GARDEN CITY, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas church has sued Garden City over an order prohibiting worship at its property in the central business district.
Mount Zion Church of God in Christ alleges in a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court that the city has threatened to prosecute it in municipal court for violating a zoning ordinance. The city has said in a letter that it also could seek an injunction in Finney County District Court to enforce its zoning regulations.
At issue is a Main Street building that has allegedly been used as a church for more than 10 years.
The church’s lawsuit contends the city is violating its First Amendment rights and seeks a ruling finding the zoning restriction unconstitutional.
City officials did not immediately respond to phone messages Monday seeking comment.
Orthodontists Cindy and Alan Reed are working with others in Salina’s medical community to rally support for maintaining fluoride in the public water supply. Voters will decide the issue Tuesday.- photo by Andy Marso
By ANDY MARSO KHI News Service
SALINA — When Alan and Cindy Reed started devoting their evenings and weekends to going door-to-door to talk with their Salina neighbors about an upcoming vote on water fluoridation, they considered avoiding houses with the blue “Stop Fluoride” signs.
The husband-and-wife orthodontist team, with 50 years combined experience, doubted they could change the minds of the people who lived there. But when Cindy started knocking on those doors, she generally found residents willing to hear her out. By the time she was done, many of the people she talked with pulled up their anti-fluoride signs.
Something struck her about some of those who didn’t.
“Of the four, two of them were smoking a cigarette while they were talking to me about fluoride being toxic, and they didn’t want anything toxic,” Cindy said.
Since 1968, Salina has fluoridated its drinking water to the level recommended by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fight tooth decay. Yet the issue is now pitting neighbor against neighbor in this central Kansas city of almost 50,000 people.
A dentist’s office on a busy Salina street displayed three of the yellow pro-fluoride signs, possibly in rebuttal to the chiropractor next door who had one of the blue anti-fluoride signs in front of his office.
The majority of Salina’s medical community is rallying in support of maintaining fluoride in the public water supply, with 21 doctors and 39 dentists joining a pro-fluoride coalition.
Under the direction of Allison Lesko, president of the Salina Dental Society, the group has canvassed houses, distributed signs and even put together television commercials touting the benefits of fluoridated water.
The coalition is taking nothing for granted with Tuesday’s vote.
Doctors and dentists in Salina, along with other fluoridation advocates, say removing fluoride from public water will lead to dental issues, especially among lower-income residents who have trouble affording dental care.- J. Schafer/KPR
Kevin Robertson, executive director of the Kansas Dental Society, said that’s the right approach.
A fluoridation effort in Wichita — currently one of the country’s largest cities without fluoridated water — failed decisively in 2012, emboldening anti-fluoride activists throughout the state.
Robertson said efforts to pull fluoride from the water of Wellington and Parsons were kept off the ballot this year. But if the Salina measure passes, fluoride opponents are likely to continue their efforts.
“Unfortunately, at this moment the momentum seems to be kind of an anti-fluoride momentum,” Robertson said.
That momentum extends across the state line into Missouri, where the Kansas City suburb Independence and its population of 120,000 remain without fluoridated water.
Former City Councilman Jason White and other public health advocates have wanted to change that for years, dating back to a heated 2003 debate when a deadlocked City Council — including White — failed to muster the votes to put the issue on the November ballot.
White said the positive effect of fluoridation would be particularly strong in his community because the Independence Water Department also serves customers in surrounding areas, including the large suburbs of Lee’s Summit and Blue Springs.
White said fluoridation advocates have discussed making another push multiple times since 2003, including as recently as 18 months ago.
But they backed away, in part because of the 2012 Wichita vote and a similar result in May 2013 when voters in Portland, Ore., rejected adding fluoride to their water supply.
“We did not see the ability to get it over the goal line,” White said.
The history
The origins of water fluoridation date back to the early 1900s, when a pair of dental researchers tried to determine what was causing a condition known as “Colorado Brown Stain.”
Longtime residents of Colorado Springs had brown, mottled teeth. The teeth were unattractive, but the dentists also noticed that they were far less prone to cavities. They eventually determined that the local water supply had high levels of naturally occurring fluoride — far higher than the tightly controlled levels found today in municipal drinking water.
Dr. H. Trendley Dean, head of the National Institutes of Health’s dental hygiene unit, later determined that at a level of about 1 part per million, fluoridated water could have the teeth-strengthening properties of the Colorado Springs water, with almost none of the visual defects, which by then were called “dental fluorosis.”
In 1945, Grand Rapids, Mich., became the first city to fluoridate its water at that level, and Dean and his NIH team began monitoring 30,000 Grand Rapids schoolchildren. Within 11 years, their tooth decay rate had dropped 60 percent.
Since then, controlled water fluoridation within a recommended range of 0.7 to 1.2 parts per million has been widely adopted and tooth decay rates have fallen dramatically across the country.
The CDC lists fluoridated water as one of the top 10 public health achievements of the 20th century and has a website that allows users to learn if the water in their community is fluoridated and at what level.
There has been extensive research on the safety and efficacy of water fluoridation. The Journal of the American Dental Association lists more than 1,000 articles on the subject. The Environmental Protection Agency has, since 1974, studied fluoride levels in water as part of its mandate under the Clean Water Act. That research has found that fluoride is safe to consume in drinking water at levels more than four times those used today.
The National Research Council issued reports on fluoridation in 1951, 1977, 1993, 2006 and 2007. Based on those data reviews and others, the CDC has determined that community water fluoridation “is a safe, effective, and inexpensive method to reduce tooth decay” and recommended it be continued in communities that currently fluoridate and extended to those that do not.
Despite the research findings, opposition to fluoridation continues across the country.
The resistance
Courtesy Mark Gietzen
In Kansas, that resistance lately has been headlined by Wichita resident and former Boeing employee Mark Gietzen, who gained political capital picketing an abortion clinic in that city for decades.
Gietzen was part of the 2012 drive to keep fluoride out of Wichita’s water. He also convinced his state representative, Republican Steve Brunk, to introduce an anti-fluoride bill in the Legislature. Brunk soon distanced himself from the bill, and it died in committee.
The bill would have required municipalities to warn residents that fluoridated water lowers intelligence. The handful of studies that Gietzen points to as evidence for the warning are based on data collected mainly from areas of China with naturally occurring levels of fluoride far higher than those in U.S. drinking water.
“This is a science question and a science issue,” Gietzen said. “It should not even be a political issue, but it unfortunately is.”
In Salina, Gietzen’s cause has been championed by Lou Tryon, a retired elementary school teacher who now tutors children.
“I noticed they had some dental fluorosis on their teeth and they were coming to me for a little help and having trouble trying to learn, so I put two and two together,” Tryon said in a phone interview.
Tryon later said she was not sure if fluoride was “the total cause” of the children’s academic difficulties, but she believes the chemical is linked to learning disorders like ADD and ADHD.
She called fluoride a “hazardous waste from the phosphate fertilizer company” and linked drinking water fluoridation to a secret agreement between former Alcoa attorney Oscar Ewing and then-president Harry Truman.
When asked why she believed water fluoridation was harmful in the face of so much evidence to the contrary, Tyron said, “I think the science is actually on our side.”
J. Schafer/KPR Opponents of fluoridation of Salina’s public water supply say it is more harmful than helpful to residents’ health.-J. Schafer/KPR
Tryon cited research by Albert Schatz, the scientist who co-discovered the antibiotic streptomycin, as an example. However, Schatz’s hypothesis about fluoride’s carcinogenic properties was discredited by National Institutes of Health researchers in 1973.
Tryon also named Charles Gordon Heyd, vice president of the American Medical Association in 1936-37, and Environmental Protection Agency researcher William Marcus as fluoride skeptics who have informed her position.
Still, the bulk of the scientific and medical community say that fluoride at the recommended levels in drinking water has been proven safe for human consumption and effective in fighting tooth decay.
Supporters of drinking water fluoridation include the CDC, American Dental Association, American Public Health Association and American Academy of Pediatrics.
The consequences
The safety of water fluoridation has been studied repeatedly. A 2010 study initiated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services actually resulted in a recommendation that the level of fluoride in drinking water should be lowered slightly due to increased amounts of fluoride in toothpaste and mouthwash.
The CDC adjusted its recommendation accordingly and began recommending that families use low-fluoride bottled water sometimes for baby formula because infants can proportionally ingest higher amounts of fluoride.
The scientists said the previous recommendations were still safe, but other increasing sources of fluoride could be contributing to mild dental fluorosis, a cosmetic condition. Unlike the “Colorado Brown Stain,” lesser degrees of fluorosis generally manifest themselves as white spots on teeth.
Within Salina’s medical community, those spots are the only commonly recognized consequence of maintaining the current level of fluoride in the drinking water.
Lesko, who has been practicing in Salina for seven years, said the fluorosis she’s seen is so slight it’s almost imperceptible to the naked eye.
“I’ve never seen a severe case outside of a book,” she said.
Lesko said no Salina medical doctor had come forward with information about patients with other conditions related to fluoride intake.
“Nothing has come through where they’ve seen any ill effects here in Salina,” Lesko said. “Obviously we have 69, going on 70, years of research showing the levels of fluoridation in public water are safe.”
Rob Freelove, a doctor at the Salina Family Health Care Center, said he does not know of any patients diagnosed with a fluoride-related illness in his 14 years of practicing there.
Freelove treats low-income residents at his medical clinic. He said their dental care needs are underserved even more than their medical care needs, and losing fluoridated water would only widen that gap.
“If we take it out, we’re doing our community a huge disservice,” Freelove said. “I’ve seen what it looks like now, and I dread that it could be a lot worse.”
John Adams has practiced dentistry in Salina since 1975. When he started, Adams said dentists from nearby communities without fluoridated water referred some of their young patients to him.
“I saw so many kids that needed full-mouth rehabilitation, I would put five or six kids in the hospital about every third or fourth Friday,” Adams said. “I rarely, if ever, saw kids even close to that destruction in the Salina area.”
Lesko said a study done in Antigo, Wis., after it stopped fluoridating its water shows what could happen in Salina. The town added fluoride to its water in 1949 and then stopped in 1960. In five years, tooth decay increased by 200 percent among the town’s second-graders, by 70 percent in its fourth-graders and by 91 percent in its sixth-graders.
Antigo resumed adding fluoride to its drinking water in 1965.
“Within the first five years, you’re going to see this increase in cavities,” Lesko said.
Today’s residents of Salina have more access to other sources of fluoride than the residents of 1960s Antigo did. But Adams said the effects of surface treatments found in toothpaste and mouthwashes weren’t as deep or lasting.
“You can put fluoride on the outside of teeth, and it helps for six to eight months,” Adams said. “But if you drink fluoridated water from the time you’re 1 to the time you’re about 8, you will have a lifetime benefit from that.”
Lesko said drinking fluoridated water may be all that many low-income residents with less access to dental care do on a regular basis to protect their teeth.
Removing fluoride from the water will hurt that segment of the population the most, she said, and the costs will be spread throughout the community because Kansas Medicaid covers most children’s dental services.
Salina spends about $10,000 to $15,000 per year fluoridating the water. A cost analysis done by the Children’s Dental Health Project for Oral Health Kansas estimated that within a few years, dental treatment costs in Salina would rise by $580,000 per year if the city discontinues fluoridation. The share of that related to care for Medicaid patients would be borne by the public.
“It’s the taxpayers that are going to have to fund restorations or replacements for those children,” Lesko said.
The politics
The battle over fluoride in Salina is intense.
Cindy and Alan Reed, the orthodontists, say they are knocking on doors because they want to spare Salina children from the consequences they know will result from a vote to de-fluoridate the city’s water supply. They’ve read the research.
“We’re capable of looking at how the studies were done, what variables were controlled, what variables were manipulated, if any, how the variables were measured, if other factors were either controlled or accounted for,” Alan Reed said. “Looking at things like what kind of sample size was used. All those things are very important to generating good evidence or data so there is evidence.”
Campaigning on the other side of the question are people like Sheryl Musfelt.
“I personally think we have been duped and fluoride has never been safe,” Musfelt said. “And my right to choose what I ingest was taken from me in 1968.”
On Tuesday the voters of Salina will decide.
Drive down Ohio Street, a main drag lined with ranch-style homes and strip malls, and the yellow “Keep Fluoride” signs with gleaming smiles seem to have the upper hand. Drive up Broadway Boulevard, which runs parallel about a mile-and-a-half west of Ohio Street, and the blue “Stop Fluoride” signs with their skull-and-crossbones warning prevail.
Alan Reed said members of his family have received calls from as far away as Washington state from anti-fluoride activists urging them to vote for the ballot measure. Wichita’s anti-fluoride movement has been mobilized, with Gietzen and others visiting Salina and making presentations.
The push is on, but Salina’s medical professionals are pushing back. Lesko said they learned from the recent Wichita vote.
“We know that this is spreading,” she said. “They’re trying to start a wildfire, and so we’re out here with our firehoses and everything saying, ‘OK, if you’re going to start a wildfire, we’re more than prepared.’”
Andy Marso is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Finance reports show that independent U.S. Senate candidate Greg Orman has put $3 million of his own funds into his race in Kansas against Republican Sen. Pat Roberts.
Orman’s contributions to his campaign included $1.8 million in October. Orman is an Olathe businessman who co-founded a private equity fund.
His race against the three-term GOP incumbent is close. Republicans have always counted on Roberts winning re-election as they seek a net gain of six seats to recapture a Senate majority.
Finance reports show Roberts raised more than $644,000 during the last two weeks of October, including $262,000 from political action committees.
Orman contributed $2 million in cash to his campaign in addition to covering $1 million in expenses. But he also raised more than $433,000 in contributions in October.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – The Royals extended a $15.3 million qualifying offer Monday to right-hander James Shields, which assures Kansas City of draft pick compensation if its staff ace signs a major league contract with another team before June 8.
Shields has until Nov. 10 to accept, and it is expected he will not. In the past two years, none of the 22 free agents given qualifying offers have accepted.
Kansas City has expressed interest in re-signing Shields, who helped the Royals reach the playoffs for the first time in 29 years and win the AL pennant. But with higher-payroll clubs in the market for pitching, Shields is expected to sign elsewhere.
If that happens, the Royals would receive a compensatory draft pick between the first and second rounds of next year’s amateur draft.
AUGUSTA- A Kansas man died in an accident just after 9:30 a.m. on Monday in Butler County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2000 Chevy Silverado driven by Harvey M. Furlow, 57, Augusta, was southbound on Santa Fe Lake Road 3 miles west of Augusta.
The truck failed to stop at a stoplight and was hit by a 2002 Ford F 350 driven by Daniel R. Saubers, 64, Chanute.
Furlow was transported to Kansas Medical Center in Andover where he died. Saubers was not injured.
The KHP reported Furlow was not wearing a seat belt.
Capitol’s Luke Bryan and Cabela’s Inc. debuted Bryan’s new 32 Bridge clothing line Nov. 1 exclusively at Cabela’s. The men’s and women’s apparel will target hunters, fishers and country music fans. See the line here.
Best guesses so far are that those 25,360 Kansans whose voter registration applications are in “suspense” aren’t going to yield much in the way of post-Election Day results changes for any candidates.
Which means that the election’s results from Tuesday are probably just how it’s going to be, and waiting for the final county canvassing board certified vote totals from next week — either Monday or Wednesday, depending on the county election officials’ choice — is unlikely to change anything.
Oh, those “suspense” voters whom we’ve been hearing about for months under the new voter registration law will probably get a ballot, the fun of filling it out and one of those “I Voted” lapel stickers — but the vast majority of them will have just disappeared from the election.
Voters had until midnight before election day to square up their registrations—generally change of address or such—and if they didn’t get that done, well, their ballot will be put in an envelope, not counted on Tuesday after the polls closed and in a few cases might be able to provide the information necessary to see that envelope opened and the votes counted.
Will those non-voter voters change any elections? That’s the real question, and there are thousands of them in some counties, and apparently just one in Greeley County.
But they won’t be among the numbers we see in the election night vote totals that some of us will stay up to see—and then we’ll probably arrive at the office Wednesday a little groggy.
Because we’ll never see whom those “suspense” voters voted for, we’re not going to know whether the Secretary of State Kris Kobach-pushed new voter registration law changed results of any races.
Surprising? It made a pretty catchy campaign issue in the race for secretary of state, but for those “little guys” down the ballot, the House races and county officer races where races are sometimes decided by 100 votes or so, well, chances are that the county determinations of which of those “suspense” ballot envelopes get opened and counted are unlikely to make a difference.
There go those high-excitement and little-attended county election board meetings, where in a close race candidates for office — where a couple dozen votes might make a difference on who comes to Topeka — will be looking at boxes of might-be votes but are unlikely to see many of those ballots actually counted.
The Kansans who got a ballot Tuesday—nearly everyone does—probably aren’t going to know whether their vote will count, and depending on who was in line to vote nearby, may or may not bother to provide the information to make their ballot count.
The election law change that is designed to prevent foreigners from messing with Kansas elections probably isn’t going to catch a lot of illegal voting attempts, but it may make the number of votes which actually have to be counted on either Election Day or by county canvassing boards a little smaller than some would like. But, chances are that Tuesday’s vote totals will be very close in virtually every district, and that opens up the possibility that you might be able to cosign for whoever appears to have won on Tuesday…
And, whether your vote counts or not, at least the TV campaign ads will be over, so we’ll get to see what the new Fords look like this year…
Syndicated by Hawver News Co. of Topeka, Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report. To learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit www.hawvernews.com.
BUNKER HILL — The Russell County Sheriff’s Office arrested an Oklahoma man this weekend on suspicion of possessing a large amount of marijuana.
On Sunday, sheriff’s deputies were called to the Sun Mart truck stop at Bunker Hill on a report of a suspicion person. Upon arrival, deputies confronted Juan Moreno of Tulsa, Okla., and their investigation led to a search of Moreno’s vehicle.
Police reportedly found a large amount of marijuana in the vehicle, with an estimated street value of $186,000.
Moreno was taken into custody and his vehicle was seized.
At Monday’s meeting, the Ellis County Commission are expected to vote on whether or not take part in a Kansas Association of Counties salary study.
According to County Administrator Greg Sund, Ellis County conducted a salary study in 2009 and, because they were popular with counties across the state, they have elected to do another one. It costs $175 per county.
Ellis County is currently in the middle of its own wage-and-benefit study but Sund said he believes it is good to get another study to compare findings.
The Ellis County wage and benefit study costs $37,500.
Also on the agenda for Monday’s meeting, scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. at the courthouse:
• County employee Mike Fisher will appear before the commission to discuss wages and benefits. Although Sund said they are subject to union negotiations, he and the commission cannot answer questions or make comments on the issue.
• Sund will present the commission with two examples of employee evaluation forms for the commission’s approval.
• Sund will discuss changes he has presented to the architect on the Administrative Center at 718 Main.
• The commission will conduct a closed session to discuss union negotiations.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Investigators are recovering the remaining aircraft wreckage off the roof of a flight safety training facility in Kansas.
Wichita Battalion Chief Stuart Bevis said Monday crews are using a crane to remove the fuselage and other large aircraft pieces from the roof of the building where a small plane crashed on Thursday at Wichita’s Mid-Continent Airport, killing four people.
Bevis says that the National Transportation Safety Board wants to finish its work at the site on Monday.
The twin-engine Beechcraft King Air drifted left of the runway after taking off, then made a steep left bank before plunging into the Flight Safety International Learning Center at the airport.
The pilot and three people inside flight simulators in the building were killed. Five others were injured.
LAWRENCE — Longtime Hays resident and philanthropist Marianna Kistler Beach died at her home Saturday in Lawrence.
Beach and her husband, Ross, lived in Hays for more than 60 years before relocating to Lawrence in 2000. Ross Beach died in 2010.
Marianna Beach established the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art on the campus of Kansas State University and was a longtime advocate and volunteer leader of the Hays Arts Council.
Marianna Kistler Beach, 94, died at her home in Lawrence, Kansas, on November 1, 2014. She was born November 24, 1919 in Lincoln, Kansas, to Elmer Levi and Myrtle Mae (Skinner) Kistler of Lincoln. The family moved to Manhattan, KS in 1934 in order for the children to have college educations in the lean years of the Great Depression. She graduated from Manhattan High School in 1937 and Kansas State University in 1941, where she was a member of Pi Beta Phi, Sigma Phi Journalism Honorary and Mortar Board. She was instrumental on the student committee to obtain legislative approval to use student fees to enable construction of the Kansas State Student Union.
She was married to Ross Beach on June 1, 1941, and they were devoted to each other for 69 years until his death in 2010. Residents of Hays, Kansas, for over 60 years, they finally moved full time to Lawrence in 2000.
A consummate traveler, Marianna wrote detailed journals of their safaris to Africa and India. She was deeply involved with the Kansas-Paraguay Partners and the Sister Cities Program, promoting cultural and technical exchange among the peoples of the United States and Latin America. Determined to never use a translator in her volunteer work in South America, she enrolled at the age of 65 in an summer immersion class in Spanish in Quito, Ecuador through Georgetown University.
An ardent supporter of the arts, Marianna was a member of the Mid America Arts Alliance, president of the Hays Arts Council, and wrote a column on art and city beautification for the Hays Daily News for over twenty years. She was instrumental in convincing her husband, in commemoration of their 50th anniversary, to establish the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art on the campus of Kansas State University to ensure art be available for all Kansans to enjoy.
With a lifelong devotion to the needs of individuals with special needs, she worked tirelessly in supporting efforts to maximize the potential of handicapped individuals, having served on the President’s Committee on Mental Retardation for two terms and as the U.S. representative to and president of the Inter-American Children’s Institute of the Organization of American States from 1982 – 1988. She was extremely active on the local level also. Because of her tireless efforts in this field, the Beach Center for Families and Disabilities at the University of Kansas was named in their honor.
Recognized by numerous organizations throughout her life, her most treasured awards were by Fort Hays State University with the Distinguished Service Award, Kansas State University with the Alumni Medallion Award, Kansas University with the Distinguished Service Citation, Topeka Daily Capital as a “Kansan of Distinction”, and People to People “Volunteer of the Year” award.
Beach also participated in her local community as a member of PEO, the First Presbyterian Church (Hays), Westside Presbyterian Church (Lawrence), Smoky Hills Public Television Board, Tennola and many other organizations. Personal pleasures were in having earned her private pilot’s license at age 45 and participating in weekly conversation groups in French and Spanish until recently.
Marianna was pre-deceased by her parents and her husband. She is survived by her three daughters: Mary (Gary) McDowell, Pt. Townsend, WA; Terry (R.A.) Edwards, Hutchinson, and Jane (Steve) Hipp, Jackson, WY. Also surviving is a brother, Lee Kistler of Evergreen, CO, and a sister, Janet Bush of Littleton, CO, eight grandchildren and six great grandchildren.
Cremation has taken place. Her ashes will be co-mingled with those of her husband and spread over their beloved State of Kansas, and their “adopted” country of Kenya.
Because Marianna and her husband took a special interest in supporting efforts to maximize the potential of special needs individuals, in addition to enhancing international cooperation, the family suggests memorials to the 4-H Foundation for the Rock Springs Wah-Shun-Gah Ranch for Kansas campers with unique needs, or to the Center for Life Experiences at the First Presbyterian Church in Hays, KS and may be sent in care of Warren-McElwain Mortuary, 120 W. 13th Street, Lawrence, KS 66044. The family requests no flowers.
A Celebration of Life for Mrs. Beach will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, November 16th at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art in Manhattan, Kansas.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Wichita chiropractor was sentenced to five years in federal prison and ordered to repay more than $1.8 million for defrauding health care insurers.
Federal prosecutors announced Monday that 33-year-old Jeffrey D. Fenn pleaded guilty to one count of health care fraud, two counts of aggravated identity theft and one count of tax evasion.
Fenn admitted that from March 2011 to October 20131 he submitted false claims to Medicare, two insurance companies and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program through his businesses, Wichita Health and Wellness, Fenn Chiropractic and Wichita Pain Associates. He also made fraudulent claims for business and personal income taxes.
GARDEN CITY, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas church has sued Garden City over an order prohibiting worship at its property in the central business district.
