Shawnee County commissioners made the best decision they could under the circumstances last month when they agreed to let Forensic Medical Holdings provide coroner’s services until January 2020, says county counselor Jim Crowl. Crowl clarified in an interview last week how the county responded to the firing of three coroner’s office employees who sounded alarms about the company’s quality of service. He also said commissioners learned in mid-April that county coroner Charles Glenn, who has held the position since 2014, planned to sell his company to FMH. Commissioners Kevin Cook, Shelly Buhler and Bob Archer voted in 2015 to privatize coroner’s [...]

Responsibility has shifted from Topeka to Shawnee County for rebuilding a road that straddles city limits at an economic development park south of town. County Commissioners Kevin Cook, Shelly Buhler and Bob Archer voted 3-0 Monday to enter into a contract calling for the county to carry out bidding, construction and construction administration for the joint $1 million project to rebuild S.W. Gary Ormsby Drive between S.W. Innovation Parkway and the on-ramp to northbound US-75 highway. “I feel much more comfortable than I did when we first took up this topic,” Cook said. He was referring to how the agreement initially [...]

When Jim Richardson began taking photos in Cuba, Kansas, he started out photographing a town and ended up photographing a community. “I kind of expected when I started that I was documenting the decline and probable death of a small town, but it didn’t happen,” Richardson said. “They have kept the town alive and interesting.” Richardson, a former Topeka Capital-Journal photographer who now works for National Geographic magazine, has spent 40 years taking pictures of Cuba and the people who live there. The photos have been featured in National Geographic and on CBS Sunday Morning. Cuba will celebrate its 150th anniversary [...]

Creating the Brown v. Board education mural, there was a lot of doubt about how this project was going to come about. Filling the south-facing wall of Hill and Co.’s building at 1424 S.E. Monroe St., near the Brown v. Board of Education historic site, was the largest undertaking the Topeka Mural Project had ever attempted. It involved coordinating with an artist with whom the mural project had never worked. From the project facilitators to city leaders, building owners and the general public, it involved a lot of trust. “I learned pretty early on that you have to just trust the [...]

The city’s governing body, consisting of the nine council members and Mayor Michelle De La Isla, plans to consider scheduling a citywide Nov. 6 ballot question election on whether to extend the current citywide half-cent tax for 10 years, through Oct. 1, 2029. The proposal would arrange for revenue from the renewed tax, like the current one, to be allowed to go only to cover “costs of maintenance and improvements of existing streets, curbs, gutters, sidewalks, alleys and street lighting.” Topekans in April 2009 voted 57 percent to 43 percent to approve the current 10-year tax. It began Oct. 1, 2009, [...]