This letter has nothing to do with the hospital. This is a letter about the fishing at the dams on Elm Creek.
I have been at three county commission meetings and have gotten different answers each time I asked why commissioners stopped the fishing at Elm Creek.
Here are the answers:
First meeting: We were driving on private property, fireworks, drinking beer and leaving trash.
So I did a little research and found that the hill of shale is 20 foot on the right-of-way and not on private property.
That it’s not against the law to shoot off fireworks in the county.
Drinking beer is not against the law in the county.
Flooding and wind is responsible for most of the trash at the dams and the creeks.
Next meeting: No driving on the right-of-way, said a Department of Agriculture employee who did some looking back there and reported to Mr. King that it was dangerous at the high water dam. This is what Mr. King told me: Now that he knows it’s dangerous he can’t let us go fish anymore at the high water dam.
Some more research found it was dangerous when it was built, and the county has had no trouble all these years.
We drove on a road over the right-of-way that has been there for 60-plus years and it was “dangerous” to come onto the highway. When it was a state highway, the road was over the right-of-way and they never stopped anyone from using it. If you look at the side of the road, you will see that it was built up by the state so that cars could drive off the highway to get to the low water dam.
All this time they let me think that we would get to fish, but it would take some time to work it out.
You know the county is not going to put out any money to fix up anything for us.
Mr. (Dick) Works told me that the county was not in the business of recreation.
Mr. (Rob) Frances told me he did not care if we had fished there for 100 years; we were not going to do it anymore.
Last meeting: The county is not going to do anything to help the young or old to get to fish. I was told we could fish, but no more driving to the low water dams. How in the world do they think we can walk 500 or 600 yards?
When Mr. King was told what was going on, he should have asked the sheriff to have his men check on the dams and see that all were fishing. If they were doing wrong, give them a ticket and publish it in the court news. With their names in the paper, all would know of the wrongdoings, and that those wrongdoings would not be tolerated.
Now, this is what it will take to get back to being able to fish as we did before: It is time Mr. Works be replaced. He has been in office too long.
He thinks that he can do anything he wants and not have to answer to the people, nor does the public have any say in the matter.
As for Mr. Frances, he needs to be replaced as soon as his time is up.
I think that if we do this we will let all commissioners know that they answer to all the people — not to a few — in matters such as these.
It should be our right as taxpaying citizens to be allowed to have input on such matters and decisions not left to an elite few.
Kansas code 60503 is 15 years old and says we can use “Prescriptive Easement: Obtaining rights in land by use.”
The land is not used for anything. I think we could win in court, but if we did it would come out of our tax money. I don’t want that to happen. I only want everyone to fish without breaking the law.
David Hawn
Iola, Kan.
