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If you wanted to walk across the state of Kansas you would face a 423 mile journey. Many Walk Kansas teams reach that marker within the first weeks of Kansas State University’s state-wide, eight-week fitness program. If you’d like to join the fun, the registration deadline for signing up a team is March 5.

Walk Kansas is a team-based program that helps participants lead a healthier life by encouraging more activity, better nutrition choices and learning positive ways to deal with stress. This year’s challenge runs from March 18 to May 12.

Teams
Co-workers, family members, friends, and neighbors form teams of six and track daily minutes of physical activity and food choices during the eight-week challenge. Part of the fun is picking a team name and team captain. Captains report team totals each week. Participants log minutes of activity, and fruits and vegetables consumed each day, and report these weekly to their team captain.

What Kinds of Activities Count
Walking is not the only activity that counts. Any activity that is moderate or vigorous for at least 10 consecutive minutes counts. Strength and flexibility exercises, such as yoga, tai chi, working with resistance bands, and strength training would also count. Teams’ progress can be tracked at www.walkkansas.org

Who Can Participate
Anyone wanting to participate should gather a team of six members, choose a team name and captain, and contact their local K-State Research and Extension office for registration information. Participation is free for Johnson County employees, $4 for non-employees. In Johnson County, information is available at www.johnson.ksu.edu/walkkansas

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K-State Research and Extension is committed to making its services, activities, and programs accessible to all participants. If you have special requirements due to a physical, vision, or hearing disability, please contact Johnson County Extension at 913.715.7000. K-State Research and Extension is an equal opportunity provider and employer.
 

The Johnson County Library will host an issues and engagement forum about the Kansas –Nebraska Act of 1854 on Thursday, February 16 at 6:30 p.m. at the Central Resource Library, 9875 W. 87th St., Overland Park, KS. This event is part of Johnson County Library’s 2011-2012 Legacies of the Civil War series.

Slavery or freedom forever: what was at stake in the Kansas-Nebraska Act? In 1854, President Franklin Pierce faced a choice that would have a profound impact on the future of the Unites States. Should he give settlers in Kansas and Nebraska the right to vote on whether slavery would be permitted, should be banned in the territories, or should he focus on practical considerations like the economy rather than moral rhetoric? Join fellow community residents to discuss how you would advise the president. To register please, call (913) 826-4600 or visit www.jocolibrary.org/civilwar.

For more information on the Legacies of the Civil War programs at Johnson County Library locations, visit www.jocolibrary.org/civilwar.   Library programs are free and open to the public. For more information call (913) 826-4600. Interpretive services and other accommodations for those with special needs are available by contacting Library staff at least one week in advance of the program.

Maintenance of the Edgerton Cemetery is becoming a financially grave issue for the Edgerton Cemetery Association.

The non-profit association of volunteers has been operating and taking care of the cemetery for more than a century, but maintaining the grave sites, including mowing and repairing tombstones, needs a new source of revenue to avoid the possibility of the 154-year-old cemetery falling into a state of neglect and disrepair.

Setting up a cemetery district is a rare occurrence since Johnson County isn’t in the business of maintaining cemeteries. But it does allow the formation of districts where residents pay a small amount every year in taxes to go toward cemetery upkeep.

On Thursday, January 19, the Edgerton Cemetery Association submitted a petition to the Johnson County Board of Commissioners and requested creation of a new cemetery district with taxing authority within a large portion of McCamish Township in the southwest corner of Johnson County.

“Although the association has been in existence since the 1880s, we have recently experienced several years of financial difficulty which have made it more problematic to adequately maintain the cemetery at an acceptable level,” Delbert Sawyer, president of the association, said in a letter to the Board. “We anticipate that this trend will continue.”

The Board of County Commissioners accepted the petition Thursday and voted to continue a public hearing for a week. The Board is scheduled to make a decision during its business session on Thursday, January 26, in the Board’s hearing room on the third floor of the county’s Administration Building, 111 South Cherry Street, in downtown Olathe. The meeting starts at 9:30 a.m.

If the new cemetery district is formed on January 26, the approval begins a 30-day protest period that allows for the opportunity to submit a petition, asking that the proposed creation of the new taxing district be decided by an election of voters within the affected area of McCamish Township. The petition must be signed by at least 10 percent of the qualified electors in the proposed cemetery district.

Johnson County hasn’t created a cemetery district for several years. If completed, the district being requested by the Edgerton Cemetery Association will join half a dozen other cemetery districts in the county.

There are 39 cemeteries and six cemetery districts in Johnson County. Four existing cemetery districts (De Soto, Monticello, Pleasant Ridge, and Prairie Center) submitted budgets for the 2011 taxing year with levies ranging from .492 to .004. The Aubry and Pleasant Valley cemetery districts did not submit budgets.
The new proposed cemetery district spans all of McCamish Township, including the city of Edgerton, but excludes:

•  The existing Prairie Center Cemetery District;
•  The Four Corners and Lost Cemeteries, both sites appear abandoned, and St. Columbine Cemetery, which is owned and maintained by the Catholic Church;
•  The portion of the township that’s located in the city of Gardner; and,
•  All schools and churches in McCamish Township.

The Edgerton City Council has voiced no opposition or objection to the city’s inclusion in the new district. Burial lot owners also have not objected or opposed plans by the association.

If approved, the new cemetery district would put in place a minimal property tax to cover the annual cost of maintaining the grave sites. The maintenance costs for the past year were $4,100. In its petition to the county, the Edgerton Cemetery Association proposed an annual budget of $7,000.

The estimated annual mill levy for the cemetery district is $2.51, or approximately .218 mills. The estimate is based on a residential home appraised at $100,000. The district would have the authority to levy a tax not to exceed $6,000 or 2 mills for annual cemetery maintenance.

According to Sawyer, the tax levy will provide revenue to properly maintain the Edgerton Cemetery in the future. Other funding sources are generated by sale of cemetery lots, currently selling for $400, and interest from the investment of the association’s permanent maintenance fund, which is approximately $31,500. The association sold only two lots in 2011. State law prohibits the association from using the principle of the fund as revenue.

Located in unincorporated McCamish Township at the corner of 207th Street and Sunflower Road south of the city of Edgerton, the small cemetery was established in 1858. It was created three years after the founding of Johnson County and three years before Kansas became the 34th state in the Union.

The Edgerton Cemetery occupies approximately five acres and is surrounded by fields. It has more than 500 tombstones that mark the resting place for several generations of Johnson County families, scores of individuals, and some graves dating back to the Civil War.

The cemetery also includes the grave site of Clark Dillie, who was the first county commission chairman after Johnson County was created in 1855, and Judge David Martin, who laid out a new town on his farmland in 1870.

Martin named the town Martinsburg, but the next year saw the railroad coming through his property, building the Edgerton Depot, and renaming the town Edgerton after D.M. Edgerton, who is credited as the chief engineer of the Kansas Pacific Railroad’s track construction. The Kansas Pacific became a part of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1880. The rest is history.

More information is available by contacting Richard Lind, assistant county counselor, at (913) 715-1900 or richard.lind@jocogov.org.