OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A monthly economic survey index for nine Midwestern and Plains dropped in September, suggesting slowing economic growth in the months ahead.
A survey report issued Wednesday says the overall Mid-America Business Conditions Index dropped nearly three percentage points to 54.3, from 57.2 the previous month.
Creighton University economist Ernie Goss, who oversees the survey, says a drop in grain prices over the past year has led to a pullback in economic activity for the heavily agrarian region.
The survey results from supply managers are compiled into a collection of indexes ranging from zero to 100. Survey organizers say any score above 50 suggests economic growth, while a score below that suggests decline.
The survey covers Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota.
It’s a short agenda, just two items for Hays city commissioners to review during their work session this Thursday evening.
The first agenda item is an update of stormwater activities.
City Stormwater Specialist Steve Walters will review the National Pollutant Discharge System permit and which requirements the city still needs to meet. Walters will offer recommendations on how to do meet the requirements.
There will also be a look ahead to large stormwater projects proposed for next year, according to Assistant Hays City Manager Paul Briseno.
“These include levy repair upgrades, the Lincoln Draw project engineering with the Army Corps of Engineers and the 13th Street stormwater project from Main to Milner, which will be done in collaboration with the reconstruction of 13th in that area, as well as the Eighth Street drainage project.
“The total cost of of these major projects would be roughly $1.3 million. Those funds are budgeted in the city’s 2015 budget,” Briseno said.
Commissioners also will hear a bid recommendation from I.D. Creech, director of Public Works, for storm sewer structures repair.
“Roughly 100 structures need to be rehabilitated — manholes and inlets, the structures adjacent to city streets,” Briseno explained.
Utility Solutions LLC of Basehor has submitted the low bid of $37,180, considerably below the engineer’s estimate of $70,980. The project would be funded from the stormwater utility line item.
The work session begins at 6:30 p.m. Thursday night in Hays City Hall, 1507 Main. Click HERE for the Oct. 2 meeting agenda.
Next week’s city commission meeting, Oct. 9, has been canceled due to the lack of a quorum.
The Hays Public Library will premiere “The Art of Change,” a Turning Points film, at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 17 at Fort Hays State University’s Robbins Center.
The event will include live music, the film premiere and a community discussion. There will also be refreshments and food from Gella’s Diner & Lb. Brewing Co. The HPL would like to invite the Hays community to this free event.
Hays was selected by the Kansas Humanities Council as one of four communities in Kansas to have a story put on film. The KHC defines a Turning Point as “an idea, event, action, or moment in time that directly or indirectly causes decisive change in a community.”
Hays’ film, “The Art of Change,” is about the formation of the Hays Arts Council in the 1960s; it was filmed in coincidence with the HAC 2014 Spring Art Walk.
“Not only was our arts council the first in the state of Kansas, but it is still thriving, growing and touching lives all over Western Kansas” said Luci Bain. Bain is the Kansas Room librarian at the HPL and is the project director for the Hays Turing Points.
There will be a reception with refreshments from 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., with the film premiere following. At 7:30 p.m., there will be a community panel discussion with Mayor Henry Schwaller and HAC president Dennis Schiel.
Bain hopes for community support at the event.
“This film is for the people of Hays,” she said, “for fifty years it has been the people in this community that have supported the arts and contributed to the Hays Arts Council to make so many amazing projects and programs possible.”
Bain first heard about the opportunity for a short film during an oral history seminar sponsored by the KHC in 2013. “For the proposal I had to do quite a bit of background research and find people who would be willing to do interviews,” she said.
After Hays was accepted, Bain continued to find pictures, newspaper articles, and had to prepare for interviews. “I think it’s a mark of how important the Arts Council is in Hays that no one I contacted refused the possibility of an on-camera interview.”
The three other communities that were selected for Turning Points were Kinsley, Ulysses, and Olathe. You can find more information about these projects at www.kansashumanities.org. All four Turning Points short films will screened at the event.
Turning Points is supported by the Kansas Humanities Council through a generous gift from Suzi Miner in memory of Kansas historian Craig Miner.
For more information please visit www.hayspublib.org.
Lynn Helen (Level) Griffith, age 75, of Utica, passed away Monday, September 29, 2014 at Hays Good Samaritan Society. She was born March 15, 1939, in Crawford County, Iowa, to John Howard and Leone Elizabeth (Lakers) Level.
Lynn was a bookkeeper and a homemaker. She cherished time spent with family and friends. She is survived by her husband, Bob, of the family home; a son Robert (Jeanie) of San Jose, California; a step-daughter Melinda Ewert of Hays; a step-son Dennis and wife Delores, of Niceville, Florida; six grandchildren, Nicholas, Gabriel, Elijah, Justin, Cameron, and Leo; and four great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her parents; and three sisters, Nancy, Betty and Mary.
Graveside funeral service and burial will be 11:00 a.m., Friday, October 3, 2014 at Ransom Cemetery, in Ransom.
Memorial contributions are suggested to the Lynn Griffith Memorial Fund and may be sent in care of Schmitt Funeral Home, 336 North 12th, WaKeeney, KS 67672.
RUSSELL — Russell County Economic Development and Convention and Visitors Bureau is hosting a youth hunt next month for children age 11 to 16.
The event will be 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Nov. 1. Youth will be required to have an adult accompany them.
Youth will have the opportunity to hunt and view demonstrations on the following:
• Gun safety and cleaning
• Bird dog demonstration
• Target shooting (Youth wanting to shoot clays will have the opportunity to do so prior to hunting with a guide.)
• Bird cleaning demonstration
Breakfast and lunch will be provided, and guides will assist youth and their parent during the hunting process.
For more information or to register before the Oct. 17 deadline, call (785) 483-4000 or email [email protected].
ELLSWORTH, Kan. (AP) — An Ellsworth woman was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison after her 13-month-old daughter ingested morphine.
Michele Suppes was sentenced Tuesday after entering an Alford plea to involuntary manslaughter in the June 2010 death of Bailiegh Kay Suppes.
Prosecutor Amy Hanley said Suppes put the morphine in her daughter’s bottle so the child would stay asleep while her boyfriend was at her home.
The Salina Journal reports that before her sentencing, Suppes told the court she thought Bailiegh picked up one of her mother’s pills that had dropped on the kitchen floor.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office says it had no written or email correspondence with national Republican groups or U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts’ re-election campaign as a legal dispute over the contest unfolded.
Kobach’s office responded this week to an open records request from The Associated Press.
The request sought copies of written and email correspondence from Aug. 25 through Sept. 19 between Kobach and top aides with two national GOP groups, Roberts and his top campaign aides.
The legal dispute stems from Democrat Chad Taylor’s withdrawal from the Senate race. A three-judge panel in Shawnee County District Court is reviewing a voter’s lawsuit aimed at forcing Kansas Democrats to name a new nominee.
Taylor’s move was seen has helping independent candidate Greg Orman’s chances of defeating Roberts.
If you want to check your child development, call for a free screening. Children birth to three years from Ellis and Rush Counties will be screened on Friday, Oct. 3. Speech, language, vision, height, weight, hearing, thinking, self-help, behavior and motor development will be checked.
Call the Hays Area Children’s Center to make an appointment at (785) 625-3257.
Screenings are sponsored by the Hays Interagency Coordinating Council.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Rain had started to fall at Kauffman Stadium as the echoing roars finally faded into the night. Eric Hosmer popped out of the dugout one last time, looked to the sky and let it soak in.
It had been 29 years since the Royals played a postseason game — nearly three decades spent mostly as a laughingstock. But on Tuesday night, already drenched in victory champagne, the young first baseman felt as if the whole world had watched their coming-out party.
“This team showed a lot of character tonight,” Hosmer said. “We weren’t going to quit.”
Salvador Perez singled home the winning run with two outs in the 12th inning, capping two late comebacks that gave Kansas City a thrilling 9-8 victory over the Oakland Athletics in the American League wild-card game.
Kansas City Royals
Quite a start to October baseball — even if this one appeared to be over with plenty of time to spare in September. But in a back-and-forth epic that lasted 4 hours, 45 minutes, the A’s lost their seventh straight winner-take-all playoff game since 2000.
It was the final collapse in a season that looked so promising this summer.
“This will go down as the craziest game I’ve ever played,” said Hosmer, who sparked the final Royals rally with a one-out triple. “This team showed a lot of character. No one believed in us before the game. No one believed in us before the season.”
Making their first postseason appearance since winning the 1985 World Series, the Royals are sticking around. They’ll open their best-of-five Division Series on the road Thursday night against the AL West champion Los Angeles Angels.
After falling behind by four runs, the Royals raced back with their speed on the bases — they led the majors with 153 steals this season. Kansas City swiped seven in this one to tie a postseason record previously shared by the 1907 Chicago Cubs and 1975 Cincinnati Reds, according to STATS.
The biggest one came in the 12th.
Hosmer scored the tying run on a high chopper to third by rookie Christian Colon, who reached safely on the infield single and then stole second with two outs.
Christian Colon scores game winning run in 12th inning Tuesday in Royals 9-8 AL wildcard victory over Oakland (Photo: Kansas City Royals)
Perez, who was 0 for 5 after squandering two late chances to drive in key runs, reached out and pulled a hard one-hopper past diving third baseman Josh Donaldson. Colon scored easily, and the Royals rushed out of the dugout for a mad celebration.
Sitting upstairs in a suite, Royals Hall of Famer George Brett put his hands on his head in near disbelief at the frenzied and jubilant scene that was unfolding below.
“It was unbelievable,” Perez said.
The A’s raced out to a 7-3 lead by the sixth inning, but the Royals countered with three runs in the eighth. Nori Aoki’s sacrifice fly off Sean Doolittle in the ninth forced extra innings.
Kansas City squandered chances in the next couple of innings, as midnight came and went on the East Coast and the tension continued to build. Rookie left-hander Brandon Finnegan, just drafted in June, pitched two scoreless innings but walked Josh Reddick to start the 12th.
Pinch-hitter Alberto Callaspo delivered an RBI single off winning pitcher Jason Frasor to put the A’s ahead 8-7, but Hosmer hit a drive high off the left-center wall against loser Dan Otero for a triple in the bottom half.
Colon drove in Hosmer with a bouncer that barely traveled 50 feet. That set the stage for Perez, who lined a pitch from Jason Hammel down the third-base line.
“They finally got ahead there in the 30th inning or whatever it was,” said Brandon Moss, who drove in five runs with two homers for Oakland. “That was definitely the best baseball game I’ve ever been a part of.”
The long-downtrodden Royals hadn’t played in the postseason since beating St. Louis in the 1985 World Series, and the excitement that permeated the city might best be summed up by a statement posted by the Kansas City Police on Twitter in about the 10th inning: “We really need everyone to not commit crimes and drive safely right now. We’d like to hear the Royals clinch.”
For the A’s, it was a stunning and heartbreaking finish. They had the best record in baseball before wilting in the second half, and needed a victory on the final day of the regular season just to squeeze into the playoffs.
Oakland had chances to put all that in the past. Instead, the season ended abruptly for a team that has failed over and over again in the postseason.
“It’s kind of a microcosm of the year that we had,” Doolittle said.
A much-anticipated pitching showdown between Oakland ace Jon Lester and Kansas City counterpart James Shields instead turned into a high-scoring game and a battle of attrition between bullpens.
“It was absolutely epic,” Shields said. “You don’t write a story like that.”
Doolittle tried to save it for Oakland in the ninth, but he gave up a bloop single to pinch-hitter Josh Willingham. Pinch-runner Jarrod Dyson was sacrificed to second and then brashly stole third, allowing him to score on Aoki’s deep fly to right field.
It was the third time in the last three seasons that Doolittle has blown a postseason save.
“That’s the most incredible game I’ve ever been a part of,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “Our guys never quit. We fell behind there in the fifth inning, sixth inning. They kept battling back. They weren’t going to be denied. It was just a great game.”
UP NEXT
Yost hadn’t picked a starting pitcher for the opener against the Angels. The two best bets are vastly different options: Danny Duffy is a young, hard-throwing lefty who plays on passion, while Jeremy Guthrie is a cerebral right-hander who relies on guile.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Oakland C Geovany Soto left the game after hurting his left thumb tagging Hosmer at the plate to end the first inning.
POSTSEASON BLUES
The A’s haven’t won a playoff series since sweeping Minnesota in the 2006 ALDS. “We’ve had our ups and downs,” catcher Derek Norris said, “especially in the playoffs.”
For centuries, veneration of the historic icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa has been credited with numerous miracles and favors, both spiritual and physical. A beautiful replica of this icon has been blessed and consecrated at the monastery of Jasna Gora in Poland, where the original is kept, and entrusted to the pro-life missionaries of Human Life International for the defense of life, marriage and the family.
Now, having traveled many tens of thousands of miles from Vladivostok in Russia, throughout Europe and North America, she will be visiting Hays to spread the Gospel of life.
The public is inivted Wednesday evening, Oct. 8th, at the Comeau Catholic Campus Center as we venerate Our Lady’s icon in gratitude for her intercession on behalf of life and our families. Adoration of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament will be underway upon the icon’s expected arrival at 4 p.m. and Mass will be celebrated at 5:45 p.m. Veneration of the icon will continue until approximately 8:30PM, when it is scheduled to depart for the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Wichita.
For more about Our Lady’s icon and the Ocean to Ocean Pilgrimage in Defense of Life, click HERE.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A monthly economic survey index for nine Midwestern and Plains dropped in September, suggesting slowing economic growth in the months ahead.
