News – Page 1232 – Ranson Financial Group LLC

Emporia hospital experiences ventilator shortage, county declares emergency

info2022-01-11T07:01:10-06:00January 11th, 2022|

Hospitals across Kansas are feeling the strain not just on staffing but on supplies as well. One hospital, in particular, ran out of ventilators on Friday as the state continued to report a surge in COVID-19 cases. On Friday, Jan. 7, a local emergency was declared for the Newman Regional Health hospital in Emporia by the Lyons County Board when they ran short of ventilators. This declaration will help the hospital receive two additional ventilators from the state. "The hospital had used all the ventilators that they had, and they were in need of some more," said Rollie Martin, chairman of [...]

Suburban multifamly boom creates a complex issue

info2022-01-11T07:00:26-06:00January 11th, 2022|

Multifamily development in Johnson County has exploded in the past decade. Lenexa alone added roughly 3,000 apartments between 2011 and 2020, and Overland Park picked up 7,000 apartment and senior-living units in that same period, with 1,355 completed just in 2021. Projects have played important roles in the county economy: helping attract residents, providing a more affordable option as house prices have increased, and complementing retail and office growth in areas such as Lenexa City Center and downtown Overland Park. But apartment growth also has come with resistance and became an issue in the Overland Park mayoral race. Source: Kansas City [...]

Dodge City public transportation fees return in February

info2022-01-11T06:59:33-06:00January 11th, 2022|

Effective Feb. 1, 2022, Dodge City will be reinstating all passenger fees for their public transportation services. Public transportation fees have been waived since June 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, due to funding received from the Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). According to Nick Hernandez, the City Manager of Dodge City, the ability to waive fees was made possible by the funds available through the State's Public Transportation program to help local governments and other agencies to match aid under the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Source: KSN-TV

Topeka’s new loan forgiveness program encourages investment in lower-income neighborhoods

info2022-01-10T07:31:49-06:00January 10th, 2022|

A lifetime of memories exists in the house where Kristin Miller grew up in southeast Topeka's Hi-Crest West neighborhood.... in late 2017, Miller found herself facing home repair costs she couldn't afford to cover. Fortunately, she said, she was accepted into a program through which the city's housing services division loans money to homeowners in lower-income neighborhoods to have needed work done. Source: CJonline

‘Nonrenewable resource’: As western Kansas dries up, Legislature revisits water policy

info2022-01-10T07:21:40-06:00January 10th, 2022|

For the better part of a decade, the drinking water supply for a small southwest Kansas town was almost constantly contaminated with unsafe levels of radium, a radioactive element that can cause cancer. The city of Lakin found unsafe levels of uranium in its water in 2007, said Mike Heinitz, the city’s administrator. For years, it sent quarterly notices telling residents they could be consuming high levels of uranium before opening a multimillion dollar treatment facility in 2015. Now, Lakin’s water meets federal standards. But neighboring Deerfield, downstream on the Arkansas River, might have to pipe in water from Lakin for [...]

Johnson County says close contact tracing of COVID-19 in schools ‘no longer feasible’

info2022-01-10T07:12:23-06:00January 10th, 2022|

Amid a record surge in COVID-19 cases, the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment has told local school districts that “intensive contact tracing within schools is no longer feasible.” The flood of new cases, fueled in part by the highly contagious Omicron variant, has made it practically impossible for JCDHE officials and school nurses to keep up with the often time-consuming task of tracking down who an infected person may have been in contact with. JCDHE says, instead, priority should now be given to identifying positive cases and isolating them. Source: Shawnee Mission Post

Four-lane expressway project begins in Cherokee County

info2022-01-10T07:06:07-06:00January 9th, 2022|

Road expansion is underway in Cherokee County. The Kansas Department of Transportation is creating a four-lane expressway along U-S 166. The project will be constructed between the highways junctions with U-S 400 and K-26. There will also be interchanges constructed at each of the junctions. Traffic is not expected to be impacted during the early phase of the project, which includes equipment staging, clearing and bridgework. KDOT will provide traffic updates over the course of the project which is anticipated to be completed by May 2024. Source: KSNF/KODE

Lyon County declares state of local emergency for COVID-19

info2022-01-09T18:16:35-06:00January 9th, 2022|

The Lyon County Commission declared a state of local emergency due to COVID-19 Friday morning. According to County Clerk Tammy Vopat, Newman Regional Health contacted Lyon County Emergency Management and requested the use of two ventilators to be ordered from the State EOC. All local ventilators were currently in use. Emergency Management was unable to request the resource from the State EOC, because a state of local emergency was not already in place. Source: Emporia Gazette

Kansas City, Kansas, Police try something new to get unlicensed cars off the road: Teach driver’s ed

info2022-01-09T18:15:16-06:00January 9th, 2022|

Ulisa Arreola-Campos had a lot on her plate the day she was supposed to attend court on the charge of driving without a license. The Kansas City, Kansas, teenager had only recently been discharged from a month-long hospital stay after being felled simultaneously by COVID-19 and appendicitis. Her mother was also laid up — she broke her leg in multiple places when she fell on a public bus. Ulisa, a high school sophomore, was trying to manage online classes and help her three younger siblings with their school work as they all stayed home during the early months of the pandemic [...]

Main Street Program to help restore and maintain Girard Square

info2022-01-10T07:07:47-06:00January 9th, 2022|

The main square has been one, if not the most memorable locations in cities like Girard, it's a center for shops, food and business. However, a major obstacle current and new businesses face is the maintenance of the buildings which house them, but there could soon be some help. "In order to have jobs and people who want to live here, and come back to Girard, we need a healthy square. We need businesses here, a place to shop, just all around it starts with the square," says Mark Schifferdecker, GNBank President & CEO. Maintaining the historic buildings in the Girard [...]