The Newton City Commission has approved a policy to ban tobacco use at city parks and outdoor recreational areas. The Tobacco-Free Parks policy will be effective on January 1st, 2024, and it will ban tobacco use in city-owned recreational areas, including parks, playgrounds, trails and athletic fields. Sand Creek Golf Station will be exempt from the policy. The Healthy Harvey Coalition asked Newton High School students last spring to help with a study on tobacco litter in city parks, and in one park, the students filled a seven-liter bucket with discarded tobacco products. The Coalition also helped to encourage the City of Hesston to make its parks tobacco-free, and the group worked with the City of Newton on an ordinance to raise the age for buying tobacco products to 21. The City of Newton and the Harvey County Health Department will receive free signs from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, and the signs will be posted at parks and recreation areas to remind visitors of the new policy.
Source: 101.3 KFDI

There have been delays in completing a street improvement project in the city of Bel Aire, two years after construction began. Work on the project has stopped and the city is working on testing and inspections to determine when it can be started again. Bel Aire Mayor Jim Benage provided an update on Facebook on the project to improve Woodlawn between 37th and 45th Streets North.  He said the wheel paths in the east lanes are deforming, cracking, slipping, and sinking. The city has hired a firm to take soil samples and results will be studied by the project engineers, the Bel Aire City Engineer and the Kansas Department of Transportation. Benage said a plan will then be developed for repairing the east lanes and finishing the project. As soon as this plan is developed and put in place, it will be shared with the public. With winter weather approaching, the work will likely be delayed until the spring. The city will take some temporary measures to provide a safe route through the winter. In the meantime the city will continue to have northbound traffic in the middle lane with traffic cones in place. The traffic light at 45th Street North will continue to be a four way stop. Benage said in his statement, “We are frustrated with the slow progress, but we need to be very intentional on how we proceed. Not doing so, could cause the City even more problems.”
Source: 101.3 KFDI