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County commissioners Tuesday delayed a decision on imposing a moratorium on commercial battery energy storage systems to add language proposed by Commissioner Clarke Dirks offering reasons for the moratorium. County counsel Brad Jantz, who was not at the meeting, drafted the same resolution for Harvey County but did not include rationale mentioned by Dirks. Dirks said data centers and battery storage used tremendous amounts of energy. Read more: Marion County RECORD

St. Luke Hospital is considering whether to change how hospital board elections are conducted. “We have historically pretty low participation in our elections from the general public, unless there’s something controversial going on,” chief executive Alex Haines said. Elections are conducted during the hospital district’s annual meeting in May. Read more: Marion County RECORD

The Hutchinson City Council is taking the next steps toward renovating some of the city’s most iconic structures. The council unanimously approved a STAR bond project plan Tuesday evening after holding a public hearing. The proposal uses sales tax revenue to improve three key sites in hopes of drawing more tourists to Hutchinson. “What is helpful about STAR bonds is that it allows municipalities to make investments into our community into those attractions that, in turn, will bring in more visitors,” Dave Sotelo, Hutchinson’s director of strategic growth, said in an interview with KSN before the City Council meeting. The STAR [...]

A new Amazon facility is up and running in the Wichita area. Last week, the company opened a last-mile facility in Bel Aire that has about 150 employees, plus more than 130 drivers for the delivery service partners. The location is about the size of three football fields, according to Amazon. Read more: KSN-TV

Golden Waves Grain announced it plans to build a baking production facility in Goodland, bringing about 140 new jobs to the city. The facility will house grain milling operations and a large-scale commercial bakery under one roof. Tony Adams, the CEO of Golden Waves Grain, says Goodland is the perfect place for the project because of the city’s access to hard red winter wheat. “We may ask some of the farmers who are investors to look at some different types of wheat that would coordinate with the hard red winter wheat that we’re growing, or expand on some of the hard [...]

Real property tax exemptions cost local and state governments more than $1 billion in forgone tax revenue during 2024, a new state audit reports. Acknowledging that their conclusions should be interpreted as rough estimates because they rely on significant assumptions, state auditors reported that local government lost a $1 billion in revenue and the state didn’t collect  $12 million in property tax revenue. The auditors noted that just a  few of those exemptions are were for economic development projects. The auditors found that between 6% and 42% of Kansas counties’ real property was exempt. Eighty three of the state’s  105 counties [...]

A proposal capping property tax assessments moved out of Senate committee on Wednesday as the Legislature takes its first steps toward addressing property taxes ahead of this year’s elections. The Senate tax committee approved a constitutional amendment that would cap the taxable assessed property value at 3% with several limited exceptions, including new construction or improvements and if there is an error calculating the tax assessment. The cap would transfer if the property is sold or transferred. For tax year 2027, the final taxable assessed values hall not increase by more than 3% compared to the assessed value of the property [...]

The city’s new full-time planner will look to guide a slew of developments around town as they move from blueprints to buildings. Kyle Kobe is in his first weeks as the new city planner, but he has experience working with Eudora thanks to his time at Professional Engineering Consultants, where the city was one of his major clients. Kobe, who lives in Olathe, is originally from Edwardsville and has spent nearly his whole life in Kansas. He said growing up he often found his mind wandering to how cities were laid out and fit together, which pushed him to pursue a graduate degree [...]

In a 4-3 vote, USD 365 school board members decided Jan. 13 to close Greeley Elementary School, the Anderson County Review reported. The vote came after a Jan. 8 contentious public hearing, where board members were accused of having already made up their minds to shutter the school despite public comments to the contrary, the Review said. Board member Robert Shilling, Westphalia, said he spent time visiting with Greeley residents about the issue. Shilling said the overriding sentiment was that their opinions were not valued, the Review reported. The board’s decision sets in motion a plan outlined by Ryan Most, superintendent [...]

Allen County has launched a new emergency alert system, Genasys, replacing CodeRED with a cheaper, more customizable platform for public safety notifications. Allen County residents now receive emergency notifications through a new alert system, Genasys, following the county’s transition away from the long-used CodeRED platform. County commissioners unanimously approved the change in August 2025, with the new system officially going live Oct. 1. CodeRED remained active during the transition period and was fully discontinued on Jan. 3. The switch was made at the request of Allen County Emergency Management Director Jason Trego, who said the new system offers improved functionality at [...]