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Hiawatha Community Hospital to meet with county and city officials on financial crisis

info2019-01-16T06:31:50-06:00January 16th, 2019|

Hiawatha Community Hospital is scheduled to meet with city and county officials to discuss its state of financial urgency. This is according to Jeff Shelton, CEO, who announced last week that the hospital needed to cut — or find additional revenue — to the tune of approximately $3 million in order to deter the financial crisis. Shelton announced last week cuts in employee fringe benefits that totaled around $1 million — and included a 2 percent pay cut for all employees, in addition to other compensation decreases by the providers — but said the hospital would need to find a way [...]

Planters at end of JoCo streets cause big stir: Are they hazards or safety features?

info2019-01-15T07:09:38-06:00January 15th, 2019|

When a reckless driver last May crashed into a decorative planter at the end of a residential street in Mission, he did a lot more than dislodge some bricks into the roadway. The errant motorist sparked an impassioned debate over how best to preserve quiet, safe streets and neighborhood tranquility not far from Shawnee Mission Parkway. City officials say they can’t just fix the broken planter, which has been there for more than 25 years, because it doesn’t meet the latest national highway safety standards. The city has floated the idea of removing this planter and five others that currently create [...]

Homeowners throughout Topeka can now apply to get their houses painted

info2019-01-15T07:00:53-06:00January 15th, 2019|

The city of Topeka has expanded its guidelines for homeowners to have their houses painted at no cost this summer, now allowing anyone from throughout the capital city to apply, a city official said. Shane Wilson, program intake coordinator with the city’s Neighborhood Relations department, said Monday the city had initially focused in North Topeka and Ward-Meade neighborhoods as they looked for struggling homeowners who needed help getting their houses painted. But after calls from throughout the community, the program is being opened to anyone in the city who meets guidelines. Group Cares, a Colorado-based organization, will bring its team of [...]

Hoisington to finish new fencing project at City Cemetery

info2019-01-15T06:56:50-06:00January 15th, 2019|

The City of Hoisington is moving forward with completing the fencing project along the west side of the city cemetery along North Cedar Street. Hoisington City Manager Jonathan Mitchell says the Hoisington City Council voted to retain the services from Eldridge Fencing to finish the already started project. The $26,000 project will finish the fencing along the west side of the cemetery with new gates. Mitchell says there is not a lot fencing needed for the cemetery along K-4 Highway because of the tree rows that border in the majority of the boundary. (Read more: Great Bend Post)

Heavy snow in KC area left Edgerton City Hall in the dark

info2019-01-15T06:51:16-06:00January 15th, 2019|

Heavy snow has left Edgerton City Hall in the dark – literally. “Power is out at city hall,” said Don Roberts, mayor. An alert was sent to area residents via the Johnson County notification network. “We are trying to get moved to a priority list,” Roberts said. Edgerton is serviced by Kansas City Power and Light, which had over 80,000 customers out Jan. 11. Although city hall has no phones, no lights, no internet, Roberts said he was only aware of about five Edgerton residential customers without power. “People can still call in to city hall, it won’t be the same [...]

Gardner okays neighborhood revitalization program

info2019-01-15T06:48:46-06:00January 15th, 2019|

The Gardner City Council adopted a resolution to create a neighborhood revitalization program in four zones within Gardner during a meeting Jan. 7 The zones, three business and one residential, will benefit from a tax rebate once the program is completed. According to Larry Powell, Gardner director of business and economic development, the proposed revitalization program follows the success of a similar program that ran between 1997 and 2007. (There was a final payout in December of 2017.) He said Gardner was the first city in the county to establish a neighborhood revitalization project and the first to complete it. He [...]

899 people in line ahead of you? Johnson County in for major courthouse traffic jam

info2019-01-15T06:47:44-06:00January 15th, 2019|

If you are scheduled to appear in Johnson County traffic court on the morning of Feb. 6, you might want to bring a book. A very long book. For reasons that officials are still trying to sort out, more than 900 traffic cases have been scheduled to be heard at the 8:30 a.m. docket that day in the traffic division at the Johnson County Courthouse in Olathe. “There is likely to be a wait of several hours,” Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said in a written statement. A typical traffic court docket would schedule 250 to 350 citations, according to [...]

Hays Regional Airport serves record number of passengers

info2019-01-15T06:46:10-06:00January 15th, 2019|

The Hays Regional Airport will be receiving more funds for improvements from the Federal Aviation Administration, thanks to record boardings in the 2018. More than 12,000 passengers flew out of the airport last year. Ovid Seifers, airport manager, said the April addition of SkyWest flights to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport was the reason for the increase. Flights to Denver were also up slightly. This included a record month in December, Seifers said. The airport last reached 10,000 boardings in 2011 and 2012. Since the airport exceeded 10,000 departures in 2018, it is eligible for $1 million in FFA Airport Improvement Funds [...]

Wichita company plans payback to city after missing incentive threshold

info2019-01-14T08:25:35-06:00January 14th, 2019|

Local aerospace supplier Fiber Dynamics Inc. is planning an expansion in southwest Wichita while also crafting a plan with the city to make good on monies owed as a result of missing the employment threshold of a previous tax abatement. According to documents from the city, the company in 2008 was approved for a tax exemption for expansion and new machinery. At the time, it had a base employment of 22 people and projected the creation of 79 new jobs. However, at the time of the city’s five-year review of that abatement in 2013, the company had not yet hit that [...]

Johnson County among hardest hit by power outages from weekend winter storm

info2019-01-14T06:50:21-06:00January 14th, 2019|

Efforts to restore power to homes affected by the winter storm that hung over the Shawnee Mission area for a full day this weekend are expected to continue into at least tomorrow. Information provided by KCP&L to northeast Johnson County cities suggests that many customers may be without power through Monday. The heavy, wet snow the piled up on the area from Winter Storm Gia damaged parts of the local electrical grid, sending blue flashes from blown transformers across the sky Saturday. More than 120,000 KCP&L customers across the Kansas City metro area were left without power at the storm’s peak. [...]

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