Municipal News & Jobs

Galena voters pass a bond proposal for school upgrades. USD 499 Bond Question: If the bond question passes, it would allow the school district to borrow $7.5 million to fix and improve school buildings, enhance safety, and build new facilities, without increasing taxes.
Source: www.koamnewsnow.com – RSS Results in news/local-news of type article

State leaders approved recognizing the Fallen Firefighter Memorial in Wichita as the state’s official memorial on Wednesday. The move comes after it was vandalized this week. On Tuesday, the Kansas Firefighters Museum took to Facebook to share that the museum and memorial had been vandalized. The Wichita Fire Department took it upon themselves to clean up the memorial on Wednesday, but the building cannot be power-washed.
Source: KSN-TV

The McPherson Fire Department is inviting the community to celebrate the opening of its brand-new Fire Station 2 with a public open house on Saturday, May 31, from 9 a.m. to noon. According to a social post from the department, the special event will allow residents to tour the station, meet local firefighters, and learn more about the equipment and resources that help keep the McPherson community safe.
Source: KSN-TV

Local and state leaders broke ground on the new South Central Regional Mental Health Hospital in Wichita. It happened at noon on Wednesday at 3901 S. Custer Ave., the site chosen for the new hospital in south Wichita. It is just west of Meridian and MacArthur Road. The hospital will have 104 beds for adults with acute mental illness. Sedgwick County will build it, and the State of Kansas will run it. Funding for the project comes from federal and state sources. Sedgwick County received $25 million in federal recovery funds for construction. The Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services (KDADS) has $71.5 million of state funds to construct and operate the hospital, according to documents. The hospital is expected to be open by 2027.
Source: KSN-TV

Haysville’s $80 million bond for school infrastructure improvements passes with around 75% of voters swinging in favor. Every one of the nearly 2,000 people who turned out in the race had their own reasons for voting, but all agreed that whether your answer was “yes” or “no”, the topic is important.
Source: KSN-TV

Riley County’s planning board is making progress on its short-term rental regulations. At Monday’s county commission meeting, the planning director presented a draft with updated language on licensing requirements and other rules for commissioner feedback. One planned requirement for short-term rentals (also called vacation rentals, commonly rented on sites like Airbnb and VRBO) is a responsible agent. Webb added a rule that the responsible agent must live in Riley County while guests are in the short-term rental.
Source: themercury.com – RSS Results in news of type article

National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week is April 13 through 19, and it highlights the essential role dispatchers fill in emergency responses, according to Kyle McCaskey, Harvey County public information officer. The department has 24 people working there altogether, with four of those being part-time dispatchers and three being administrative.
Source: Harvey County Now

The new law updates the Kansas Open Records Act and Kansas Open Meetings Act, and a provision in it says that any governing body or agency that “elects to live stream their meeting on television, the internet or any other medium shall ensure that all aspects of the open meeting are available through the selected medium for the public to observe.” That would affect the Lawrence City Commission, which currently does not include all parts of its meetings in its live broadcasts on YouTube.
Source: LJWorld

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.

The stock market has been the acute point of stress for investors the past week. But the bond market hasn’t given them much of a break either. On Tuesday, as the S&P 500 tumbled for a fourth straight day, prices of long-term U.S. Treasury debt fell, too. That drove their yields, which move in an inverse relationship to prices, higher. It was especially confounding because long-term Treasury prices in preceding days hadn’t gained as much as they normally would in the face of a steep-stock market selloff. So much for government debt being a haven at a time of upheaval. The big question is why Treasury yields have behaved this way.
Source: WSJ.com: Markets

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.

Last week, Wichita city leaders extended an agreement with the McPherson County Conservation District. The agreement is meant to work with farmers to reduce levels of atrazine in the Little Arkansas River, keeping those chemicals from being recharged into the Equus Beds Aquifer…. “That we pay farmers $100 an acre when they plant cropland back to grass,” Howard Miller, a leader for the Cheney Lake Watershed, said.
Source: KSN-TV

A new partnership between Fort Hays Tech Northwest and the Goodland Police Department may help speed up investigations for the department. … The school says the agreement will establish a fully functioning fingerprint lab at the Goodland Police Department.
Source: KSN-TV

The Villalobos family has been raising chickens in their backyard for five years. “So, at the start of COVID, we got chickens. We decided to hedge against some security. As everything started locking down, we wanted the kids to have something to do for fun, and it also gave us eggs,” Jeremy Villalobos said.
Source: KSN-TV

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.

Gov. Laura Kelly on Thursday signed seven more bills, bringing to 29 the number of pieces of legislation that she has signed into law this year. So far, she has vetoed four bills, including two on Monday. She has been overridden twice so far, with the Legislature scheduled to return April 10 for more veto override votes. She has allowed three bills to become law without her signature.
Source: Sunflower State Journal

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Friday that he expects President Donald Trump’s tariffs to raise inflation and lower growth, and indicated that the central bank won’t move on interest rates until it gets a clearer picture on the ultimate impacts. In a speech delivered before business journalists in Arlington, Va., Powell said the Fed faces a “highly uncertain outlook” because of the new reciprocal levies the president announced Wednesday. Though he said the economy currently looks strong, he stressed the threat that tariffs pose and indicated that the Fed will be focused on keeping inflation in check.
Source: Bonds

Should Wichita’s mayor have more power? Or should an unelected city manager continue to be the city’s most powerful official? As it stands, the mayor is the only official elected citywide. But she has no executive powers and can’t enact her agenda without the support of three other council members, who represent smaller districts. The city manager, who is appointed by the council, prepares the budget, chooses department heads and manages the daily operations of the city government.
Source: Wichita Kansas Local News, Crime & More |

The upcoming Rural Living Resource Fair will seek to connect community members with experts and resources designed for rural living, including a range of local vendors. The event, hosted by K-State Research and Extension Douglas County, is set for 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, April 12 at the county fairgrounds. It’s free and open to all, and no registration is required. Local experts will be present to speak on topics such as zoning and codes; well and pond management; prairie, wildlife and woodland management; brush clearing and noxious weed control; land preservation and more, according to a news release announcing the event.
Source: The Lawrence Times