No one hates pre-8 a.m. activities more than me. But five times a year, it's easy for me to roll out of bed around 6:30 a.m. to place American flags in folks' and business' yards in support of the Kiwanis flag program. And my favorite day for this program is Nov. 11, Veterans Day.

Another one of my favorite Kiwanis activities is our annual Kiwanis luncheon that honors our local veterans.

The Kiwanis Club buys lunch for any veteran that attends and this year's salute was last Thursday at the Fox Pavilion. More than 100 veterans attended spanning service from World War II to our present-day conflicts. Sitting among these heroes is quite a humbling experience.

For this year's event, our club requested FHSU grad student, Trey Morgan, to produce a video to salute our nation's veterans, and he did a superb job. You can view it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYx80PRQuME.

If you forgot to thank your favorite veteran yesterday, call him or her tonight. Better late than never.

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Hats off to city employees for another successful Hays annual citywide cleanup! This is a great service to the citizens of Hays. This year, I had a small slab of concrete in my backyard by the alley. I asked what it would cost for them to pick it up when they were going through the alley. It qualified for free. I didn't even try to haggle.

Thanks again to the people who do the work and also thanks to our city commission for once again approving the funds for this annual project.

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That being said, there are a few programs that could use some tweaking. In May or June, I received a warning letter for a tree in the backyard that had some tree limbs too close to the alley. Along with a letter was a picture with the illegal growth marked in red, with notice that the city would hire someone to correct my scofflaw tree if I didn't. The letter also said to contact them when corrected, so they could inspect.

I had seen other warning letters concerning such crimes as open trash containers and dirt in the alley (I'm not kidding), but most of them deal with trees. I contacted city officials in June, as I had heard more than 700 tickets had been given out since the first of this year. I was informed only 600 at the time, but they expected to hit 750 sometime in July.

I'm assuming more than 1,000 letters will be sent out this year, so in the interest of saving money in a year where budgets are tight, I have a suggestion.

Place the digital camera for sale on eBay. With those funds, purchase a chainsaw. Then, drive up and down streets and alleys looking for unlawful tree growth. Instead of getting out of the pickup, measuring the limbs, taking a picture, getting back in the pickup, driving back to the office, printing the picture, marking the picture showing what needs to be trimmed to bring in compliance, writing the letter to mail with the picture; stamping the envelope with a 44-cent stamp and then re-inspecting the foliage at least one more time; try this.

Drive down the street or alley with a pickup and a trailer. After spotting a tree that needs trimming, get out of the pickup armed with a tape measure and the aforementioned chainsaw. Mark the tree, put the chain saw to use and throw the trim job into the back of the pickup or trailer -- $440 in postage savings alone, not to mention gas, paper, envelopes, time on the road, etc.

See what I mean?

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The city administration figured out another way to save money. They're shutting down Fort Hays Municipal Golf Course for three and a half months in the guise of saving the greens on the "back nine." But wait a minute, doesn't that leave a "front nine?"

Nope; that's being shut down also, so it doesn't get overused. I guess more people must golf in the winter than the summer.

For those of you who don't know the history of the Fort Hays Municipal Golf Course, I'll bring you up to date.

For years, it was a nine-hole course. Then it was an 18-hole course. If memory serves me, in the past three years, it has mostly reverted to a nine-hole course. And now, we'll have a no-hole course.

I don't have the skills needed for a greens keeper or course supervisor (Need proof? Drive by my front yard; for more proof drive down the alley and check out the backyard. It's the backyard with the neatly trimmed tree.), so I can't help the city out on this one. But there are nine-hole courses in Ellis, WaKeeney and Russell (actually 11 or 12, but I don't have the space to explain) that don't close in the winter, so maybe we could get some advice from their course administrators.

Again, just trying to help.

Thanksgiving is just two weeks away, and although we don't have a public golf course from Dec. 1 to March 15, we can be thankful for a whole bunch of other stuff.

Glenn Staab, a lifelong Hays resident and former city commissioner, sells insurance and real estate and is the Democratic Party chairman for Ellis County. glenn_staab@yahoo.com