There’s still a lot of summer left, Johnson County — leaving ample time for home improvement projects. If you’re undertaking a DIY endeavor especially around your yard this summer, you may consider getting some money back if it’s an eco-friendly addition like a rain barrel, native plantings or a compost bin. There are several Johnson County cities that offer reimbursements for such projects through city or county-sponsored programs. But to be clear, the programs in this story are specifically yard-related and differ from other local sustainability grant programs that reimburse residents for things like solar panel installations. Source: Prairie Village Post

The Lenexa City Council may soon be joining Johnson County’s other larger cities in providing recordings of their regular meetings online. Among Johnson County’s largest cities, Lenexa is the only one that currently does not livestream its city council meetings. Overland Park, Olathe, Prairie Village, Shawnee and Leawood all livestream their city council meetings on their YouTube channels or city websites and also archive videos of past meetings online. Lenexa currently does provide audio clips of meetings on request, but staff members said those requests are infrequent. Source: Prairie Village Post

In the year and a half since she began trying to stop a slew of warehouses from being built on rural land dotted with single-family homes near Edgerton, Jennifer Williams has gotten used to hearing the metaphorical sound of doors slamming shut. Challenges to city hall on annexation and rezoning, a stab at creating a new city – all failed. But another failure, this time in court, has re-energized Williams and her group, Protect Rural JoCo. On paper, it still counts as a loss, but that matters less to Williams than what the judge said during the hearing. Those comments have convinced her [...]