Shawnee Mission Post – Community news and events for northeast Johnson County

Overland Park is moving toward a comprehensive new agenda and video system that will make it easier for people to watch city meetings remotely while keeping track of the accompanying agenda items. A council committee gave the go-ahead Wednesday to a service offered by Dallas-based Swagit Productions and iCompass Technologies of New York, that will link meeting agendas to video and store archives. If the full city council approves, the system will begin to be implemented this summer. It is similar to one used by the county commission that is offered through a different company. The video recording integrates a new [...]

The city of Merriam has determined that it will take no action regarding three petitions it received earlier this year from Merriam residents about the city’s process for building the new community center. The petitions contained a list of requests from a group of Merriam residents regarding design of the new aquatics center, the sale of land in Vavra Park and how money is spent from the city’s I-35 tax increment financing (TIF) district fund. The group who submitted the petitions — the self-named Merriam Concerned Citizens — is made up of Merriam residents who submitted the petitions in January, citing [...]

In December, Roeland Park Mayor Mike Kelly and Shawnee Councilmember Lindsey Constance organized a workshop at Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village that brought more than 120 elected officials from across the Kansas City metro together to discuss how local leaders could work together on strategies for addressing climate change and preparing the area for its effects. More than 120 elected officials from the Kansas City area attended the climate change workshop in December. This week, the National League of Cities announced that it would award a $10,000 grant to Roeland Park to continue efforts to organize a metro-wide response to [...]

One month after Shawnee’s first microbrewery opened up across the street from city hall, the city is looking into creating regulations for breweries and distilleries. Stephanie Malmborg, deputy community development director told the planning commission on Monday that community development staff is currently researching regulations of those types of businesses by other cities and also looking at best practices from the American Planning Association. “We’ve found that there’s a lot of interest in those types of uses, and it can be a great entertainment type use in some of our neighborhood commercial and commercial zones,” Malmborg said. “I think it’s important [...]

The city of Mission has taken steps to ensure compliance with state law after discovering it had an outdated ordinance on the books intended to allow police officers to confiscate firearms and weapons during a declared state of emergency. Mission officials believe the ordinance would have been deemed unenforceable under state laws which explicitly protect individuals’ rights to keep legally held firearms. City officials said Mission never used the ordinance before it was taken off the books. Before the council moved to strike it this week, the ordinance had given the mayor the authority to order a law enforcement officer or [...]

Roeland Park’s city council on Monday approved the expenditure of $118,504 for engineering and design for the first of redevelopment for R Park. The project will be managed by Larkin Lamp Rynearson, a Kansas City engineering firm. The phase one designs will include a pavilion and restrooms. The pavilion will be large enough to accommodate 60 people and the restrooms will be designed to meet this capacity, according to the task order. The city initially planned to spend $200,000 for a pavilion in 2020 and another $200,000 for permanent restrooms in 2021, but the timeline was changed to meet code requiring [...]

The developer of the Market Lofts project in downtown Overland Park may be able to get some of his promised tax increment financing money restored if he meets two new deadlines designed to get his construction workers out of the way of the Farmer’s Market. Members of the city council’s finance committee okayed a plan Wednesday that would give developer Paul Goehausen until April 15 to have the exterior work and sidewalks done. The new deadline for final completion of the project is June 1. If he misses those deadlines, he stands to lose even more of the money he had [...]

Lenexa’s future lies not just in the continued development of City Center, but also in renewed vitality of Old Town, Mayor Michael Boehm told the audience at his 2019 State of the City address. The mayor’s address, which was hosted by the Lenexa Chamber of Commerce, highlighted much of these citizen-led visioning efforts being guided by city leaders and staff. Ultimately, residents have asked to keep the city’s community as a “vibrant, connected, hometown feeling, with a distinct culture within a larger metropolitan area.” (Read more: Shawnee Mission Post – Community news and events for northeast Johnson County)

In 2013, after years of preliminary investigation, Prairie Village officials scuttled the idea of moving ahead with a project that would bring a new community center and natatorium to the grounds near city hall, citing high costs and lack of serious commitment from potential partners. Six years later, the city council thinks it’s time to give the idea a fresh look. Mayor Eric Mikkelson on Monday reported that he and a small group of city officials had held two preliminary meetings in recent weeks with representatives of the YMCA of Greater Kansas City to discuss the possibility of partnering on a [...]

Leawood had built a deserved reputation as one of the best places in Kansas and beyond to to live, work and play. That was the takeaway message from Mayor Peggy Dunn’s State of the City address, delivered Thursday at the Ironhorse Golf Club. But Dunn also had words of caution, pointing to the recently ended 35-day federal government shutdown as a sign of troubling partisanship, and imploring state leaders to work through continued friction over K-12 funding. (Read more: Shawnee Mission Post – Community news and events for northeast Johnson County)