Fort Hays State University and Hays City Summer Band will perform their last summer concert on the Historic Fort Hays lawn, located off the U.S. 183 bypass, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 4.
“We always perform the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’ ‘America the Beautiful’ and on at least one concert, John Philip Sousa’s ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,'” said Dr. Jeff Jordan, director of bands at FHSU. “Additionally, we are playing one piece that involves a short poem reading. This reading will be done by Nicole Feyerherm, a freshman at Fort Hays State University this fall.”
After the concert, the Wild West Fest fireworks display will be visible from the Historic Fort Hays lawn at 10 p.m. Even though the site will be closed for the holiday, viewers are allowed to stay and watch.
“We plan to feature two soloists at this concert: Brad Dawson, professor of trumpet and jazz studies at FHSU, and Matt Rome, (Hays), a senior clarinetist and music education major,” said Jordan. “We will also feature three student conductors: Kevin Pham, (Hays), Ashley McKinley, (Wichita), and Renee Trevino, all senior music education majors.”
This year the band consists of 37 members and has already performed at the FHSU Quad, Ellis Jr. High and in WaKeeney.
SALINA, Kan. (AP) — A Salina man convicted of killing his girlfriend’s 18-month-old daughter was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 20 years.
Twenty-eight-year-old Troy Love was sentenced Wednesday for felony murder and child abuse in the April 2012 death of Bre’Elle Jefferson. He was sentenced to 55 months in prison for the child abuse conviction. The sentences will run consecutively.
KSAL reports witnesses at the trial indicated the child suffered various injuries over a period of time. Love was primary caregiver of the girl while her mother, Robin Harrington, was recovering from a back injury.
In a statement before the sentencing, Harrington called Love “a monster” and a “coward who bullied a helpless child.”
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the theft of about 100,000 rounds of ammunition from a home in the Wichita area.
KFDI-FM reports the ammunition was taken during a burglary sometime between 5:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. on June 26.
Sheriff’s Lt. Dave Mattingly said Wednesday that musical equipment, electronics and other items were also taken. The stolen goods have a total estimated value of more than $46,000.
HOXIE- Two teenagers were injured in a crash at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday in Sheridan County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2008 Buick Enclave driven by Wilma Beatrice Mader, 86, Jennings was turning south on Kansas 23 one mile north of Hoxie.
A 2004 Chevy Silverado driven by Jordan Richard Preston, 19, Great Bend was southbound on Kansas 23, behind the Buick.
The Silverado swerved to the left to avoid the Buick and sideswiped the rear driver side of the Buick. The driver of the truck lost control, entered the east ditch and rolled one time.
Preston and a passenger in the truck Vargas, Jacob Thomas Vargas, 18, Great Bend were transported to Sheridan County Health Complex. Mader was not injured.
The KHP reported all were properly restrained at the time of the accident.
TOPEKA — Kansas Medicaid providers with expansion plans ready to go after spending months and thousands of dollars preparing for the state’s new health homes initiative said they were “shocked” and “disappointed” that state officials abruptly chose to indefinitely delay much of the program’s implementation while giving the providers less than 24 hours’ notice of the state’s decision to hit the pause button.
“We’ll just have to dismantle everything. I’m not sure it’s feasible to do it twice,” said Krista Postai, chief executive of the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas, a safety net clinic based in Pittsburg but with satellites in nearby towns. “That final-hour thing is really quite shocking. I’m not used to dealing with anything like this. This was a first for us.”
The clinic, after months of discussion, was planning a partnership with its counterpart in Johnson County. Together they would provide health home services in 18 eastern counties with the expectation they would serve thousands of chronically ill poor people with the wraparound services and close case management that are the hallmarks of health homes.
But that plan as of Monday afternoon began unraveling. Postai and other providers received a short email alerting them that officials at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment had decided that the part of the initiative dealing with Medicaid enrollees who are chronically ill with asthma or diabetes was being indefinitely delayed and would be re-evaluated as an option after Jan. 1, 2015, because there wasn’t an adequate network of providers to begin today as previously scheduled.
More than half the 72,000 people estimated to be eligible for the health homes program, which is paid for 90 percent by the federal government, are estimated to fall in that chronically ill category.
As late as last week, KDHE officials were still saying publicly that they planned to mail letters today to eligible, chronically ill Medicaid enrollees telling them they were going to be included in the initiative unless they opted out.
But apparently at the last minute, top officials at KDHE concluded there weren’t enough providers of the right types to launch the program statewide as initially planned. The portion of the program targeting Medicaid enrollees with serious mental illness, about 36,000 people, so far is proceeding on schedule with their notice letters sent this week and services beginning Aug. 1. The announcement marked the second major delay in the program, which administration officials originally had said would start Jan. 1 this year.
“The secretary along with everyone at KDHE is conducting readiness reviews on a regular basis to make sure our network was thorough. We concluded we really needed to do a better job on educating providers and to get more providers in the fold on this,” said Sara Belfry, an agency spokesperson. “We did communicate to (providers) that it was going to be delayed. We communicated as quickly as we could.”
But that turned out to be less than 24 hours’ notice.
“We were shocked to find out one day in advance that we weren’t going to have a program,” said Jason Wesco, chief executive of the Health Partnership Clinic in Olathe, the planned health homes partner with the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas. “I don’t know what the magic of January (the re-evaluation date) is. I don’t know that any more providers will be willing to jump in now. … The fact they pulled the plug on it makes me think it’s never coming back.”
Wesco said he had hired a project director for the health homes initiative and was interviewing people for five new care coordinator positions. Now, he said, he’ll cancel the new hires and try to figure out how he can afford to keep the new project director.
“I don’t make commitments to people I don’t keep, so I’m in the process of figuring that out,” he said. “She left a good job specifically to do this work. So, I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do. I’ll figure out something.”
Other providers across the state also have hired new workers or were in the hiring process, and some leased or expanded space in anticipation of the initiative.
“We definitely think there’s going to be an impact on our clinics that have hired staff and have geared up to be trained ready to start in August, and with the pushback (indefinite delay) they’re definitely going to feel the impact of it,” said Katrina McGivern, a spokesperson for the Kansas Association for the Medically Underserved, the association that represents the state’s safety net clinics. “It did come as a big surprise to us.”
But some of the safety net clinics had already chosen a go-slow approach because they were uncertain what the future of the program might be.
“Our approach was that we were going to start with the patients that we were the primary care provider for and build the network out from there as we could. Thank goodness we took that approach,” said Bryan Brady, chief executive of First Care Clinic in Hays. “I think it’s strange how quickly it happened, because it was no sooner than we got off a webinar (about the health homes initiative) with one of the (KanCare managed care companies) that the email went out saying the chronic conditions model was being delayed. There was the webinar (Monday), then an hour later it was off.”
Belfry said KDHE still intends to proceed with the health homes program for the chronically ill, but not until the network of providers is sufficient to provide the full range of services in each county and with enough of them so that each enrollee will have a choice of at least two providers.
“It’s not really an if question,” she said. “It’s a when. We are going to do this. We have been looking at the health homes concept for years. We needed the readiness review to assure we had the providers in place. We didn’t feel we had the network adequacy.”
But state officials may find that the delay will only make it more difficult for them to bring providers on board because of the misfire, Postai and others said.
“If it comes up again, we’ll revisit (our plans to participate). But I’m not sure I’ll invest the energy level I did before because I can’t trust it will happen,” Postai said. “I’ve lost faith it will ever happen. We’re as close now as we’ve ever been. The momentum was built. My staff was enthused. I was enthused. It would have led to bigger and better things. But it is what it is, and something big obviously kept it from happening.”
EMPORIA, Kan. (AP) — A technical college in eastern Kansas is taking another step toward energy self-sufficiency with the installation of solar panels.
The Emporia Gazette reports the panels are being put in place this week at Flint Hills Technical College.
The school’s Emporia campus also has a half-dozen geothermal wells, each 200 feet deep, and a turbine to generate wind energy.
Flint Hills moved a few years ago into a new building designed by architecture students from Kansas State University to be energy-efficient. The technical college is enrolled in Westar Energy’s solar program, which helped fund the solar panels.
College officials say that along with saving money on utilities, the school expects to generate enough energy to return some of it to Westar’s grid
Getting closer to the Holiday and here is the weather and temperature depiction for fireworks.
Today Mostly sunny, with a high near 83. Breezy, with a south southeast wind 8 to 13 mph increasing to 16 to 21 mph in the afternoon. Tonight A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after midnight. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 64. Southeast wind 10 to 17 mph. Independence Day Mostly sunny, with a high near 90. Windy, with a south southeast wind 14 to 19 mph increasing to 21 to 26 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 36 mph. Friday Night A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly cloudy, with a low around 70. Breezy, with a south wind 15 to 20 mph. Saturday Mostly sunny, with a high near 96. South southwest wind 15 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph. Saturday Night Partly cloudy, with a low around 70. Sunday Sunny, with a high near 97. Sunday Night Mostly clear, with a low around 70.
CHANUTE — Five people were hospitalized following a Wednesday accident in Neosho County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2008 Chevy Silverado driven by Megan Michelle Carnahan, 34, Parsons was northbound on U.S.169 two miles south of Chanute. The truck crossed the centerline and struck the rear dual tires of a 2007 Volvo tractor-trailer.
Carnahan and four children under the age of 12 were transported to Neosho County Regional Hospital.
The KHP reported all were properly restrained at the time of the accident.
DENVER (AP) — Newly unsealed court documents show the FBI thwarted a Denver woman’s attempt to help a terrorist organization by arresting her before she boarded a flight in April.
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered documents unsealed in the case against 19-year-old Shannon Maureen Conley, who was charged with conspiring to help a foreign terrorist organization. The documents say that when agents arrested her at Denver International Airport, she told them she planned to fly to Turkey and then travel to Syria to meet a suitor she met online.
The suitor apparently was a Tunisian man who claimed to be fighting for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as ISIL or ISIS.
The documents say she told agents she wanted to use American military training to wage jihad.
TOPEKA — The Topeka Independent Living Resource Center and Kansas ADAPT, advocacy organizations for people with disabilities, today marked the 15th anniversary of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said unnecessary segregation of the disabled in institutional settings or otherwise violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The event at the resource center served as an introduction for the Community Integration Act, which would create a mandatory home- and community-based services alternative to nursing facilities and institutions.
The Community Integration Act, introduced last week by U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, would create a new mandatory Medicaid State Plan benefit so people who are determined eligible for the level of care provided in a nursing facility, intermediate care facility, institution for mental disease or other institutional-type facilities will have the opportunity to receive services in a home- and community-based setting.
ELDORADO- A Kansas teenager was injured when a truck hit him just before 1:30 Wednesday afternoon in Butler County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2000 Freightliner truck driven by Stephen J. Rigby Jr., Andover, was stopped at a red traffic light on Haverhill at Central in El Dorado, intending to turn West onto Central.
John Shelbahl, 16, Eldorado, was riding a bicycle eastbound on the sidewalk on the north side of Central and rode into the path of the truck.
Shelbahl was transported to Wesley Medical Center in Wichita in serious condition.
