KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — After three delays, the world’s tallest water slide is scheduled to open this week.
Officials at Schlitterbahn water park in Kansas City, Kan., said Tuesday that the public will be able to ride the Verrückt slide on Thursday.
The ride was originally scheduled to open on May 23 when the water park’s season began. The next scheduled opening on June 5 was postponed, and a June 29 date also was delayed. Park officials have said the delays were needed to allow for more testing.
Guinness World Records in April certified the 17-story, 168-foot-tall attraction as the tallest water slide in the world. Riders on the Verruckt, which means “insane” in German, plummet at 60 mph to 70 mph on four-person rafts.
NEW YORK (AP) – Jimmy Wayne has written a story about a foster kid who was often homeless before making it big in country music. It’s his own story. Wayne’s autobiography, “Walk To Beautiful,” will come out in October. He tells the story of how his mentally ill mother took off with her lover, leaving Wayne alone at a bus station hundreds of miles from home at the age of 13. Wayne spent many nights hungry and on the streets when he wasn’t in and out of the foster care system. An elderly couple took him in, giving him a stable home and an education.
GREAT BEND — The city of Great Bend has announced it will continue spraying for mosquitoes for the next two weeks.
Last Thursday was supposed to be the last of four scheduled applications, but due to June’s wet weather, the city elected to spray for two more Thursdays, July 10 and 17.
Crews will spray from 8 p.m. to midnight on the scheduled nights. Residents are encouraged to make sure doors and windows are closed and pets are taken inside during the spraying times.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska federal judge is again drawing attention because of his personal blog, this time for using an obscene reference to suggest that the U.S. Supreme Court should not have heard the Hobby Lobby case.
The high court’s June 30 ruling found that some businesses can, because of their religious beliefs, choose not to comply with the federal health care law’s requirement that contraception coverage be provided to workers at no extra charge.
Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf weighed in Saturday on the ruling on his online blog, “Hercules and the Umpire.” In it, he references profanity in saying that the Supreme Court should shut up.
The post has drawn more than 250 comments on the judge’s site, many of them critical.
TOPEKA – Gov. Sam Brownback has ordered flags to be flown at half-staff from sun-up to sun-down Wednesday, in honor of former state Sen. Ross O. Doyen.
“Sen. Doyen spent his life serving his fellow citizens,” Brownback said. “He joined the United States Navy during World War II, right after graduating from high school, and served his country with distinction. Later, he brought that same commitment to his work in the legislature. Senator Doyen was a true Kansan, and we are grateful for his service. I extend my deepest sympathy to his family and friends and will keep them in my prayers.”
Doyen served in the United States Navy for 21 months in World War II, where he worked as an aircraft mechanic on C-54 transport planes. He began his political career in the Kansas House of Representatives 1959 and later was elected to the Kansas Senate in 1968.
He served as president of the Kansas Senate from 1975 to 1984.
Among the personnel transactions taken at Monday night’s USD 489 Board of Education meeting was the promotion of Jim Maska to head boys and girls’ soccer coach at Hays High School. Maska, who coached with the Hays Soccer Club for 14 years then spent four seasons as an assistant at TMP-Marian and has been an assistant at Hays High the last two years, takes over for Saul Hernandez who resigned at the end of the school year.
Maska inherits a boys team that finished 7-11 this past fall and a girls’ squad that went 13-4-1, winning the WAC title and advancing to the 5A South Central Regional finals.
Dena Patee is executive director of Ellis Alliance.
I wanted to let you all know that the Alliance office will be open from 8 a.m. to noon this week. I am helping with VBS at the Methodist Church in the afternoons. I will return after 3 p.m. if you need something. You can also contact me by phone and I’ll return the call as soon as I’m able.
Here’s a couple of things you may want to know and get on your calendars:
Tues-Friday: VBS at the Methodist Church from 1-3pm. Open to all 4 year olds to incoming 5th graders. Register upon your arrival.
Sunday 13th – Friday 18th: Bible School at the Ellis Baptist Church from 6:30-9:00pm. Open to all K-12 students. For more info, call Chad at the Ellis Baptist Church.
Tues, July 22: Red Cross Blood Drive! Looking for LOTS of 16-24 aged donors, as well as ALL other donors! This will help EHS earn scholarships and credit toward their blood drive later in the year! Come out and donate.
Tues July 22 – Sat July 26: Ellis Jr. Free Fair!!
Wed July 23: Rock & Chalk at the Ellis Library! Decorate with sidewalk chalk our downtown sidewalks and have a Dog & a Coke with Steve!
Just a teaser for now, more deatials as they come about.
Have a great day everyone!
Dena Patee is executive director of Ellis Alliance.
DETROIT (AP) — Ford is recalling 100,566 vehicles in North America for various safety defects.
The company announced the six separate recalls Tuesday. No injuries related to the defects have been reported.
The largest recall, of 92,022 vehicles, affects the 2013 and 2014 Taurus, Lincoln MKS, and Police Interceptor sedans, the Flex and Lincoln MKT crossovers, the 2012-2014 Edge and 2014 Lincoln MKX. Ford says the right-hand halfshaft, which is part of the axle, may disengage over time, making the vehicles inoperable.
Ford is recalling 5,264 2011-2014 F59 commercial stripped chassis because corrosion could lead to a fire risk. It’s also recalling 2,124 Escape SUVs from the 2014 model year because their panoramic glass roofs might leak or fall out.
Ford will notify owners and dealers will repair the vehicles for free.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Six months after United Airlines began flying to Chicago out of Topeka Regional Airport, ridership is increasing but airport officials say it needs to continue climbing.
Airport authority president Eric Johnson says the twice-daily flights to Chicago were about 64 percent full in June. The Topeka Capital-Journal reports the numbers increased from 25 percent full in January to 65 percent in May.
Government funds provided about $2 million in revenue guarantees if ticket sales fell short of a revenue goal. Johnson said most of the guarantee funds probably were used in the slow first quarter and the revenue shortfall for the second quarter hasn’t been calculated.
He says airport officials want the service to be profitable to ensure that United wants to continue to provide service from Topeka.
WALSENBURG, Colo. (AP) — About 100 Boy Scouts are working on merit badges in town after being evacuated from their southern Colorado camp because of flooding.
The scouts left the Spanish Peaks Scout Ranch on school buses and sheriff’s vehicles around 4 a.m. Tuesday after rain caused a creek running through the property near Walsenburg to rise.
They went to a Red Cross shelter set up in Walsenburg’s community center and could be allowed back later in the day, depending on whether there’s more rain. Scout executive Michael Stewart says the scouts, most of them from southwestern Kansas, were camping in tents above Bear Creek and weren’t in immediate danger.
Scouts there were also forced to evacuate last year by a wildfire, which has made the land more prone to flooding.
TOPEKA — Congress is working on legislative fixes to some of the problems that caused the recent scandal in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs health care system. Among other things, the bills would create a nationwide program patterned after one the agency has been testing in Kansas and a handful of other states.
The legislation would allow veterans who live far from VA medical centers to get care from local doctors. But U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., is raising concerns about the agency’s plans to end the pilot program before the national version of it is up and running.
Moran worries that Kansas veterans like Hugh Steadman will be abruptly cut off from needed health care services if the pilot program ends before the VA bill is passed and the agency is ready to implement it nationwide.
Steadman, who flew combat missions over Germany as a bombardier during World War II, lives in Great Bend. He used to have to drive two hours to the VA medical center in Wichita, a trip that was getting more difficult for him to make. Things became a little easier when the VA opened an outpatient clinic in Hays, but that’s still more than an hour’s drive each way.
“Well, it’s getting to be quite a problem, because I’m 89 years old now, and my kids don’t like me to drive out on the highways, and I think they’re probably right,” Steadman said.
But for the past year, Steadman’s driving time has been cut to just 10 minutes. That’s because a VA pilot project now pays for him to see a doctor in Great Bend. The project is called Access Received Closer to Home, or ARCH.
The VA launched the pilot program in Kansas and four other states in 2011, three years after Congress authorized it. Pratt was the Kansas test site, but things didn’t go well there.
“It failed pretty miserably,” said Vincent Wilczek, the chief financial officer of Pratt Regional Medical Center. Wilczek said primary care doctors in Pratt and the nearby communities signed up to do business with the VA but were quickly turned off by the process.
“They found it to be very burdensome, cumbersome to work with the VA, because it’s a very authorization-driven system,” he said. “And then some of the requirements they were requiring of the physicians were just very hard for local physicians to do.”
The providers in the Pratt area stopped participating in 2012. That could have ended the pilot project in Kansas, but it didn’t. Instead, Humana, which administers the program, reached out to providers in other communities.
That’s when St. Rose Ambulatory and Surgery Center in Great Bend got involved. One of the primary care providers there is Dr. James McReynolds. He said the VA bureaucracy takes a little getting used to, but he’s had no trouble getting authorization for necessary medical care.
The VA will authorize a certain number of visits, labs and/or X-rays for each patient, McReynolds said, but “it’s variable for each patient, and if you want more, you do have to request more.”
He was happy to participate in a program that made it possible for veterans to get care closer to home. And veterans in Kansas and the other participating states seemed to like it too.
Ninety percent of those surveyed by the VA said they would recommend it to other veterans. Steadman, the World War II veteran from Great Bend, agrees.
“I really like it. I sure do hate to see it quit. I’ve got several friends that go up there also, and it sure made it easy on us old-timers, where we don’t have to drive so far,” Steadman said.
Despite the veterans’ rave reviews of ARCH, the VA recently said it planned to end the pilot program. Testifying to a congressional committee in June, the VA’s Philip Matkovsky said the agency had the authority to extend the pilot program but wasn’t planning to do so.
“ARCH does expire as a contract. It was a firm-term contract with a base one year and then two option years, which expires, I believe, Sept. 30. And typically, unless the contracting officer can determine a compelling reason to extend that — and I’m not a contracting officer — we let contracts expire,” Matkovsky told the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
Sen. Moran strongly disagrees with that decision.
“ARCH comes about from legislation that I introduced as a House member. It has a lot to do with my background as a congressman from the First District of Kansas, a congressional district larger than the state of Illinois but with no VA hospital,” Moran said.
The Kansas Republican has been urging the VA for months to continue the program. He sees it as a bridge to the nationwide program authorized in the bill still working its way through Congress.
“The idea that I was pushing about services closer to home over the last four, five, six years is something that is now front-and-center in bipartisan legislation that is expected to pass Congress and be signed by the president. And yet we still have a Department of Veterans Affairs who, presumably, is reluctant to implement and pursue these programs in part, I think, because the VA’s funding, if they pay for services outside the VA, it’s less money that they’ve had to use within the VA,” Moran said.
Still, it appears that Moran may have won a partial victory. He said Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson has verbally agreed to keep the program in place, but only for veterans who already were being served by it. And even that less-than-ideal compromise isn’t a sure thing, given the VA’s recent track record. So Moran has asked Gibson to confirm that pledge in writing.
With the end-of-the-month deadline looming to balance the 2015 budget the Ellis County Commission met with department heads again Monday afternoon in an effort to cut into the approximately $1.5 million shortfall.
Barb Wasinger
Despite an increase in tax valuation in the county from 2013 to 2014 the county is anticipating a reduction in revenues because of changes in personal property taxes, the way wireline equipment is listed and a reduction in oil and gas tax.
At Monday’s special meeting, the commission tasked department heads with finding places to cut, and they targeted about $500,000 to $600,000 in possible cuts — leaving an estimated shortfall of approximately $1 million.
“I know and I appreciate that all of you have tried to be really mindful of where you are spending money and what’s going on. But it’s just not there,” Chairwoman Barb Wasinger said.
EMS Director Kerry McCue said he believes most departments are almost the same as last year and without current funding levels, services might have to be reduced.
Wasinger said some departments might not be able to provide the same level of services they do now because of budget cuts.
“That’s the decision the taxpayers need to know is being made here, either pay more taxes or we cut back and some services may have to be cut back a little bit,” she said.
But, Wasinger added, “I hear from everyone, don’t raise our taxes. We’re all trying to cut back.”
When crafting their budget proposals, department heads were told to budget for a 3-percent pay increase for employees.
The commission and the department heads talked about possibly cutting those raises.
County Attorney Tom Drees noted that, if everyone has cut everything they can, that only leaves personnel. Drees said 95 percent of his budget is salaries.
“For most of us … the cost of our increase is the raise,” he said.
Public Works Director Mike Graf brought up the fact that Ellis County does not have a general county-wide sales tax and, while that won’t help the current situation, it could be something to consider in the future.
“That may be something we have to start educating the public if they want to try continue services,” Wasinger said. “We may have to sell that.”
EMPORIA, Kan. (AP) — Snack cakes have been good for Emporia.
The northeast Kansas town has seen jobs return and millions of dollars in investments since its Hostess Brands plant reopened last year and expanded this year.
The Kansas City Star reports the company that makes Twinkies, Donettes and other cake products added $30 million in improvements to the plant. A ribbon cutting is planned Friday to celebrate a new warehouse, and a Twinkie festival is scheduled Saturday.
The plant was closed and 500 jobs were lost during a labor dispute in 2012. The Emporia plant was one of four Hostess bakeries reopened last year when a partnership group bought the company’s assets.
About 330 non-union workers are currently employed by the plant and another 50 jobs are likely to be added.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — After three delays, the world’s tallest water slide is scheduled to open this week.
