The Prairie Village City Council on Monday approved an agreement with Kansas City Power & Light that potentially could result in a significant portion of the city government’s electric needs coming from wind energy. The agreement pledges that the city will buy power from an as-yet unbuilt wind farm in the region for 20 years. It still hinges on whether KCP&L can persuade enough local governments and other large electric customers in northeast Johnson County to follow Prairie Village’s lead. Drew Robinson, the company’s manager of renewable energy, told the council he needs at least 100 megawatts of dedicated monthly peak [...]

A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of an Overland Park resident who said he was denied access to several public records in connection to a police shooting that killed a teenager in 2018. The lawsuit, filed in Johnson County District Court Wednesday, names the city of Overland Park and District Attorney Stephen Howe as defendants. According to the suit, Mark Schmid began requesting documents last May under the Kansas Open Records Act in regard to the shooting of 17-year-old John Albers. Schmid lives in Overland Park. He’s also part of JOCO United and a member of Albers’ extended family by [...]

Another Kansas hospital run by North Kansas City-based EmpowerHMS is reporting serious financial trouble. Employees at Horton Community Hospital in northeast Kansas said they didn’t receive their paychecks Friday and have been dipping into their own pockets for weeks to buy supplies. It’s the latest in a months-long string of similar cash flow problems for EmpowerHMS, which until recently managed 14 rural hospitals across Kansas, Missouri and five other states. Last month a judge granted a request by the city of Hillsboro, north of Wichita, to remove Empower as its hospital’s operator, “citing the irreparable harm” likely to occur if Empower [...]

The city of Olathe says its residents diverted 40.03 percent of waste from landfills in 2018, well above the national average of 34 percent and the Kansas City area average of 36 percent. It’s slightly above the Johnson County average of 39 percent. “Our residents continue to make a positive impact on the environment by participating in the Olathe recycling program,” Public Works Director Mary Jaeger said in a news release.. “This year, more than ever, we focused on educating residents to not just recycle, but to recycle clean.” Olathe said it shifted its education focus last year in response to [...]

Missouri taxpayers spent around $151 million over the last decade luring companies from Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas a few miles across the state line to Jackson County. And according to research by the Hall Family Foundation, Kansas reciprocated by spending $184 million enticing border-hopping companies to flee Jackson County for Johnson and Wyandotte. It’s an economic border war that’s raged for years in the Kansas City metro. And to its critics, it’s long past time for a truce. “We’re using [economic development incentives] to divide the pie,” said Bill Hall, president of the Hall Family Foundation and longtime Kansas [...]

When a reckless driver last May crashed into a decorative planter at the end of a residential street in Mission, he did a lot more than dislodge some bricks into the roadway. The errant motorist sparked an impassioned debate over how best to preserve quiet, safe streets and neighborhood tranquility not far from Shawnee Mission Parkway. City officials say they can’t just fix the broken planter, which has been there for more than 25 years, because it doesn’t meet the latest national highway safety standards. The city has floated the idea of removing this planter and five others that currently create [...]

Larry Paine and the rest of the city leaders in Hillsboro, Kan., have a problem. EmpowerHMS, the North Kansas City-based company that manages their hospital, owes the city thousands in unpaid utility bills. A check written to the city in December bounced, and Paine, the city administrator, can’t get anybody from the company to resolve it. ... Empower, headquartered at 1700 Swift Ave., operates 14 rural hospitals nationwide, including three in Kansas (Hillsboro Community Hospital, Oswego Community Hospital and Horton Community Hospital) and two in Missouri (Fulton Medical Center and I-70 Community Hospital in Sweet Springs). But Paine and leaders in [...]

As of Jan. 1, about 5,200 Overland Park households were placed in new City Council wards as part of district boundary review that takes place every two years. The idea is to balance the number of residents among wards as residential growth continues in the south part of the city. Under city policy and state law, the population should not deviate more than 10 percent among the city’s six wards. However, last year’s review found a 15 percent deviation. (Read more: KC Star Local News)

Electronic bicycles, scooters and other motorized vehicles will remain banned from Johnson County park trails for at least the near future. The county Park & Recreation District’s Board of Commissioners on Wednesday voted against a proposal that would have allowed visitors to use e-bikes and electronic unicycles on the 15-mile Gary L. Haller Trail in Shawnee between March and June of next year as part of a pilot project. District officials said the pilot would have shown them how much interest there was for people wanting to use motorized vehicles on the park trails and whether allowing the vehicles led to [...]

The Prairie Village City Council on Monday approved an ordinance that shields LGBTQ individuals from many types of discrimination within the city. It’s a decision that culminates more than three months of sometimes contentious public debate on the issue and paves the way for other Johnson County municipalities considering similar legislation. The measure passed by a unanimous vote, which was greeted by applause and cheering from a council chamber filled mostly with supporters of the ordinance. “I’m hopeful that the vote we take tonight will emphatically say to everyone in the LGBTQ community that we see you, we love you and [...]