Greensburg officials made clear at their October 6 council meeting their intent to move forward with plans to prosecute chronic violators of the City’s nuisance property code.

   Having started work at the Kiowa County Road and Bridge Department in 1988, Doyle Conrad succeeded Don Sylvester as the department’s superintendent in January 1997.  He sat down with Signal editor Mark Anderson last Thursday to discuss a variety of topics concerning his future and the condition of the county’s highway department since the May 4, 2007 tornado.  That interview follows in full.

   Needing to trim costs to match funding resources, Kiowa County Commissioners agreed on a 2-1 vote in special meeting Thursday morning to award Snodgrass and Sons Construction of Wichita a contract, based on a revised bid, to build the new Road and Bridge facilities on South Grove in Greensburg.

   With deficits continuing to grow for the City of Greensburg in terms of delivering utility services, City Council approved modest increases in several areas at Monday night’s meeting.

  Saying it’s time to “start cracking down” on those who’ve allowed their lots to remain overgrown since the tornado despite repeated written warnings from the City, Greensburg City Administrator Steve Hewitt turned Tuesday night’s City Council meeting over to City Attorney Gordon Stull for an explanation of how the City can go about taking such offenders to court.

   Though Greensburg’s City Council eventually voted unanimously Tuesday night to allow the placement of a single section manufactured home in a residential area, the discussion leading to that decision rekindled an ongoing debate over the implications of allowing such structures within city limits.

   One of the 18 Greensburg High graduates handed his diploma last May 4 by President Bush, Justin Brokar counted the experience a special privilege considering his intense interest in partisan politics.  Though headed for a career in the ordained ministry until his initial exposure to the political arena 30 months ago, Brokar’s strong faith led him to cast his lot with the more conservative of the two major parties, the GOP.
 

   The diesel tank that's been missing from the Mullinville City Shop since at least mid-July was returned last Thursday afternoon.  What remains to be seen is whether the City Council will take any further action on the tank's unauthorized disappearance.

The S.D. Robinett Building, better known as the Centera Bank just before the May 4, 2007 tornado, will likely soon be known as more than the lone structure of Greenburg’s business district to have survived the deadly storm.

  Given the floor at Monday night’s Mullinville City Council meeting, councilman M T Liggett addressed three matters, the second of which is his concern that a former member of the council, Betty Clayton, is blocking access to a vacated street.

   County commissioners’ plans to begin reviewing possible vendors to eventually replace the County’s current computer system with the emerging PC-based platform is a less than popular notion for at least a couple of department heads, namely, Register of Deeds Marilyn Brown and Treasurer Brenda Osborne.

   As if his concern over the vacated street blocking measures of a former member of Mullinville’s City Council were not enough, councilman M T Liggett went further at Monday’s meeting when he broached a potentially criminal matter possibly involving a current member of the council.

   Rev. Marvin George has served as pastor of Greensburg’s First Baptist Church for nearly eight years and was added to the Kiowa County Memorial Hospital (KCMH) Board in October of 2007.  He recently expressed a willingness to be interviewed by The Signal in response to comments posed by former Mayor John Janssen concerning the county’s new hospital in an interview that appeared in last week’s Signal.  George answered questions put to him by Signal Editor Mark Anderson over the phone last Thursday morning.  Following is the majority of what George had to say in response to The Signal’s queries.

   Greensburg’s City Council formally adopted the sizeable pay hike it voted in earlier this summer at Monday’s meeting by approving Ordinance 958 on a 4-1 vote.