Community sign sample from left; Brian Issac, Mark Flemming, Darrell Bohnert, Mike Harris, Lennie Gutscher, Cody Vandeweed, Gene Underwood, Kevin Peroutek and Keith Roe.
At Mankato City Hall on Oct. 20, Kevin Peroutek, Jewell County emergency preparedness director ,demonstrated the new signs which are part of the community pack deal funded by the SPARKS grant. The 400 pound signs, provided by Darktronics, will be placed in Burr Oak, Esbon, Formoso, Jewell, Mankato and Randall. Each will be responsible for the signs and the placement of them. Officials will also be responsible for deciding whether the signs will be permanently fixed or left on the trailers.
The SPARKS grant is a federal program to mitigate COVID-19, so the signs will be updated with new information regarding COVID. The signs can also be manually updated with severe weather warnings and other information that is pertinent for the county or the communities themselves.
The signs need to be delivered and installed by the end of the year in order to be eligible for the SPARKS funding. These signs come with a trailer and a generator.
A KDOT sign will also be delivered to each community as part of the SPARKS grant.
In addition to the signs, each city will get hand-held sanitizer guns, two gallons of sanitizer to go with the guns, two hand sanitizer stations and video conferencing capability with a laptop as part of the community pack deals.
In times of emergency, the messages on the signs can be updated from the Mankato dispatch center.
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