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

In the span of just a few weeks last summer, torrential rains sent Brush Creek pouring over its banks in Prairie Village twice, threatening motorists on Mission Road and causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to homes and property in the vicinity of the Village Shops and Village Presbyterian Church. Now, the city of Prairie Village thinks it has a solution to the problem. Keith Bredehoeft, the city’s public works manager, told the city council this week that engineers believed they had devised a plan to mitigate the threat of such catastrophic flooding damage in the future. While he [...]

Mission residents came out Wednesday night in overwhelming support of a nondiscrimination ordinance to extend legal protections to their LGBTQ neighbors and city employees. Councilmember Sollie Flora introduced the ordinance that would make discrimination against a number of classifications, including LGBTQ individuals, illegal. LGBTQ residents and city employees are not currently given legal protection from discrimination under state or federal law. The ordinance is reflective of the city’s values, Flora said Wednesday. (Read more: Shawnee Mission Post – Community news and events for northeast Johnson County)

After nearly 20 meetings, hours of discussion and input from hundreds of homeowners, the Prairie Village city council has taken fresh action on an issue that has become a growing concerns to residents over the past several years: the impact of new home and remodeling projects on the character of existing neighborhoods. On an 11-2 vote at its meeting last night, the council accepted the unanimous recommendation of the city’s planning commission and adopted a new set of home design guidelines that build upon a set of restrictions on height and minimum setbacks the council approved in 2016. (Read more: Shawnee [...]

A group of homebuilding and remodeling professionals have organized opposition to the new guidelines, with several lobbying the planning commission to recommend denial ahead of the vote earlier this month, saying that the regulations would scuttle investment in rebuild projects and would have unintended consequences for existing homeowners. Among the proposed design standards, the new regulations would require a minimum amount of greenspace on a home lot, and restrict the amount impervious surface. (Read more: Shawnee Mission Post)

Roeland Park’s one-of-a-kind leaf pickup program is getting a new look this fall. The city recently purchased a new leaf pickup truck that vacuums up leaves instead of scooping them. Jose Leon, Roeland Park public works director, said Roeland Park was “in dire need” of replacing the equipment because it incurred hefty maintenance expenses last fall. During pickup season in 2017, several bricks, landscape rocks, yard tools and other heavy objects hidden in leaf piles got picked up by the machine and broke the leaf shredder. Those issues cost thousands of dollars and “a lot of downtime” to fix. “Over the [...]

A group of homeowners living near a proposed apartment complex in western Lenexa gathered nearly 200 petition signatures and sent a flurry of emails to City Council members in opposition to the project, and many showed up in force at Tuesday’s council meeting. In the end, the council unanimously rejected the project. The Vistas at Canyon Creek, proposed for the northwest corner of Canyon Creek Boulevard and Kansas Highway 10, would have required rezoning for the construction of 294 apartments in 12 buildings and a convenience store with gasoline pumps. ... Kristin Kippes, a homeowner who lives near the proposed project, [...]

Bicyclists stopping by downtown Overland Park will soon have many more places to hitch up. The city is in the process of getting 37 new racks to be distributed throughout the downtown area. Three racks would go outside the Matt Ross Community Center. “Downtown is a natural destination for bikes but there are really very few racks,” said Doug Johnson, of the city’s planning and development department. That will change with the acceptance of a proposal from BikeWalkKC that the city council approved Monday night. The bike racks come at no cost to the city. Instead, the $9,270 to install them [...]

The electric scooter rentals that have been zipping around downtown Kansas City for the past few months are showing up more and more frequently in the Shawnee Mission area. But just where and how they can be legally ridden in northeast Johnson County is somewhat fuzzy. Electric scooter companies like Bird and Lime haven’t officially set up operations in Overland Park, Lenexa, Shawnee or Prairie Village, according to city officials — but that hasn’t stopped riders from taking the vehicles into the area. Because the phenomenon is so new, cities here have not directly addressed electric scooters regulations yet, especially concerning [...]

Shawnee police officers’ investigations of crashes and crime scenes just got more detailed and more than twice as efficient. The 3D Scanner software produces a detailed and scaled map of a crash or crime scene, including a 360-degree perspective, according to Shawnee city records. One officer utilizing a 3D Laser Scanner can record a scene in about 60 percent of the time required by four officers using a Total Station, the Shawnee Police Department’s current device. In fact, the city’s traffic safety unit recommended purchasing the FARO 3D Laser Scanner because it can record and measure a 150-meter area in roughly [...]

For more than an hour on Tuesday, an organized group of home building professionals approached the podium in the Prairie Village council chambers and railed against a set of proposed design standards for new homes in the city. They would discourage people from investing in their homes and the community, the builders said. They would stifle regreening of aging neighborhoods. They would put an onerous burden on the businesses trying to meet demand for modern houses. Builders should have been more involved in the process. It was a standing room only crowd in the council chambers for the hearing on Tuesday. [...]