Leavenworth School District’s new website feature to report threats

The Leavenworth Unified School District’s website officially has a new feature to help report tips, ask questions or raise concerns. Community members can use the new feature to alert the district if they feel like there’s a threat. The button on the website’s home page features four words, ‘See Something, Say Something.’ FOX4 spoke with District Superintendent Dr. Kellen Adams and Republican County Attorney Todd Thompson on Wednesday, September 25. Thompson claims there’s a difference between a disruption to a school day and a threat, and what happened at the high school earlier in the month was more of a threat than just a disruption. That incident caused the creation of the new website feature, where people can submit tips without others seeing you do it. Adams said anyone can use this online form, but it’s mostly for student use. “There is sometimes a really difficult decision that a student has to make of whether or not, ‘Do I come forward with this information?’” he said in his interview with FOX4 Wednesday.
Source: fox4kc.com | FOX 4 – WDAF

info2024-09-27T10:24:26-05:00September 27, 2024|News|

Meeting to discuss possible sales tax hike set

The Jackson County Commissioners will host a special meeting at 6 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 30, at the first floor meeting room at the Jackson County Courthouse to discuss the possibility of increasing the county sales tax by one percent, from 1.4 percent to 2.4 percent, it was reported. Members of the public are encouraged to attend to share their feedback. During the county public hearing last month to exceed the revenue neutral rate, some residents in attendance voiced their support for raising the county sales tax in order to help reduce the county mill levy. Jackson County currently has a 1.4 percent sales tax rate, which includes a special .4 percent sales tax for road and bridge improvements and for each of the county’s cities. The special .4 percent sales tax was renewed by voters in November 2019 and will be in place for seven years. According to the Kansas Department of Revenue, Jackson County’s sale tax has generated $1,703,815.10 this year through August. During the same time period in 2023, the tax generated $1,554,779.53.
Source: Holton Recorder

info2024-09-27T10:22:41-05:00September 27, 2024|News|

Hospital subsidy pitched here

Although “the sky isn’t falling,” as Holton Community Hospital CEO Carrie Lutz told members of the Holton City Commission and Jackson County Commission at their meetings on Monday, the hospital is facing some financial issues with Medicare reimbursement and pandemic-related problems that have hospital leaders asking city and county officials to consider a subsidy, possibly in the form of a sales tax. “You are elected officials, and our county, state and federal officials need to know that decisions you make can impact us,” Lutz told county commissioners. Lutz met with county commissioners on Monday afternoon and with city commissioners that evening to discuss the hospital’s challenges and successes in the past few years, noting that while the hospital’s recent expansion allows extra services to be offered and annual revenue has doubled from $22 million to $44 million between 2013 and 2013, there’s still a need for financial assistance.
Source: Holton Recorder

info2024-09-27T10:21:36-05:00September 27, 2024|News|

COVID-19 wastewater data spiked in JoCo. Here’s why local officials aren’t worried.

Despite a short-lived spike in wastewater data for northeast Johnson County last month, the overall trend of COVID-19 infections in the county and statewide has been on the decline, according to data from the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment. As the next cold and flu season approaches, the county’s website shows that while sewage monitoring systems show Kansas with “very high” levels of COVID virus, the overall trend is likely downward. Activity for flu and respiratory syncytial virus in wastewater also is minimal statewide, according to the site. Source: Johnson County Post

info2024-09-27T10:20:36-05:00September 27, 2024|News|

Overland Park to cut down lanes on stretch of Santa Fe Drive, add room for bikes

Overland Park intends to try out a road diet on a chunk of Santa Fe Drive next year. On Wednesday, the Overland Park City Council Public Works Committee unanimously recommended approval of the infrastructure maintenance program plan for 2025. That plan identifies Santa Fe for street preservation work, and when that’s complete, the city will repaint the pavement markers to match the new traffic pattern. Director of Public Works Lorraine Basalo said the road diet would narrow Santa Fe Drive from four lanes to two lanes between Antioch Road and Robinson Street, about where the road already narrows as it moves into downtown Overland Park. The eliminated lanes will then be converted into “buffered bike lanes,” she said, though no new walls or barriers are planned at this time.
Source: Prairie Village Post

info2024-09-27T10:19:49-05:00September 27, 2024|News|

Redlining helped spur disinvestment in Wichita’s urban core. How much is an in-fill plan changing that legacy?

Just over half of all demolitions in Wichita and Sedgwick County in the last decade were of single-family homes. Of those, nearly a quarter occurred in ZIP code 67214. The area had the most single-family demolitions of any other ZIP code over the last decade. The population there is majority Black and majority Hispanic. Parts of all six ZIP codes in Wichita’s urban core, including much of 67214, touch areas that were formerly redlined. “Redlining” refers to a practice adopted by the Homeowners Loan Corp., a government-sponsored corporation born out of the Great Depression. Almost a century ago, the practice was used to categorize neighborhoods according to how secure the area was for mortgaging. Those areas graded as the least-desirable were shaded in red on the maps, leading to use of the term “redlined.” “HOLC did not invent redlining, as life insurance companies previously discriminated in this way, nor did HOLC circulate its maps beyond a small group of government officials,” according to On The Line, a book by Trinity College professor Jack Dougherty, who works with students and community partners to analyze the relationship between schooling and housing in the city and suburbs of Hartford, Connecticut. Though the corporation’s maps did not cause redlining, they reflect the racist and elitist perspectives of the federal officials who created them, the book says, and the vestiges of the maps and the perspectives they reflect remain today.
In 1937, 64% of the city of Wichita was redlined by those maps. That made it the third-most redlined city in the country. Redlining contributed to generational wealth gaps that still plague Black Americans. Even today, in areas that were previously redlined, it can be a struggle for residents to secure loans, including for refinance or renovation.
Source: KLC Journal

info2024-09-27T10:18:44-05:00September 27, 2024|News|

EPA awards Iola School District $690k for clean buses

The U.S. Environment Protection Agency is set to present a $690,000 ceremonial check to the Iola Unified School District. The check is part of the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program. The program funds electric buses, which produce zero-tailpipe emissions, as well as propane and compressed natural gas buses, which produce lower tailpipe emissions compared to existing school buses. According to the EPA, the school district will use the funds to purchase two electric school buses and install charging infrastructure. The presentation is set for Thursday, September 26 at 11 a.m. at the Iola Elementary School.
Source: KOAM News

info2024-09-27T10:17:08-05:00September 27, 2024|News|

Watch: Local firefighters receive training on how to put out natural gas fires

Black Hills Energy partnered with around 50 firefighters on Thursday night to train them how to respond to natural gas fires. The training was held at Colwich Memorial Park. In addition to pipeline safety presentations, Black Hills Energy helped conduct live-fire, hands-on training exercises to allow firefighters to practice containing and extinguishing natural gas fires under controlled circumstances. Black Hills Energy said the Colwich training is one of a series of fire safety seminars the company is offering to fire departments in Kansas. The company also educates firefighters about the various characteristics of natural gas so they can safely and effectively manage natural gas incidents.
Source: KSN-TV

info2024-09-27T10:16:17-05:00September 27, 2024|News|

School building consolidations being considered across Kansas this year

School building consolidations are being considered across Kansas this year. The Wichita and Garden City school districts are considering merging and closing some school buildings. One much smaller community, Healy, plans to dissolve its district altogether. The Garden City Public Schools Board of Education met Thursday night to consider whether to approve a plan to close three elementary school buildings. Following our 6 p.m. broadcast, Garden City Public Schools announced that the board rejected the recommendation in a 4-3 vote. They are not the only ones who have thought of building consolidation this year. Across Kansas, Wichita Public School’s Board of Education voted to move forward with its facilities master plan, which would close four elementary schools. Experts at the Kansas State Department of Education say this year is comparable with past years. They say school districts consider closing buildings for many reasons, including population shifts across cities, declining school enrollment due to a lack of children in the area, and aging buildings that are no longer sustainable. Some districts are also shifting to move students from multiple smaller buildings to one big building for staffing efficiency.
Source: KSN-TV

info2024-09-27T10:15:21-05:00September 27, 2024|News|

Fluoride in drinking water poses enough risk to merit new EPA action, judge says

A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to further regulate fluoride in drinking water because high levels could pose a risk to the intellectual development of children. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen cautioned that it’s not certain that the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ in kids, but he concluded that mounting research points to an unreasonable risk that it could be. He ordered the EPA to take steps to lower that risk, but didn’t say what those measures should be. It’s the first time a federal judge has made a determination about the neurodevelopmental risks to children of the recommended U.S. water fluoride level, said Ashley Malin, a University of Florida researcher who has studied the effect of higher fluoride levels in pregnant women.
Source: KSN-TV

info2024-09-27T10:14:06-05:00September 27, 2024|News|