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A Great Bend school resource officer was awarded for his actions during a shooting this summer outside Wichita’s Towne East Square. On Aug. 8, officer Paul Millard was leaving the mall with his wife when gunshots were fired in the parking lot. Millard quickly responded and restrained the suspect until the Wichita Police Department arrived. At Monday night’s Great Bend City Council meeting, Millard was awarded a Bronze Wreath of Valor by the WPD. The honor is the third-highest given by the WPD. Read more: KSN-TV

Harvey County 911 Emergency Communications has a new tool that will help first responders find people in an emergency. What3Words is a tool that helps dispatchers pinpoint your location to within a few feet. The app works by dividing the world into 3-meter squares, each with three assigned words. Read more: KSN-TV

At the August 27, 2025 Hays Commission / Russel Council Joint Meeting, Hays City Manager Toby Dougherty stated that, despite legal objections raised, the state’s Water Hearing Panel is waiting on the Supreme Court ruling before it holds a statutorily required hearing on the R9’s approved water use change and transfer application. Per the Kansas Water Transfer Act (KWTA), the application to transfer more than 2,000 acre-feet of water over 35 miles is a multi-step process. The R9 process resulted in a 2019 50 page Master Order, including 32 separate orders giving contingent approval of the transfer and contingent approval for [...]

Sedgwick County has a new four-legged partner helping investigate fires. Latitude, also known as Laddy, is an 18-month-old black lab who recently graduated from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) training center in Virginia. He joins the Sedgwick County Fire District 1 Fire Investigation Unit as an “ATF accelerant detection canine,” trained to sniff out signs of arson. Read more: KSN-TV

Approximately 30 volunteers gathered on Saturday, Nov. 15, at Pittsburg City Hall where they were divided into teams and sent out into the city to do some community clean up. Read more: - Morning Sun

According to Adam Harrison, the human resources and finance officer for the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office, recruitment and retention of correctional officers (COs) is an “uphill battle.” “Working 12-hour shifts with violent offenders,” Harrison told the county commission, “our application pool is practically non-existent.” Harrison added that 70 percent of the applicants the department does receive are disqualified because they fail the urinalysis, polygraph, or background checks. To increase interest, Harrison proposed an increase in starting pay from $16.67 an hour to $18 an hour, a raise of $1.33 per hour. Officers typically work 2080 regular and overtime hours per year, [...]

McPherson USD 418 has opened an online survey to provide additional feedback on facility planning for the district. This follows up on the work of a facility study committee, open houses held in October, and a phone survey commissioned by the district. The survey, which is being managed by ExcellenceK12, a company which works with school districts on community research, and should take about 3-5 minutes to complete. Read more: Ad Astra Radio | Your Hometown Radio Stations & Local News Source

Halstead City Council authorized city staff to sign paperwork and send $136,000 to the Kansas Department of Transportation for the city’s portion of the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) improvement project. The amount represents the city’s 20 percent match for the grant originally awarded by KDOT in July 2022. Anticipated costs for construction engineering, construction, and inspection costs per the accepted bids on the project are $678,227. City Manager Ethan Reimer said the next step will be to meet with the contractor and get anticipated construction dates. He said it will mostly be five-foot-wide sidewalks running on the north side of [...]

Texas businessman Brad Heppner’s insistence on construction of a grandiose $20 million grocery store in Hesston proved too complicated for the project to get off the ground before the unsealing of an indictment alleging he orchestrated a $150 million financial fraud. Federal charges against Heppner, who was CEO of the Beneficient company in Dallas and a founder of the Beneficient Heartland Foundation in Hesston, were revealed days before an interim committee of the Kansas Legislature convened to review activities tied to Beneficient. The Legislature several years ago ordered state regulators to issue a unique bank charter to fuel Beneficient’s business catering [...]

North Newton now will have a parks and recreation committee. That’s after the North Newton City Council voted 4-0 in favor of establishing the group at its regular monthly meeting on Monday night. “The creation of a parks and recreation committee, which focuses on advising the city council on how to best utilize and improve the city’s parks, trails and open spaces, was identified as a productive way to fulfill some of the outcomes in our strategic plan,” City Administrator Brad Harris said at the meeting. “This ordinance will establish a group of four residents, selected by the mayor, and a [...]