NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Board of Reno County Commissioners approved the choice of the Ninnescah Valley News as the county newspaper at their meeting on Wednesday.
Ongoing questions regarding the legal status of the Rural Messenger and its status with the Postal Service contributed to the decision.
"Rural Messenger has a pending application, but as of today, they don't have formal approval with the U.S. Postal Service, which is concerning to me, if we went forward with them," said County Counselor Patrick Hoffman. "The Hutch News is our current paper. They submitted a bid that was lower than what we've been paying, but the Ninnescah Valley News is lower, so it's really a choice for the commission between those two."
Commissioner Ron Hirst also made a note that this is not the first time that the Ninnescah Valley News has been the county's paper of record, they also served that function about 25 years ago.
"In conversations with Ninnescah Valley News, when they called me, years ago, they provided newspapers at the courthouse when they had that, so that people could get the newspaper there. I would imagine, that, when asked, that they would provide a certain amount of newspapers to the annex as well as the courthouse."
Commission chair Daniel Friesen would like to see counties be able to put their legal notices online like cities can through home rule, but even though the legal requirements are different, the county is going to work harder in that regard.
"The commission directed us to put more things on the county website," Hoffman said. "We have been working on that with the information officer. In addition to this, we will be making more things available on the web than we currently were."
The motion passed unanimously.
CLICK HERE to download the Hutch Post mobile app.
CLICK HERE to sign up for the daily Hutch Post email news update.