Municipal News & Jobs

The town of Green received its name in 1868 when Governor Nehemiah Green offered to buy a bell for the first Methodist Church to be established in a town named Green. The people of the area placed the name on their area, and the Governor made good on his promise.
Read more: KCLY Radio

Clay Barker, general counsel for the Secretary of State’s office, said during a hearing that combining elections would “exponentially increase” the number of ballot versions printed, to account for the boundary lines of small offices, such as school board seats and drainage districts. He also said the ballots would be much longer, costing more to print and leading to longer lines at the polls as voters take more time to fill them out.
Read more: The Iola Register

The interest rate table above illustrates recent changes in a sample of AA rated bond trades reported to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s EMMA® system. Every issuer’s credit is different, and other financing sources may be available. To obtain comprehensive Financial Advisory services for your local government, contact your Ranson Financial Municipal Advisor, Larry Kleeman, or Henry Schmidt.

It took her longer than she planned, but Jamie Wiseman is realizing her dream come true as Bentley’s newest police officer. Growing up, Wiseman watched her mom (postmaster) and dad (mechanic) don a uniform every morning and work hard for their family, so she thought that’s what she would do. She picked a police officer. In 2021, she attended the Citizens Police Academy in Wichita and began volunteering for events throughout the year. In 2023, she attended the Wichita Police Academy, where she qualified on handguns and shotguns, the tools on her duty belt, and completed the case law, among other items. She considered working in her hometown of Spearville but didn’t want to drive four hours for each shift, so she began emailing local small-town departments. Bentley Police Chief James “Tim” Bryan was the only one who had a position open and was interested in hiring part-time. He said the agency has had female officers in the past. “I felt that the addition of another woman would be a value-add for our small department,” Bryan said. “Her upbringing in a town of comparable size, her living in proximity to Bentley, being a mother, and her passion to serve were all considerations.”
Read more: Harvey County Now

Now that the news of the Kansas City Chiefs’ move from Arrowhead Stadium to a new facility in Kansas has begun to sink in, many Kansans are reflecting on the tax incentive package used to get them here, say some state lawmakers. As the Kansas Legislature geared up for the session opening this week, members of the state Legislative Budget Committee said they have been flooded with constituent questions about the particulars of the Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bonds that will make up a significant portion of the funding. Legislators passed those questions on to a representative of the state Department of Commerce last week. Not all of the questions could be immediately answered, because final elements of the stadium location and property ownership are yet to be worked out.
Read more: Johnson County Post

On a lot of minds lately is the large jump in property taxes for 2026. County resident Roger Lomshek has been making the rounds among the county commission, USD 250 Board of Education, and the Pittsburg City Commission trying to convince them to reopen their 2026 budgets and possibly offer a rebate to taxpayers. USD 250 flatly refused. Crawford County and Pittsburg have been discussing the issue. At Tuesday night’s city commission meeting, Pittsburg commissioners agreed to investigate whether it is legal to reopen and redo the budget and explore possible options.
Read more: -Morning Sun

A year of hard work has paid off. Captain Steven Dryzmalla of the Hesston Police Department completed a year-long Law Enforcement Leadership Academy through the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center and the University of Kansas. To complete the course, Dryzmalla had to complete a capstone project, and he did exactly that. Dryzmalla has been working for HPD since 2011. The course was for command staff and above, usually lieutenant and above. Dryzmalla said the class covered topics from leadership to budgeting, to even working on recruitment or retention and a succession plan. The course even covered how to present projects to governing bodies.
Read more: Harvey County Now

Although Lenexa officials last year approved an over 66% increase in the number of places available at Project 1020, the county’s only cold-weather homeless shelter, the facility at the Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church has been full to overflowing every day this season since it opened Dec. 1, say organizers. On Thursday, advocates for people without housing asked for and got help from county commissioners in the form of funding of up to $25,000 for vouchers for hotel or motel stays — at negotiated rates — to help those residents who get to the shelter after it fills up. The funding is intended to last through March 31, after which the shelter closes for the season.
Read more: Johnson County Post

Hillsboro is fielding increasing complaints about feral and stray cats damaging property and straining relations between neighbors. But city administrator Matt Stiles told city council members Tuesday that the city has limited capacity to respond. Police mainly deal with stray dogs. Stray cats and other small animals are handled with live traps lent to residents and a local resident who helps on a case-by-case basis, he said.
Read more: Marion County RECORD

County commissioners Tuesday delayed a decision on imposing a moratorium on commercial battery energy storage systems to add language proposed by Commissioner Clarke Dirks offering reasons for the moratorium. County counsel Brad Jantz, who was not at the meeting, drafted the same resolution for Harvey County but did not include rationale mentioned by Dirks. Dirks said data centers and battery storage used tremendous amounts of energy.
Read more: Marion County RECORD

St. Luke Hospital is considering whether to change how hospital board elections are conducted. “We have historically pretty low participation in our elections from the general public, unless there’s something controversial going on,” chief executive Alex Haines said. Elections are conducted during the hospital district’s annual meeting in May.
Read more: Marion County RECORD

The Hutchinson City Council is taking the next steps toward renovating some of the city’s most iconic structures. The council unanimously approved a STAR bond project plan Tuesday evening after holding a public hearing. The proposal uses sales tax revenue to improve three key sites in hopes of drawing more tourists to Hutchinson. “What is helpful about STAR bonds is that it allows municipalities to make investments into our community into those attractions that, in turn, will bring in more visitors,” Dave Sotelo, Hutchinson’s director of strategic growth, said in an interview with KSN before the City Council meeting. The STAR bond is expected to fund renovations to Memorial Hall and the Landmark Apartments, as well as major upgrades at the Cosmosphere.
Read more: KSN-TV

A new Amazon facility is up and running in the Wichita area. Last week, the company opened a last-mile facility in Bel Aire that has about 150 employees, plus more than 130 drivers for the delivery service partners. The location is about the size of three football fields, according to Amazon.
Read more: KSN-TV

Golden Waves Grain announced it plans to build a baking production facility in Goodland, bringing about 140 new jobs to the city. The facility will house grain milling operations and a large-scale commercial bakery under one roof. Tony Adams, the CEO of Golden Waves Grain, says Goodland is the perfect place for the project because of the city’s access to hard red winter wheat. “We may ask some of the farmers who are investors to look at some different types of wheat that would coordinate with the hard red winter wheat that we’re growing, or expand on some of the hard red winter wheat, so that’s a possibility, but right now the wheat that they grow is one of the reasons we have put this project in Goodland,” Adams said. He said the company will need about 2 million bushels of wheat each year, and the Goodland area produces about 65 million.
Read more: KSN-TV

Real property tax exemptions cost local and state governments more than $1 billion in forgone tax revenue during 2024, a new state audit reports. Acknowledging that their conclusions should be interpreted as rough estimates because they rely on significant assumptions, state auditors reported that local government lost a $1 billion in revenue and the state didn’t collect  $12 million in property tax revenue. The auditors noted that just a  few of those exemptions are were for economic development projects. The auditors found that between 6% and 42% of Kansas counties’ real property was exempt. Eighty three of the state’s  105 counties had 20% or less of their real property exempt from property taxes. The audit estimated that $54 billion, or about 15%, of the $366 billion in appraised property values across Kansas have been exempted from real property taxes. There are seven broad categories for real property tax exemptions in Kansas, including those for the government, education, public service and nonprofits, energy and utilities, economic development and agriculture and other that don’t fit neatly into a category.
Read more: Sunflower State Journal

A proposal capping property tax assessments moved out of Senate committee on Wednesday as the Legislature takes its first steps toward addressing property taxes ahead of this year’s elections. The Senate tax committee approved a constitutional amendment that would cap the taxable assessed property value at 3% with several limited exceptions, including new construction or improvements and if there is an error calculating the tax assessment. The cap would transfer if the property is sold or transferred. For tax year 2027, the final taxable assessed values hall not increase by more than 3% compared to the assessed value of the property for tax year 2022. The amendment, if approved by two-thirds of the Legislature, would have to be ratified by Kansas voters during this year’s primary election on Aug. 4. The amendment is an attempt to respond to constituent complaints about rising property taxes, something lawmakers addressed nominally last year but couldn’t agree on a broader proposal to hold down property taxes.
Read more: Sunflower State Journal

The city’s new full-time planner will look to guide a slew of developments around town as they move from blueprints to buildings. Kyle Kobe is in his first weeks as the new city planner, but he has experience working with Eudora thanks to his time at Professional Engineering Consultants, where the city was one of his major clients. Kobe, who lives in Olathe, is originally from Edwardsville and has spent nearly his whole life in Kansas. He said growing up he often found his mind wandering to how cities were laid out and fit together, which pushed him to pursue a graduate degree in urban planning from KU. “I drove through all these towns, and I just found myself thinking, ‘Why is that there and not there?’” he said. “At the time, I was looking for, you know, what is my calling? I kind of just took a leap like, ‘Hey, this seems like the right thing for me,’ and it’s worked out ever since.” He hopes he can leverage those skills to help Eudora during a period of growth.
Read more: The Eudora Times

In a 4-3 vote, USD 365 school board members decided Jan. 13 to close Greeley Elementary School, the Anderson County Review reported. The vote came after a Jan. 8 contentious public hearing, where board members were accused of having already made up their minds to shutter the school despite public comments to the contrary, the Review said. Board member Robert Shilling, Westphalia, said he spent time visiting with Greeley residents about the issue. Shilling said the overriding sentiment was that their opinions were not valued, the Review reported. The board’s decision sets in motion a plan outlined by Ryan Most, superintendent of schools, to close the school effective at the end of this school year, restaging the 43 students in Greeley to Garnett Elementary School. Superintendent Most said that 51 percent of Greeley Elementary’s K-6 students currently live in Garnett. The superintendent projected that continuing enrollment declines in USD 365 for the 2026-2027 school year will result in a districtwide loss of $242,000 in state aid.
Read more: The Iola Register

Allen County has launched a new emergency alert system, Genasys, replacing CodeRED with a cheaper, more customizable platform for public safety notifications. Allen County residents now receive emergency notifications through a new alert system, Genasys, following the county’s transition away from the long-used CodeRED platform. County commissioners unanimously approved the change in August 2025, with the new system officially going live Oct. 1. CodeRED remained active during the transition period and was fully discontinued on Jan. 3. The switch was made at the request of Allen County Emergency Management Director Jason Trego, who said the new system offers improved functionality at a lower cost. Trego noted that the county maintained both systems briefly to ensure continuity of service.
Read more: The Iola Register

Projected increases in electricity load growth are as high as 99% by 2035, a data point that pushed regional energy regulators to create a plan to stabilize and expand grid capacity and transmission, a legislative committee learned Thursday. Part of that process includes building a controversial transmission line that will travel through four Kansas counties. Justin Grady, director of utilities for the Kansas Corporation Commission, told the House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee that a proposed 133-mile, 345 kilovolt transmission line to be built by Evergy will travel through western Sedgwick, Sumner, Cowley and Chautauqua counties. The project is part of Southwest Power Pool’s annual plan to support projected growth in electricity usage across its 14-state coverage area, Grady said. SPP is one of seven nonprofit organizations approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to oversee transmission infrastructure, ensure utility system reliability and manage the wholesale electricity market.
Read more: The Lawrence Times