Municipal News & Jobs

A study being conducted by researchers at the University of Kansas aims to rectify what the project’s lead researcher describes as a “terrible” lack of data about broadband access in the sunflower state. “The (Federal Communications Commission) data on broadband is terrible. There’s no other word to describe it,” said KU economics professor Donna Ginther. “It’s inaccurate. It’s incomplete. So one of our first steps was to try to get a handle on actual access and speed and affordability.” Ginther, who serves as lead on the project and director of KU’s Institute for Policy & Social Research, said getting to the bottom of those questions about internet access is why researchers are conducting the study now. The main piece of the study is a statewide survey that includes an internet speed test.
Source: Dodge City Daily Globe.

Attorney General Derek Schmidt announced he will intervene in a challenge to a Johnson County mask mandate.
Attorney General Derek Schmidt said Thursday in a legal filing that his office will seek to intervene in a challenge to a Johnson County mask mandate — a case which has burgeoned into a threat to the constitutionality of a sweeping set of reforms to the state’s emergency management law. Senate Bill 40 … included a sweeping provision allowing individuals to demand a hearing or file a civil suit challenging COVID-19-related orders from a local governmental body, school board or public health officer, with strict time limits on when a hearing must be held and a verdict rendered.
Source: Dodge City Daily Globe.

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.

Residents of Pierceville Township spoke against the development a sand quarry run by Huber Sand in Pierceville at the June 7 Finney County Commission meeting. A Board of Zoning Appeals meeting is being held on June 16 at 9 a.m. at Garden City Hall in Commission Chambers as Huber Sand has filed an application for a conditional use permit to run a sand gravel quarry in Pierceville. The land is currently zoned as “A” Agricultural and is generally located at South Main Street and East Avenue D. The property straddles the Finney County and Gray County line. Pierceville resident Dionisio Garcia expressed concern about a quarry being developed there, one reason being an increase in traffic, making it unsafe for his children, and that the sand trucks would be driving on city streets.
Source: GC Telegram.

Portions of an expansive new Kansas emergency management law that opened the door to lawsuits challenging local COVID-19 precautions could become invalid after a Johnson County judge said this week they hold “significant constitutional problems.” In an order Tuesday, Johnson County District Judge David Hauber asked Attorney General Derek Schmidt, who helped draft the law and is running for governor, to appear in court as he considers ruling portions of it unconstitutional. The request came in Hauber’s ruling on a lawsuit parents filed against the Shawnee Mission School District seeking to force an end to the district’s mask mandate. The suit used procedures established by Senate Bill 40, passed in March by the Legislature in response to a backlash against state and local measures to combat the pandemic.
Source: KC Star.

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.

If Angelus were still a prosperous farm town and had more children than chickens, then maybe the two-story brick schoolhouse would still be a school and not a chicken coop. But it isn’t and it doesn’t. So instead of students, the ground floor of the century-old building is occupied by poultry, goats cavort on the muddy front lawn and there are reports—unconfirmed—of pigs in the gym.
The situation is raising hackles among the 28 residents of Angelus, as well as former students and history buffs elsewhere in northwest Kansas. “It saddens you every time you go by there,” said Bill Bixenman, 89, whose eighth-grade class in Angelus had 13 pupils. “But it is what it is.” The school’s owner, Josh Rumback, acknowledges that his decision to convert school to barn has left some locals “butt sore.” He built a wall that somewhat blocks the view from the gravel road that runs through the center of Angelus. … Local tension over the school’s decay reflects a larger truth: America’s small towns have been shrinking, sometimes into nothingness.
Source: Wall Street Journal.