A middle school English teacher in Hoisington, Kiley Klug, took her language skills to the big stage, winning “Wheel of Fortune.” “At the end of the day, it didn’t really matter how much I won or if I won; I just wanted to experience that and check it off my bucket list,” Klug said. Klug says being a middle school English teacher, she loves all word games. She applied multiple times before getting her shot. After she got the “yes” she’d been waiting for, she began thinking of logistics. Klug says as a teacher, she wasn’t sure what they would be able to afford. “We were trying to decide who to go with us; my husband was like, ‘Yeah, it’s probably just gonna be the two of us. I just don’t think we could swing four plane tickets. That’s a lot of money.'” Then, everything fell into place. Klug formerly spent some time advocating for Dravet syndrome, an epilepsy syndrome, on the side. Her son Owen has Dravet syndrome. The organization she worked for contacted her to train new influencers. “They wanted me to be like a coach, a trainer,” Klug said. “And so I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely. I’ll do that for sure.’ And they said, ‘You’ll be compensated for it.’ Like, ‘OK, I’d do it for free, but whatever.’ I got paid around the time we were debating whether or not we could take our kids, and I kid you not, it was exactly the amount of four plane tickets. So I just feel like all of these doors just opened.”
Source: KSN-TV

A Wichita apartment complex that houses people who are low-income and disabled is in the process of rebuilding. On Tuesday, the Wichita City Council approved industrial revenue bonds for a sales tax exemption for the rebuild at The Timbers. The apartment complex is knocking down its older units built in the 1970s to create new ones that follow updated ADA guidelines. What the City did Tuesday was grant The Timbers $13 million worth of industrial revenue bonds for a sales tax exemption. In simpler terms, that means they don’t have to pay sales tax on supplies they buy for their renovation project. Having the exemption from the City will help The Timbers unlock funding from the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation. “When you apply for the tax credit program, it’s based on points, so if you have local, in this case, city contribution, which would be in the form of a sales tax exemption, it increases our points when we apply to KHRC,” said Patrick Jonas, CEO and President of the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation, which currently owns The Timbers. He said they chose not to apply for grant funding from the City for the upcoming second phase of the project. They plan to rely more on the KHRC for the dollars they need.
Source: KSN-TV

The City of Wichita is hosting a career fair from 1- 4 p.m. on Monday, April 22, at the Workforce Alliance of South Central Kansas, 2021 N. Amidon, Suite 1100. Applications will be accepted for all job openings, and staff will be on hand from the following departments to answer questions: Airport Police and Fire; Fire; Information Technology; MAPD (Metropolitan Area Planning Department); Municipal Court; Park & Recreation; Police; Public Works & Utilities; and Wichita Transit. The City has 293 open positions across its departments, including multiple seasonal opportunities. To learn more and apply for a job, visit www.wichita.gov/jobs.
Source: KSN-TV

Gov. Laura Kelly is weighing in on a tax package sent to her desk, which includes a slew of tax cuts. The package received bipartisan support in the Senate, with one Democrat voting in favor of the plan, and it passed unanimously in the House. However, Gov. Kelly said Tuesday that her initial interpretation of the bill is that it’s ‘too expensive.’ “I think what I said when it got passed, though, is it’s a little out of the ballpark. It’s too expensive so I really need to take a look at that and have some serious conversations with my budget people looking forward to see if my gut sense is that it is too expensive and not sustainable,” Kelly told reporters Tuesday. Kelly is tight-lipped on whether she’ll veto the plan. She only has about a week left to decide as lawmakers return to the statehouse next week. The package that passed just hours before lawmakers adjourned this month provides property tax relief and eliminates the income tax on social security. It also removes the state food sales tax by July 1. It is something Gov. Kelly has been pushing for since her re-election campaign in 2022. Another key feature of the plan includes moving the state to a two-rate income tax system. It eliminates the bottom bracket and reduces the top two brackets by 0.15%.
Source: KSN-TV