Responding to a request from the Allen County Multi-Agency Team’s Drug-Free Communities task force, Allen County commissioners have proclaimed Oct. 23 – 31 Red Ribbon Week.
The Red Ribbon campaign is a nationwide effort intended to draw awareness to the hazardous effects of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.
ACMAT point person and DFC coordinator Jaimie Westervelt, along with DFC youth mobilizer Elizabeth Hopkins, escorted six area middle and high school students into the beige confines of the commissioners’ meeting room. The students unfurled for the commissioners a banner bearing dozens of student signatures. Each signee, explained Westervelt, has committed themselves to a tenure of sobriety during their school-age years.
DFC’s efforts are made possible by a $125,000 federal grant awarded to ACMAT in 2015.
The students asked that the commission allow them to display the banner on the courthouse lawn during Red Ribbon Week. The commissioners agreed to that request, praised the students’ efforts, gave them each a glazed doughnut, and thanked them for coming out.
SPEAKING of successful grants, Allen County Farm Bureau coordinator Debbie Bearden, along with Robin Schallie and Calvin Parker — farmers’ market director and longtime market vendor, respectively — updated the commission on the happy fortunes that befell this year’s recently concluded Allen County Farmers’ Market.
Last year, the commission agreed to act as a fiduciary agent for a grant awarded to the Allen County Farmers’ Market from the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
The deadline for applying for a second year of the grant is fast approaching, explained Bearden, who asked that the commission lend a similar support in the upcoming year.
“Absolutely,” said commission chair Jim Talkington. “The work that you guys do is phenomenal.” Commissioners Tom Williams and Jerry Daniels agreed.
COUNTY commissioners gave eager assent to Tracy Keagle’s request to decorate the Iola town square for Christmas. The yuletide overhaul will include decorations and lights stretching across the courthouse lawn and bandstand, and will incorporate a giant Christmas tree, for which Keagle has secured the use of a county bucket truck, essential for adorning the tree’s highest branches.
