News – Page 522 – Ranson Financial Group LLC

Joint city-county meeting to focus on homelessness and housing strategic plan

info2024-01-17T11:00:03-06:00January 17th, 2024|

The Lawrence City Commission and Douglas County Commission on Wednesday will hold a joint meeting to review the strategic plan to address homelessness and hear updates on progress. The commissions will not take any binding action but will discuss collaboration between the governing bodies going forward, according to the agenda. Both commissions heard reports on the draft plan in spring of 2023, and city/county staff members held public engagement meetings to gather community feedback over the next couple of months. The plan has since been revised, and the final draft was completed in December, according to the presentation in the meeting agenda. The joint [...]

Waging war on snow, ice

info2024-01-17T10:58:34-06:00January 17th, 2024|

“It’s been pretty mild since I got here,” said Pittsburg Street Supervisor Lonnie Wells, “2011 was the last big storm, and that’s OK with me.” As Wells spoke Tuesday, the City’s trucks were crisscrossing Pittsburg using plows and a mixture of sand and salt to clear the streets of stubborn packed snow. Although the weekend’s snow was not deep, the extreme cold slowed melting and many streets were still slippery. Wells said that once snow is compacted by traffic and temperatures are as low as they have been recently, it becomes almost like ice. “You can’t plow that stuff off,” Wells said. The extreme [...]

Why is Wamego dropping its speed limit to 20 mph?

info2024-01-17T10:57:30-06:00January 17th, 2024|

With a few exceptions, the City of Wamego has chosen to drop the speed limit for local streets to 20 mph. KSNT 27 news spoke with City Manager Stacie Eichem for an explanation for why the decision was made and what this means for people driving through Wamego. She said the Governing Body of Wamego approved Ordinance 1800 on Dec. 19, adopting a city-wide 20 mph limit. Language in the ordinance states that a traffic speed study was conducted by Olsson Engineers. A recommendation from this study asked for the speed limit on local roadways to be lowered to 20 mph "in [...]

Appraisal increases match housing market changes

info2024-01-17T10:56:17-06:00January 17th, 2024|

Appraisals in the county have increased significantly, with the county appraiser saying it’s the highest she’s ever seen in the past three years. Real estate agents say there are changes in the housing market that explain these increases. Brad Elliot, a real estate agent in the county, said interest rates increasing in recent years has kept many people from selling. This causes increased competition for the houses that are put on the market and drives prices up. Elliot thinks, with interest rates decreasing again, more houses will be added to the market. People who had been unwilling to move because their interest rates [...]

Markets Expect Rate Cuts Soon. Central Banks Say Not So Fast.

info2024-01-17T10:55:09-06:00January 17th, 2024|

There may be a middle ground between blindly trusting central bankers’ interest-rate guidance and disregarding it completely. On Tuesday, stocks fell, Treasury yields jumped and the U.S. dollar rose against other currencies after Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller warned that any lowering of interest rates this year will need to be “carefully calibrated and not rushed.” Though he is a well-known hawk, many other officials have also recently suggested that investors may be expecting borrowing costs to come down too far and too fast. European Central Bank rate setters made the same point at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, including chief economist Philip [...]

New zoning code could bring in different events around Century II

info2024-01-17T10:52:10-06:00January 17th, 2024|

More special events could be coming to downtown Wichita. The City Council unanimously passed a zoning change on Tuesday, which not only removed outdated zoning but also opened up the facility to more events and opportunities in the area around Century II. It came about after an artist began to fight to keep his shop in Old Town, and a group looked into holding a tattooing convention there, but the Central Business District prohibits tattooing. A few months after Afterlife Tattooz opened in Old Town, the owner got a letter from the City telling him tattoo shops were not allowed in his part [...]

Prairie Village moving ahead with plan to build new city hall

info2024-01-17T10:51:11-06:00January 17th, 2024|

Prairie Village is moving forward with plans for a new city hall — unchanged from a design the previous city council supported before last fall’s elections altered the makeup of the governing body. During the first discussion of the new city hall facility in 2024, the city council on Tuesday decided to ultimately exclude two proposed changes to a roughly $30 million design that the previous council had asked city staff to explore last year. The plan backed by the council calls for a completely new 18,000-square-foot city hall building on the south side of the parking lot outside the current municipal complex. [...]

Panasonic answers concern Kansans to pay for electricity infrastructure serving De Soto plant

info2024-01-17T10:49:11-06:00January 17th, 2024|

Panasonic executives involved in construction of the $4 billion electric vehicle battery plant at De Soto said Tuesday the facility would begin production in early 2025 and negotiations continued with Evergy on delivery of electricity to manufacturing space occupying 4.7 million square feet. The company broke ground in July 2022 on a project backed by up to $1 billion in state economic incentives with the promise of employing 4,000 people in production of lithium-ion batteries used in vehicles. In testimony to the House energy committee, Panasonic said the December decision not to build a comparable plant in Oklahoma didn’t indicate presence [...]

Halstead expands funding to revitalize downtown

info2024-01-17T10:47:49-06:00January 17th, 2024|

After seeing some businesses struggling to maintain their buildings downtown, the City of Halstead started a grant program for these businesses. The grants, known as “DRAGON Grants,” provide businesses with between $1,000 and $10,000. Reimer said that, in the past, the city allotted $40,000 for grants each year, but the city council voted to expand that to $50,000 for 2024. City Manager Ethan Reimer said these grants are a way for the city to provide some support to businesses in the community that they don’t get elsewhere. “It’s a recognition of the fact that some of our larger businesses qualify for [...]

Lawrence city commissioners express support for updates to land development code, hope to implement it this year

info2024-01-17T10:46:12-06:00January 17th, 2024|

City commissioners on Tuesday received an update on the city’s new land development code, which aims to update zoning regulations to allow for more sustainability, affordable housing and equity. Elizabeth Garvin of Clarion, a national land-use consulting firm, gave a presentation to commissioners outlining the work of city staff, planning commissioners and a steering committee for the updated code. The city began work to update the land development code in 2022 and is hoping to implement the new one this year. Currently, the project is in its third of four stages, which is drafting the new land development code. One of the [...]