support group mtg. @ Scott Co. Library, 6:30 p.m.

Retirement reception for Darlene Kohman @ Al-Anon meeting @ courthouse, Community Christian 4:00-6:00 p.m.

Church, 6:30 p.m.

School Resumes

21 Friends of Lake Scott work day/clean-up, 1:00 p.m.

VA rep., @ Scott Co. Livrary, 10:00 a.m.

Attend the church of your choice.

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The Scott County Record

Lawn and Garden

Page 8 - Thursday, March 12, 2015

Eager gardeners can prune deciduous shrubs Gardeners are eager to get out and do something in the landscape this time of year. One chore that can be taken care of during March is pruning certain shrubs.

Often, gardeners approach pruning with trepidation, but it is not as difficult as it may seem.

Remember, not all shrubs need to be pruned (i.e., witch hazel), and certain shrubs, which will be identified later in this article, should not be pruned this time of year.

Shrubs are pruned to maintain or reduce size, rejuvenate growth, or to

remove diseased, dead or damaged branches.

Deciduous shrubs are those that lose leaves each winter. Evergreen shrubs maintain foliage all year and include yews and junipers.

Deciduous shrubs are placed into three groups: •Those that flower in the spring on wood produced last year; •Those that flower later

in the year on current seasons’ growth; and •Those that may produce flowers, but those flowers are of little ornamental value.

Shrubs that flower in the spring should not be pruned until immediately after flowering.

Though pruning earlier will not harm the health of the plant, the flowering display will be reduced or eliminated.

Examples of these types of plants include forsythia, lilac, flowering quince, Vanhoutte spirea, bridal wreath spirea and sweet mockorange.

Shrubs that bloom on current seasons’ growth or that do not produce ornamental flowers are best pruned in March.

Examples include Roseof-Sharon, pyracantha, Bumalda spirea, and Japanese spirea.

Wounds Can Heal Pruning during the spring allows wounds to heal quickly without threat from insects or disease. There is no need to treat pruning cuts with paints or sealers. In fact, some of these products may slow healing. There are three basic methods used in pruning shrubs:

10 rules for success Help houseplants when planting trees recover from Before you begin spring landscaping, here are some tips on planting trees.

1) Select the right tree for the site. To avoid serious problems, choose trees that are adapted to your location. Consider whether the tree produces nuisance fruit or if there are disease-resistant varieties available.

For example, there are a number of crabapple varieties that are resistant to apple scab and rust diseases. Also consider the mature size of a tree to be sure you have enough room.

Visit http://www.hfrr.ksu.edu/p.aspx?tabid=731 or ask a local nurseryman for suggestions.

2) Keep the tree well watered and in a shady location until planting. When moving the tree, lift it by the root ball or pot and not by the trunk.

3) Before planting, remove all wires, labels, cords or anything else tied to the plant. If left on, they may eventually girdle the branch to which they are attached.

The root flare (point where trunk and roots meet) should be visible. If it isn’t, remove enough soil or media so that it is.

4) Dig a proper hole. Make the hole deep enough so that the tree sits slightly above nursery level. Plant the tree on solid ground, not fill dirt.

In other words, don’t dig the hole too deep and then add soil back to the hole before placing the tree. The width of the planting hole is very important. It should be three times the width of the root ball.

Loosening the soil outside the hole so it is five times the diameter of the root ball will allow the tree to spread its roots faster.

5) Remove all containers from the root ball. Cut away plastic and peat pots; roll burlap and wire baskets back into the hole, cutting as much of the excess away as possible.

If you can remove the wire basket without disturbing the root ball, do it. If roots have been circling around in the container, cut them and spread them out so they do not continue growing so that they circle inside the hole and become girdling roots later in the life of the tree.

6) Backfill the hole with the same soil that was removed. Amendments such as peat moss likely do more harm than good.

Make sure the soil that goes back is loosened no clods or clumps. Add water as you fill to insure good root to soil contact and prevent air pockets.

There is no need to fertilize at planting.

Note: Adding organic matter to larger area than just the planting hole can be beneficial, but it must be mixed in thoroughly with the existing soil.

However, adding amendments to just the planting hole in heavy soil creates a “pot” effect that can fill with water and drown your new tree.

7) Don’t cut back the branches of a tree after planting except those that are rubbing or damaged.

The leaf buds release a hormone that encourages root growth. If the tree is cut back, the reduced number of leaf buds results in less hormone released and therefore fewer roots being formed.

8) Water the tree thoroughly and then once a week for the first season if there is insufficient rainfall.

9) Mulch around the tree. Mulch should be 2-4 inches deep and cover an area two the three times the diameter of the root ball. Mulching reduces competition from other plants, conserves moisture and keeps soil temperature closer to what the plants’ roots prefer.

10) Stake only when necessary. Trees will establish more quickly and grow faster if they are not staked. However, larger trees or those in windy locations may need to be staked the first year.

Movement is necessary for the trunk to become strong. Staking should be designed to limit movement of the root ball rather than immobilize the trunk.

winter doldrums

For many houseplants, winter is an endurance contest, marked by short days, low light levels, and a dramatic drop in the urge to drink, eat and grow.

“Fortunately, houseplants perk up again sort of get re-energized - when the vegetation outdoors starts to leaf out for spring,” said Larry Crouse, horticulturist with Kansas State University Extension. “This energy comeback is one reason why spring can be the best time to repot houseplants that have outgrown their container.”

When late spring’s rising nighttime temperatures stay above 55 degrees, however, many houseplants could recover even further if moved outdoors - just for summer, Crouse said.

“Of course, that kind of move won´t magically transform them into plants that thrive in wind and direct sunlight. Houseplants can suffer as severe a sunburn as some pale office worker would get, vacationing on the beach,” he warned.

What houseplants need outdoors is a sheltered location with dappled shade, the horticulturist said. In many cases, that turns out to be a porch or someplace protected by trees, house or garage.

“The plants will need water every time the top half-inch of their potting soil gets dry - which can be fairly often in summer,” Crouse said.

“So, I’d also recommend locating them close to an outdoor water source. If you can, sink their pot into the ground, too, to moderate their soil’s temperature and water-loss rate.”

He suggested placing peat moss around and under the sunken container. Because peat moss holds water, it can help keep pot-held roots cool.

If the pot is porous, peat moss also will help reduce evaporation.

“Every two weeks or so, you’ll want to rotate the sunken pot by a quarter turn. That will break off any roots that grow out of the container´s drainage holes and into the peat moss,” Crouse said. “It also will help your plant grow straight, because every side will spend a quarter of its time in the brightest light.”

thinning, heading back, and rejuvenating.

Thinning is used to thin out branches from a shrub that is too dense. It is accomplished by removing most of the inward growing twigs by either cutting them back to a larger branch or cutting them back to just above an outward-facing bud. On multi-stemmed shrubs, the oldest canes may be completely removed.

Heading back is done by removing the end of a branch by cutting it back to a bud and is used for either reducing height or keeping a shrub compact. Branches are not cut

back to a uniform height because this results in a “witches-broom” effect.

Rejuvenation is the most severe type of pruning and may be used on multi-stem shrubs that have become too large, with too many old branches to justify saving the younger canes. All stems are cut back to three- to five-inch stubs.

This is not recommended for all shrubs but does work well for spirea, forsythia, pyracantha, ninebark, Russian almond, little leaf mock orange, shrub roses and flowering quince.

The Scott County Record

Lawn and Garden

Page 9 - Thursday, March 12, 2015

getting to know broccoli

Now a good time to cut ornamental Misunderstood veggie is good for you, easy to grow grasses Ornamental grasses have staked their claim as gorgeous assets to many a landscape, even in the cold, dark days of winter.

But now is the time to cut them back to make room for new growth.

“March is a good time to remove dead foliage from ornamental grasses,” says Kansas State University horticulture specialist Ward Upham.

“Grasses green up earlier if foliage is removed and are more attractive without a mixture of dead and live leaves.”

Several tools can be used, including hand clippers, weed whips (if the foliage is small enough in diameter), weed whips with a circular blade or even a chain saw.

“Use the top of the chainsaw bar to cut so the saw doesn’t pull in debris and clog,” says Upham.

“It is often helpful to tie the foliage together before cutting so it doesn’t interfere and is easier to dispose of. Burning is another option - but only if it is safe and legal to do so.”

Ornamental grasses may not burn long, but they burn extremely hot, he said. The crown of the plant will not be damaged, and new growth will appear relatively quickly.

If the center of the clump shows little growth, the plant would benefit from division. Dig up the entire clump and separate.

Then replant the vigorous growth found on the outer edge of the clump.

Extension offers advice, research on lawn turf

County Extension offices are a good resource for learning about lawn care and which turf varieties do well in a particular region.

K-State researchers study weeds, irrigation and turf management practices. They maintain test plots across the state to see which turf varieties do best in Kansas’ diverse climates.

In highly agricultural Kansas, horticulture is No. 3 after wheat and corn in gross crop value.

As part of that, turfgrass is far and away the leader in the horticulture industry.

“We have 160 different cultivars of tall fescue alone in our trials near Wichita,” says KSU horticulturist Ward Upham, “and Kentucky bluegrass trials going on near Olathe.

Every Extension office can provide the “bottom line” of each year’s results in addition to recommendations on lawn care.

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Eat your broccoli, it’s good for you! How many times have we heard this line? It is the classic statement about this vegetable.

No one will argue with you about the health benefits of vegetables, and most of all, the misunderstood broccoli. Broccoli, along with other members of the cabbage family, such as cauliflower and cabbage are highly nutritious and touted for their benefits in fighting certain diseases naturally.

Broccoli and cauliflower are easy plants to grow at home in the garden or even a patio container. There are only a few simple guidelines that need to be followed in order to grow your own crop of vitamin rich, fresh all natural goodness.

When to Plant One of the keys to success is planting on time. Members of the cabbage family like to grow in the cool spring weather. For best results start with young healthy transplants which are readily available in the spring at garden centers.

The transplants should be set out between mid- and late March. Waiting until even early April may be too late for a quality crop.

Growing in Containers Broccoli and cauliflower will require at least a half day of

sunlight for growth.

In the garden, set the plants about two feet apart. In containers place one plant in a gallon container, or for a larger harvest, plant four to five in a 24-inch pot.

Containers should be filled with a good quality potting mix available at local stores.

Fertilizing Another key to success is proper fertilization. These are large leafy vegetables that require ample fertilization for best growth.

Fertilization can be accomplished in the garden by applying 1-2 tablespoons of a fertilizer such as 13-13-13 or 20-10-10 worked into the soil around the planting hole. This application should be repeated once or twice at about four-week intervals.

Container grown plants can follow the same schedule but reduce the amount to 1-2 tablespoons per pot each time. Supply water as needed.

Pest Control There are relatively few pest problems. Cabbage worms can eat holes in the leaves, leaving the plants unsightly but the head will be just fine.

Control of this pest can be achieved by either the use of chemical sprays or organic products.

Harvesting Harvesting of broccoli can start in mid May depending on variety, while cabbage and cauliflower will develop heads in late May or even June.

Cut the developing broccoli heads while still firm and before any yellow flowers start to open.

Cauliflower is a little more temperamental. The developing heads will need to be blanched to retain that crisp white color.

Heads exposed to the sunlight will become brown and less appealing.

Simply pull a few leaves together over the developing head and secure with a rubber

band or tie. This shades the head while developing.

The bountiful harvest is not complete when the main large head has been cut as broccoli will continue to produce what is called side shoots. These smaller heads are produced from branches that develop.

If hot summer temperatures arrive late, expect to cut fresh broccoli through most of June.

At that time the plants can be removed.

Cabbage and cauliflower only produce the one head so the plants can be removed after harvest to make way for the next vegetable crop.

Help your lawn recover from a dry winter

There wasn’t a lot of snow to go around this winter.

Looking out at a barren lawn all winter long gets you to thinking about springtime and how green it’s going to be. That might not be the case.

Now is a good time to begin taking steps to help your lawn recover from a dry winter.

Snow is more than just a pro-

tective covering, says landscape specialist Matt Einhorn.

“You typically don’t think of watering your landscaping in the winter and why would you? But it’s necessary and it’s a job that’s usually taken care of by mother nature,” he says.

“When there’s no snow there is such a thing as a winter drought. We have to be aware of that and come springtime you

might need to water a little earlier and a little more often to get the water at necessary levels.”

Because of the relatively mild winter months, grubs may become an issue.

“The early warm weather could result in more grubs this year,” notes Einhorn.

Skunks feed on grubs which could lead to more skunks appearing in neighborhoods.

The best medicine for that is a grub control product early in the spring that you make sure you put down on your lawn.”

The lack of moisture could mean extra work in order to get the yard in shape this spring.

“And keep in mind, anything you planted in the fall and especially your flowering trees, might not be as ‘showy’ come springtime,” Einhorn adds.

The Scott County Record • Page 10 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Crisis ger dilemma for lawmakers is still to come. Without a huge influx in revenues, the state is looking at a $600 million to $700 million budget hole in the next fiscal year which begins on July 1. That represents roughly 10 percent of the state’s general fund.

“And we’re not finding any places to cut. After the last couple of years, budgets are already pretty lean. We’ve been cutting budgets since 2009,” says Hineman. “We’ve reached the point where we can’t fill the revenue hole with budget cuts alone.

Critics of the state’s corporate and income tax cuts have noted that Kansas has traditionally viewed revenue as a three-legged stool consisting of property, sales and income taxes.

“I still believe in that three-legged stool concept,” says Hineman.

“We will do surgery on the tax cuts of 2012,” he noted. “But I don’t know how far we can go and get the necessary support.”

Eliminate Use-Value One solution being proposed by some eastern Kansas lawmakers is to change the formula that’s part of the use-value method of appraising agricultural land. The argument is that use-value doesn’t accurately represent current land value trends.

As proposed, Hineman says it would represent a 473% increase in ag land property taxes statewide.

At a minimum, he says the additional property tax revenue from the local through state levels will be about $716 million in the first year.

“I don’t see enough support for this in its current form,” assured Hineman. “It makes sense to legislators in eastern Kansas, but it would cause a dramatic shift in tax burden in Western Kansas.”

(continued from page one)

“If this happens, the increase in ag land values will wipe out any benefit we get from the income tax cut,” noted Carolyn Simpson, Scott City.

Like most of those in attendance, she favored eliminating the income tax cuts and maintaining a balance in the state’s tax structure.

“People are telling me at town halls to ‘Leave our property taxes alone.

We’ll pay the income tax,’” said Hineman.

Tax Exemptions Removing farm machinery from the sales tax exemption has also come under criticism in rural areas.

“There are pages and pages of tax exemptions.

Why did they pick out this one?” asked Rex Grothusen, Scott City. “I know Brownback wants to run for president again someday. That’s why he’s selling the idea of cutting taxes and jobs flocking into the state.”

Hineman said the legislature will have to “do surgery on the tax cut of 2012.”

“But I don’t know how far we can go and whether there will be enough support,” he said.

To date, he says the legislature has made little headway on tackling the major budget issues facing the state. The legislature is in session until the end of March, but Hineman is skeptical it can pass a budget by then.

“We can’t look at taxes until we pass a budget,” he noted.

School Funding Simpson said she was “flabbergasted that we keep attacking the Supreme Court rather than following the law” with respect to school funding.

The latest proposal to come out of the Brownback Administration is to scrap the school finance formula and replace it

with block grants for school districts.

“The current formula does a pretty good job of putting the money where it belongs,” said Hineman.

While details of the block grant program were just being released on Friday, Hineman worries that districts which see an increase in enrollment will suffer because they will get only a certain amount of funding that doesn’t change with additional students.

“Block grants don’t recognize higher enrollment or special needs, such as at-risk students,” Hineman noted. “I can’t imagine that the courts will go along with that.”

Lack of Cooperation Scott County Commissioners Jim Minnix expressed concern that the three branches of government aren’t working together. The administration and conservative lawmakers have animosity toward the judicial branch and refuse to provide enough funding to keep the courts operating as they should.

“The only way for the courts to function at the level of funding they’re getting is to furlough employees. That’s going to affect the operation of our courts, especially in rural areas,” said Minnix.

With the government’s budget, he said the courts are looking at 45 furlough days in the 2016 budget (starting July 1) and 80 days in 2017.

With the furloughs and other proposals that would shut down district courts in rural areas, Minnix says the state is “limiting access to justice.”

“We’re not looking at tax cuts, but a shift in taxes from the state to the local level,” emphasized Minnix. “If we don’t step up at the local level and assume those extra costs, then it means a loss of services that local taxpayers expect to receive.”

KDOT Transfers Hineman also expressed concern with the impact on continued state borrowing from Kansas Department of Transportation highway improvement funds. He said that since 2009 the state has borrowed $2.1 billion, which is money that would have gone into projects around the state.

With the latest round of borrowing, Hineman says it will be smaller projects in Western Kansas that get cut.

He noted that Sporer Excavation, based in Oakley, is doing highway construction work on I80 in Nebraska because there’s no work to do in Kansas.

Another major highway contractor is looking at relocating their Wichita office to Oklahoma.

“That doesn’t help the state’s economy,” said Hineman.

(Top) Rex Grothusen, Scott City, makes a comment during Friday’s town hall meeting with Rep. Don Hineman. (Above) Rep. Hineman responds to a question.

(Photos by Larry Caldwell)

Tabor College Concert Choir Dr. Bradley Vogel, Director Tuesday, March 24 7:00 p.m.

Holy Cross Lutheran Church 1102 Court St., Scott City

The Scott County Record

Award Kel’s contract for grounds work Kel’s TLC, Scott City, submitted the low bid for chemical treatment of all grounds within USD 466 (Scott County).

This not only includes the football playing field and practice fields, but grounds surrounding each of the districts buildings.

Kel’s had the previous three-year contract and bid $10,950 per year for a three-year extension.

Also submitting bids were Pro-X ($17,811) and Lebbin Lawn and Tree ($19,240).

The bid includes treatments of insecticide, preemergence, iron/sulphur and winterizing of the grounds.

Board member Lynnette Robinson noted that the Pro-X and Lebbin bids also made reference to sandbur treatment.

She asked if the district had plans to address goat heads which are a particular problem around the SCMS tennis courts.

Robinson said the goat heads that are already growing need to be physically removed, but that treatment needs to be applied soon to keep the problem from getting even worse.

It was felt that chemical pre-emergence should prevent sandburs and goat heads from getting started, but there were no plans to remove those already growing.

Youth/Education stand up for the Beavers

Six-year-old Peyton Gentry encourages the Scott City crowd to stand up and support the Beavers during the Class 3A sub-state semi-finals played in Beloit on Friday evening. The SCHS boys defeated Minneapolis in the semi-finals, 67-61, and followed with a 61-60 win over Beloit in the finals on Saturday to earn their fifth consecutive trip to the state tournament.

(Record Photo)

$51M in school funding cuts this year under GOP proposal Public schools in Kansas would lose $51 million of the state dollars they expected to receive before the end of June under an education funding plan from top Republican legislators.

The Kansas Department of Education’s analysis of the school funding plan showed that the reductions would be deeper than cuts announced by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback to help balance the state budget. He and lawmakers must close a budget shortfall that arose after they cut personal income taxes in 2012 and 2013 at Brownback’s urging to stimulate the economy.

The governor’s cuts, which are now in effect, will trim $28 million. The reductions from GOP legislative leaders would be $23 million higher and

total about 1.5 percent of the general aid the state’s 286 school districts were to receive.

Brownback is making an across-the-board reduction per-student.

Republican legislators’ plan would concentrate the reductions in dollars for equipment and building repairs and aid for districts that want to levy additional property taxes but can’t match the revenue-raising of the wealthiest ones.

If the GOP legislators’ plan was enacted, some funds could be shifted among districts, with winners and losers.

The House and Senate budget committees had hearings earlier this week on the legislative plan.

Their Republican chairmen, Rep. Ron Ryckman,

Olathe, and Sen. Ty Masterson, Andover, defended the reductions for the current school year by noting that school districts still would receive significantly more aid than during the 2013-14 school year.

Mark Tallman, a lobbyist for the Kansas Association of School Boards, said it’s unfair and unnecessary to reduce state aid so late in the school year.

“If districts got an increase in spending, they budgeted for it,” Tallman said. “Now, they’re being told they won’t be getting as much.”

The GOP legislators’ plan incorporates Brownback’s proposal to jettison the funding formula and give districts “block grants” based on their current aid until law-

makers can write a new formula.

Brownback and other GOP conservatives argue that the state’s current per-pupil formula for distributing aid is hard to understand and doesn’t direct enough dollars into the classroom. Other lawmakers and educators say the problem is that the state doesn’t spend enough money.

Brownback and his allies agreed last year to a big increase in aid for poor school districts to comply with a Kansas Supreme Court mandate in a lawsuit filed in 2010, but the price tag was larger than they’d anticipated.

Ryckman and Masterson said their plan returns funding to what legislators thought they’d be spending.

Page 11 - Thursday, March 12, 2015

USD 466 BOE okays alternate SCHS schedule Scott Community High School students will have the option of a later start time to their day when the 2015-16 school year begins.

The board of education approved plans by SCHS Principal Shelly Turner to prepare schedules with a 7:45 and 8:45 starting times. Students will be able to choose between the two, with dismissal times at 3:10 p.m. and 4:10 p.m.

Turner was needing the board’s approval now in order to prepare for fall pre-enrollment which will begin following spring break.

A preliminary survey of students found that 25-28 percent would choose the 8:45-4:10 school day if given the option. Turner was wanting to experiment with the later starting day because there are a number of students who are consistently late for school.

“This is about our atrisk students and how they could benefit,” noted Supt. Jamie Rumford.

Rumford had anticipated there could be some difficult adjustments to the duel schedule, but Turner said those are being worked through.

Should students choose to start the day later, they will still be required to be enrolled in seven hours.

However, students would also have the opportunity to start the day early, finish later, and take eight hours of classes.

Students who are also involved in sports would need to begin their day at 7:45 a.m.

“I don’t want to see practices pushed back to 7:00 or 7:30 at night,” said board member Lynnette Robinson.

“I don’t see that as a problem,” said Turner.

“Athletes are going to start their day at 7:45.”

In addition, students who work after school have indicated they would prefer the 7:45 a.m. start so they could get to their jobs earlier.

“I’ve heard some people complain that they don’t think this is fair to kids who are in sports,” said board member Chris Price. “I tell them that it’s a choice.”

Robinson said the only negative she had was that the school day would start 15 minutes earlier.

“Let’s give it a try,” she added. “Hopefully, it can benefit some kids.”

6 area students earn degrees from K-State Six area students were among nearly 1,500 who completed degree requirements at Kansas State University at the conclusion of the fall semester.

Area graduates include: Dighton: Taylor Barber, Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering Scott City: Alexandria Holovach, Bachelor of Arts Leoti: Grant Bangerter, Master of Accountancy; Macey Sheppard, Bachelor of Science in Agriculture; Carlie Watt, Bachelor of Science in Agribusiness Marienthal: Nicholas Biel, Bachelor of Science in Biological Systems Engineering.

Show dates Friday, March 20 Saturday, March 21 Sunday, March 22 $

6

per person

Sequoyah Cinema 8, Garden City Tickets can be pre-ordered before March 13 at:

www.fbcscott.com For more information: First Baptist Church • 872-2339

For the Record

The Scott County Record

The Scott County Record Page 12 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Navigating through the college aid maze Jason Alderman

If you’re worried about paying for your child’s college education, keep this statistic in mind: during the 2011-12 school year, the U.S. Department of Education reported that 85 percent of all full-time, four-year college students were receiving some form of financial aid.

Consider planning way ahead of time to develop a college savings strategy that fits with your finances. If you need more

resources to cover additional costs, get to know the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, better known as FAFSA (https://fafsa.ed.gov).

FAFSA is the universal application for current and prospective U.S. college students to receive college financial aid. It is the gateway to grants, student loans and work-study programs on the federal and state level.

If you have a kid headed for college, it’s a good idea to learn about the

Scott City Council Agenda Mon., March 16 • 7:30 p.m.

City Hall • 221 W. 5th •Call to Order •Approve minutes of March 2 regular meeting •Zoning Ordinance •Discuss allowing automobile and motor vehicle sales in a district zoned for ag •Discuss water credits for Scott Rec Commission •Rodenbeek and Green - insurance renewal •Requested dates for use of Patton Park March 28: Easter egg hunt May 22/June 5/June 13/June 26/July 3/July 10/ August 14: Movies in the park June 7: Bark for Life event for Relay for Life June 13: Bluegrass concert and BBQ June 20: Relay for Life July 18: Ice cream social (Pence Church) July 25: Beefiesta tasting booths Aug. 15-16: Lake Scott Rod Run Sept. 26: Whimmydiddle •Request to use Bryan Center parking lot from June 5-7 for flea market and food vendors •Open agenda: audience is invited to voice ideas or concerns. A time limit may be requested Pool Department 1) Recommendation on hiring lifeguards 2) Approve lifeguard training cost/dates 3) Approve dates to use pool May 19: SCES boat races May 19: Accelerated reader swim party May 20: 5-7 grade field trips Police Department 1) Request to attend dog handler training and certification in Pipe Creek, Tex. Parks Department 1) Misc. business Public Works Department 1) Request to attend GWMD meeting on March 17 in Scott City 2) Request to attend “Small Public Water Supply System Operator Training” 3) Employee request from sick leave bank Clerk’s Department 1) Misc. business •Financial and investment reports •Mayor’s comments

Public Notice (First published in The Scott County Record Thurs., Feb. 26, 2015; last published Thurs., March 12, 2015)3t In the Matter of the Estate of David B Mick, deceased (Petition Pursuant to K.S.A. Chapter 59) No. 15-PR-2 NOTICE TO CREDITORS THE STATE OF KANSAS TO ALL PERSONS CONCERNED: You are notified that on February 17, 2015, a Petition for Probate of Will and Issuance of Letters Testamentary was filed in this Court by John Mick, an heir, devisee and legatee, and executor named in the “Last Will and Testament of David B. Mick,” deceased.

All creditors of the decedent are notified to exhibit their demands against the Estate within the latter of four months from the date of first publication of notice under K.S.A. 59-2236 and amendments thereto, or if the identity of the creditor is known or reasonably ascertainable, 30 days after actual notice was given as provided by law, and if their demands are not thus exhibited, they shall be forever barred.

John Mick Petitioner Jake W. Brooks Attorney At Law P.O. Box 664, 101 E. 6th Scott City, Kansas 67871 620-872-7204

FAFSA as early as possible. The universal form is the first step for any current or prospective student who needs help paying for higher education.

For the 2014-15 academic year, the College Board reported that annual tuition, room and board (http://trends.collegeboard.org) averaged $18,943 at in-state public universities, $32,762 for out-of-state students and $42,419 at private, nonprofit schools.

Students fill out the FAFSA, but if your child is a dependent student, you should gather the information together. Dependent students are generally under 24, unmarried and not working full-time. They will need your financial data to complete the filing.

Students with special family circumstances (including absent parents) may still qualify for federal and state aid under certain conditions, but should check directly with finan-

Scott Co. LEC Report Scott City Police Department March 9: A report was taken of a juvenile with possession of paraphernalia with intent to manufacture a controlled substance in addition to possession of a narcotic or stimulant.

March 9: Brian Ball, 32, Sterling, Colo., was arrested for violating a flashing red light; possession of an opiate, narcotic or certain stimulant; and conspiracy to distribute marijuana.

March 9: David Suri was arrested for criminal threat and disorderly conduct. He was transported to the LEC. Scott County Sheriff’s Department March 6: Steven Patton reported the theft of property.

Public Notice (First published in The Scott County Record Thurs., March 5, 2015)1t SCOTT COUNTY CITY AND SCHOOL GENERAL ELECTION APRIL 7, 2015 CANDIDATES TO BE VOTED FOR AT THE CITY/SCHOOL GENERAL ELECTION, STATE OF KANSAS, SCOTT COUNTY, KANSAS To whom it may concern: I, the undersigned county election officer of the above named county, have received the following candidates for the various nominations for the City/School election, and in accordance with the provisions of law, I hereby publish so much thereof as is applicable to this county, and I have added thereto the names and addresses of the candidates.

SCHOOL BOARD CANDIDATES USD NO. 466 VOTE FOR FOUR (4) M. Lynnette Robinson 101 Westview Drive Scott City Ben Taylor 1108 Myrtle St. Scott City Mark Davis 1208 Kingsley St. Scott City Eric Erven 230 Penn Ave. Scott City CITY CANDIDATES VOTE FOR ONE (1) Mayor Dan Goodman

1204 Santa Fe St.

Scott City

City Treasurer Daniel G. Weides

1011 Santa Fe St.

Scott City

City Council • Ward 1 Louis H. ‘Bo’ Parkinson 402 Myrtle St.

Scott City

City Council • Ward 2 Barbara J. Wilkinson 706 Ora St.

Scott City

City Council • Ward 3 Perry L. Nowak 1407 Church St.

Scott City

City Council • Ward 4 Fred Kuntzsch 701 E. 7th St. Wesley Wernecke 909 S. Main St.

Scott City Scott City

VOTE YES OR NO “Shall the following 2014-1 Resolution become effective?”

“BE IT RESOLVED, by the Board of Education of Unified School District No. 466 that the Scott Recreation Commission be authorized to levy an ad valorem property tax of not to exceed four mills in the tax year 2015 and thereafter.”

Pursuant to the foregoing, I hereby give notice that a General Election will be held on the 7th day of April, 2015, at which time the candidates from the above list, and the Questions and Reverenda may be voted on at the Wm. Carpenter 4-H Building, at the Scott County Fairgrounds. This polling place will be open from 7:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. on April 7, 2015.

Advance voting will begin on Wednesday, March 18, 2015, at the Scott County Clerk’s office, 303 Court Street, Scott City, Ks. Advance voting will end on Monday, April 6, 2015, at 12:00 noon.

Done at my office in the City of Scott City, County of Scott and State of Kansas this 4th day of March, 2015.

Seal Alice Brokofsky Scott County Election Officer Friendship ‘Meals to Go’ available from the VIP Center Individual frozen/sealed trays • Good for special diets only $3.25/meal • Call 872-3501

cial aid representatives at target schools for specific options.

The process starts with the student choosing a personal information number (PIN) that gives them multi-year access to the financial aid system.

They will follow up with their own Social Security, contact and address information.

Parents will submit their most recent federal income tax data and other proof of income; Alien Registration Numbers

are required from parents who are not U.S. citizens.

More detail is available on the FAFSA site.

FAFSA filing opens after January 1 every year with June 30 as the final deadline. Keep in mind, though, that a student’s current or target school financial aid deadlines (https://fafsa.ed.gov/deadlines.htm) can be significantly earlier based on the state in which they plan to attend college.

(See MAZE on page 13)

Public Notice (First published in The Scott County Record, Thurs., March 5, 2015; last published Thurs., March 12, 2015)2t NOTICE OF SALE OF ABANDONED MOTOR VEHICLE TO: Kevin S. Edgar, Owner 2000 S. 1400 E. Vernal, Utah 84078 Forrest Tingey, Lienholder 1162 N. 3000 W. Vernal, Utah 84078 All other interested persons: Notice is hereby given that the following described motor vehicle will be sold at public auction by the Scott City Police Department on March 31, 2015 at 10:00 AM at the Scott City/County law Enforcement Center, 602 West 5th Street, Scott City, KS 67871: 1999 Dodge Ram 3500 RPC VIN #3B6MF3660XM571979 The motor vehicle has been impounded by the Scott City Police Department and will be sold at public auction to the highest bidder for cash unless the owner or lienholder above named claim the motor vehicle within 10 days of the date of the second publication of this notice and pay the removal and storage charges and publication costs incurred by the Scott City Police Department.

Dated: March 3, 2015 Chris Jurgens, Chief of Police Scott City Police Department 602 West 5th Street Scott City, Ks. 67871 620-872-2133

Support Your Hometown Merchants!

The Scott County Record • Page 13 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Lawmakers move quickly to gut school funding

The chief financial officer in Kansas’ largest school district is urging legislators to give more consideration to a plan from Republican leaders to overhaul how the state distributes aid to public schools and prevent unexpected budget surprises.

But the GOPdominated Legislature isn’t heeding the suggestion.

The House Appropriations Committee debated the plan on

Tuesday, a day after having a hearing and five days after GOP leaders unveiled the plan. The Senate Ways and Means Committee is holding its own hearing Tuesday, also with the intent of moving quickly.

“One of my main concerns is that this bill is on such a fast track,” Jim Freeman, the chief financial officer for the 51,000-student Wichita school district, told the House committee. “I think

County Commission February 2, 2015 Scott County Commissioners met in a regular meeting with the following present: Chairman James Minnix, Commissioners Jerry Buxton and Gary Skibbe; and County Clerk Alice Brokofsky were present.

•Approval was given for the county attorney’s wage increase.

•Blue Cross/Blue Shield representative Adrian Cario presented health insurance rates. There was an 8% premium increase for the current policy that is a grandfathered policy. The policy could be reduced significantly if the total employee count could be reduced. The county Clerk will consult with auditors and report back to the commissioners.

•County auditor Randy Sangster discussed the reduction in oil and gas assessments due to the reduced rates being paid for crude oil.

•Sheriff Glenn Anderson and Deputy Jeff Pounds informed the commission of damage that had been done the vent work and the window in one of the jail cells. It was decided that all the vent work would be reconstructed with a heavy gauge of iron and that bars would be placed around the windows to deter further damage. Netting will be place over the outside exercise area so that items can no longer be thrown into the area.

The commission authorized spending up to $10,000 for the improvements. Anderson was also instructed to seek bids for the construction of a chain link fence around the perimeter of the jail facility.

•The following road permits were signed: Venture Corporation: entrance for road materials located on Union Road. S3, T17, R31.

Landmark Resources: access of right-of-way to drilling site located on Cherokee Rd. S15, T17S, R34.

New transportation maps are available Whether you want to drive across the state, find the closest airport, discover new places of interest or check out a state lake, the new 2015-16 Kansas transportation map published by the Kansas Department of Transportation has it all.

City and county indexes are above the map as well as a distance map that allows motorists to pick the best route to their destination.

Visitor resources, helpful phone numbers and websites as well as state recreation areas are also provided.

On the back of the map are inset maps of Kansas City, Wichita, Topeka and 13 other cities. There is information on how to get road condition information and highlights of Kansas driving laws.

“The state map offers so much more than just directions - it’s a great source of information for those traveling or just want to learn more about Kansas,” said Secretary of Transportation Mike King. “It’s always good to have a state map handy.”

Maps will be available at various travel information centers, attractions and other locations across the state.

They can also be requested on the KDOT website at http://www.ksdot.org/maps.asp.

it requires a lot more consideration.”

Top Republicans want to move quickly because aid to public schools at more than $4 billion - is the biggest item in the state budget. Legislators must close a budget shortfall projected at nearly $600 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1 that arose after they aggressively cut income taxes in 2012 and 2013 at Brownback’s urging to stimulate the economy.

Maze (continued from page 12)

Before this process begins, however, tax and financial advisors should be consulted to discuss the full range of savings and investing options that can minimize the need for student borrowing.

For assistance in completing the FAFSA form, parents and prospective students should consider contacting financial aid administrators at prospective schools or where the student has been accepted for admission.

Some schools offer workshops in filling out the form and organizations like College Goal Sunday (http://www.collegegoalsundayusa.org/) offer that assistance in 39 states.

Parents and students should also check their own networks for help.

Employers, professional organizations (related to the student’s field of study), fraternal societies and private foundations are great potential resources for no-strings scholarships and grant money. If a dependent child works a summer job at a major company (fast food, retail and beyond) he or she can check if the employer offers scholarships or education benefits to part-time workers.

It is also important to keep an eye on the news for the latest changes to federal and state financial aid and student loan rules.

Bottom line: Knowing as much as possible about college financial aid now can help parents and students make the best plans for covering those expenses. Whether college is months or years away, it’s never too early to start planning and saving.

“When this bill’s passed, we’ll be able to plug a number into that No. 1 expenditure that we’ll have, and we’ll have certainty there,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Ron Ryckman Jr. (R-Olathe).

“Then we try to balance the budget from that point.”

Local school officials and lobbyists for education groups testified Monday against the GOP legislators’ plan. The edu-

cators said the state’s current plan for distributing aid to school districts is sound and adjusts funding quickly when student populations change.

Brownback and many GOP legislators consider the existing formula overly complicated, but Freeman suggested the GOP plan, in a bill running 97 pages, also is “pretty complex.”

Top Republicans have expressed frustration that the current formula

can commit the state to unanticipated and automatic spending increases.

The price tag for aid for the current school year jumped nearly $64 million after lawmakers set the state budget last year.

Kansas Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Mike O’Neal was critical of the current formula. The Kansas Policy Institute, a small-government, free-market think tank, also supports the plan from GOP leaders.

The Scott County Record • Page 14 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Researcher: tobacco tax a reliable revenue source Andy Marso KHI News Service

A university researcher says his data suggests a proposed tax increase on cigarettes would provide a stable revenue stream for the state while also saving big on health care costs.

Frank Chaloupka, an economics professor from the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the $1.50-per-pack increase would cause some Kansans to quit smoking, but not enough to offset the revenue gained from those who continue.

The savings in health care costs from those who do quit could amount to $1 billion over five years.

Would reduce smoking rate, health care costs “You do have it both ways,” he said. “We’ve seen this in state after state after state.”

Chaloupka is the head of the university’s Health Policy Center and director of Tobacconomics, a group of economists and other policy researchers who study tobacco control issues.

He has authored several studies on the effect of tobacco taxes in other states.

“You see the same patterns,” Chaloupka said.

“Whenever taxes and prices go up, you see reductions in overall cigarette smoking.”

Find time to improve family relationships by the American Counseling Association

A common complaint today is how busy we all are and how little time we have even for things that really matter, often including our families.

Work obligations, school projects, aging parents, social events - the things that eat up our time can seem endless. And the result is that we have little time to spend with family members. Instead, there may be limited communication and the start of serious problems that can be hard to recognize.

A key to improving and strengthening family relationships is to make family a priority. In practical terms, it doesn’t mean ignoring all your other obligations, but rather simply including family time in your planning and scheduling, and making that a priority for all family members.

A simple way to improve family ties is to schedule regular family meetings. Even if it’s just once or twice a month, it can keep everyone informed and allow for issues to be addressed as a family, rather than waiting for something to become a disaster.

It’s important to have some simple ground rules for a successful family meeting. Number one is that everyone has to attend. It’s also not a time for yelling, name-calling, accusing or blaming.

Each family member gets a turn to speak with the goal of communicating and working out normal family problems together.

One suggestion for positive meetings is to start with each person relating something good or interesting that’s happened recently. Next, go to working out everyday problems, such as chores, errands, and schedules. Give family members a chance to bring up concerns so that all can work together to find solutions.

Relationships can also be strengthened through family dinners. If yours is a typical busy family, you might need a family rule that at least once a week everybody arranges their schedules so that you all can sit down to a friendly meal. Make it special with candles and favorite foods.

Get everyone involved in preparing dinner or setting the table. Steer dinner conversation toward positive things and updates on what’s happening in each family member’s life.

It’s unfortunate that in today’s busy world it often takes real effort to find the time to be with those we love the most, but it’s an effort worth making. Strengthening family ties can help us really get to know and enjoy family members and to get the most from our relationships with them.

“Counseling Corner” is provided by the American Counseling Association. Visit the ACA website at counseling.org

Representatives from the American Heart Association and other health advocacy groups introduced Chaloupka and his research to key Kansas legislators Friday in an attempt to re-energize a push for a tobacco tax increase that has thus far gained little traction in the Capitol.

Gov. Sam Brownback proposed the increase as part of his effort to close a budget gap of more than $600 million.

But Republican leaders in both the House and Senate have been cool to the idea. Representatives of the Kansas Chamber

of Commerce and the convenience store industry testified in committee hearings that the increase would hurt businesses, especially those in the Kansas City area, because Missouri has the nation’s lowest cigarette tax.

Chaloupka’s research on the proposes Kansas tax increase was paid for in part by a grant from the National Cancer Institute at the federal National Institutes of Health.

He said the increase is projected to cause about 25,000 adult smokers to quit and dissuade another 25,000 children from starting.

thus far in the dozens of state tax increases that Chaloupka has studied, including Kansas’ last cigarette tax hike, in 2002.

The state’s division of budget estimates that the tax increase currently on the table would provide about $72 million in additional state revenue the first year.

Chaloupka said much of the smoking reduction would come after that initial sticker shock, causing new revenue to fall before leveling off near $45 million per year five years after the tax increase.

“The reductions in consumption are not in proportion to the increase in price,” he said.

The reduced smoking rates are estimated to prevent almost 15,000 smoking-related deaths and save the state big on health care spending.

But Chaloupka said the increased cigarette tax still would provide a new revenue stream for the state, because the reductions in cigarette purchases would not offset the increased tax on each pack.

“The revenues that are generated are very stable, and very predictable,” he said. “Every time the state raises their taxes, they’re going to see big increases in revenues.”

That has proved true (See TOBACCO on page 15)

Integrate reading into the everyday life of young children It’s never too early to start reading to your child. Reading encourages speech and language development and is a great way for you to interact and communicate with your child early on.

Studies show that the earlier babies are exposed to reading, the more they will enjoy reading and learning, and the better they will perform in school. Fun activities can help build the foundation your child needs to start reading. Here’s how to get started with your little one:

that begins with A” is a great way to introduce communications specialist directional language and Russell Child Development connect letters with their using a wide variety of sounds and language with words when talking with the objects it represents. her. Research shows that the more words a child It’s Mine! hears by age two, the Write his name in larger her vocabulary will books and papers and grow. point it out to him. It will build familiarity with the Sign Time letters in his name and Point out signs and show a concrete use for symbols wherever you go.

It will reinforce the idea writing.

Amy McGrath

that symbols have meaning, preparing your child Play With Books Get some sturdy yet to translate letters into small board books that sounds and words. she can play with. Just holding books and turning Talk, talk, talk!

I Spy Build up your child’s Playing “I spy with pages is an essential step spoken vocabulary by my little eye something to reading.

Clapping Games Clap out the syllables in your child’s name and other family members’ names. It will show him that different words are different lengths and that long words can be broken into smaller bits.

Build Up ABCs Get a set of alphabet blocks for your child to build and play with - she’ll be building letter recognition and block towers at the same time.

And, of course, read aloud.

•Reading to your child regularly is the most important thing you can (See READING on page 15)

96,000 Kansans sign-up for ACA; most qualify for $211 tax credit In Kansas, 96,197 consumers selected or were automatically re-enrolled in quality, affordable health insurance coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace as of Feb. 22, according to a report released this week by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Of the consumers with a Marketplace plan selection, 80 percent (76,958 people) qualified for an average tax credit of $211 per month and 67 percent paid $100 or less per month after tax credits.

In Kansas, 87 percent of individuals with a Marketplace plan selection had the option of

selecting a plan for $100 or less per month.

In Kansas, 38,391 consumers under the age of 35 are signed up for Marketplace coverage (40 percent of all plan selections compared to 38 percent of plan selections at the end of 2014 Open Enrollment).

And 29,753 consumers 18 to 34 years of age (31 percent of all plan selections) are signed up for Marketplace coverage.

In Kansas, 38,391 consumers under the age of 35 are signed up for Marketplace coverage.

Fifty-two percent (50,022) who selected plans in Kansas are new consumers who did not have Marketplace coverage as of November 2014.

“The figures tell a story of health coverage consumers rely on for financial and health security - and of coverage they don’t want to lose,” said Secretary Sylvia Burwell.

Marketplace consumers in Kansas this year were more active, engaged, and eager for

coverage than consumers in other insurance marketplaces.

Fifty-two percent (50,022) who selected plans in Kansas are new consumers who did not have Marketplace coverage as of November 2014, and 48 percent (49,804 (See CREDIT on page 15)

(See CLINIC on page 13)

The Scott County Record • Page 15 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

ACA driving down health insurance costs

WASHINGTON - Five years after Obamacare became law, the projected costs continue to tumble, according to a nonpartisan report released Monday.

Costs of providing health care under the Affordable Care Act are projected to be almost one-third less than what had been anticipated by the Congressional Budget Office in 2010. By 2019,

the costs are expected to be 33 percent less than forecast.

Continued reductions in private insurance premiums are largely responsible for the decline, the CBO said, along with a slight reduction - to 24 million, down one million - in the number of Americans projected to gain insurance under the program.

Study: prostate, breast cancer tend to cluster in families

Women with close male relatives with prostate cancer are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer, a new study confirms.

These findings, from the Women’s Health Initiative, reinforce the results of a 1994 study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

“This is not the first study to examine this relationship, but it is one of the larger to date, if not the largest study,” said lead author Jennifer BeebeDimmer of Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit.

Cancer is a disease of the DNA, she said, and family clustering indicates that breast and prostate cancers may have genes in common, Beebe-Dimmer and her colleagues used data for more than 78,000 women in the Women’s Health Initiative who were over age 50 and cancer-free when the study began in 1993. At the start they had comprehensive physical exams and gave detailed personal and family medical histories.

Most women remained in the study for more than 10 years.

By 2009, there had been 3,506 new breast cancers in the original group.

Overall, more than 11,000 women had a firstdegree relative - mother, sister or daughter - with breast cancer, and this was more common for those who were eventually diagnosed themselves.

Twenty percent of women with breast cancer had first-degree relatives with the disease, compared to nearly 15 percent of those who did not develop breast cancer.

There was a similar, but very slight, association with prostate cancer, the researchers reported in the study.

More than 11 percent of women who developed breast cancer reported a first-degree relative with prostate cancer, compared to about 10 percent of women without the disease. Having a father, brother or son with prostate cancer increased the risk of breast cancer by about 14 percent.

Compared to women with no family history of breast or prostate cancer, those with a family history of both were 80 percent more likely to develop breast cancer, the authors found.

Researchers have been reporting on familial links between breast and prostate cancer for 40 years, said Mary-Claire King of the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, in email to Reuters Health.

“It is good to see the link confirmed” in the Women’s Health Initiative, said King, who was not involved in the new research.

“Both of these cancers are relatively common, so that it is possible when cancers are diagnosed in multiple family members it may be due to chance,” Beebe-Dimmer said. “It may also be an exposure to something in the environment.”

Credit

(continued from page 14)

people) are consumers who re-enrolled in Marketplace coverage.

Of the 49,804 consumers who were re-enrolled in 2015 Marketplace coverage, 23,398 (24 percent) came back to the Marketplace, updated their information and actively selected a plan.

Of the 23,398 active re-enrollees, 13,922 switched to a different plan than they had in 2014 - that’s 60 percent of active re-enrollees and 28 percent of all reenrollees. This is a much higher proportion than seen in other programs.

For example, studies show that approximately 13 percent of Medicare Part D enrollees change plans in a given year, and only about 7.5 percent of those with employer sponsored coverage switch plans for reasons other than a job change.

“The slower growth has been sufficiently broad and persistent,” the congressional agency said.

The CBO issued its revised outlook, as it typically does, during budget season in Washington.

Even since the last round of budget office estimates in January, the projected 10-year cost of providing health care under the Affordable Care

Act has fallen 11 percent, from $1.3 trillion to $1.2 trillion, the CBO said.

The projected cost of providing subsidies over the next decade to those who purchase insurance through Obamacare is now expected to be 20 percent lower than estimated in January.

The improving assessment comes as the embat-

Tobacco “Basically, we estimate for every 10 percent increase in price, there’s about a four percent decrease in consumption.”

Chaloupka said his research suggests some Kansans will cross the border to buy their cigarettes, but not in numbers that would drastically reduce the effectiveness of the policy change.

When surrounding states have increased their tobacco taxes in the past,

it has raised the revenue rates in Missouri slightly but raised far more revenue in the states in which the hikes occurred.

“You get this really small increase in revenues in Missouri, because maybe there is a little bit of cross-border shopping,” Chaloupka said.

“But it’s certainly generating the revenues that were expected in the states that raised their taxes.”

Reading do to help her develop pre-reading skills •Find a time when you and your child are relaxed and interested in reading, such as at bedtime or after a nap.

•Let her choose the books and pages to read.

•Let her help hold the book and turn pages.

•Show delight and enthusiasm as you read to her.

(continued from page 14)

(continued from page 14)

It’s never too soon or too late to read with your child and the memories you make today will bring all of you a lot of joy later.

For more resources on child growth and development be sure to visit RCDC online at www. rcdc4kids.org, www.facebook.com/ RCDC4kids, @RCDC4kids, and w w w. p i n t e r e s t . c o m / RCDC4kids.

Friendship ‘Meals to Go’ available from the VIP Center only $3.25/meal • Call 872-3501

tled health care law is before the Supreme Court and continues to face partisan attacks in Congress.

The court is expected to decide this summer whether to allow a key provision of the law which lets the government provide subsidies for lower-income Americans who buy insurance through the online Obamacare

exchanges - to stand in all states, even those that have not set up their own marketplaces.

In Congress, Republicans are continuing efforts to repeal the law and have recently proposed various alternatives should the court dismantle Obamacare, though none has gained widespread political traction yet on Capitol Hill.

Pastime at Park Lane We welcome Frank Leal to Park Lane.

Residents played pitch and dominoes on Monday afternoon. Game helpers were Joy Barnett, Hugh McDaniel, Gary and Janet Goodman, and Mandy Barnett.

Pastor Bob Artz led Bible study on Tuesday morning. Doris Riner and Elsie Nagel led the hymns.

Russel and Mary Webster led Bible study on Tuesday evening.

Rev. Warren Prochnow led Lutheran Bible study on Wednesday morning.

Residents played bingo on Wednesday afternoon.

Helpers were Madeline Murphy, Barbara Dickhut and Mandy Barnett.

Elsie Nagel gave manicures on Thursday.

Hit and Miss Band performs

The Hit and Miss Band from the VIP Center performed on Thursday afternoon. They played Irish songs in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. Band members were Margie Stevens, Arlene Cauthon, Melody Stevens and Jerry Ellis.

4-Hers make centerpieces

Thanks to the Lake Wide Awake 4-H Club for making the St. Patrick Day centerpieces for the dining room tables.

Dottie Fouquet was visited by Jon and Anne Crane, Mark Fouquet and Don Gaschler.

Dona Dee Carpenter was visited by Gloria O’Bleness, Larry LaPlant, Marvel Hopkins and Alisa Moore.

Cecile Billings was visited by Ann Beaton and Delinda Dunagan.

Delores Brooks was visited by Nancy Holt, Cheryl Perry, Charles Brooks and Fritzi Rauch.

James Still and Mike Leach were visited by Tina Turley and Linda Dunagan.

Nella Funk was visited

by Nancy Holt, Mary Lou Oeser, Karen Harms, Pam Brown and Tami Turley.

Deaths Lucy Boyer

Alene Nell Fisher

Lucy Boyer, 68, died Feb. 23, 2015, at St. Luke’s Hospice, Kansas City.

S h e was born on Aug. 26, 1946, in Garden City, the daughter of Louis Lucy Boyer and Anna Lobmeyer.

She graduated from St. Mary of the Plains High School, Dodge City, and Garden City Community College, majoring in journalism. She was an associate editor of newspapers in Buena Vista, Colo., Gove and Scott City.

In 1967, she married Bill Boyer in New Mexico.

Survivors include: one son, Sean, West Plains, Mo.; two daughters, Heather, Monte Vista, Colo., and Megan, Bend, Ore.; three brothers, Marion, Raymond and Donald Lobmeyer; one sister, Dorothy Owens; and eight grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by one brother, David; two sisters, Carolyn Davis and Edna Pellette; and one grandson, Zacharias Boyer.

A memorial celebration of her life will be held on Sat., March 21, 10:00 a.m., at the Elks Lodge, 905 Kansas Plaza, Garden City.

Alene Nell Fisher, 96, died March 8, 2015, at Wichita County Health Center, Leoti.

S h e was born on Aug. 30, 1918, near Ingalls, the daughter of Al- Alene Fisher vin H. and Bertha Mae (Crick) Hewes. A resident of Wichita County since the 1930s, she was a homemaker and farm wife.

Alene was a member of the United Methodist Church and Rebekah Lodge, both in Leoti.

On Aug. 28, 1938, she married Jess L. Fisher at Lakin. He died Dec. 14, 1982, in Leoti.

Survivors include: two sons, John Fisher, and wife, Evelyn, Honolulu, Hawaii, and Clark Fisher, Leoti; one daughter,

Jalene Conrad, and husband, Christopher, Wray, Colo.; eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by her parents and one daughter, Emmalee Fisher.

Funeral service will be held Fri., March 13, 2:00 p.m., at the United Methodist Church, Leoti, with Rev. Brad Kirk officiating.

Burial will be in the Leoti Cemetery.

Memorials may be given to Leoti EMTs, United Methodist Church, Museum of the Great Plains or Wichita County Long Term Care Center in care of Price and Sons Funeral Home, 202 N. 4th, Leoti, Ks. 67861.

Condolences may be sent to the family through the funeral home website at priceandsons.com.

Sr. Citizen Lunch Menu Week of March 16-20 Monday: Chicken and noodles, mashed potatoes, capri vegetables, whole wheat roll, pineapple.

Tuesday: Chicken pot pie, broccoli, biscuit, peaches.

Wednesday: Beef and beans, California blend vegetables, whole wheat bread, apple crisp.

Thursday: Pork roast, sweet potatoes, green beans, whole wheat roll, strawberries and pears.

Friday: Baked cod, au gratin potatoes, gingered carrots, whole wheat bread, ambrosia. meals are $3.25 • call 872-3501

The Scott County Record • Page 16 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Darlene Richman was visited by Tina Turley and Phebe Unruh.

Frank Leal was visited

by Peanut, Crystal, Maria Leal, Johnny Leal, Leala Luna, Balentin Luna and Kirsten Roberts.

Harriet Lewis was visited by Hugh McDaniel.

Lowell Rudolph was visited by Kathleen Moore, Tom Moore and LuAnn Buehler.

Corine Dean was visited by Nancy Holt, Ron Hess, Dianna Howard, Janice Drohman, Sheri Scott, Rylee Zimmerman, Kiersten Scott, Warren and Wyatt Kropp, Mandy and Aaron Kropp, Damian Ortiz, Kim Smith, Karen Harms, Mary Lou Oeser, Pam Brown and Tami Turley.

by Jason Storm

Emogene Harp was visited by Nancy Holt, Joy and Mandy Barnett, Alicia Harp and Rick Harp.

Geraldine Graves was visited by Megan Dirks and Valeria Bejarano.

Boots Haxton was visited by Tava See and Rod and Kathy Haxton.

Lucille Dirks was visited by Dale and Vicki Dirks.

Jake Leatherman was visited by Virgil Ratzlaff and Hugh McDaniel.

Bonnie Pickett was visited by Gloria Wright, Larry and Philene Pickett, Margie Stevens and Treva McCandless.

Lorena Turley was visited by Phyllis See, Neta Wheeler, Tracy Hess, Karen Harms and Mary Lou Oeser.

Yvonne Spangler was visited by Les and MaryAnn Spangler, Yvette Mills, Adalei Zeller and Jerica VanCampen.

Albert Dean was visited by Nancy Holt, Carol Davey, Mary Lou Oeser and Karen Harms.

Harold and Ruth White were visited by Travis Jones.

LaVera King was visited by Gloria Gough; Krista, Abby and Haylie McDaniel; Velda Riddiough and Carol Latham.

Vivian Kreiser was visited by Sharon Lock, Kai and Sage Wilkerson, and Trenedy, Grace, Kaleb and Spenser Beaton.

Clifford Dearden was visited by Florence Daubert and Kirk and Janet Ottaway.

The Scott County Record • Page 17 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Health Care HR Week honors SCH personnel

The American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration (ASHHRA), a personal membership group of the American Hospital Association (AHA), announces Health Care HR Week.

The week of March 15-21 has been set aside to recognize health care human resources professionals.

They are being recognized for the daily issues they face in areas such as workforce, compensation and benefits, employee relations, talent management, wellness, etc.

About ASHHRA Founded in 1964, ASHHRA is a personal membership group of the American Hospital Association (AHA) and has more than 3,500 members nationwide.

It provides timely and critical support through research, learning and knowledge sharing, professional development, products and resources, and provides opportunities for networking and collaboration.

The Scott County Hospital human resource department consists of (from left) Pam Wheeler, director; Afton Huck, benefits specialist; and Sunni Smyth, payroll specialist.

Attend the Church of Your Choice

Beginning and End Beginning . . . I continue to think about beginnings. The beginning when we were conceived. The beginning when we took our first breath. The beginning of our first heartbeat. The beginning of birth. The beginning of our existence. We were fearfully and wonderfully made by a powerful and loving Creator. The beginning of heaven and earth, Genesis 1:1. The beginning of wisdom, Psalm 111:10. The beginning of marriage, Matthew 19:3-6.

The beginning of the Word, John 1:1-3. Jesus said, “I am the Apha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End”, Revelation 22:13.

A lot of beginnings. My father in law, Dwight, had his beginning on July 16, 1929, when he was born the eighth child of 15 children. He had a beginning on his first day of school, only going through the eighth grade. He had a beginning in the Navy when he joined at age 17 and stayed in for 20 years. He had a beginning as a married man in August 1952 and stayed married for 62-1/2 years.

He had a beginning as a dad on April 6, 1953, with the birth of his first daughter Marcia, my wife. He had a beginning as a father-in-law on August 13, 1972, when I married Marcia. He had a beginning as a grandpa on June 1, 1977, with the birth of my daughter, Heather. He had a beginning as a great-grandpa on December 4, 1997, with the birth of Abbie, my great-niece. From all those beginnings Dwight and his wife, Gleneva, had two daughters, five grandkids and 17 great-grandkids.

But, Dwight’s best beginning came in 1966 when he made the decision to take his wife and two daughters to a Billy Graham Crusade in San Diego, Calif. It was at the Crusade that the Holy Spirit spoke to all four of their hearts and they all became believers in Jesus Christ, that very night. It was the beginning of their eternity. Because of Dwight’s decision to go, his whole family had their beginning as Christians!

On March 9, 2015, Dwight gave up the fight against the stinking cancer that caused many health problems and he began his eternity absent from his body and present with Christ. Dwight moved from the stinky stuff of earth into his heavenly home. Wow! What a beginning that is!

Yes, we all had a beginning - the time we first became us. And we all will also have an end - the time our bodies will no longer function. We will be gone in the twinkling of an eye and whisked into eternity! If you know Jesus, what a day of rejoicing that will be! If you don’t know Jesus it will be the beginning of your eternal suffering.

It’s your choice . . . accept Jesus’ forgiveness and inherit eternity with Him . . . or reject Jesus’ forgiveness and go into eternal suffering. I choose Jesus! It’s all about Jesus! John 14:6 Pastor Larry Taylor Gospel Fellowship Church, Scott City

Scott City Assembly of God

Prairie View Church of the Brethren

1615 South Main - Scott City - 872-2200 Ed Sanderson, Senior Pastor 9:00 a.m. - Pre-Service Prayer 10:00 a.m. - Sunday Worship Service and Children’s Church Wednesday: 7:00 p.m. - Bible Study and Prayer

4855 Finney-Scott Rd. - Scott City - 276-6481 Pastor Jon Tuttle Sunday School: 10:00 a.m.

Morning Worship: 11:00 a.m.

Men’s Fellowship • Tuesday breakfast at 6:30 a.m.

Held at Precision Ag Bldg. west of Shallow Water Wednesday Bible Study, 7:00 p.m., at the church

St. Joseph Catholic Church

Holy Cross Lutheran Church

A Catholic Christian Community 1002 S. Main Street - Scott City Fr. Bernard Felix, pastor • 872-7388 Secretary • 872-3644 Masses: 1st Sunday of month - 8:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Other weekends: Sat., 6:00 p.m.; Sun., 11:00 a.m.

Spanish Mass - 2nd and 4th Sundays, 1:30 p.m.

1102 Court • Box 283 • Scott City 620-872-2294 • 620-872-3796 Pastor Warren Prochnow holycross-scott@sbcglobal.net Sunday School/Bible Class, 9:00 a.m.

Worship every Sunday, 10:15 a.m.

Wed.: Mid-Week School, 6:00-7:30 p.m.

Pence Community Church

Community Christian Church

8911 W. Road 270 10 miles north on US83; 2 miles north on K95; 9 miles west on Rd. 270 Don Williams, pastor • 874-2031 Wednesdays: supper (6:30 p.m.) • Kid’s Group and Adult Bible Study (7:00 p.m.) • Youth Group (8:00 p.m.)

Sunday School: 9:30 • Morning Worship: 10:30 a.m.

12th & Jackson • Scott City • 872-3219 Shelby Crawford, pastor Sunday School, 9:30 a.m.

Sunday Morning Worship, 10:45 a.m.

Wednesday Night Bible Study, 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday: God’s High School Cru, 7:30 p.m.

First Baptist Church

Immanuel Southern Baptist Church

803 College - Scott City - 872-2339

1398 S. US83 - Scott City - 872-2264

Kyle Evans, Senior Pastor Bob Artz, Associate Pastor

Robert Nuckolls, pastor - 872-5041

Sunday School, 9:30 a.m.

Sunday School: 9:45 a.m. • Worship: 11:00 a.m.

Sunday morning worship: 8:30 a.m. and 10:45 a.m.

Wednesday Bible Study, 7:00 p.m.

Gospel Fellowship Church 120 S. Lovers Lane - Shallow Water Larry Taylor, pastor Sunday School: 9:30 a.m.

Morning Worship: 10:30 a.m.

1st United Methodist Church 5th Street and College - Scott City - 872-2401 Dennis Carter, pastor 1st Sunday: Communion and Fellowship Sunday Services at 9:00 a.m. • Sunday School, 10:30 a.m.

All Other Sundays • Worship: 8:30 and 10:45 a.m.

Sunday School: 9:30 a.m. • MYF (youth groups) on Wednesdays Jr. High: 6:30 p.m. • Sr. High: 7:00 p.m.

First Christian Church

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

701 Main - Scott City - 872-2937 Scotty Wagner, pastor Sunday School, 9:30 a.m.; Worship, 10:45 a.m.

Wednesday is Family Night Meal: 5:45 p.m. • Study: 6:15 p.m.

Website: www.fccscottcity.org

Elizabeth/Epperson Drives • Scott City • 872-3666 Father Don Martin Holy Eucharist - 11:45 a.m.

St. Luke’s - 872-5734 (recorded message) Senior Warden Bill Lewis • 872-3347 or Father Don Martin - (785) 462-3041

Scott Mennonite Church

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

12021 N. Eagle Rd. • Scott City

9th and Crescent - Scott City - 872-2334 Bishop Irvin Yeager • 620-397-2732 Sacrament, 9:30 a.m.

Sunday School, 10:50 a.m.

Relief Society and Priesthood, 11:20 a.m.

YMYW Wednesday, 8:00 p.m.

Franklin Koehn: 872-2048 Charles Nightengale: 872-3056 Sunday School Worship Service: 10:00 a.m.

Sunday Evening Service: 7:00 p.m.

The Scott County Record • Page 18 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Veterans rep in SC Tuesday

Jody Tubbs, representing the Kansas Commission on Veterans’ Affairs, will be at the Scott County Library on Tues., March 17, 10:00 a.m., to assist veterans and their dependents with VA claims work.

Anyone unable to meet with Tubbs at that time can contact her office in Colby on Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays at (785) 462-3572.

Assessments due Monday

Scott County residents are reminded that personal property assessment sheets are to be turned in to the appraiser’s office no later than Mon., March 16, to avoid a penalty.

Individuals must report property including: •Vehicles that are not tagged •Farm trucks •Aircraft •Boats and jet skis •Golf carts •Camper and misc. trailers •Mobile homes Businesses must report personal property that includes: •Equipment and machinery •Office equipment (computers, furnishings, etc.)

•Anyone with questions can contact the appraiser’s office at 872-5446.

Early voting starts March 18

Voters can get an early start in casting ballots in the upcoming general election when advance voting gets underway on Wed., March 18.

Voting will take place at the Scott County Courthouse during regular business hours. Advance voting will end on April 6.

The general election is April 7.

Voter registration books will remain open until 5:00 p.m. on Tues., March 17. Voters register at the county clerk’s office.

Tabor College choir tour coming to SC HILLSBORO, Kan. – The Tabor College Concert Choir’s statewide tour will include a stop in Scott City on Tues., March 24.

The choir will be performing at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Scott City, starting at 7:00 p.m.

Theme of the tour is “His Holy Presence.”

The choir’s director and professor of choral music, Brad Vogel, is excited for his students to share their music with the theme “His Holy Presence.”

“The texts and sounds of the repertoire explore the various ways that God’s presence is communicated,” says choir director Brad Vogel, “from singing of how God meets us in our need, to how we communicate God’s presence when we serve and meet the needs of others.”

The Concert Choir’s repertoire for the program features some unique

works, including: a work accompanied by sophomore harpist Heather Loewen and the premiere performance of Vogel’s own composition, “Bread and Wine,” featuring senior Krista Neifert on piano and senior Natalie Wiens on cello.

The text for this work was commissioned for the choir from Mennonite poet Jean Janzen.

“The spring tour is both the focal point and the highlight of the choir’s work each year,” Vogel added. “The opportunity to travel together and to share our work with others is enriching. We trust that our music enriches the lives of those who hear us.”

The Concert Choir has been selected to perform for the Kansas Music Educators Association State Convention six times since 2000 under Vogel’s direction.

GWMD

(continued from page one)

ing water consumption, will be on display at the Groundwater Management District No. 1 annual meeting on Tues., March 17, 1:30 p.m., at the Wm. Carpenter 4-H Bldg., Scott City.

Doors will open at 1:00 p.m. Farmers and others interested in seeing results of the groundwater model or viewing other technology exhibits can arrive early or remain after the meeting has concluded.

“This model is a great opportunity for irrigators and others within the groundwater management district to see what the future of the Ogallala looks like in our specific area,” says Kyle Spencer, director of GWMD No. 1.

“People can see the impact of reducing water usage by different amounts, such as 20 or 30 percent, or what happens if we do nothing,” Spencer says. “We can show them the life of the Ogallala district-wide and even under specific tracts of land.”

Spencer says this is a “great educational tool” that should eliminate a lot of the speculation about the long-term future of the Ogallala, and current usage, throughout the district.

Making the presentation and explaining the groundwater model will be Don Whittemore with the Kansas Geological Survey.

In addition, Tracy Streeter, director of the Kansas Water Office, will give an update on KWO regional meetings and what’s happening with efforts at the state level to conserve the Ogallala.

The meeting is open to all agriculture producers and landowners as well as the general public.

GWMD No. 1 includes Scott, Lane, Wichita, Greeley and Wallace counties.

Vote

Wernecke

Retirement reception Tues.

for

A come-and-go retirement reception will be held for Clerk of the District Court Darlene Kohman at the Scott County Courthouse on Tues., March 17, from 4:00-6:00 p.m.

Kohman has been working for the courts for the past 30 years.

Scott City Council Ward 4 Smart Growth, Smart Spending,

‘Moonshiners’ at Park Lane

New Results!

“The Moonshiners” will be performing at Park Lane Nursing Home, Scott City, on Fri., March 20, starting at 6:00 p.m.

Everyone is invited to attend. Refreshments will be served.

Wesley Wernecke

•

Quality and Affordable Housing

•

Small and Local Business Development

•

Government Transparency

•

Constituent Services

Phone: 785-829-7616 • Email: info@wesleyforourcity.com • Web: www.wesleyforourcity.com (Pol. adv. paid for for by the candidate)

St. Patrick’s Day Picks of the Week!

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IN THROUGH INSPIR OR OF FROM THE AUTH

L A E R R O F S I N E HEAV Friday, March 27

DATE 7:00 p.m.

TIME

(doors open at 6:00 p.m.)

Come hear the Burpo family share their inspiring story of hope and peace.

To learn more, visit www.heavenlive.org.

SCHS Gym

Location Name Address Field 1 Address Field 2

FREE admission (Free-will offering)

Extra information here - leave blank if necessary

Nationally touring recording artists “Read You and Me” join the Burpo family for an amazing night of worship.

To learn more, visit www.readyouandme.com.

1314 S. Main, Scott City 872-5854 www.heartlandfoodsstores.com

Sponsored by Scott County Ministerial Alliance

Sports The Scott County Record

Lion tamer O’Neil sets a new standard with 40 points in post-season • Page 20

www.scottcountyrecord.com

Thursday, March 12, 2015

another nail-biter

Beavers pull away late to avoid upset against Cards

The Hutchinson Sports Arena has nearly felt like a second home to the Scott Community High School boys.

They won nine straight games in the arena while 44 bringing home Cheney Scott City 47 consecutive Class 3A state titles from 201113.

After a brief departure to Class 4A-Division II last season, the Beavers are back in Class 3A and back in Hutchinson where they resumed their win streak with a hard-fought 47-44 win over Cheney in the opening round of state tournament action on Thursday afternoon.

Cheney’s patient offense and ability to get to the charity stripe allowed them to build a seven point first half lead in what turned out to be another nail-biter for the Beavers.

“We came out really flat in the first half,” says senior guard Brett Meyer who hit both ends of a one-and-one with 4/10 of a second left in the game to finally seal the win.

The Beavers struggled offensively in the first two quarters, scoring a season low 19 points against a Cheney squad that was content with running time off the clock.

“It seemed they were taking a minute off the clock every time they had the ball,” says senior guard Chantz Yager. “We didn’t

the first 2-1/2 minutes which contributed to an early 7-2 deficit.

“We knew they were going to press and we wanted them to press, but we didn’t handle it as well as we should have,” Meyer says.

When it wasn’t turnovers it

Maintaining composure in the face of adversity

was fouls which plagued Scott City as Cheney outscored SCHS 10-2 at the charity stripe in the first half. With 1:51 remaining in the half and the Beavers trailing 15-14, Cheney scored four free throws - two technicals and a double bonus.

I t ’ s o f t e n Rod been said Haxton, that you sports k n o w editor a game has been well-officiated when the officials don’t become part of the game.

That wasn’t the situation in Saturday’s sub-state championship game in Beloit. The officials put themselves in the spotlight and everyone around them became part of the supporting cast.

Credit the Beavers for figuring out how to overcome a very difficult situation. It began when Sloan Baker was called for his first foul with the game just six seconds old - yes, six whole seconds.

“We knew we weren’t going to get any calls. We knew that it would happen and that we’d have to fight through it,” said Baker.

And perhaps that was the most impressive aspect of Saturday’s game. The players didn’t hang their heads and they didn’t whine. They were simply determined to find a way to win.

That’s a mental toughness rarely found with high school athletes . . . “or college or sometimes with the pros,” says head coach Glenn O’Neil.

“It’s easy to let a situation like that get into your head and affect the way you play,” he noted.

After Friday’s semi-final game, the Beavers had some idea about what to expect on

(See BEAVERS on page 24)

(See ADVERSITY on page 24)

Scott City’s Brett Meyer drives past a pair of Cheney defenders during first round action in the Class 3A state basketball in Hutchinson on Thursday. The Beavers escaped with a 47-44 win.

(Photo by Larry Caldwell)

do a very good job of running our offense and we couldn’t get into any kind of offensive flow.”

Scott City’s inability to find their offense in the first half also contributed to an uncharacteristic nine turnovers. The Beavers had three turnovers in

Page 19

down to the wire

Supporting players shine in sub-state spotlight They aren’t the marquee players on a senior-laden Scott City roster, but Bo Hess and Drake McRae proved they were ready for the bright lights in a thrilling 61-60 win over Beloit in the Class 3A sub-state finals played on the Trojans’ home floor Saturday evening.

Hess hit a pair of clutch free throws down the 60 stretch and Beloit Scott City 61 McRae came off the bench to score a career high 10 points in sending the Beavers to their fifth consecutive state tournament which begins this week in Hutchinson.

When Hess stepped to the charity stripe with only 20 seconds remaining and SCHS protecting a 57-55 lead, the sophomore knew these were the biggest free throws of his career.

So did senior teammate Brett Meyer.

“I told Bo, ‘We trust you and you’re going to make these,’” says Meyer. “I’m so proud of what he did in such a big-time situation.”

Not that Hess was lacking in confidence either.

“I knew I could knock them down. I shoot free throws in practice all the time and I had confidence in myself that I could hit them,” noted Hess.

Practice is one thing. A substate championship game is

Scott City senior Brett Meyer raises the sub-state championship plaque while teammates celebrate their 61-60 win over Beloit on Saturday. Pictured to Meyer’s left are Sloan Baker, Drew Duff, Justin Faurot, Drake McRae, Matthew Jenkins and Chantz Yager.

(Record Photo)

quite another.

With a state trip still hanging in the balance, and looking like a seasoned veteran, Hess hit nothing but net to convert both ends of the one-and-one that

stretched Scott City’s lead back to four points, 59-55.

Beloit (19-4) kept their hopes alive on a rebound and putback with 5.3 seconds to play, once again making it a two point

game. The inbounds pass went to Meyer who was quickly fouled and put on the line with 4.4 seconds remaining. He also connected on both ends of the one-and-one, giving him a team

high 16 points, and Scott City fans could finally rest easy with a four point cushion.

Beloit would add a meaningless three-pointer at the buzzer (See SUB-STATE on page 21)

simply spectacular

The Scott County Record • Page 20 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Outdoors in Kansas by Steve Gilliland

O’Neil Is this a tames genuine concern in Lions with Kansas? 42 points There is an old adage that says if you drop a frog into boiling water it will immediately jump out, but if you put that same frog into a pot of cool water then slowly raise the water temperature to boiling, the frog will likely be boiled.

The gist of the proverb is that we will instantly react to sudden changes around us, but if those changes come slowly and subtly, it may be too late to properly react once we notice.

House Concurrent Resolution 5008 just now starting its journey through the Kansas Legislature would amend the state constitution to guarantee Kansas residents the right to hunt, fish and trap wildlife.

My first reaction was, “Do we really need this?” Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to become like the frog in the pot and eventually lose my hunting, fishing and trapping rights after years of slow and subtle attacks on those rights by the likes of PETA and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS.) But this is Kansas after all, and I really don’t worry much about us Kansans being out-muscled nor out-witted by that sort of thinking.

I also know that federal law still trumps state law, so we can pass all the laws and resolutions we want, but if something contrary gets passed at the federal level, it’s all for naught. I could only hope that the bills co-authors Adam Lusker from Fontenac and Travis CoutureLovelady from Palco had some reasoning in mind that I was missing.

I spoke with Rep. Lusker on the phone and here are some

(See CONCERN on page 23)

Trey O’Neil scored a career high 42 points and Scott City was able to pull away down the stretch for a hard-fought 67-61 win over Minneapolis in the Class 3A sub-state semifinals on Friday evening in Beloit.

“The w a y things started in Minneapolis 61 Scott City 67 the first quarter I knew I was going to have a good night, but I wasn’t thinking about 40 points,” said the senior guard who had 29 points by halftime. “I was just finding a way to help this team survive and move on.”

Survival didn’t seem like it would be an issue when the Beavers put together a 13 point scoring blitz early in the first quarter for a 13-2 advantage with 3:39 on the clock. The Lions, who entered the night averaging 2.5 treys per game then went on a long-range shooting binge, knocking down five three-pointers during the next 10 minutes.

“They were on fire. I think it kind of shocked us for awhile,” noted senior guard Brett Meyer.

It wasn’t just threepoint shooting that brought Minneapolis back into the game. SCHS had to go to their bench a little earlier and more often than they would have liked when starting guards Chantz Yager and Meyer had three fouls before halftime.

That was something which Minneapolis head coach Alex Hutchins, a SCHS graduate, had hoped might play to his team’s advantage.

“When I started coaching I had to adjust to the officiating up here. They call it a lot tighter,” he noted. “I learned from Coach (Glenn) O’Neil to play a swarming, inyour-face defense. That got Scott City into early foul trouble, some of their boys had to go to the bench early and that was to our advantage.”

It took a pair of late free throws by O’Neil to give the Beavers a nar-

Scott City’s Trey O’Neil drives inside for a basket over Minneapolis senior Gage Mortimer during the sub-state semi-finals on Friday night in Beloit.

(Record Photo)

row 36-34 halftime lead and throughout the second half it was a battle for Scott City. O’Neil’s threepointer with just over a minute left in the third period gave the Beavers a 50-44 advantage - their largest of the second half but Minneapolis wouldn’t go away.

While the Lions didn’t add another three-pointer after halftime, they were able to find repeated success in the paint.

“Defensively, we didn’t play well,” said an obviously unhappy Coach O’Neil. “We didn’t keep them out of the paint.

When you combine that with the threes they were making earlier in the game it’s going to lead to some pretty good offensive efficiency.”

Minneapolis grabbed its second lead of the half, 55-54, with 4:39 left in the game. Both teams

exchanged the lead until O’Neil put his team back on top to stay, 58-57, with 3:27 on the clock. The guard then rifled a pass to senior center Sloan Baker who converted a threepoint play for a 61-57 lead.

Twice more the Lions would cut the lead to a single basket - at 61-59 and again at 63-61 - the last with only 40 seconds to play. With Minneapolis forced to foul, O’Neil knocked down both opportunities with 35.1 seconds to play, followed

by Baker stepping in front of a pass for a steal that led to another two free throws by O’Neil for a 67-61 lead with just 19 seconds remaining.

Baker was the only other Beaver in double figures with 10 points while Meyer added seven.

Coach Hutchins, who has seen O’Neil play fre-

quently during his SCHS career wasn’t completely surprised at the senior’s offensive display.

“Trey is an excellent player. Even if you try to gimmick him with a box-and-one or triangleand-two him and Brett, you can figure that Trey is going to get his 25, maybe 30,” says Hutchins.

O’Neil admitted that he expected to see some defensive adjustments after he had scored 12 points in the opening period and during one stretch scored 17 consecutive points.

“I thought after the first quarter they might make some adjustments,” said O’Neil. “They laid off my three and allowed me to go above them and shoot it. I was going to take that all night.”

The defensive game plan was to give O’Neil his points and not allow any other Beavers to have

a big game, says Coach Hutchins.

“If Trey gets his 25 or 30 and no one else gets more than 10 or 11, we might be in business. But if Sloan gets 20, Brett gets 15 and Dylan (Hutchins) or Chantz get 10, then you’re going to be in trouble. It worked for the most part.

“We weathered a couple of haymakers from them early in the game and for us to be in a position to win, and to even have the lead late in the game, was all I could have asked for,” added Hutchins. “We have a seasoned group, but not as seasoned as the group we played against.”

“Give them credit,” says T. O’Neil. “They played a great game and made shots when they needed.

Fortunately, we’ve been in this situation before and we did what we needed down the stretch to get the win.”

The Scott County Record • Page 21 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Sub-State (continued from page 19)

for the final one point margin, to give the Beavers a 61-60 win and send them to their fifth consecutive state tournament.

The championship game was very similar to the previous night’s win over Minneapolis as the Beavers had moments when they put together some scoring runs and appeared ready to put the game away only to have Beloit climb back.

And, just like the previous night, the officiating was a big factor.

Senior center Sloan Baker sat out the final 4-1/2 minutes of the first quarter after picking up his second foul and was on the bench for the final 5:47 of the second period with his third foul. At the 5:43 mark of the third period he picked up his fourth foul and didn’t return to the floor until early in the fourth quarter.

In the first three quarters he played a total of eight minutes.

In addition, Meyer and Hess picked up their third fouls midway into the third period and senior guard Trey O’Neil was whistled for his third shortly afterwards.

“It’s just the worst feeling to see your teammates fighting through adversity and all you can do is sit there and watch,” noted Baker.

Even without Baker, the Beavers were in control for most of the first half, opening up their biggest lead of the game, 28-18, at the 2:16 mark of the second period following consecutive three-point baskets by junior guard Dylan Hutchins.

Beloit answered with a 13-2 scoring run that extended into the third period when two quick baskets to open the second half gave the Trojans what turned out to be their final lead of the game, 31-30.

Scott City junior Dylan Hutchins is able to keep his balance after Beloit’s Colson Reames tries to stop him from driving to the basket during second half action in the sub-state finals.

(Record Photo)

This morning, during practice, Coach O’Neil said the Minneapolis scouting report said they didn’t have to worry about me doing much scoring. He figured that Beloit wasn’t going to be too worried about me either. Coach said that if I have a chance to make a play, go make a play. I thought it was my time to do that.

Drake McRae

that was capped off by a third trey from Hutchins that gave them a 41-33 lead. However, it was early in that scoring run that Baker picked up his fourth foul and junior Drake McRae came off the bench and answered the call with the best night of his varsity career.

McRae drained a pair of three-pointers that put the Beavers on top, 38-31 and 44-39.

He scored eight of his 10 points in the third period.

McRae Provides Spark “Drake stepped up big when SCHS (23-1) followed with an 11-2 scoring blitz of its own he had to come in for me,” notes

Baker. “Give him a lot of credit for playing a great game.”

As if anticipating there might be an opportunity for McRae to make a big contribution in the championship game, head coach Glenn O’Neil had issued a challenge to the junior forward during the Saturday morning practice.

“This morning, during practice, Coach O’Neil said the Minneapolis scouting report said they didn’t have to worry about me doing much scoring. He figured that Beloit wasn’t going to be too worried about me either,”

says McRae. “Coach said that if I have a chance to make a play, go make a play. I thought it was my time to do that.

“Once that first shot fell it was a real boost to my confidence,” he added.

McRae’s offensive flurry was crucial in giving the Beavers a 49-44 edge at the end of three quarters, but Beloit point guard Bailey Vetter on consecutive possessions was able to drive into the lane for a pair of field goals that cut the lead to 4948. After that, both teams exchanged baskets the remainder of the night.

With SCHS protecting a 5554 lead, Meyer hit both ends of a one-and-one with 2:44 remaining. Beloit followed with a free throw and a Scott City turnover under their own basket and gave the ball back to the Trojans

at the 1:11 mark.

Scott City was able to get a long defensive rebound on Beloit’s next possession which set up the game-ending free throws.

“We were struggling on defense most of the night,” says Meyer. “But when it came down to the end of the game we were playing hard defense and knocking down our free throws.”

A night after scoring 42 points, senior guard Trey O’Neil finished with 13, but noted that the contributions from other players showed they aren’t a one-man team.

“Everyone works hard during the off-season and in practice.

We trust in everyone’s ability to shoot the ball and make plays,” says O’Neil. “Give props to everyone for doing what it took to make a contribution and get us the win.”

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The Scott County Record • Page 22 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Athletes pay for NCAA’s abuse of power There’s an arrogance emanating from the hallowed halls of the NCAA. It would seem that the hierarchy within the organization often abuse their power.

The NCAA by infractions Mac committee as- Stevenson sured athletic officials at Kansas that they would do their utmost to quickly conclude the investigation into some alleged wrongdoing by Cliff Alexander or his family. That was two weeks ago and Alexander has had to sit out three games while everyone waits.

Members of the NCAA Infractions Committee don’t seem to realize or care how much time and effort by the players, coaches, and administrations - goes into a college football or basketball season.

This isn’t just a KU issue. Examples abound of instances where the NCAA has made schools wait for extended periods of time before resolving cases on possible rules infractions.

And the rules are as complicated as the national tax laws.

The NCAA needs an overhaul. It’s unhealthy for such a small group of people to have so much power over so many athletic departments. Don’t think for a moment that inside politics aren’t often involved in all of these rules issues. In addition, the lack of transparency concerning investigations is disturbing.

It’s high time for the NCAA to realize they are working for collegiate athletics, not the other way around.

Why a regular season?

All the post-season college conference basketball tournaments are fun for the fans, but they should be eliminated.

What is the purpose of the league races? Take the Big 12 for example: Each team plays the other members twice in a home-andhome format. It can’t get much fairer than that.

Kansas won their 11th consecutive league championship and it was undisputed. What do the Jayhawks have to gain by possibly (See POWER on page 25)

O’Neil’s sub-state offensive show is one for the record books When you have athletes who have grown up performing on the biggest stage, it’s no surprise to see them respond when their season is on the line.

The Scott City boys did that not just once, but twice, during the Class 3A substate tournament in Beloit.

“Any time you have senior guards like Chantz (Yager), Brett (Meyer) and Trey (O’Neil) who have not only been on this stage, but bigger ones, they’re not going to have a deer-in-the-headlights look in a big moment,” observed former SCHS graduate and current Minneapolis head coach Alex Hutchins following Scott City’s 67-61 win against his team in the sub-state semi-finals.

“We knew we would have to play a very clean game to finish. A turnover here or there, a knockdown shot, a good pass by Trey and that’s the difference in the game. If you’re going to win bigtime games then you need a guard who can break a defense down and make good decisions.”

O’Neil did just that with a 42 point (15-of-23 FG) performance that also included six assists, four rebounds and three steals.

It was the biggest post-season offensive game for a Beaver since 2007 when Corbin Kuntzsch scored 40 points in the sub-state finals against Medicine Lodge.

But coaches adapt on both sides of the ball.

“We knew that after Trey carried us with the scoring on Friday that Beloit was going to run a box-and-one. Trey wasn’t going to get 15 shots,” said Coach O’Neil. As it turned out, Trey was 5-of-10.

“They had one player who was in man defense on him and two defenders would collapse on Trey whenever he drove to the basket. We saw them playing a similar defense in Friday’s game against Norton,” says the head coach.

Heading into Saturday’s game, Coach O’Neil knew the Beavers would likely need four players in double figures. They got three with Meyer (16), O’Neil (13) and Drake McRae (10), while junior guard Dylan Hutchins added nine.

Beloit’s junior guards Bailey Vetter and Colson Reames were a problem all night, finishing with 18 points each.

Both had the ability to drive to the basket and finish off scoring opportunities.

Again, adjustments were made.

Both guards were able to drive against Scott City’s smaller guards, after Beloit was able to screen O’Neil and Meyer.

After two quick driving baskets by Vetter to start the fourth quarter cut the lead to 49-48, O’Neil was moved to the top

of the zone to keep Beloit’s guards from penetrating and force them to alter their shots when they did get near the basket.

“We were pretty well able to shut (Vetter) down after that,” says Coach O’Neil.

Long Road Trip With a sub-state trophy safely stored away, Scott City fans are still questioning how the Beavers got assigned to a sub-state site nearly four hours from home.

“All the other schools, with the exception of Norton, were less than an hour away. And it’s just as tough for teams like Lakin and Cimarron to travel to Chaparral,” said Coach O’Neil, referencing the long trip those schools made to the southern sub-state site.

That’s a question that’s not likely to be answered by KSHSAA. While Beloit is certainly good enough to be in the state field, Coach O’Neil feels other teams can make a similar claim.

(See O’NEIL on page 25)

7th grade boys undefeated in GWAC With a 42-33 season-ending win over Ulysses, the Scott City Middle School seventh graders wrapped up an undefeated year in Great West Activities Conference action.

The GWAC champions brought the defensive pressure on Ulysses, outscoring the Tiger Cubs 20-4 in the second and third quarters to pull away for the easy win.

Brandon Winderlin poured in a game high 14 points while Hunter Yager and Parker Gooden added 11 and nine points, respectively.

Ulysses defeated the “B” team boys, 33-15.

V. Martinez scored five

points and Braylin Heim added four.

8th Graders Rip Ulysses Scott City’s eighth graders closed out their season with a 40-26 win over Ulysses.

Marshall Faurot scored 11 of his game high 17 points in the first quarter. Parker Vulgamore and Jack Thomas each added seven points.

The “B” team held on for a 34-31 win over the Tiger Cubs.

Shea Morris knocked down three treys to finish with a game high 13 points and Chase Cupp added six.

In just two quarters of play, the “C” team rolled to a 29-6

Eighth Grade Season Recap ‘A’ Team Season record GWAC record Non-league record

‘B’ Team Season record GWAC record Non-league record

‘C’ Team Season record

11-0 6-2 (co-champs with Holcomb) 5-1 (wins over Liberal West, Liberal South, Hays, Kenneth Henderson and Dodge City; only loss to Salina)

8-4 6-2 (split with Holcomb and Ulysses) 2-2 (defeated Liberal West and Liberal South; lost to Kenneth Henderson and Dodge City)

4-0

win.

Justin Hundertmark, Vance

Armstrong and Chase Cupp each scored five points.

The Scott County Record • Page 23 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Class 3A State • Boy’s Division March 12-14 • in Hutchinson 1) Sabetha (22-1) Thurs., March 12 6:30 p.m.

Sabetha 50-46

8) Riverton (18-5)

Friday, March 13 8:15 p.m.

4) Hesston (21-2) Thurs., March 12 8:15 p.m.

5) Wichita Collegiate (20-3) Saturday, March 14 6:15 p.m.

2) Scott City (22-1) Thurs., March 12 3:00 p.m.

7) Cheney (19-4) 3) Osage City (21-2) Thurs., March 12 4:45 p.m.

6) Wellsville (19-4)

1st Place

Scott City 47-44 Friday, March 13 4:45 p.m.

Wellsville 59-51 Sat., March 14 2:00 p.m.

3rd Place

Foul woes end DHS hopes of return to state tourney It was not a scene that Dighton High School head coach could have imagined.

Five of her starters sitting beside her on Dighton 34 the bench Ingalls 45 in the second period of a Class 1A-Division I sub-state championship game.

“It was frustrating,” said Felker as she had to pull starters from the game with early foul trouble.

Little wonder the Lady Hornets (17-5) fell victim to Ingalls, 45-34, in the tournament finals on Saturday evening.

After jumping out to a 12-4 lead and seemingly in control of the game, the momentum quickly shifted as the DHS starters began making their way to the sideline.

It began when point guard Sara Cramer and 5-foot-10 center Jordan Speer picked up their third fouls with six minutes left in the first half.

Two minutes later, two more starters joined them.

A fifth starter had her third foul and was on the bench with 2-1/2 minutes left in the half.

That left Felker with five junior varsity players on the court to finish out the half, allowing Ingalls to turn an eight point deficit into a 27-14 halftime lead.

“I couldn’t have asked for more from the junior varsity girls, but they aren’t scorers,” noted Felker. “They put their hearts on the line, but it wasn’t enough - not in a sub-state championship game.”

In addition to being outscored by 17 points in the second quarter, the Lady Hornets were called for 10 fouls and as JV girls were filling more spots on the floor that contributed to 12 turnovers.

The foul numbers were 17-to-7 in favor of Ingalls in the first half.

Speer, who is an offensive force for the Lady Hornets, managed to score 12 points on 4-of-7 shooting from the field despite only about eight minutes of playing time.

Kiara Budd added nine points and Dakota Hoffman finished with seven points and five rebounds.

second half, Dighton played much softer pressure on their zone defense in hopes of keeping them in the game.

Ingalls was able to stretch the lead to 33-14 before Dighton knocked down a couple of treys and was able to climb back into the contest.

They were down 33-25 at the end of three quarters and cut the margin to just seven points with 5:28 remaining.

“As soon as we got the game back into single digits, then all of our starters started picking up their fourth fouls,” Felker noted. “It was a unique game.”

Kiara Budd and Speer eventually picked up their fifth fouls. Three other starters had four fouls as the Lady Hornets finished with a total of 25.

Added Motivation While DHS had envisioned a third consecutive trip to the state tournament, they will instead have to use a bitter seasonending loss as motivation.

They only lose senior Second Half Comeback guards Regan Foos and With the starters back Madison O’Brien who in the lineup to start the (See DHS GIRLS on page 25)

Dighton boys make early exit from sub-state tourney With the sub-state tournament on their home floor and a No. 2 seed, the Dighton High School boys had high hopes of a trip to the Class 1A-Division I state tournament.

Hodgeman County had other ideas.

Hitting 9-of-11 from the field in the first q u a r t e r, Hodgeman 55 the LongDighton 40 h o r n s pounced on Dighton for a 20-5 lead and that proved to be the final margin in a 55-40 upset win on Friday night.

“Whether it was poor defense on our part or great offense on their part, we couldn’t find a way to stop them,” said head coach Dean Cramer of the first quarter scoring blitz.

Dighton (12-9) was able to climb back into the game with 17 points in the second quarter, cutting the halftime deficit to 3122. That margin bounced between seven and nine points throughout the second half.

“We struggled with our shooting all night. When that happens, you need to show a little more pa-

tience, which we didn’t do,” said Cramer. “We’d make a couple of passes and shoot rather than run through our offense several times and try to get a better shot closer to the basket.

“We ran multiple offenses to get something going, but we never ran anything long enough to make it work. You have to give the defense time to break down. After three or four times through the offense the defense can get tired, or be in the wrong spot.”

As a team, the Hornets were just 15-of-55 from the field (27%) “It’s not that we were taking bad shots, but when they aren’t falling you have to do something different,” he says. “We weren’t as disciplined as we needed to be and I’ll take the blame for that.”

Dighton was trailing by seven points in the fourth quarter, but missed opportunities kept them from putting more pressure on the Longhorns.

Sophomore Lake Lewis, who was 3-of-8 from beyond the threepoint line, finished with a team high 11 points. Ty-

Concern points they hope to make with this proposed constitutional amendment.

First, they want its passage to show groups like PETA and HSUS just how seriously we Kansans value our right to hunt, fish and trap, making them think twice about trying to force their agendas; sort of the ounce-of-prevention-is-worth-a-pound-ofcure principle.

Secondly, they want to

J&R Car and Truck Center

(continued from page 20)

show Kansas sportsmen and women that our state leaders take our hunting, fishing and trapping rights seriously. Also by doing this they want sportsmen across the country to take notice that Kansas also wants their business as well.

If ratified by two-thirds of the house and twothirds of the senate, HCR 5008 will appear on the ballet in the next regular

208 W. 5th St., Scott City 620-872-2103 800-886-2103

ler Lingg and Ryan Horn added 10 points each.

“We had a real nice season. A lot of people felt we wouldn’t be better than .500 with such a young team, but the boys came together and played well in the last half of the season,” says Cramer.

During a late-season stretch, the Hornets defeated state-ranked Hoxie and NWKL tournament runner-up Tribune.

I really felt we should have been in the championship game. It sure would have been nice to get there and see what happened,” Cramer said.

“You never know how many opportunities you’ll get to compete in a state tournament.”

At the same time, the Hornets are a young team with Wyatt Habiger the only senior.

“Our young kids gained a lot of experience and we have some incoming freshmen who will give us added depth,” says Cramer. “We have a lot to look forward to next season.”

In the sub-state finals, Satanta defeated Hodgeman County, 58-42, to earn a trip to the state tournament at Emporia.

election year in 2016.

I’m still not sure we need an amendment to our state constitution to guarantee our right to hunt, fish and trap here in Kansas, but things take awhile to grow on me.

In the mean time, let’s all exercise those rights to the fullest and Explore Kansas Outdoors.

Steve can be contacted by email at stevegilliland@idkcom.net

Come Grow With Us!

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The Scott County Record • Page 24 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Beavers Moments later they added two more free throws for a 21-14 lead their largest of the day.

Meyer, who scored a team high 14 points, followed with a basket and then, as the clock was winding down, a rebound ended up in the hands of Bo Hess who was quickly sandwiched between a pair of Cardinals. Hess turned around and shot a desperation, off-balance 15-footer that hit the bottom of the net as the buzzer sounded, cutting the lead to just three, 22-19.

“That was a huge basket. To play as badly as we did and to be down by only three points made us feel a little better about things,” said senior center Sloan Baker. “We knew if we just played our game in the second half we’d be all right.”

More Intensity The Beavers played with more intensity in the second half, taking their first lead of the game, 26-24, on a three-pointer

by Meyer with 5:23 left in the third period. The score was tied four times during the next five minutes - the final time at 32-32 on a pair of Baker free throws with 13.6 seconds to play.

Senior guard Trey O’Neil had been the focus of tight pressure defense throughout the game, scoring only five points in the first three quarters before he brought the Scott City crowd to life with back—to-back treys to open the final quarter.

That capped off a 28-11 SCHS scoring run that put the Beavers on top, 38-32 with 6:24 remaining.

It also forced the Cardinals to be a little less patient on offense.

“When they fell behind they couldn’t pass the ball around as much. It forced them to think more about taking the ball to us and trying to score,” noted Yager.

(continued from page 19)

An assist from O’Neil to Hess at the 2:32 mark gave the Beavers their largest lead of the game, 42-34, which they matched again at 45-37 following a free throw by Dylan Hutchins with 1:08 remaining.

If Scott City fans thought they could rest easy they quickly found out otherwise during a hectic final minute.

A Cheney basket was followed by a Scott City turnover in the backcourt.

Cheney then capitalized on Scott City’s aggressive defense which flooded the left side of the floor, leaving a shooter wide open on the right side for a three-pointer that made it a 45-42 game with 41.6 seconds to play.

As Meyer was trying to weave his way through the Cheney defense he was tripped up in the backcourt and sent crashing to the floor. The Cardinals were able to get a quick tie-up before Scott City could call a timeout. The officials called a jump ball with the possession arrow pointing to Cheney.

Baker, who played most of the second half with three fouls, came up with a huge defensive block and a rebound on the possession that followed. He was immediately fouled, but missed the front end of a one-and-one with 26.1 seconds to play.

The Beavers were playing loose defense as Cheney drove the lane for a basket with only seven seconds to play. Again, it was Baker making a heads-up play when he hesitated to pick up the ball out of bounds, and milked the clock for the full five seconds before finally making the inbounds pass to Meyer.

As Meyer raced by a Cheney defender he was fouled and once again sent to the floor. By the time an official had blown a whistle for the foul, the

Adversity Saturday. The emphasis during the Saturday morning practice session was to play smarter.

“You don’t take a chance on rebounds that are definitely going to the other team and avoid reaching so much,” was Coach O’Neil’s message.

After reviewing game film, O’Neil felt that most of the fouls called on the Beavers were legitimate, particularly when rebounding. He was more bothered by the lack of consistency in calls made at both ends of the floor.

When Baker picked up his second foul less than 4-1/2 minutes into the game and added a third at the 5:47 mark of the sec-

SCHS sophomore Bo Hess takes the ball to the rim during Thursday’s state tournament opener against Cheney.

(Photo by Larry Caldwell)

SCHS Player Stats vs Cheney Scott City Chantz Yager Bo Hess Dylan Hutchins Trey O’Neil Brett Meyer Drake McRae Sloan Baker

FG

3 pt.

FT

PTS

ORB

DRB

TR

AST

St

Min

1-2 3-3 0-2 4-10 5-9 0-0 4-5

1-2 1-1 0-0 2-7 2-2 0-0 0-0

0-0 0-0 1-2 1-2 2-2 0-0 3-5

3 7 1 11 14 0 11

1 1 0 0 1 1 3

1 3 0 5 3 0 4

2 4 0 5 4 1 7

0 1 2 4 1 1 0

1 0 0 1 0 0 2

16:42 27:02 15:35 32:00 31:43 5:32 31:26

game clock had expired and Scott City fans were celebrating their narrow win.

But there was still time for some late drama.

After a conference between the officials, both coaches were called to the scorer’s table. The Cheney coach was signaling that he wanted a full second put back on the clock, but all he got was 4/10 of a second.

Meyer stepped to the

line, just as he had done in the closing moments of the sub-state title game five days earlier, and calmly hit both ends of a one-and-one to give the Beavers a three point margin.

A desperation shot by Cheney from 60 feet away never came close as the buzzer sounded.

“We survived, but we’ve got to play better if we’re going to win our next couple of games,”

said Baker.

After three consecutive games that have gone down to the wire, Meyer says he is tired of just surviving.

“I want a beat-down,” he said emphatically.

After committing nine first half turnovers, the Beavers played a much more error-free game in the second half with just four more giveaways. The SCHS defense, however, was limited to a season

low of just four steals.

Baker, who was an efficient 4-of-5 from the field, finished with 11 points and seven rebounds. O’Neil also had 11 points to go along with five rebounds and four assists.

Another key to the win was Scott City’s ability to keep Cheney off the free throw line. After shooting 10-of-13 in the first half, the Cardinals were only 2-of-2 in the final 16 minutes.

guard Brett Meyer.

At the same time, Scott City fans may have also witnessed the definition of irony.

After dealing with officiating calls throughout the Beloit game that were questionable at best, Scott City’s final six points came at the free throw line.

Irony, maybe.

Luck, perhaps.

Maybe it showed how good the Beavers were and the level of composure - in order to win a game in which it felt you were outnumbered on the floor for most of the night.

Sour grapes? Not hardly.

Check the scoreboard.

What happened on Saturday night can’t be changed. Maybe it can be improved upon.

We witnessed officials on Friday and Saturday night who appeared out of their element. They couldn’t keep up with the pace of the game, were often times out of position to be making the call that they made and seemed to be trying to predict that a foul was about to occur.

That’s not fair to either team in a game with so much at stake.

Scott City and Beloit both have outstanding games. As SCHS senior Sloan Baker observed afterwards, “This felt like it should have been a

second round state game, maybe even a state championship game.”

Had KSHSAA put any thought into substate assignments, this game probably wouldn’t have occurred until the state semi-finals or finals.

Instead, Scott City continues to play for another week by the narrowest of margins and Beloit sits at home.

We feel badly for the Beloit players who deserve to be in the state tournament but aren’t.

We feel nearly as bad for the officiating crew on Saturday. Had they gotten out of the way they might have been able to witness one heck of a game.

(continued from page 19)

ond period, Coach O’Neil knew it would take more than a personnel adjustment.

“With Sloan out for most of the first half, the emphasis during our huddles was on the next play,” explains Coach O’Neil.

“Forget about what was called and what wasn’t called. Worry about making a play because you can’t change what’s already happened.”

Adversity makes you tougher and, in the case of the Beavers, brings them closer together.

“We’re already like a family, but we really had to come together tonight,” said senior guard Trey O’Neil following the

game.

Lack of Rhythm Of course, the number of fouls being called against the Beavers made it impossible for the team to be aggressive - which leads to transition baskets - or to create any kind of offensive flow.

SCHS was whistled for 19 fouls. At one time in the second half the foul disparity was 8-to-1 against SCHS. Fortunately, the Beavers were 9-of-10 at the charity stripe while Beloit was 14-of-18.

“It was hard to get any kind of flow in the game because every time we did something we were called for a foul,” said senior

The Scott County Record • Page 25 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Takedown Kids Wrestling Western Kansas Classic March 7, 2015 • at Hays 6-Years and under 46A: Kasey Rohrbough dec. by Juan Ortiz (SW Grapplers) 10-7; pinned by Aiden Shepard (Salina) 0:36.

46A: Kirby Rohrbough pinned by Triston Tomlinson (Great Bend) 0:54; pinned by Gunner Wente (Hoxie) 1:51.

55B: Blaze Gossman pinned Merrek Markley (Hays) 2:44; pinned Trace Smith (Oberlin) 2:37; dec. by Noah FloresSharp (Gray Co.) 5-2. Second place 55B: Brody Rohrbough pinned by Noah Flores-Sharp (Gray Co.) 0:49; pinned Kaydon Gulick (Hays) 0:24; pinned Trace Smith (Oberlin) 0:44; maj. dec. Merrek Markley (Hays) 11-0. Third place 7-8-Years-Old 49: Trenton Frank dec. by Bradlee Thompson (Ogden) 5-2; dec. Braison Sexton (Kobra) 3-0. Second place 55A: Matthew Wheeler dec. by Kaeden McCarty (Colby) 4-2; dec James Gordon (Clay Co.) 6-2; dec. Braxton Munk (Hoxie) 7-4; dec. by Trent Eck (Brawlers) 6-0. Third place 55B: Kamdyen Moore dec. Adan Ornelas (Lakin) 6-5; pinned by Cooper Wellbrock (Salina) 0:35.

73: Houston Frank pinned Andrew Fuller (David City) 1:50; maj. dec. by Ian Aouad (Brawlers) 11-0; dec. Brody Hayes (Clay Co.) 6-0; pinned Jake Meyer (Wamego) 1:25.

Third place 73B: Case Armendariz dec, by Rayn Gonzales (Dodge City) 7-1; pinned by Brody Oviatt (Wamego) 1:16; pinned by Jeremiah Hansen (Norton) 1:13. Fourth place 9-10-Years-Old 70: Collin McDaniel dec. Andrew Bretz (Hoxie) 3-2; pinned Knowlyn Egan (Derby) 1:21; dec. by Daniel Vines (SW Grapplers) 2-0. Second place 73: Zachery Rohrbough pinned Kolton Field (Norton) 2:55; dec. Aaron Wiegel (Hays) 7-0; dec. by Kelby Eck (Brawlers) 2-1; maj. dec. Easton Burton (Ellis) 9-0; maj. dec. Wyatt Weber (Great Bend) 12-0. Third place 76: Conner Armendariz dec. Jace Woodrow (SW Grappler) 3-0; dec by Darius Shields (Norton) 4-3; dec. Colin Kleysteuber (Greater Gold) 7-0; pinned Jace Woodrow (SW Grapplers) 1:57. Third place 120: Ronnie Weathers dec. Rylan Basart (Stockton) 6-2; sudden victory-1 Brandon Baker (Hoxie) SV-1 9-7; pinned Ashton Bearley (Atwood) 1:23; pinned Preston Bearley (Atwood) 2:31. First place 130: Lance Miller dec. Pierce Cunningham (Leavenworth) 4-1; dec. by Kobi Lawrence (Leavenworth) 7-0. Second place 150-HWT: Jarron Gregory pinned Calvin Sholey (Leavenworth) 0:37; pinned Jacob Roach (Great Bend) 0:48; pinned Brock Buresh (Phillipsburg) 0:24; pinned Damien Ortiz (Scott City) 0:56. First place 150-HWT: Damien Ortiz dec. Jacob Roach (Great Bend) 6-0; pinned Calvin Sholey (Leavenworth) 2:59; dec. Brock Buresh (Phillipsburg) 7-0; pinned by Jarron Gregory (Scott City) 0:56. Second place 11-12-Years-Old 96: Kale Wheeler pinned Mason Urban (Norton) 1:16; tech. fall by Alek Martin (Brawlers) 16-0; pinned Aidan Baalman (Hoxie) 0:39; maj. dec. Elijah Aouad (Brawlers) 12-0.

Third place 130: Caleb VanDegrift dec. by Blayze Standley (Hays) 125; pinned Caden Reeves (Bobcat) 0:20; dec. by Cole Amlong (Norton) 7-5.

140: Cale Goodman dec. Chanz Gerleman (Linn Co.) 6-4; maj. dec. by Gage Fritz (Great Bend) 11-1. Second place 13-14-Years-Old 95: Bralin Heim pinned by Drew Burgoon (Salina) 0:37; pinned by Colton Ketterl (Oberlin) 3:00.

95: Theron Tucker tech. fall Skylar Burkes (Great Bend) 17-0; pinned Derek Boxberger (Hoisington) 1:13; pinned by Evan Totty (Heartland) 3:09; dec. Konnor Griffin (Colby) 6-4; pinned by Chandler Schoenberger (Russell) 3:32. Fourth place 100: Justus McDaniel dec. Luke Richard (MOKWC) 5-0; dec. by Julion Falco (Salina) 6-2; pinned Tyler Martin (Phillipsburg) 0:15; pinned Connor Keller (St. Francis) 0:19. Second place 110-115: Kaden Wren maj. dec. Creighton Newell (Hays) 9-0; dec. Tristin Hauck (Ottawa Co.) 6-3; maj. dec. by Dayton Porsch (Hoxie) 11-1; pinned Gerardo Herrera (Greater Gold) 0:58; dec. Tristin Hauck (Ottawa Co.) 7-5. Third place 140: Wyatt Hayes pinned Blaine Russell (Phillipsburg) 1:01; tech. fall Noah Hansen (Plainville) 18-2; maj. dec. Dakotah Whiteley (Abilene) 13-4. First place

Power

(continued from page 22)

possibly playing three grueling games in three days at the Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City?

KU and every other team has a chance to sustain season-ending injuries or nagging physical problems that hinder their performance in the NCAA Tournament, which starts five days after the conference tournament.

There’s just one reason for these conference postseason tournaments: Money.

It would be fitting if each team could take 10 days off before starting the NCAA Tournament.

But it doesn’t work that way. There’s too much money involved.

Don’t be surprised if the selection committee for the NCAA Tournament puts Kansas and Wichita State in the same regional. It’s become common practice to place teams in locations close to their fan bases and the

Shockers and Jayhawks fit that scheme.

KU will likely be a two seed and Wichita a three.

It would certainly add to already fanatical interest if the two schools from the Sunflower State were to collide at the Big Dance.

That probably won’t happen, but we can hope.

The Big 12 Tournament this week in Kansas City promises to be highly competitive and exciting because the teams are so evenly matched. Many of the so-called experts claim that the Big 12 is the best conference in the nation from top to bottom.

We’ll see.

From here it appears that the biggest weakness in the Big 12 is the lack of quality centers. Most of the teams have talented players who are six-footeight or six-nine, but not many effective centers that go 6-10 and up. Maybe that won’t matter much this year.

O’Neil Eight teams in Class 3A won at least 16 games during the season, but fell short of qualifying for state. They include Minneapolis (16-5), ArmaNortheast (18-4), Atchison-Maur Hill (18-4), Norton (18-4), Burlington (19-3), Eureka (19-4) and Beloit (19-4).

Been Here Before When Meyer stepped to the free throw line twice in the final 2:44 and hit all four free throw attempts, it was a familiar situation . . . kind of.

“For as long as I can remember, whenever I was playing basketball at home I’d be at the free throw line in a state cham-

(continued from page 22)

pionship game and I’d make those all the time. I missed a lot at the beginning, but I’ve gotten better and I think those are things that help prepare you for these moments,” he says.

Battle Tested One advantage of coming out of the Beloit substate is the feeling that the team has been battletested.

“We definitely won’t be underprepared going into state,” says Baker.

“Playing in front of a Beloit crowd that was pretty rowdy and to hear them go quiet when we made a big play, and then to hear our crowd chanting ‘We are SC’ louder than we’ve

DHS Girls

heard it at Scott is pretty impressive.”

“Coach said it was like a mini-state game,” added Meyer. “It felt that way.”

Coach O’Neil agrees it was good preparation for state.

“The closeness of the games, in terms of pressure, gives you a better idea of what you’ll be seeing again this week in the state tournament. It’s a lot more realistic in a game than what you can manufacture in a practice,” he says.

“If you’re in that situation in a practice then you go to the next drill. If you’re in that situation in a game then you have to figure your way out of it.”

(continued from page 23)

made significant contributions as role players.

“A lot of people counted us out before the season began, but they made sure that we were in position to have a great season,” says Felker. “They figured out their roles and were a big part of our success.”

Dighton returns starters Speer, Cramer and Budd, along with junior Hoffman who logged significant minutes off the bench.

“The girls are already talking about what they want to do this summer. This loss will be a motivation,” Felker says. “It will make us work harder so we don’t fall short again.”

Outdoor Employment Opportunity Creel Clerk at Lake Scott The KANSAS DEPARTMENT OF WILDLIFE AND PARKS, Fisheries Division is seeking an individual to assist with administering an eight (8) month creel census at Scott State Fishing Lake. Employment will commence on approximately March 9, 2015, and run through October 31, 2015.

WORK DUTIES: The hired creel clerk will be responsible for traveling (in personal vehicle) around Scott State Fishing Lake interviewing anglers, recording data, and managing data on a desktop computer, during predetermined sampling periods on weekdays and weekend days. The months of March, July, August, September, and October the clerk will conduct interviews during twelve (12) sampling periods. During April, May, and June eighteen (18) sampling periods will be conducted. Some flexibility is allowed relative to scheduling sampling periods within monthly time frames.

Each sampling period is two (2) hours in length.

SALARY: Pay is $11.79 per hour. Private vehicle mileage will be reimbursed at the rate of fifty-six cents ($0.56) per accrued mile while the clerk is on duty. The creel clerk is paid bi-weekly. Vehicle reimbursement vouchers and subsequent checks are prepared and issued monthly.

REQUIREMENTS: Interested individuals must be at least 18 years of age, possess a valid Drivers License, and know the basics of the Windows Computer Operating System. Knowledge and identification of the major Kansas sportfish species would be helpful. Interested persons must portray a positive image and be willing to provide general public information and assistance as necessary. Individuals possessing a flexible schedule are highly desirable. Applicants will need to complete a KDWPT temporary employment application package.

HOW TO APPLY:

If interested, or for additional information please contact: Dave Spalsbury, District Fisheries Biologist Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks, and Tourism Cedar Bluff Area Office 32001 147 Hwy Ellis, KS 67637 (785)-726-3212, ext. 105 Email: david.spalsbury@ksoutdoors.com

DEADLINE TO APPLY: March 13, 2015

Good Luck!

The Scott County Record • Page 26 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Scott Community High School Beavers

Members of the Class 3A sub-state champion Scott Community High School basketball team for 2014-15 are (front row, from left) Justin Faurot, Chantz Yager, Brett Meyer, Sloan Baker, Dylan Hutchins, Jess Drohman and Matthew Jenkins. (Back row) assistant coach Brian Gentry, assistant coach Jordan Carter, Kyle Cure, Bo Hess, Trey O’Neil, Drake McRae, Drew Duff, Draven McRae and head coach Glenn O’Neil.

1st Place • Orange and Black Classic in Colby Great West Activities Conference Co-Champions Class 3A Sub-State Champions Season Record: 23-1 You have done an outstanding job of representing SCHS and our community.

Good luck in your quest for a Class 3A championship in Hutchinson this weekend.

Scott Cooperative Association 410 E 1st St. 872-5823 • 800-931-COOP www.scottcoop.com

Scott City Chiropractic 1101 Main • 872-2310

Chambless Roofing, Inc. 1102 S. Main St. 872-2679 or 800-401-2683

Midwest Energy

Stevens Veterinary Services 872-2727

Eisenhour & Graff 509 Church St., Scott City 224 N. 4th St., Leoti 872-3471 • 375-2272

501 Main St. • 872-1143

1130 W. Hwy 96 872-2315

State Farm Insurance Michael Trout, agent 112 W. 3rd • 872-5374

Berning Farms

1314 Main St. • 872-5854 www.heartlandfoodsstores.com

325 Main • 872-2161

D-214-0653 • M-214-0652

J&R Car and Truck Center

Spencer Pest Control

208 W 5th St. • 872-2103 JRCARandTRUCK.com

Box 258 • 200 E. Rd. 140

Rodenbeek & Green Agency

872-2870

601 S. Main St. • 872-5803

3171 W. Hwy 96, Scott City

910 W. 5th • 872-3508

620-872-5503

Precision Ag and Seed Services

Norder Supply, Inc.

Sager Pump Service

250 N. Pawnee Rd 872-3058

303 Glenn St., Scott City

1550 W. Rd 70 • 872-5242

Sourk Veterinary Clinic 1801 S. Hwy 83 • 872-7211 Fax: 872-7212

Helena Chemical 1711 S. Main St., Scott City 872-2156

Turner Sheet Metal 1851 S. Hwy 83 • 872-2954

416 S. Main St. • 872-0006 www.wbsnet.org

Braun’s Butcher Block

AgMax Crop Insurance

212 Main St., Scott City 872-7238

www.hughbinns.com

807 N. Main • 872-7244 americanimplement.com

1301 S. Hwy. 83 • 872-3722

Networktronic, Inc.

Dirk’s Earthmoving

Bling

181 N. Front St., Scott City 872-2174

815 W. 5th • 872-2900

Dairy Queen 1211 S. Main St. • 872-3215

HRC Feed Yard LLC

201 Main, Scott City 872-5655

ADM Grain

823 S. Main, Scott City 872-2372

101 S. Main • 872-5885 www.weci.net

408 Main • 872-2449

Joe and Jay Beaver Scott City • 872-2340

Scott Recreation Commission

872-2101 • 874-4486

American Implement

402 S. Main St. 872-1300

506 Main, Scott City 872-7224

habiger@wbsnet.org

Wheatland Broadband

Millrod’s

J.F. Beaver Advertising

Security State Bank

40 Pitman Ln • PO Box 243 872-7222

Wheatland Electric

Dec-Mart Furniture decmart@wbsnet.org

Platinum H Insurance

Wallace, Brantley & Shirley

Heartland Foods

Faurot Heating & Cooling, Inc.

www.VFFARMS.com

First National Bank

MTM Siding & Glass, Inc.

BK Auto Body

872-3057 • 872-1793

306 W. 5th St. 872-7214

Office Solutions, Inc.

L&M Western Tire

Scott County Hospital

1007 N. 8th St., Garden City 620-874-0014 www.officesolutionsinc.biz

1503 S. Main., Scott City 872-3393

201 Albert Ave., Scott City 620-872-5811 www.scotthospital.net

6550 W. Hwy 96 872-5328 www.hrcfeed.com

The Rec (Pool Hall)

Bartlett Grain 305 W. Bellevue • 872-3456

Percival Packing

318 Main, Scott City

710 W. 5th St. • 872-7199

Western State Bank

Midwest Mixer, LLC

1425 S. Main St., Scott City 872-2227 • www.wsbks.com

40 East Rd. 160 872-7251 • 800-280-7251 www.midwestmixer.com

The Scott County Record • Page 27 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

A small investment in a healthier way of life for . . .

2 1 2

1 7

3 5

4

6

5

8

8 Scott Community Wellness Center

1) Workout rooms with elyptical bikes, treadmills, etc. 2) Multi-purpose rooms available to the public. 3) Board meeting room. 4) Office space for SRC staff. 5) Locker rooms (no showers) and public restrooms. 6) Reception area. 7) Concession stand area. 8) Indoor walking track.

√ √ √ √

yourself your children your grandchildren your community

The proposed Scott Community Wellness Center will offer: •an indoor walking trail and activities for adults.

•a workout room available to the community at no charge during the day.

•2 full-sized gymnasiums open to the community and school district.

•a key card (for a monthly fee) that allows access to the workout area and gyms during non-business hours.

Don’t be confused by the question on the ballot.

It says the SRC is seeking authority to raise its levy up to four mills. The Scott Recreation Commission already receives funding from a 2.25 mill levy.

The SRC is only seeking an additional 2 mills.

One mill will be used for general operations. One mill will be used to retire the debt on the proposed wellness center.

invest in our community, wellness and recreation

vote ‘yes’ on the special question appearing on the April 7 general election ballot Paid for by the Scott Community Wellness Committee, Sidney Janzen, treasurer

The Scott County Record

Farm

Page 28 - Thursday, March 12, 2015

Ag Dept. still working on water overuse fines The Kansas Department of Agriculture has yet to propose increases to fines for overpumping groundwater, but there is widespread agreement they are necessary to preserve the state’s water supply and restore confidence in the enforcement system.

Jackie McClaskey, the department’s secretary, said in January that the department was preparing a proposal to increase the

ag briefs

Farm Bill tour reaches over 4,000 Farm producers and ranchers are facing many decisions regarding the Agricultural Act of 2014, also known as the 2014 Farm Bill.

To help with that decision-making, K-State Research and Extension held meetings throughout the state in January and February. Recordings of presentations offered at the meetings are now available online.

“More than 4,000 people attended the meetings, with many attending more than one to improve their understanding,” said Mykel Taylor, assistant professor of the Kansas State University Department of Agricultural Economics.

Surveys at these meetings asked people to rate the value of the information presented on the programs details and the tool. An average of 89% of attendees rated the information as “valuable” or “very valuable” on a four point scale.

•The Base Reallocation and Payment Yield update deadline that was originally February 27 is now extended to March 31. The deadline to make the program election remains as March 31.

Video available from the Wichita farm bill meeting include: •“The Nuts and Bolts of the 2014 Farm Bill (Agricultural Act of 2014),” presented by Art Barnaby (4-part series); •“Cotton in the 2014 Farm Bill”; •“Making “the Decision: Using the Texas A&M, University of Illinois and OSU/KSU Decision Tools” by Mykel Taylor; and •“Things You Need to Know,” a discussion from FSA. In addition, resources are available at www.AgManager.

Info. Additional information is available from Rich Llewelyn: rvl@ksu.edu or 785532-1504

fines.

Earl Lewis, assistant director of the Kansas Water Office, says the proposal is still a work in progress.

Beth Gaines, a spokeswoman for the agriculture department, said some proposed regulations may be ready for public input by the time the legislature recesses in early April. But it’s more likely, Gaines said, that

We do not, in any way, support the violation of private property rights, which are water rights. The penalty has to be sufficient to keep that from happening.

Kent Askren, director of public policy, Kansas Farm Bureau

the proposal won’t appear until the legislative session ends in May. The Ogallala aquifer is becoming dangerously depleted in some areas, and efforts are underway to prolong its supply.

Frustrations about

some irrigators pumping more than their water rights allow came to a head during the recent drought, when high commodity prices and low rain levels made it a savvy financial decision for some to absorb over-

pumping fines rather than risk crop loss.

In December 2013, one state lawmaker called the state’s overpumping fines “a joke.”

Concerns about the effectiveness of the state’s water rights enforcement existed before the drought, though.

Mark Rude, executive director of the Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District No.

3, said his district’s board requested that the state increase the fines in 2007, even though that part of Kansas is home to many of the state’s largest irrigators.

“We’re out there, we’re the users, but everyone wants a sense that the law is enforced,” Rude said.

“If the law’s not enforced, people lose heart.”

(See FINES on page 29)

Sharing the facts about GMOs Website bridges gap between perception, reality Frankenfood. Toxic wheat.

Genetically modified. Gluten.

Farmers and scientists recognize these topics as frustrating myth and misperception, but not all consumers may have enough knowledge to do the same.

That is the conclusion of a new report by the Pew Research Center, who interviewed both scientists from the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Wheat Scoop Julia Debes communications director

Kansas Wheat

and the general public with the same set of questions to see how views differed between the two groups on a wide range of scientific topics, including genetically modified foods.

The results show a big gap between perceptions. The majority of scientists (88 percent) responded that it was safe to eat genetically modified foods, while the majority of the general public (57 percent) said genetically modified foods were unsafe to consume.

The 51 percentage point divide was the largest opinion difference in the survey.

Furthermore, 57 percent of Americans said they believed scientists do not have a clear understanding about the health effects of genetically modified crops.

In order to build a bridge between scientific knowledge and consumer education, members of the Council for Biotechnology Information - including BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Monsanto Company and Syngenta - collaborated together to build a new website designed specifically to

answer any and every question on genetic modification - GMO Answers.

Kate Hall is the manager for partnerships and programs for the Food and Agriculture Section of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO).

She explained at the January Kansas Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers Conference that the website was designed to focus on the conversations and concerns consumers have on safety, affordability and nutritional value.

“Food is personal,” she said, detailing GMO Answers is an open forum. “This a pub(See GMOs on page 29)

Antibiotic McNugget comes at a price

M c D o n a l d ’ s Corporation’s decision to phase out human antibiotics from its U.S. chicken supply will add to costs of production in a tightmargin business that are likely to be borne mostly by poultry companies.

McDonald’s, whose top chicken suppliers include Tyson Foods, has given its producers two

years to eradicate all antibiotics used on humans from barns and hatcheries.

It’s going to be expensive and may take longer than planned: switching to antibiotic-free chickens could increase on-farm costs by up to three percent.

Perdue Farms, a supplier with about a third the volume of Tyson, said it’s

taken more than a decade and millions of dollars to make such a change.

McDonald’s will use its purchasing muscle as the world’s largest restaurant chain to avoid passing extra costs on to customers.

Officials with McDonald’s haven’t speculated how much the company’s costs for chicken

Ks. feedlot count up 2%

Market Report

Weather

Kansas feedlots, with capacities of 1,000 or more head, contained 2.05 million cattle on feed on January 1, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.

This inventory was up two percent from last year.

Placements during December totaled 330,000 head, down eight percent from 2013.

Fed cattle marketings during December totaled 370,000 head, down four percent from last year.

Other disappearance during December totaled 10,000 head.

County Plat Maps • Finney • Gove • Greeley • Kearney • Lane • Logan • Ness • Scott • Wichita • Wallace Pick them up today at:

406 Main • Scott City 620 872-2090

Closing prices on March 10, 2015 Bartlett Grain Wheat.................. $ 4.96 White Wheat ....... $ 5.11 Milo .................... $ 4.38 Corn ................... $ 3.96 Soybeans (new crop) $ 9.04 Scott City Cooperative Wheat.................. $ 4.96 White Wheat ....... $ 5.11 Milo (bu.)............. $ 4.38 Corn.................... $ 3.96 Soybeans ........... $ 9.05 Sunflowers.......... $ 16.90 ADM Grain Wheat..................

Milo (bu.).............

Corn....................

Soybeans............

Sunflowers..........

$ 5.04 $ 4.38 $ 3.96 $ 9.07 $ 17.45

H

L

March 3

43

27

March 4

31

18

March 5

48

16

March 6

62

21

March 7

69

29

March 8

63

30

March 9

68

26

P

Moisture Totals March

.00

2015 Total

.99

Ag Facts There are about 7,000 cherries on an average tart cherry tree (the number varies depending on the age of the tree, weather and growing conditions). It takes about 250 cherries to make a cherry pie, so each tree could produce enough cherries for 28 pies.

could rise. They describe the project as “an investment” to meet customer demand.

While veterinary use of antibiotics is legal, controversy has grown over routine feeding of antibiotics that are important to humans to otherwise healthy chicken, cattle and pigs in a bid to stave off disease and help the

animals grow more quickly.

The risk is that overuse could spur the creation of so-called superbugs that develop cross-resistance to antibiotics used to treat humans. Reuters found last year that major U.S. poultry firms were administering antibiotics to their flocks on the farm (See McNUGGET on page 29)

The Scott County Record • Page 29 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Meat prices, restaurant dining are trending higher The latest consumer price and spending data from the USDA’s Bureau of Labor Statistics show a continuation of food-price trends, with beef prices continuing upward ahead of other animal-based foods.

One notable piece of information from the reports, however, illustrates how the U.S. foodservice sector has fared as the economy improves.

According to monthly retail sales data, during January 2015, consumer spending on food away from home, at $67.4 billion, for the first time outpaced consumer spending on food to be consumed at home, listed at $64.1 billion.

This resulted from an increase of 8.5 percent in food-away-fromhome spending from January 2014 to January

Fines He said irrigators who follow the rules have begun to worry they can’t compete with those who flout them.

Rude said many considerations go into any change in pumping regulations, such as accounting for breakdowns and poor installation of water meters that measure flow rates.

But as long as honest mistakes aren’t too harshly punished, he said, the small number of people who willfully overpump should be held accountable.

“There’s strong support for more enforcement,” Rude said.

That support also extends from the state’s largest and most influential agriculture advocacy

group, the Kansas Farm Bureau.

“We do not, in any way, support the violation of private property rights, which are water rights,” said Kent Askren, the group’s director of public policy. “The penalty has to be sufficient to keep that from happening.”

Askren said any changes to the regulations should ensure that

the offenses, penalties and enforcement mechanisms are clearly communicated to water users.

Once the proposed regulations are released, he said he’d be better able to comment further.

“That’s been discussed for quite some time,” Askren said. “So we’re just kind of waiting to see them.”

(continued from page 28)

Even though there is no genetically modified wheat currently in the commercial grain supply, that does not mean consumers have not submitted questions about it.

Questions have addressed the result of breeding semi-dwarf wheat on gluten content (none) and the effect of using glyphosate on wheat at harvest (which less than five per-

McNugget far more pervasively than regulators realized.

Sandwich chain Chickfil-A in 2014 gave its producers five years to meet its commitment to go antibiotic-free for chicken.

Perdue is a major supplier to Chick-fil-A. Costco Wholesale Corp., the nation’s thirdlargest retailer that annually sells 80 million rotisserie chickens, acknowledged there is a “large”

and food-away-fromhome spending narrowed.

Lower gasoline prices likely contributed to the surge in restaurant spending during January, as smaller fuel bills freed up consumer dollars for spending elsewhere.

Overall food-price inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was moderate over the past year, showing an increase of 3.1 percent for

(continued from page 28)

GMOs lic question and answer where anyone can come and ask any question they have on food and agriculture.”

GMO Answers draws on more than 100 volunteer experts to answer submitted questions, including “conventional and organic farmers, agribusiness experts, scientists, academics, medical doctors and nutritionists.”

2015. Spending on food for at-home consumption increased just 3.7 percent during the same period.

During the recession years beginning in 2007, consumer spending in restaurants dropped considerably relative to spending for food at home. But as the economy and consumer confidence recovered, restaurant spending rebounded and the spread between food-at-home

cent of American famers do).

Industry experts Dr. Brett Carver, Oklahoma State University wheat breeder, Dr. Kevin Folta, professor and chair of the University of Florida horticultural services department, and Dr. Andrew Kniss, associate professor of weed ecology and management at the University of Wyoming, provided detailed responses.

Wheat researchers at Kansas State University are conducting valuable research into genetic modification that provides increased resistance to destructive wheat viruses, additional heat tolerance and even could someday create a celiac safe wheat.

Consumer acceptance will be needed, however, to bring those benefits to the farm and to the dinner table.

(continued from page 28)

appetite for chicken free of these medically-important antibiotics.

The company is aware of the supply difficulties and won’t commit to a timeline.

Who pays the price?

Some of the extra costs of cutting out antibiotics could be borne by franchisees.

But most analysts expect McDonald’s to

push the costs back onto its suppliers, who may not have the market power to resist. The top four U.S. chicken processors control about 53 percent of the domestic market.

McDonald’s “carries a lot of clout with suppliers,” and some of them are dependent on the chain for survival.

Tyson and Keystone Foods, part of Brazilbased Marfrig Global

Foods, say they have significantly reduced medically-important antibiotic use in their flocks and are positioned to meet McDonald’s and other customers’ needs.

Perdue, the fourthlargest domestic chicken producer, began removing antibiotics used for growth promotion in 2002 amid consumer questions about what was being put into the animal feed.

food away from home and 3.3 percent for food at home.

Meat, dairy and poultry prices generally increased more than those for other foods over the past year, particularly in the case of beef.

The CPI for beef and veal increased by 19 percent from January 2014 through 2015. This year, ERS predicts beef and veal prices will increase

another 5-6 percent.

Pork prices in January fell by 0.1 percent from the previous month, but remained 7.4 percent higher than a year earlier.

For 2015, ERS expects pork prices to increase by 2.5 to 2.5 percent.

The prices for dairy products are 3.8 percent above January 2014.

ERS predicts dairy prices to increase 2-3 percent in 2015.

$

7

The Scott County Record • Page 30 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Call 872-2090 today!

Per Week

The Scott County Record Professional Directory

There’s no better way to reach your potential customers in Scott County and the surrounding areas.

Agriculture

Preconditioning and Growing

• 45 Years Experience • Managed and owned by full-time DVM • 2,000 Head capacity Office - 872-5150 • Scott City Stuart Doornbos Home - 872-2775 Cell - 874-0951

Sager’s Pump Service • Irrigation • Domestic • Windmills • Submersibles

Cell: 874-4486 • Office 872-2101

Construction/Home Repair

CHAMBLESS ROOFING Residential

All Types of Roofing

Commercial

Cedar Shake and Shingle Specialists Return to Craftsmanship

Attention to Detail and Quality Guaranteed 620-872-2679 • 1-800-401-2683

Dirks Earthmoving Co.

Clifton Smith Construction

Formerly J.R. Smith, Handyman Call:

620-214-2674

20 years experience See us for any type of work!

Painting • Remodeling • Handicap Bath Remodels

Licensed and Bonded

SPENCER PEST CONTROL RESIDENTIAL – COMMERCIAL

Precision Land Forming of terraces and waterways; feed lot pens and ponds; building site preparation; lazer equipped

Termite Baiting Systems • Rodents Weed Control • Structural Insects Termite Control

Richard Dirks • Scott City, Ks.

Box 258, Scott City • (620) 872-2870

(Home) 872-3057 • 877-872-3057 (Cell) 872-1793

ELLIS AG SERVICES • Custom Manure Conditioning • Hauling and Spreading • Custom Swathing and Baling • Rounds-Net or Twine • Gyp and Sand Sales • Custom Harvesting Call Brittan Ellis • 620-874-5160

Automotive

Contact:

Landscaping • Lawn/Trees

Berning Tree Service David Berning • Marienthal

620-379-4430

Tree Trimming and Removal Hedge and Evergreen Trimming Stump Removal

Fully Insured

SCOT AYTES • 874-1646 t Paint i

Red

Medical

Specializing in all coatings

or any other color Paint inside and out residential, commercial, and industrial.

Free estimates and 16 plus years of experience.

PC Painting, Inc. Paul Cramer 620-290-2410 620-872-8910 www.pcpaintinginc.com

Pro Ex II

Over 20 Years Experience

Professional Extermination Commercial & Residential

• Termites • Rodents • Soil Sterilization • Pre Treats • Lawn Care • Fly Parasites

John Kropp, Owner • Scott City 874-2023 (cell) • 872-3400 (office) • prox2@live.com

RT Plumbing Rex Turley, Master Plumber

Residental and Commercial Plumbing Water Systems, water lines, sewer cleaning faucets and fixtures, garbage diposals and more

Marienthal, Ks.

620-909-5014 (H) • 620-874-4128 (C)

Walker Plumbing, Inc. Backhoe & Trenching services • Irrigation & gas leak repairs • Full-line irrigation parts T-L center pivot dealer Floor heat systems Pump & install septic systems Boring equipment

423 S. Mesquite Rd. • Scott City • 872-2130

Charles Purma II D.D.S. P.A. General Dentistry, Cosmetics, and Insurance Accepted

We welcome new patients.

324 N. Main • Scott City • 872-2389 Residence 872-5933

Pro Health Chiropractic Wellness Center (Scott City Chiropractic) “TLC”...

Technology Lead Chiropractic

Dr. James Yager 110 W. 4th St. • Scott City • 872-2310 Toll Free: 800-203-9606

Horizon Health For your home medical supply and equipment needs!

We service and repair all that we sell.

1602 S. Main • Scott City • 872-2232 Toll Free : 1-866-672-2232

$

7

The Scott County Record • Page 31 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Call 872-2090 today!

Per Week

Professional Directory Continued

Services

Berning Auction “Don’t Trust Your Auction to Just Anyone”

For all your auction needs call:

(620) 375-4130

Dr. Jeffrey A. Heyd

Russell Berning Box Q • Leoti

Optometrist Treatment of Ocular Disease • Glaucoma Detection Children’s Vision • Glasses • Contact Lenses

Complete family eye center!

106 W. 4th • Scott City • 872-2020 • Emergencies: 214-1462

Sandy Cauthon RN

105 1/2 W. 11th St., Scott City 620-874-1813 scottcitymfr@gmail.com FB: Scott City Myofascial Release

Call me to schedule your Myofascial Release

For Sale

Help Wanted

FRESH PIANO inventory. We’ve been all over the country rounding up new (and “like new”) pianos. 17 new arrivals. Mid-America Piano, Manhattan. 800-950-3774. www.piano4u.com.

C O N T R A C T SALESPERSONS to sell aerial photography of farms. Commission basis, $5,000-$8,000/mo. Proven product and earnings.

Travel required. More info at msphotosd.com or call 877-882-3566.

––––––––––––––––––––– FULL-TIME LAKE caretaker and fulltime street operator in Anthony, Ks. Salaries DOQ. Excellent benefits. Information: www. anthonykansas.org/jobs.

Call 620-842-5960. Jobs are open until filled. EOE.

Education MEDICAL BILLING trainees needed. Become a medical office assistant.

No experience needed.

Online training can get you job ready. HS diploma/GED and PC/Internet needed. 1-888-589-9683.

––––––––––––––––––––– CAN YOU DIG IT? Heavy equipment operator training. 3-week program.

Bulldozers, backhoes, excavators. Lifetime job placement assistance with national certifications. VA benefits eligible. (866) 740-7697.

20/20 Optometry

Scott City Myofascial Release

Kansas Classifieds Ad Network

The classified ads below are appearing in 147 Kansas newspapers with a total circulation of 500,000 the classified display ads appear in 142 Kansas newspapers with a total circulation of 457,000. KCAN line ad is $300 for up to 25 words and $12 each additional word. A 2x2 display ad is $800 per insertion and a 2x4 display ad is $1,650 per insertion. To find out more, contact The Scott County Record at 872-2090.

Bolen Enterprises Prairie Dog Control •34 years experience •Bonded/Licensed

Bob Bolen 785-821-0042 • Fax 785-852-4275

Auction LAND AUCTION. Thurs., March 26. 360 acres +/-. Dickinson County. Offered in 5 tracts, expired CRP and pasture.

6 miles north of Chapman, Ks. Ruckertauctions.com.

785-565-8293.

Homes AVOID TAX REFUND regret. Invest in new 3-4 BR Clayton Mfd.modular home and receive up to $7,500 gift card. Lenders offering $0 down for land owners. Less than perfect credit OK. 866-858-6862.

Retail

SOCIAL SECURITY disability benefits. Unable to work? Denied benefits? We can help! Win or pay nothing. Contact Bill Gordon and Associates at 1-800-737-4275 to start your application today.

Over 200 appliances in stock!

COMPARE OUR PRICES!

We have Reverse Osmosis units in stock.

Remember us for parts in stock for all brands of all appliances.

Sales and Service Days • Mon. - Sat. Deliveries • Mon.-Sat.

Largest Frigidaire appliance dealer in Western Ks. 508 Madison • Scott City • 872-3686

Computer Sales, Service and Repair Custom computers!

Networking solutions!

Mon. - Fri. 9:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.

402 S. Main, Scott City • 872-1300

NAVAJO HIRING CDL-A truck drivers.

Plenty of miles. No-touch freight, new equipment.

Great benefits. 6 months recent tractor/trailer exp. in last 3 years. Call 866913-3701.

––––––––––––––––––––– BUTLER TRANSPORT. Your partner in excellence. Drivers needed.

Great hometime. $650 sign-on bonus. All miles paid. 1-800-528-7825. www.butlertransport.com.

––––––––––––––––––––– NO EXPERIENCE? Some or lots of experience? Let’s talk. No matter what stage in your career, its time. Call Central Refrigerated Home (888) 670-0392. www.

CentralTruckDrivingJobs. com.

Legal Aid

Gene’s Appliance

Networktronic, Inc.

Truck Driving

Northend Disposal A garbologist company.

Scott City • 872-1223 • 1-800-303-3371

Brent Rogers

Sales Consultant b.rogers@officesolutionsinc.biz

Office (620) 276-3131 Toll Free 1-800-794-9052 Cell (620) 874-0014 Fax (620) 276-8876 1007 N. 8th, Garden City, KS 67846 www.officesolutionsinc.biz

District 11 AA Meetings Scott City

Unity and Hope Mon., Wed. and Fri. • 8:00 p.m.

807 Kingsley Last Sat., Birthday Night, 6:30 p.m.

All open meetings, 874-8207 • 874-8118

Dighton Thursday • 8:30 p.m.

535 Wichita St. All open meetings, 397-2647

Dining Tuesday-Saturday 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

www.reganjewelers.com

412 N. Main • Garden City • 620-275-5142 All Under One Roof

Revcom Electronics

Your RadioShack Dealer Two-way Radio Sales & Service

C-Mor-Butz BBQ

Barbecue, the only sport where a fat bald man is a GOD...

& Catering

Kyle Lausch 620-872-4209

Locally owned and operated since 1990

1104 Main • Scott City • 872-2625 Support your hometown merchants who back your school and community activities throughout the year!

Bryan Mulligan & Chris Price 620-874-8301 & 620-874-1285

www.cmorbutzbbq.com • cmorbutzbbq@gmail.com

Classifieds

The Scott County Record • Page 32 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Buy, sell, trade, one call does it all 872-2090 ot fax 872-0009

Classified Ad Deadline: Monday at 5:00 p.m.

Classified Ad Rate: 20¢ per word. Minimum charge, $5.

Blind ad: $2.50 per week extra. Card of thanks: 10¢ per word. Minimum charge, $3. Classified Display Ad rate: $6.00 per column inch.

Classified advertising must be paid in advance unless business account is established.

If not paid in advance, there will be a $1 billing charge.

Tear sheet for classified ad will be $1 extra.

Card of Thanks We have so many people to thank for their support during Dan’s recent stroke.

The Scott City EMS for their quick response and care, Dr. Cupp, and Melissa Batterton and the staff at the Scott County Hospital.

Thanks to the Scott County Hospital Caring Hearts Fund for their gift to help with expenses.

And we thank our family, friends and the United Methodist Church family for their prayers, cards, phone calls, visits and food.

We are so appreciative of this caring community.

God Bless all of you, Dan and Becky Ellis Thank you to all the wonderful people of Scott City who have supported us through Marilee’s rounds of radiation treatments in Houston. The calls, cards, texts, emails, gifts, letters and, of course, the prayers - were and are greatly appreciated.

Thank you to those who supported us financially by donating to our bank account. A special thanks to Rod Haxton for publishing the notice free of charge. This money will help cover our expenses while traveling and when we are in Houston.

Thank you to our neighbors for keeping an “eye on the place” so we could have peace of mind. Thank you Chuck and Becky Ellis for taking care of our cats and bird and making sure they had food and water. And for the wonderful job of sorting our mail and forwarding the necessary pieces so we could stay caught up on the news, bills and personal mail.

Last, but certainly not least, a very special thank you to our families for their concern, calls, visits and prayers.

It is wonderful to have family support at a time such as this.

It is great to live in a community such as this and to have all of this support.

God bless all of you, Darrell and Marilee Cramer

UPCOMING AUCTIONS SCOTT CITY, KS

Estate of Lila Selfridge

• SUN., MAR. 15TH 2:00 p.m. • 507 Court

100’s OF COINS-MOST AU & BU Ss, Halves & more! incl.; 20 + GOLD COINS

“Dan” Depperschmidt Estate

• SAT., MAR. 21ST 10:00 a.m. • 507 COURT

TOOLS • HOUSEHOLD • COLLECTIBLES • BOOKS • 1990 GMC Sierra PICKUP

620-872-2957

paragons@wbsnet.org auctionzip.com/brittan

LOVELY BRICK HOME

Apartments available for qualifying tenants 62+ or disabled with rental assistance available.

Hours: Tuesday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. by appointment Call Steve 872-2535 or (620) 255-4824.

1 3/4 baths up with full

basement and 3/4 bath, 2 car garage, on corner lot.

NEW LISTING

STARTER

baths, large family room

and detached garage on a large corner lot. Stucco

exterior with new windows throughout. $72,500

Thomas Real Estate

www.thomasreal-estate.com

914 W. 12th Scott City, Ks. 67871 (620)-872-7396 Cell: (620)-874-1753 or Cell: (620)-874-5002

HIDE AND SEEK STORAGE SYSTEMS. Various sizes available. Virgil and LeAnn Kuntz, 41tfc (620)874-2120.

––––––––––––––––––––– MULTIPLE HOUSES FOR RENT. 1 bedroom homes available. Also 8x10 storage units available. Stop by PlainJans to fill out an application or 01tfc call 872-5777.

––––––––––––––––––––– STORAGE UNITS in various sizes available at The Storehouse, Don and Trudy Eikenberry 62007tfc 872-2914.

COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS for sale 40’x60’ metal shop building and a 133’x45’ (approx.) round top building.

Serious inquiry’s only seller is a real estate agent selling own property 87426tfc 5109 or 874-2124.

––––––––––––––––––––– 4-BEDROOM HOME FOR SALE, 2 baths, 2 living rooms, 1 car attached garage, fenced-in backyard and covered patio. Motivated sellers asking $102,000! Schedule a showing today 620-21429t4c 1681.

WANTED TO BUY. Stored corn. Call for basis and contract information.

1-800-579-3645.

Lane County Feeders, Inc. 32tfc ––––––––––––––––––––– WANTED TO BUY. Wheat straw delivered.

Call for contracting information. Lane County Feeders. 397-5341. 44tfc

USD 466 NEEDS substitute route bus drivers. For applications and additional information contact Lance Carter at 620-872-7655.

Notice COLBY GUN/COIN SHOW, March 14-15, Sat., 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. and Sun., 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. at the Community Building, Colby. Admission $4. Information 308-995-2258. 31t1c

SEASONAL LANDSCAPING Scott Community Golf Course is looking for seasonal help through Oct. 31, 2015.

Duties include: mowing, raking sand traps, weed eating, picking up trash, able to lift 50 lbs., mower up-keep, work with the public.

Work days: Monday-Friday every other weekend and tournement days. Early a.m. work start times.

You may pick up an application at the Golf Course Clubhouse front counter, 806 N. Main, Scott City,Ks. 67871.

30t2c

3+1 bedrooms, 1 3/4 baths, full basement, family room down, enclosed back porch, storage shed, wood fenced in yard on a large lot.

Services WANTED: Yards to mow and clean up, etc. Trim smaller trees and bushes too. Call Dean Riedl, (620) 872-5112 or 8744135.

34tfc ––––––––––––––––––––– FURNITURE REPAIR and refinishing. Lawn mower tune-up and blade sharpening. Call Vern Soodsma, 872-2277 or 874-1412.

36tfc ––––––––––––––––––––– MOWER REPAIR, tuneup and blade sharpening.

Call Rob Vsetecka at 620214-1730.

36tfc ––––––––––––––––––––– METAL ROOFING, SIDING and TRIMS at direct-to-the-public prices. Call Metal King Mfg., 620-872-5464. Our prices will not be beat!

37tfc ––––––––––––––––––––– “JEN’S GROOMING” also offering boarding.

By Jennifer Milner, hours: 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. call 620-214-0097. Located in 09tfc Shallow Water.

––––––––––––––––––––– INSULATION THAT LASTS. Home, Ag Shop or Business. Call Spray Foam It, LLC, Ryan Koehn 620-872-1517 or Dwight Koehn 620-87231t4c 1496.

02tfc

––––––––––––––––––––– POSITION AVAILABLE in swine finish facility in Scott County. Good schedule and benefits. Call 620-874-1017 or 620-21428tfc 1864.

––––––––––––––––––––– LOOKING FOR MAID, 3-5 days per-week, pleasant place to work. Stop by and pick up application at the Lazy R Motel, 710 E. 29tfc 5th, Scott City.

––––––––––––––––––––– F U L L - T I M E POSITIONS for Landfill and Road Department.

For application stop by Wichita County Road Department, 501 E. Broadway, Leoti. Inquiries may call 620-375-2814.

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––––––––––––––––––––– FA R M W O R K E R , 4/19/15-11/1/15, Anderson Harvesting, Bridgeport, Nebr., 1 temp., job.

Operate harvesting machines to harvest crops in Nebr. Adjust speed of cutters, blowers, conveyors, and weight of cutting head. Change cutting head for crop. Drive truck to transport produce to storage area. Drive truck to haul harvesting machines b/w work sites. Service machinery/make in-field repairs. $13.59/hr.,-$1800/ month, ¾ work guarantee, tools/equipment/housing provided, trans and subsistence expense reimbursed. Apply at Kansas Works, 620-227-2149.

31t1c Job #265554.

DIRECTOR

have their own space.

wood burning fireplace,

SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT

Just move in, this

2-bedroom home is ready and waiting, FA/CA,

appliances, SA garage,

steel siding and sprinkler.

Great area! Only $69,900.

HUGE

With over 1,800 sq. ft., on one level everyone will 3-bedrooms, 2 baths,

cathedral ceiling in living fenced yard, shed and

home with 5 bedrooms, 2

Help Wanted

Grisell Memorial Hospital is seeking a qualified candidate to serve as the Director of Lab and Radiology.

GMH is a non-profit, 12 bed, critical access hospital with outpatient clinics and an attached LTCU in Ransom.

Candidates must possess an Associate’s Degree in Medical Lab Technology from an accredited institution with a current ASCP or equivalent certification.

Interested candidates should send their resume, cover letter and salary requirements to: Kris Ochs, Administrator, Grisell Memorial Hospital, 210 South Vermont, Ransom, Ks. 67572 or email: kochs@grisell.org 31t2c

room, enclosed patio large

Well kept 1 1/2 story

Agriculture

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Two large bedrooms, one average bedroom, plus

Real Estate

Pine Village Apartments 300 E. Nonnamaker

BRITTAN AUCTION Fred Brittan, Auctioneer SCOTT CITY, KS

Rentals

16’x 25’ barn, oversized SA garage.

Lots of updates!! Home $160,000/ 3 extra lots $15,000.

Lawrence and Associates

Deb Lawrence, GRI Broker Shorty Lawrence, Sales Assoc.

513 Main • Scott City 872-5267 ofc. 872-7184 hm. lawrenceandassocrealty.com Sheila Ellis, Broker Assoc.

872-2056 Kerry Gough, Sales Assoc.

872-7337 Russell Berning, 874-4405 www.berningauction.com

Scott County Sheriff’s Department is accepting applications for: Jailer Applicants must be 21 years of age with a valid driver’s license and clean driving record. Must have a high school diploma or GED equivalent. Looking for someone who is a team player. Must be willing to do shift work including days, nights, holidays and weekends. Background checks and UA’s completed on all prospective applicants. Applicants must not have any felony or misdemeanor charges or convictions.

Scott County offers an excellent benefit package that includes BCBS health, KPERS, paid vacation, sick leave, holidays and furnished uniforms and equipment.

Applications may be obtained at and returned to: Sheriff Office 602 W. 5th, Scott City • (620) 872-5805

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ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS If you want to drink, that’s your business.

If you want to stop, that’s ours.

Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Tuesday nights at 8:30 p.m. at the United Methodist Church basement (use west door).

412 College, Scott City.

Al-Anon at same time and location.

Contact: 874-0472 or 872-3137. 30t52 SECRETARY USD 466 is seeking a secretary at Scott City Middle School.

Applicant must have a High School Diploma, be organized, dependable, have good computer skills, positive attitude, good communication skills, and willingness to work with students and the public.

Responsibilities include answering the phone, monitoring student attendance and data, and duties assigned by the principals.

Job begins August 3, but would need to be available for paid training part of May and June.

For more information contact: Jana Irvin at 872-7640.

Applications may be picked up at: Scott City Middle School 809 W. 9th St. Scott City, Ks. 67871 Applications and Resumes need to be turned in by April 20, to Scott City Middle School.

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The Scott County Record • Page 33 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Employment Opportunities SPECIAL EDUCATION PARA-PROFESSIONAL

MAINTENANCE WORKER The City of Scott City is accepting applications for a full-time maintenance worker in the Parks Department.

Benefits include: BC/BS, vacation, and sick leave.

Applications may be obtained at City Hall, 221 W. 5th St., Scott City.

Applications will be accepted until position is filled.

EOE Employer

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MAINTENANCE WORKER The City of Scott City is accepting applications for a maintenance worker in the street, water and sewer department.

Benefits include: BC/BS, vacation, and sick leave.

Applications may be obtained at City Hall, 221 W. 5th St., Scott City.

Applications will be accepted until position is filled.

EOE Employer

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CATTLE CLERK Cattle Clerk- Royal Beef Feed Yard, a Division of Irsik & Doll, is now taking applications for a positive, self-motivated, multi-tasking, professional.

Applicants should be reliable, hard working, and self motivated. Tasks are primarily clerical in nature.

However, applicant needs good customer service skills and must be proficient in Microsoft Office, and eager to learn new systems and software. Previous feed yard experience is preferred, attention to detail, flexibility, respect for confidentiality, and the commitment to take ownership.

Competitive wages are offered with a full benefits package including, 401(k) with company match, profit sharing plan, 100% paid medical and dental insurance for employee, 100% paid short/long term disability insurance, life insurance, paid vacation, sick leave, and career advancement opportunities.

Apply in person or send resume to: Royal Beef, ATTN: Jon Heiman, 11060 N. Falcon Rd., Scott City, KS 67871.

Irsik and Doll is an EOE.

PARK LANE NURSING HOME

For High Plains Educational Cooperative Unified School District No. 466 is seeking a special education Para-Professional in each school building to work with students.

The positions are available as soon as possible.

For more information and applications please contact: Susan Carter Board of Education Building 704 College, Scott City, KS 67871 24tfc

Scott County Sheriff’s Department is accepting applications for: Deputy Sheriff Applicants must be 21 years of age with a valid driver’s license and clean driving record. Must have a high school diploma or GED equivalent. Preferred applicant needs to be a Kansas Certified Law Enforcement Officer. But we are willing to train the right person.

Looking for someone who is a team player. Must be willing to work shift work including days, nights, holidays and weekends. Background checks and UA’s completed on all prospective applicants.

Applicants must not have any felony or misdemeanor charges or convictions.

Scott County offers an excellent benefit package that includes BCBS health, KPERS, paid vacation, sick leave, holidays and furnished uniforms and equipment and up-to-date patrol vehicles.

COORDINATOR Scott Community Foundation seeking a full-time Community Development Coordinator to develop and execute community strategies.

Responsibilities include management of public relations, marketing, and donor development related activities.

Must have intermediate to advanced computer skills for website maintenance, proficient in Microsoft Word, Publisher and Excel. Bachelors or Masters Degree preferred.

Salary will range from $35,000-40,000 annually plus benefits based upon experience.

Please send resume by March 20 to: Ryan Roberts, Scott Community Foundation, 303 Court, Scott City, Ks. 67871.

If you have additional questions please call 620-872-3790.

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210 E. Parklane Scott City, KS 67871 Or visit us at our website: www.parklanenursinghome.org “Quality Care Because We Care”

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SERVICE TECHNICIAN American Implement, Inc., a progressive John Deere agricultural dealership in Southwest Kansas, is experiencing significant growth and is currently seeking qualified individuals to fill the position of Service Technician in the Scott City location.

Responsibilities are to analyze, troubleshoot and perform electrical and mechanical repairs on agricultural equipment. Experience in maintenance and repair of automotive, diesel or heavy equipment required.

American Implement offers competitive wages and an excellent benefits package, which includes life, health and supplemental insurance, 401(k) plan and a quarterly incentive bonus program.

Interested applicants may send a cover letter and resume to: Tyler Kough Location Manager PO Box 20, Scott City, KS, 67871 or Call: (800) 779-7244 or (620)872-7244.

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POLICE OFFICER The City of Scott City is accepting applications for the position of police officer.

Applicant must possess a HS diploma or GED equivalent, a valid driver’s license, and must be 21 years of age. Graduates of KLETC are preferred, but not required.

The City offers a full benefit package with KPERS, BCBS, vacation and sick leave.

Applications may be obtained and returned at: Law Enforcement Center, 602 W. 5th, Scott City, (620) 872-2133.

Applications will be accepted until position is filled.

EOE Employer

Qualified applicants must own a set of tools to perform the functions of the job.

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Shift differential pay offered for evening and night shifts!

Please apply in person at:

Park Lane Nursing Home

SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT

Applications may be obtained at and returned to: Sheriff Office 602 W. 5th, Scott City • (620) 872-5805

Has openings for the following positions: Full-time CNA Part-time PRN CNA/CMA Full-time RN/LPN Full-time Housekeeping Supervisor Full-time Dietary Full-time Maintenance Assistant

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SCOTT COUNTY HOSPITAL HAS OPENINGS FOR THE FOLLOWING POSITIONS PATIENT CARE Acute Care RNs Physical Therapist Respiratory Therapist Operating Room RN C.N.A.s CLERICAL Ward Clerk Materials Management Assistant SERVICE PRN Cashier Aide/Cook Evening Cook Housekeeping Aide Applicants for these positions are required to be able to read, speak and understand English.

Pre-employment physical, drug/alcohol screening, immunization titer, physical assessment and TB skin test required. We are a tobacco free campus.

We offer competitive pay and great benefits.

Due to our recent expansion of services and rapid growth, we are in need of Acute Care RNs and are offering financial incentives.

Applications are available on our website at www.scotthospital.net or call 620-872-7772 for more information.

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LOOKING FOR A CHALLENGE? WE WILL CHALLENGE YOU TO DO THE BEST WORK OF YOUR LIFE. Compass Behavioral Health is currently looking to fill the following position at our Scott City location.

Children’s Case Managers we work directly with children and their families in their homes, schools and community. These children are experiencing an emotional disturbance and need help to learn new skills and remain safe in their environment.

Come be a part of our professional team as we work cooperatively within the agency and with outside providers to meet the needs of our children. A minimum of a bachelor’s degree in a related human service field or equivalently qualified by work experience is required. Base pay starting at $13.94/hr., also additional compensation is given for experience.

All candidates must pass KBI, SRS, motor vehicle screens, and have a valid driver’s license and be willing to work flexible hours to meet the needs of the consumer and family.

Benefits include: retirement, fully vested at time of employment; health/dental insurance-portion of premium paid by Compass Behavioral Health, life insurance and long-term disability-premium paid by Compass Behavioral Health, holiday, bereavement and vacation/sick days.

Applications are available at: 210 West 4th, Scott City, KS 67871 or www.compassbh.org Applications/Resumes can be sent to: E-mail hr@compassbh.org or faxed to 620-272-0171 Compass Behavioral Health Attn: HR PO Box 853, Garden City, KS 67846.

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The Scott County Record • Page 34 • Thursday, March 12, 2015

Tornado activity occurring earlier in the year The national average peak for tornado activity in the U.S. is June 12.

But the peak in particular regions can range from early May to early June.

And it appears the peak of the tornado season has shifted seven days earlier over the last 60 years.

The shift is even larger - up to two weeks - when the weakest tornadoes are excluded.

The key question what’s causing the shift, including the possibility of effects from global warming - remains unanswered, but ripe for further study.

John Long, who works at Montana State University, and Paul Stoy

have co-authored a report on activity in Tornado Alley, which is defined as Kansas, Oklahoma, most of Nebraska and northern Texas.

Long and Stoy set about using tornado observation data gathered by the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center to look for shifts in the peak of activity.

The rhythms of the tornado season are familiar to those growing up in the broad swath of land from the Midwest down through Texas and through the Southeast. While “tornadoes can happen any day of the year,” Stoy

Busting common tornado myths Myth 1: Opening windows will equalize pressure.

“Opening the windows is absolutely useless, a waste of precious time, and can be very dangerous.

Don’t do it,” according to the Storm Prediction Center.

All it might get you is a bunch of debris blown into your house by a tornado’s fierce winds - which could be dangerous. * * * Myth 2: The southwest corner of a basement is the safest corner.

While a basement is a good place to take shelter from a tornado, no corner of a basement is safer than any other.

According to the SPC, this myth arose from the mistaken belief that most tornadoes come from the southwest and that any debris they generate would fall into the northeast corner of a basement. But tornadoes can arrive from any direction, and their winds are spinning in a vortex and can be blowing from any direction.

If you take shelter in a basement, the best place to be is away from any windows, under a sturdy workbench or mattress, and away from any shelves or other things that might fall on you. You should also make sure you’re not directly under any heavy appliances that may be on the floor above. * * * Myth 3: When you’re on the road, the best place to ride out a tornado is under a bridge.

Definitely not!

Although it might seem like the bridge over your head would protect you, hiding under an overpass or bridge is actually very dangerous, because a tornado’s winds can blast debris underneath the structure. The storm’s winds could blow you out from underneath and possibly into the tornado itself, or the bridge could collapse on top of you.

If there is no building in which to take shelter, get as far away from the road and cars as possible, and lie down in a low spot. * * * Myth 4: Tornadoes never cross hills, rivers, roads, etc.

If a particular town or other location hasn’t been hit by a tornado that passed nearby, it didn’t have anything to do with the area’s topographical features, it was just luck.

Tornadoes are not guided or repelled by roads, hills, streams or rivers. In fact, a tornado has even crossed the Mighty Mississippi.

Local wisdom had it that towns such as Topeka, Ks., and Waco, Tex., were immune to tornadoes, until they were hit by F5s (in 1968 and 1953, respectively). * * * Myth 5: Tornadoes avoid big cities.

Many people think big cities are immune to tornadoes. That’s not the case: Many cities - including Dallas, Atlanta and St. Louis (which has been hit a whopping four times) - have been hit by tornadoes.

Cities occupy a smaller area relative to the surrounding, more rural areas, and are therefore less likely to be hit.

said, the season tends to ramp up starting in April, first in the Southeast, then moving westward and northward as spring and summer progress.

In looking through this data, the two found tornado activity had shifted a week earlier throughout most of the region.

When EF0 tornadoes, the weakest rating on the Enhanced Fujita scale, were removed in a preliminary analysis not published in the paper, the shift broadened to nearly 14 days.

Removing Nebraska from the data also produced a nearly two-week shift in the remaining states.

Of the shift, Stoy said, “I think it’s actually quite profound . . . this is over the course of people’s lifetimes.”

Cause Unknown Greg Carbin, a warning coordination meteorologist with the Storm Prediction Center (SPC), said the findings were “very interesting.”

What remains to be determined is exactly what is causing the shift in peak tornado activity. The study looked at some possibilities, but other than an apparent link between El Niño and tornado activity in Oklahoma, couldn’t find any links to major climate cycles.

Carbin and his colleague Harold Brooks, a senior scientist with the National Severe Storms Laboratory and a reviewer of the paper, have both been working on looking for trends in tornado data and the possible explanations behind them, including warming.

Of the trend Long and Stoy found, both said that warming was a possibility, as it could be moving forward the timing of the return of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico that is a key to tornado formation, Carbin said.

“I can see why this would be occurring with a warming climate,” Carbin

said. But “I don’t want to completely commit to the fact that it’s all to do with warming.”

Regardless of when the peak of activity occurs, devastating tornadoes can happen far before or after that peak, Carbin said. So in terms of individual outbreaks, “I think it’s dangerous to take too much away from a study like this,” he said.

And as with all tornado trend studies, the biggest problem is being able to say something about the activity of a given year ahead of time, Carbin said, “because ultimately what we want to do is try to be able to predict some of this stuff.”