The Expocentre announced at the Shawnee County Commission meeting Monday that it won the bid for the Kansas High School Rodeo Association Finals. The event returns from Hutchinson after a 3-year hiatus from Topeka, where it once held 54 consecutive years of the competition.
"It's more of an awakening to us when we lost the event that we really need to start caring more about the events that have been here for so long," said H.R. Cook, general manager.
More than 170 high school students participate in the event, bringing friends and family - and business - to Topeka. Cook talked about what it took to bring this event back.
"Visit Topeka has initiated a bid fund where they will basically seed money to allow events to come here to Topeka," Cook said.
The win secures this event for the Expocentre from 2013 to 2015.
Also on the agenda, commissioners heard form Parks and Rec director John Knight about three golf course superintendent positions he wished to fill. Employees in these positions recently resigned and Knight said some of them may have been up for pay reductions as a result of the recent merger.
"I did receive commissioners's approval to keep their salaries the same for up to six months because I knew that they would probably want to look somewhere else. I just wasn't anticipating them leaving this quick," Cook said.
The Parks and Rec Listening Tour resumes with more meetings this week but there will be other ways to turn in your ideas.
"We're also going to have surveys that we're going to have. They'll be on our website; we're handing out the surveys at these meetings, so there are other ways, if you're a little uncomfortable presenting them in a public setting, you can still get your messages to us," Knight said.
And something to keep an eye on -- commissioners heard form the Shawnee County appraiser about the possibility of some changes to property values as he presented the bid for valuation notice printing. Some property values may take a downward turn. County appraiser Mike Hixon said his office would send about 20 thousand more notices this March than it did last year to notify owners that thier property values have either gone up, or down.
