Kansas Municipal News
Kansas City area schools dropped COVID mask rules. Here’s why they’re required anyway
Though many Kansas City area districts have moved away from mandates on masks, this week students in several schools are required to wear them anyway as COVID-19 cases surge. These districts still require masks temporarily if a certain percentage of students and staff in a school building either test positive for COVID-19 or were exposed to the virus. In the Shawnee Mission district, for example, the mask mandate ended in secondary schools last week as students returned from winter break. Yet as of Monday, all 11 of the district’s middle and high schools were requiring everyone to wear masks again, spokesman David Smith said, after each school reached the district’s 3% threshold to trigger a mask mandate.
Source: Joco 913 News
Legislators, governor agree to allocate $154 million in federal stimulus funding
Gov. Laura Kelly and legislative leaders unanimously agreed Monday to dedicate $154 million in federal stimulus funding to support economic development with construction of commercial buildings and to improve resources available to low-income students struggling in school. Members of the State Finance Council, which includes Republicans and Democrats from the Senate and House, adopted a recommendation to set aside $100 million for expansion of structures needed to expand or attract businesses and jobs. The council also directed $50 million at a new program of $1,000 per-child grants to be used by families in the way most useful to students struggling through the pandemic. In addition, $4 million was approved to help school districts upgrade internet connections to high-speed broadband services.
Source: Kansas Reflector
FCC latest funding will give over $5 million to 19 Kansas school districts
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced on Monday, Jan. 10, that it is committing $361,037,156.16 in their latest wave of Emergency Connectivity Fund (EFC) Program support to schools, libraries and consortia. Out of the 859 facilities that will be receiving this current wave of funding, 19 of them are in Kansas and will receive a total of $5,520,334.64. The EFC is a $7.17 billion program that will help schools and libraries provide the tools and services their communities need to support remote learning during the COVID-19 emergency period. The EFT will help provide relief to millions of students, staff, and library patrons. It will also help close the homework gap for students who currently lack internet access and devices they need to connect to classrooms.
Source: KSN-TV
Emporia hospital experiences ventilator shortage, county declares emergency
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 the Lyon County Board of Commissioners.
Source: KSN-TV
Suburban multifamly boom creates a complex issue
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 Business Journal
Dodge City public transportation fees return in February
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
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
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 the same reason. Uranium and sulfate flow into Kansas from Colorado on the Arkansas River. Quality of the water in that part of the state is expected only to get worse as groundwater supplies are depleted, causing concentrations of the contaminates to rise. It’s one of myriad water issues facing Kansas that members of the House Water Committee studied in informational meetings last year. This legislative session, committee members will look to reorganize the Kansas agencies that deal in water and identify long-needed funding for projects.
Source: Kansas Reflector
Johnson County says close contact tracing of COVID-19 in schools ‘no longer feasible’
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
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
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
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 in 2020. “Virtual school wasn’t going good for me,” she said. “I had a lot of things going on.”
Source: KCUR News
Main Street Program to help restore and maintain Girard Square
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 square has been a major goal for the city, and thanks to a recent award, it could see an old program emerge in a new way.
Source: KSNF/KODE
Hiawatha Creamery set to bring nostalgic flavor to downtown
Sometimes an idea can hang around for years, and when the timing is right, coincidences and the right people will fall into just the right places for that idea to manifest into reality. The business partners behind the newly-announced Hiawatha Creamery have followed just that type of circuitous path, but find themselves on the threshold of hosting what will surely be one of the hottest spots in town this summer. … Leaning heavily into the nostalgic, the partners said that The Hiawatha Creamery will offer a unique hometown experience… The owners believe their new business not only fills a hole in the community — adding a fresh name to the downtown block and providing a service that has been noticeably absent in recent years—but that it also helps set Hiawatha apart. “I don’t think many small towns have the combination of a movie theater, a bowling alley and a real ice cream shop,” says Ryan.
Source: Local News | hiawathaworldonline.com
Argonia museums see much needed improvements
The Salter House Museum management board has made some progress toward updates on the museum property. The chimneys at the Salter House Museum have been capped. They were leaking when it rained. The exterior repairs have now been completed and the board looks forward to beginning interior work. Board member Joan Hemberger said the group plans to apply for grants to help them repair the interior of the former home of Susanna Madora Salter, the first female mayor to serve in the United States.
Source: Times-Sentinel Newspapers
Kansas court ruling keeps law allowing COVID lawsuits alive
People still can sue Kansas counties over mask mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions and obtain a quick trial-court decision because of a Kansas Supreme Court ruling Friday. The court declined to consider whether a law requiring trial-court judges to rule on such lawsuits within 10 days is constitutional. While the justices split over the reasons, they were unanimous in concluding that a Johnson County judge had no business striking down the law in a case that dealt with another legal question. Judge David Hauber ruled that the law denied counties their right to due legal process and interfered with the courts’ power to handle their own business. But he did so in a lawsuit against a mask mandate imposed by a school district — not the county. School districts aren’t covered by the law that applies to counties — and a separate law mandating the same expedited legal process in lawsuits against school districts expired in June. In the court’s majority opinion, Justice Dan Biles wrote that “a long-standing doctrine of judicial restraint” is that courts should avoid deciding on a law’s constitutionality if they can resolve a case another way. The court concluded that Hauber should not have ruled on the law covering counties.
Source: Andover American
Read the Court’s opinion here.
Wyandotte County leaders name Cheryl Harrison-Lee as interim County Administrator
The Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas unanimously named Cheryl Harrison-Lee as the interim County Administrator on Thursday evening. Harrison-Lee’s appointment comes less than two weeks after Doug Bach announced his retirement as the county administrator. Harrison-Lee’s term is scheduled to run from Jan. 7, 2022 to April 1, 2023. Commissioners voted 10-0. This is the first time Wyandotte County will have a different County Administrator since 2014, when Bach was appointed by former Mayor Mark Holland. Bach’s retirement came less than a month into the term of new Mayor Tyrone Garner, who was elected in November and sworn-in in early December. Before serving as County Administrator, Bach served as Deputy County Administrator from 2003-2014.
Source: KC Star Local News
Municipal Bond Trends for January 6, 2022
The interest rate table above illustrates recent changes in a sample of MBIS “investment grade” yields. Every issuer’s credit is different. For rates that may be applicable to your municipality, contact our Municipal Bond Advisors, Larry Kleeman and Beth Warren.
Facades of Louisburg Improvement Program
FLIP, or Facades of Louisburg Improvement Program, provides matching funds from the city to assist in facade improvements of homes and businesses. New for 2022 is a change in the award amount for residential applications up to $1,000. FLIP Residential provides city residents a one-time reimbursement grant of 50% of the project costs to make exterior improvements to the front of their home. However, the city’s reimbursable amount shall not exceed $1,000. For example, if your project costs $500 then the reimbursable amount will be $250; a $1,500 project will award $750 and a project $2,000 or more will get a reimbursement of $1,000, the full $500 allowed.
Source: Louisburg, KS-Newsflash
Riley County receives grant to start drug treatment court program
Riley County recently received a grant from the Department of Justice to start a new drug court program. The $550,000 grant was awarded to Riley County Community Corrections Dec. 9. It essentially creates an alternative to incarceration for criminal or juvenile offenders and parents with pending child welfare cases who have alcohol and other drug dependency problems become and remain sober. The goal of the program is recovery so as to reduce future criminal activity.
Source: 1350 KMAN