by Leah Justice
April is National County Government Month and in honor of that the Polk County Board of Commissioners has established a contest for high school art classes to design a new Polk County flag.
The winner of the contest will receive a $200 scholarship, which commissioners decided to pay for out of their own pockets at $40 each.
Commissioners met Monday, April 7 and agreed to establish the contest. Board chair Ted Owens asked for permission from the board to allow the high school art class to conduct a contest to design a new county flag. Owens said he wants to see what they come up with and it won’t necessarily mean the winning design will replace the current county flag.
Owens said he already has a citizen committee made up of Polk County Cooperative Extension Director John Vining and Robert Williamson with the House of Flags Museum to judge the contest.
Owens originally asked that the $200 winnings be taken out of the manager’s discretion fund, but commissioner Michael Gage said he’d like to see commissioners come up with the money for that out of their own pockets. Other commissioners agreed.
“I think it’s a wonderful way to get our schools involved in county government,” said Owens.
He said he recently visited Polk Central’s fourth grade class to talk about government and encouraged other commissioners to visit the schools to get young people interested in government.
Owens said he asked students questions about government with one question being how many counties are in North Carolina. He said he was pleasantly surprised when one fourth grader answered correctly, that there are 100 counties in the state.