BREAKING NEWS
UPDATED AFTER PRINT DEADLINE
Hillsboro Community Hospital’s parent company, HMC/CAH Consolidated Inc., exited from Chapter 11 bankruptcy after 15 months of reorganization on Jan. 17. All 12 of the company’s hospitals — located in rural communities — remain in operation following the reorganization. The company filed for bankruptcy protection on Oct. 11, 2011.
With a heads-up kind of announcement, Hillsboro City Administrator Larry Paine told council members Tuesday that a developer had asked him to gather information in regard to city participation in bringing more low-income housing to the city. “We’re getting a high degree of interest in doing this,” Paine said. “He would like to put in 6 to 12 units but needs points from working with us to qualify for the tax credit program.”
Most of the April 2 city and school district elections will be uneventful matters, with only a handful of contested races, while no City of Marion positions are up for election. The filing deadline for candidates was noon Tuesday. The only contested board of education race is in Peabody-Burns USD 398, where five candidates have filed for three at-large positions. The candidates are Shayla Clark, Travis T. Foth, Barry Peter, Jarrod Gaines, and Julia Ensminger.
Pins banged and set-gates clanged Thursday at Trail Lanes Bowling Alley in Hillsboro, much like they do every weekday afternoon, except Friday, now that the Tabor College bowling team is practicing for intercollegiate competition. With three large tournaments under their belt, team members are striking and sparing their way to success, said coach Todd Zenner.
Frank J. Heath Jr., 98, died Thursday at his home in Burns. He was born Jan. 19, 1914, in rural Burns to Frank J. Sr. and Lizzie (Whitlock) Heath.
Milford Klaassen, 61, of Hillsboro died Monday at St. Luke Hospital in Marion. He was born Oct. 18, 1951, in Hillsboro to Ted and Rubena (Leppke) Klaassen. He was the owner of JAMM Mowing. He married Janell Schmidt on June 21, 1986, in rural Goessel.
Billy Wayne Lucas, 84, of Marion died Monday at Peabody Care Center. He was born March 30, 1928, in Marion to Art and Zula (Buford) Lucas. He was a retired employee of the City of Marion and a member of Marion Christian Church.
Ann Truax Judson Moench, 72, of Hurley, Mo., died Jan. 8. She was born Sept. 2, 1940, in Lyons to John and Eloise Cockley Truax. The family moved to Manhattan and then Emporia where Ann graduated from high school.
The city of Goessel fills up four different recycling bins each week. Bins in Florence and Centre schools have been equally utilized. Still, it costs the county more per month to pay the $138 fee to Waste Connections for the recycling bins than it does does for those materials to be transported to the Butler County Landfill as trash, Transfer Station Director Rollin Schmidt said Tuesday. The cost for all of the bins in the county, including bins in Burns, Durham, Lincolnville, Lost Springs, Pilsen, and Tampa, is $16,620 per year.
Marion has received $162,747 as a part of a $105 million settlement against Sygenta, an atrazine manufacturer from Switzerland. Marion’s part of the lawsuit dates back to 2007 when atrazine was noticed in Marion Reservoir. The water was measured to contain 0.6 parts per billion of atrazine, Marion City Administrator Doug Kjellin said. Environmental Protection Agency regulations state that three parts per billion is an acceptable level of atrazine.
Road and Bridge Superintendent Randy Crawford brought two options for summer work to Marion County Commission on Tuesday. Option one is for chip seals for seven miles of Quail Creek Road, from 290th to 360th, one half mile of Nighthawk Road west of Peabody, and for 30th Road between Old Mill Road and the Harvey County line. All of that totals $306,504 in estimated cost. Crawford also included cold mix cost for blade patching, including 340th Road for an additional $525,000. The total for option one is $831,504.
“We’ve got a problem,” Transfer Station Director Rollin Schmidt said. “It’s not a small problem.” It was multiple problems actually, lumped together at the Marion County Commission meeting under the heading of nuisance.
It turns out it was an unfortunate miscommunication rather than an attempt to hide government business from the public that led to County Commissioner Dan Holub’s proposal last week not to publish the full text of public notices. Unaware that the county had ceased publishing notices in the Hillsboro Star-Journal and Peabody Gazette-Bulletin long before a below-cost discount had expired because it wasn’t being used, Holub apparently was less concerned about saving money at the expense of informing the public than he was about figuring out how to keep information flowing at a reasonable price.
BALANCING ACT:
Miracles can happenONE WOMANS VIEW:
Parachute opens
Goessel Goal Getters 4-H Club met Jan. 7 with 38 people present. Cameron Myers spoke about his rocketry project, Mikayla Lare spoke about tornadoes, and Ella Tracy gave a presentation on how to make goat-milk caramel. The program was “The Path to Oz-someness.”
Jordan Riggs, a sophomore at Pittsburg State University, will play the part of Bill Bobstay in the university’s production of “H.M.S. Pinafore,” an opera by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, on Feb. 15 and 17. Riggs grew up in the Peabody area and graduated from Hillsboro High School in 2011. He is studying music education with an emphasis on vocal music.
Hillsboro High School student Meghan Leihy has been awarded a Garvey Competitive Scholarship from Washburn University in Topeka. She is one of 26 students to receive the scholarship this year. To qualify to compete for a scholarship, a student must have a grade point average of 3.25 or better. Students with the highest scores on a scholarship test received scholarships ranging from $500 to $2,000.
CORRESPONDENTS:
Northwest of Durham,
Round the town,
TampaENGAGEMENTS:
Phelps, Goering,
Mayfield, Burgan
If schools substituted iPads or mini-iPads for textbooks, all students would have access to the same amount of information regardless of economic status. That was the message keynote speaker Corrine Hoisington conveyed to 340 educators who gathered at Hillsboro High School Monday for the 2013 Technology Excellence in Education Network conference.
Resonance is not something students learn from a book in Len Coryea’s sixth grade science class at Hillsboro Middle School. Instead, students meandered around the classroom Friday, bouncing tuning forks off their palms and shoe soles, experimenting with ways to make a louder vibration. “We are studying sound and noise,” Coryea said. “Sometimes learning gets loud and messy.”
Hillsboro High School select choir Spirit-N-Celebration will have its annual concert, SNC Night, at 7 p.m. Jan. 31 in the high school auditorium. The concert will feature songs of the students’ choosing and choreographed performances by the whole group, including “Down at the Twist and Shout,” “My Girl,” and “Hey, Big Spender.” Students’ choices range from country to pop music and include comedic pieces.
Cathedrals are hard to come by on the plains of central Kansas, but choir directors Renae Schmidt Peters of Goessel and Bradley Kaufman of Hesston said few things compare to hearing the reverberation of voices ring through vaulted cathedral ceilings. For that reason, the Hesston College Bel Canto Singers and the Goessel High School Elbiata Singers will perform at 5 p.m. on Jan. 27 in one of the few cathedrals on the Kansas prairie – St. Fidelis Church: The Cathedral on the Plains, in Victoria.
Forty-six Goessel FFA members want to fight hunger by packaging 24,000 meals with Numana, Inc. a hunger relief organization. But they are going to need some help to pull off the daunting task, set for 10 a.m. to 12 noon on Feb. 16 in the commons area of Goessel High School. “We are excited to play a vital role that affects a variety of people in the world,” adviser Zana Manche said. “Our students have worked very hard to raise the money needed to buy food supplies, now we are asking the broader community to come out and support or volunteer with us.”
Sharolyn Tibbetts of Hillsboro is one of the few that can say she lived a dream come true, and she’s not even retirement age yet. At age 63, Tibbetts enjoys swimming every day at the USD 408 Sports and Aquatic Center, she enjoys getting to know people at the Hillsboro Senior Center where she serves on the board of directors, and she enjoys involvement at Hillsboro United Methodist Church along with her husband, Gary. The dream she lived however, was seven years of service in the United States Air Force where she learned to ask questions, multitask assignments, and prioritize her responsibilities.
Betty Johnson bent to pick up a pile of books Saturday, when a sharp pain ripped through her body. “I just can’t lift things like I used to,” the 73-year-old said as she sat down on a nearby bench.
The Hillsboro boys’ basketball team finally won a tight game, 58-49, to defeat Hays-Thomas More Prep, Saturday for fifth place in the Trojan Classic Tournament. Things looked bleak for Hillsboro Trojans at the end of the second quarter. The Trojans only scored six points in the period. The score was 14-13 Hillsboro with 5:04 left in the half. Tyler Proffitt hit two free throws for Hillsboro to make the score 17-16, but then the Trojans went on a 3-minute scoring drought including four consecutive turnovers to trail 27-19 at halftime. The Trojans had committed 17 turnovers in the first half.
Trying to score on the Hillsboro girls’ basketball team is like driving nails into concrete. It’s possible, but it will take considerable effort. The Trojans faced their toughest opponent so far this season in the final of the Trojan Classic Tournament. Heading into the game, the Wamego Red Raiders were ranked No. 1 in 4A. “Were” is the word because the Trojans earned a 51-50 victory on their home floor for their first ever Trojan Classic title.
Tournament play proved trying for the Goessel High School boys’ basketball team as they won one and lost two last week at the Burrton Tournament. The Bluebirds started the week with a gut-check loss on Jan. 14 to Berean Academy, 37-34.