Inside the Portage County line By GENE KEMMETER of The Gazette ARBOR DAY OBSERVANCES: Arbor Day is observed on the last Friday in April but area municipalities held off their observances for later. The village of Amherst held its event Saturday at the village nursery of County Trunk V. Both the village of Plover and Stevens Point held their events Tuesday afternoon. Plover's event was at Oak Park with St. Bronislava Catholic School children in grades one through 5 helping to plant four trees. In Stevens Point, fourth-graders from St. Paul Lutheran School helped plant two trees after taking turns reading a section of the proclamation from Mayor Gary Wescott about Arbor Day. The trees were planted in "Train Park" on the south side, where engine 2713 resides. During the planting, some students showed so much energy in shoveling dirt that their parents might welcome the children using one-fourth as much enthusiasm in doing work around the house. * * * RETIRING: Bernie Wisniewski, longtime head pressman at the Stevens Point Journal, has retired after a lengthy career printing the newspaper. He started out in the oily, ink-stained basement of the old Journal building on Third Street, moved over to the present building on Third Court when it opened in 1969 and then the new plant in the industrial park in 1995. He was always around ink and now claims he'll be washing off a lifetime supply of ink while he's fishing. He also plans to do a lot of golfing. He's one of the latest to leave the Journal. Editor Debbie Bradley and Jeff Pozorski, circulation manager, will also be going this month, both to Krause Publications in Iola. * * * COLORFUL SQUADS: Multicolored squad cars are back in Portage County. The city of Stevens Point has come back with black-and-white cars (just like the 1950s and '60s) this year. The area hasn't had multicolored squads for several years. The last time was probably the "bicentennial" cars of the Portage County Sheriff's Department in 1976, a red-white-and-blue vintage with a red that was actually burgundy. The last of those cars, low in mileage, was "sacrificed" during a shootout, when a man holed up in a house peppered the vehicle full of holes. No deputies shed a tear about the loss of the vehicle. It had low mileage because no one wanted to drive it. * * * MAYOR'S ASSISTANT LEAVING: Rocky Baumgarner, assistant to Stevens Point Mayor Gary Wescott, is leaving his position after the May 15 Common Council meeting to take a position as assistant to the city manager in Salina, Kansas. Baumgarner, a Kansas native with a distinctive accent, will escape being the brunt of numerous "Wizard of Oz" comments. He took the new job after returning to Kansas last weekend to accept his master's degree. * * * OUT-OF-TOWN BOX: News reports this week said leaflets passed around Wisconsin Rapids for the Ku Klux Klan listed a Plover postal box, raising the issue of a KKK group operating in the village. A source close to the case informs The Gazette that the postal box was rented by a Wisconsin Rapids resident.