Cars back on grass

If Oct. 19 is a typical fall day, the multitude of owners bringing vehicles to the Farm-City Days Car Show will be able to relax in the shade of trees on the Allen County Courthouse lawn.
Commissioners told Jim West and Mike Schwindt they were favorable to moving cars from the asphalt of West Street to the lawn.
The show was on the lawn for many years and having it back there will be an enticement to owners, said West, a member of the Crossroads of Mid-America Car Club, the show’s sponsor.

BILL KING, director of Public Works, said the county will receive about $500,000 from the Kansas Department of Transportation in exchange for taking responsibility for maintaining highway spurs leading into Humboldt from U.S. 169 and into Elsmore and Savonburg from U.S. 59.
The state gave the spurs a final facelift with new asphalt before turning them over to the county.
King said the windfall probably would be used for equipment updates.
He also noted replacement of an old iron bridge over Owl Creek about two miles west of Humboldt was progressing.
The county will pay 20 percent of construction cost, estimated at $138,000, and probably another $100,000 for right of way acquisition and other considerations, King said.
Some groups have approached him about moving the historic bridge and keeping it as a link to the past, King said, but “that will be up to the contractor. We won’t have a say in it.”

THE COUNTY’S budget hearing ended about as quickly as it began, with not a soul coming to question an increase in property taxes to support the spending plan.
Works announced before the hearing that the Southeast Kansas Multi-County Health Department had voluntarily reduced its request from a full mill to .88 of a mill, or a cut of $11,638.
“They decided they could get by on a little less,” he said.
The health department’s budget calls for expenditures of $93,984, with tax support of $85,351.
Overall, the county’s budget for 2014 predicts expenditures of $14.07 million, supported by a levy of 71.162 mills, and property tax dollars totaling $6.9 million. This year’s levy was 67.538 mills.
A levy of 1 mill raises $1 for each $1,000 of assessed valuation. To put that in perspective, a home with a market value of $100,000 would have an assessed value of $11,500, meaning a levy of 1 mill would cost the homeowner $11.50.