Observations all along the line - Kimball & the Southern Panhandle First
Observations all along the line - Kimball & the Southern Panhandle First
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The underpass project has evolved passed being a city, historical society, or downtown project. Federal funding is now in place and so the underpass is now a federal concern. City Administrator Daniel Ortiz, made it clear that the City of Kimball is not simply dealing with a city project anymore. “We’re dealing with regional and national historical societies as well as the Federal Highway Administration, Nebraska Department of Roads and a couple of other people have a role to play in this project now,” Ortiz said. Ortiz explained that, at th...
Panorama Point is Nebraska's highest point. It sits at 5,429 feet above sea level. The Highpointers Club has made a point to help with maintaining some of the high points around the country. Recently, they have taken an interest in Panorama Point. Dave Covill, Lead Director of the Highpointers Foundation, and John Mitchler, editor of the Highpointers Club quarterly newsletter and Chairman of the club's archives, installed a bench at Panorama Point on Friday May 9, 2014. The bench is made of...
Kimball public schools have experienced low test scores in the past. School officials have seen the importance of getting those scores up higher, and over the most recent school year have been working hard to do so. The tests that students take through the years are the Dibels test which helps determine where students are in their learning and is primarily taken in the elementary school. The Nebraska State Accountability (NeSA), is a test taken by both the elementary and the high school...
Kimball High School graduation took place on May 17, 2014. Among the students who tossed their hats triumphantly into the air was Shelby Vogel, a fourth generation Kimball graduate. Shelby's great grandmother, Martha Mossberg graduated from Kimball County High School in 1936. Then there were only ten students in her graduating class. "We had classes like English, math, history, the normal classes, but we had sewing, and typing too," Mossberg said. While Mossberg attended Kimball County high...
The primary election came and went in Kimball, and now it’s time to prepare for the general election. Cathy Sibal, County Clerk, and the Clerk’s office will be busy preparing for what they hope will be a better turn out. Tuesday, May 13, was the primary election, and 622 voters went out to make their stance known. That is 622 out of 3,030 registered voters in Kimball. Such a small percentage of voters out can prove to be disheartening to the county clerk’s office, who spend so much of their time trying to prepare for the election. “We have to p...
The Kimball Event Center is due for a makeover. City Administrator, Daniel Ortiz, is quite aware of this and took the necessary steps in order to assure a better event center for the community. Ortiz retains a lot of different responsibilities at the city office, a couple of which are making sure buildings owned by the city are up to code and safe for community use, as well as finding ways for the city to make the necessary changes to certain buildings in order for them to be compliant with safety regulations. Recently Ortiz applied for the Civ...
People who read regularly reap several benefits, and those benefits are better when gained at a young age. Pizza Hut uses the BOOK IT! program to encourage reading in elementary schools across the country. Mary Lynch Elementary school was a participant in the BOOK IT! program this year, and Laurie Janicek's fifth grade class read the most. Reading has proven to be of great benefit to young and old alike, however, with most good practices it is more beneficial the younger one starts. Reading...
Not even the rain could stop the celebration of National Tourism Week on Saturday, May 10, at the Welcome Center. Kimball County Tourism and the Kimball County Visitors Committee celebrated by hosting a branding barbecue. The Brands and BBQ celebration was held at the High Point Welcome Center from 4 pm to 6 pm. Jo Caskey, Tourism Director, invited everyone to attend and to enjoy. "We are excited to celebrate the growth of tourism in Kimball County, Western Nebraska, and the Welcome Center's...
The annual Kimball Health Fair was held on April 24, 2014. Before the doors were even officially opened, about 30 people were waiting outside in line. 360 people were seen at the health fair in total. The purpose of the health fair is to get people who might not otherwise be inclined to see a doctor in to get blood tests. Penny Anderson, the event's coordinator for seven years, in association with community health care at the hospital, is retired but still volunteers her time to assist the...
Kimball is located directly in the center of the energy corridor. Currently developing is the Heartland Expressway, a federally designated high priority corridor. This corridor would be a four lane highway that would stretch from Texas up through North Dakota. This highway would provide potential consumer traffic for all the cities and towns on its route, Kimball being one of them. Just this past week the city’s economic developer, Wilson Bowling, explained why it is that the expressway would be a beneficial asset to Kimball specifically. ...
The building that was formerly home to the Four Winds Country Club, out by the golf course, has been bought by husband and wife, Mike and Kinnie Reuter and Brothers Mark and Justin Fornstrom. The plans for the building are to transform it into a bar and grill. The entire group is very excited about their new endeavor, the restaurant they have named Windbreak Bar and Grill. However, even though the plan was always to get the building and have it be a restaurant, both the Reuters and the...
Experience is a powerful teacher. Physically visiting a museum or historical site can help students recall facts deeper than if they were to merely read about them in a text book. The World Strides program offered through Kimball High School is one that allows students to experience the history of America by visiting our nation’s capital. A study done by the University of Arkansas examined what kind of benefits students experience from going on field trips. About 10,000 students were s...
Recently the 2014 Farm Bill was passed and that means some changes are being implemented to what is eligible for payout. On Thursday, April 17, Robert Nagel, Executive Director of the local Farm Service Agency (FSA) held a meeting for livestock producers in order to inform them of some of the changes. The first program introduced by Nagel was the Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP). “What LIP does is it reimburses producers for losses above normal mortality for animals that died during a natural disaster,” Nagel said. This means that after the...
TeamMates Mentoring Program was founded in 1991. The group's purpose being to provide a good adult example in school aged children's lives in addition to parents and teachers. The Kimball chapter of the TeamMates recently held the Ken Risk One Hour Walk. Kim Baliman has been a TeamMates board member since the Kimball chapter's inception ten years ago and has been a mentor in the program for the last five years. She offered up a great deal of information on both the walk and the program. "Ken...
Winter is coming to a close and spring, as some like to say, has sprung. Despite the random snow storms that Nebraska is susceptible to as late as May and even June, in some past instances, now is the time of year that farmers are getting ready to plant their crops. A lot of forethought goes into farming, and it takes patience and a knowledge of things like soil temperature and and an outlook on future precipitation levels. Al Dutcher, state climatologist in association with the UNL Extension, recently wrote a few articles concerning spring tem...
Kimball High School students went to the FFA State Competition just this past weekend. They received the usual school send off, the tunnel walk. They walked through two lanes of their peers and were given high-fives of encouragement and well wishes before they left. They competed in several areas. Dakota Randles, Arica McCloud, Kailey Dickerson, Maddie Snyder, Kayla Shoenemann, Ben Tussing, and Joel Evertson competed in junior parliamentary procedure and placed tenth. Jake Reader, Timmy Culek,...
One out of every five American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. Girls ages 16 to 19 are four times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault. 93 percent of juvenile adolescent sexual assault victims know their attacker. These statistics from the Department of Justice 2010 and U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, are just some of the harsh facts surrounding women and the violence that affects them....
A picture of one's family on a phone case, a shirt with a graphic for a local event, a blanket that needs dry cleaning, all of the aforementioned have something in common: they are all services that can be executed at Kimball Laundry and Dry Cleaning and Monograms and More........
Out of the five regions in which Nebraska has been divided by the NSAPPA, out of all the middle schools and high schools within the state, and out of all those principals Kimball’s own Eugene “Mo” Hanks, has been declared Principal of the Year in the state of Nebraska. “I was nominated over a year ago. I hadn’t upgraded my resume or anything, it wasn’t even on my radar,” Hanks said. He found out about the award on his way back from the boys’ state basketball game. He received a message to call another principal, a member of the Nebraska State...
Kathy McKillips, the Executive Director for Nebraska Tourism Commission, paid a visit to the Kimball High Point Welcome Center on March 25. The welcome center made it onto the Nebraska Tourism Commission's radar in late 2013. However, the interest in the welcome center has continued to grow due to the efforts of Kimball County Tourism Director, Jo Caskey. Everything from bird watching to wildflower tours and antiquing to scavenger hunts, the welcome center is doing everything they can to put...
The rail spur project is no longer going to be completed due to the cost of the project increasing significantly over time and the bond originally put aside not being enough to complete the project. The city council must decide what to do with the funds that have been and are to be collected. Since it is the residents of Kimball who voted "yes" on the taxation of property for the rail spur funds, it is once again going to be up to voters. However, the voters will be voting for or against...
The Kimball Police Department consists of seven officers, all of who are certified, a first in the two years since Chief Darren Huff has been in his position. Chief Huff has been working tirelessly to make sure that all of his officers are a trained asset to the community of Kimball and shared his plans for the upcoming budget year concerning the department. Some of Huff’s plans include an up to date, advanced, in house training regiment that utilizes the skills of the current officers. Now that the department has a certified detective, S...
Colonel Tom Brewer served thirty-six years in the military. During that time, he served in Desert Storm, was shot six times during an ambush, worked with CENTCOM to stop the trafficking of drugs through central Asia amd was selected to command the first task force to arrive in New Orleans in Response to Hurricane Katrina. His task force rescued 604 individuals in 30 days. During a tour of duty on December 16, 2011, his vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, and he was injured. Despite...
At the primary election on May 13, voters can expect to see a rather limited ballot. They will be able to vote concerning United States officials and state officials. However, they will not see any county, city, village, or board officials on the ballot just yet. This is because the number of filed applicants does not exceed the number of open chairs for any particular office. Also with an update to LB-56, if a county partisan office does not have more candidates of a certain party than open chairs, the candidates are pushed forward to the...
Wilson Bowling, Economic Development Director for the City of Kimball, recently returned from a trip where he visited several small town Nebraska theaters. Bowling compiled the information he gathered on his trip and presented it before the city council at their meeting on Tuesday, March 4. The reason for gathering the information being that the city is looking into what it would take to get The Goodhand Theater up and running once more. The things Bowling took a look at on his trip were the size of the local theaters he was visiting, who it...