Municipal News & Jobs

For Kayla Elam, providing in-home child care is something of a family business. Her mother offered the service in their family home when she was growing up, and still has an in-home child care business in Shawnee to this day, which her younger sister also works at. Her twin sister offers in-home child care in Gardner, too. It was hard work, complicated by a number of factors. For one thing, parents didn’t always want to pay her or couldn’t pay on time, and it’s expensive to offer the service to begin with. There were also behavioral issues that parents didn’t want to hear about or didn’t believe Elam if she raised them. Beyond the challenges of the child care business itself, Elam also says it can be hard to balance some of the licensing requirements, specifically the classes and training hours a provider needs to log while already working long hours. Elam isn’t the only in-home child care provider who feels the challenges mounting. She said she knows several people who have stepped away. Data from Childcare Aware Kansas’ Johnson County Point-In-Time count shows that there are fewer licensed in-home providers than just a couple of years ago.
Read more: Johnson County Post

The City of Galena provides an update in regards to an odor that arose last fall. The city says landfill operators have begun applying layers of lime to the area of the landfill where the odor was detected. Galena city officials say using lime amendment as a treatment for it mitigation of hydrogen sulfide gas emissions has been successful, according to studies and trials.
Read more: www.koamnewsnow.com –

Zach Daniel will serve as the next city manager after the City Commission voted Monday night to offer him the job following an executive session. Daniel, who was previously assistant manager, has been serving as the interim city manager the past few months. “I’m very grateful for the opportunity, super excited to continue to work with the commission, the department heads,” Daniel said. “We’ve got a lot of really exciting things on the horizon, and I feel grateful to be a part of that.”
Read more: The Eudora Times

South Hutchinson City Council rezoned three parcels outside of the city for an Evergy natural gas-powered electricity generation plant Monday. Evergy Director of External Affairs Chase Blasi told the City Council that demand for electricity is increasing at a rate not seen since the 1950s, when electric appliances like refrigerators were becoming commonplace. The current increase in demand is being driven by artificial intelligence and data centers, he said.
Read more: The Hutchinson Tribune

Is the size of the Iola City Council a problem? Is there a better way to ensure competitive elections, such as abandoning the city’s voting wards? Or are there other solutions to finding folks willing to run for elective office? Case in point: the upcoming Nov. 4 election has five seats up for grabs, but only one race is contested.  Two seats, plus the mayor’s, have candidates running unopposed. Another seat will have to be filled by a write-in candidate because nobody filed. Council members tackled the subject head-on Monday with an hourlong discussion that ended with the consensus that perhaps the biggest issue is getting the public more involved.
Read more: The Iola Register

A global event geared at reclaiming urban, developed environments will invite the people of downtown Lawrence into temporarily reimagined parking stalls while provoking conversation about the land we dedicate to vehicles. Park(ing) Day originated in 2005 as a single installation from Rebar Art and Design Studio in San Francisco and has since evolved into a global phenomenon. Creative installations act as interventions in public parking spaces, as the project “highlights issues like climate change, road safety, and mobility equity, offering a platform for reimagining streets as greener, safer, and more equitable spaces for people,” according to the international Park(ing) Day website. The event will take a local bent in downtown Lawrence from 4 to 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 26 with four parallel parking stall installations embodying the theme of “The Third Place.” The stalls are a product of close collaboration between numerous downtown businesses, Multistudio and KU Master of Urban Planning and Master of Architecture students.
Read more: The Lawrence Times

A new statewide bipartisan water program task force established over the summer aims to create a long-term sustainable strategy for Kansas’ water challenges. State Sen. Kenny Titus, R-Manhattan, is co-chairing the task force with State Rep. Jim Minnix, R-Scott City. The task force is in the early stages of its multi-year effort. “We basically have three phases laid out in the task force,” Titus said in an interview Monday on KMAN. “We need to identify the problems we have, how we want to solve those problems, and then how we pay for the solution.”
Read more: themercury.com –

Big name retailers such as Freddy’s, Chipotle and QuikTrip are all eyeing expansions in Andover, the fastest growing city in Butler County. That’s because the suburb east of Wichita has grown to an estimated population of more than 16,000, which can bring in more amenities like restaurants and shops, said Lori Cullum, the president and CEO of Andover Area Chamber of Commerce.
Read more: Wichita Business Journal – Local Wichita News

The U.S. Department of Justice is backing CoreCivic in its legal battle with the city of Leavenworth as the company seeks to reopen a shuttered prison it owns there as an immigrant detention center over the objection of local officials. The DOJ filed a statement of interest in federal court on Tuesday, characterizing the city’s resistance as an illegal effort to undermine the federal government’s immigration enforcement.

Read more: Wichita Eagle

A law enforcement tool for tracking suspect vehicles has been quietly put to use in Reno County. Flock is a system that reads license plates and notifies law enforcement when someone drives by with a plate associated with a crime or missing person. Law enforcement can also search for footage of vehicles by looking up their license plate information, as the Flock system keeps a comprehensive, but short-term record of all vehicles that pass by. The default amount of time that license plate data is stored in the system is 30 days. According to a presentation Flock gave to Cowley County in June 2025, these automatic license plate readers are being used in Hutchinson.
Read more: The Hutchinson Tribune

Fiscal Shocker is an interactive tool designed to compare the fiscal health, revenue structure, and spending priorities of local governments across Kansas. By standardizing and visualizing key financial indicators—such as property tax reliance, revenue structure, and expenditure patterns—it helps users identify similarities and differences among jurisdictions. The tool supports more informed decision-making for policymakers, researchers, and engaged citizens by making local government finances clearer and more comparable.
Learn more: Fiscal Shocker

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.

HB 2304 requires local governments to report certain local economic development incentive program information to the Secretary of Commerce. The Kansas Department of Commerce recently hosted a webinar related to the implementation and compliance with the law. Some helpful links:
Webinar Powerpoint
Template to submit information

Browse the Kansas Transparency Database Explorer

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.

Iola City Council members will discuss Monday whether to move to a five-member governing body. When Iolans go to the polls in November, only those living in the southwest quadrant of town will have a choice to make, at least when it pertains to local governance. That’s because of Iola’s voting ward makeup, which has been in place since since the eight-member city council was established in 2011. Councilwoman Kim Peterson would like to change that. At Peterson’s request, City Council members will consider Monday whether to implement changes in how Iolans choose their elected leaders, and how many would be seated. Peterson has asked the city to reduce its size to five members, from the current eight, and to do away entirely with voting wards, making all of the elected officials at-large representatives.
Read more: The Iola Register

Locals eager to share their thoughts and concerns about Savonburg will gather for a community conversation at 6 p.m. Tuesday. The annual get-together is once again hosted by Thrive Allen County, and will be held in the Savonburg Community Building, where they’ll discuss the city’s strengths and immediate and long-term challenges.
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.

The Neodesha Promise Scholarship Program, which provides an opportunity for Neodesha High School graduates to afford college, has reached quite a milestone. With 36 NHS students receiving promise scholarships in 2025, the program has awarded more than 550 scholarships to 184 graduates since its inception in 2019. The program provides scholarships to eligible Neodesha High graduates covering tuition and mandatory fees at Pell Grant-approved institutions. Neodesha students receiving Promise Scholarships have attended more than 40 different institutions across seven states.
Read more: The Iola Register

It was a full house on Friday at the county commission meeting as Josh Albins presented the results of the comprehensive survey to the county commissioners. Of 30,199 residents aged 18-and-over, only 2,303 responded to the survey despite mailers, newspaper ads and billboards encouraging people to participate. According to Albins, 96% of the respondents were permanent residents of the county; 86% have lived in Crawford for 10-plus years. The majority were property owners from the rural parts of the county. The two big issues that drew the crowd were zoning and windmills.
Read more: – Morning Sun