Recycling, for decades an almost reflexive effort by American households and businesses to reduce waste and help the environment, is collapsing in many parts of the country. ... With fewer buyers, recycling companies are recouping their lost profits by charging cities more, in some cases four times what they charged last year. Amid the soaring costs, cities and towns are making hard choices about whether to raise taxes, cut other municipal services or abandon an effort that took hold during the environmental movement of the 1970s. ... Perhaps counterintuitively, the big winners appear to be the nation’s largest recyclers, like Waste [...]

A northeast Kansas hospital run by an embattled health management company has shut down operations after struggling for months without enough funds to pay its employees or buy medication and food for patients. The city of Horton’s only medical provider, Horton Community Hospital, closed on Tuesday, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. Residents will now have to travel 12 miles to Hiawatha for medical care. The hospital’s chief of staff, Dr. Richard Brown, said the closure didn’t come as a surprise. Hospital workers, who have faced weekslong gaps in pay, had been working with the Kansas Attorney General’s Office and Kansas Department of [...]

City leaders have started to narrow down a field of two dozen candidates for the position of city manager, and three finalists for the city’s top administrative job will be announced in coming weeks. Instead of its regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday, the Lawrence City Commission held an approximately two-hour executive session to review applications for the city manager position. Following the session, Mayor Lisa Larsen said that 24 people applied, and that the commission had selected six people to continue to the interview stage. Read more: LJWorld.com.