BARBER COUNTY- A Kansas teen was injured in an accident just after 2p.m. on Wednesday in Barber County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2005 Ford Explorer driven by Jared U. Smith, 18, Maize, was westbound on Kansas 254 just east of River Valley Road.
The vehicle failed to maintain a single lane of traffic and partially entered the median.
The driver overcorrected, veered across both lanes of the highway, entered the north ditch and flipped onto its top.
Smith was transported to Wesley Medical Center.
He was properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas Senate committee is weighing a proposal to move up the effective date of a property tax lid from 2018 to later this year.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that the lid passed by lawmakers last year bars counties and cities from increasing property taxes above the rate of inflation without a vote.
The legislation’s language makes holding an election during the current budget cycle difficult. Sedgwick County offered an amendment it says will ensure the ability to have election on property tax increases if needed.
Supporters of accelerating the implementation of a property tax lid have argued that a shortened timeline will fight current incentives counties and cities have to boost taxes.
A city of Topeka report urges lawmakers to allow local governments to retain control over taxes.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – The Kansas City Chiefs were penalized Wednesday for violating the NFL’s anti-tampering rules for having impermissible contact with wide receiver Jeremy Maclin during last year’s free agency.
The Chiefs were stripped of their third-round pick this April and sixth-round pick next year and fined $250,000. Chiefs coach Andy Reid was also fined $50,000 and general manager John Dorsey fined $25,000.
Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt said in a statement the club intends to appeal the penalties.
The Chiefs are accused of having direct communication with Maclin, who played for Reid in Philadelphia, during the league’s negotiating period. That communication is a violation of NFL tampering rules.
Maclin later signed a $55 million, five-year deal with Kansas City.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — One of just two women to graduate in 1964 from a 100-member University of Kansas School of Medicine class is making a $1 million donation.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports that Diane Klepper’s gift to the KU Endowment will help fund the KU Medical Center’s Health Education Building. The KU Endowment announced Tuesday that the building is under construction in Kansas City, Kansas.
After a fellowship in pulmonary disease at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, she became the dean of admissions and student affairs at the school.
The Health Education Building is expected to be complete by summer 2017. The $75 million facility is being funded by state bonds, KU funds and private donations.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The chairmen of the budget committees in the House and Senate are working on their own education funding plans aimed at helping poor school districts.
Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Ty Masterson said Wednesday that he hopes to have plan drafted yet this week. The Andover Republican says it will be an attempt to meet a Kansas Supreme Court order within the state’s existing resources.
The House Appropriations Committee already has agreed to sponsor a plan from Chairman and Olathe Republican Ron Ryckman Jr. His plan would boost school districts’ aid by about $37 million.
The Supreme Court ruled last month that a 2015 school funding law violated the state constitution because it shorted poor districts on aid. The court gave lawmakers until July to fix the problems.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A former Topeka store clerk has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for helping to arrange a robbery of a man who stocked ATMs with cash.
The U.S. attorney’s office says 21-year-old Ahmad Salim Salti, of Topeka, was sentenced Tuesday for conspiracy to commit robbery.
Topeka police were called in September 2014 when a masked gunman brandishing a firearm entered the store where Salti worked just as the victim was beginning to fill an ATM.
The gunman took the money and the keys to the victim’s van before escaping in the vehicle.
Investigators learned that Salti had helped to plan the robbery by providing the date and time the victim would fill the ATM. The robber has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Wichita school district official says leaders will have to consider laying off teachers or other personnel as it faces up to $30 million in cost increases next school year and no additional state funding.
The district’s chief financial officer, Jim Freeman, projects that the cost increases for the 2017 fiscal year, beginning in July, could range from $16 million to $30 million.
The Wichita Eagle reports that revenue is expected to be flat under the state’s new block grant funding system.
Freeman says the district avoided layoffs last year by tapping into its contingency reserves and cutting other areas, such as adult education programs and classroom supplies.
School board members will meet March 21 to begin building the budget and consider options for cuts. The board may also consider moving to four-day school weeks.
FINNEY COUNTY- Law enforcement authorities in Finney County are investigating a reported drive-by shooting.
Just before 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday, officers of the Garden City Police Department were dispatched to the 500 block of Inge Street for a reported shooting that had just occurred, according to a media release.
When Officers arrived on scene the investigation revealed an unknown person fired one round into the front window of the residence.
The bullet entered the window and struck an interior wall. There were two adults inside the residence at the time, there were no injuries.
Witnesses in the area stated they heard approximately 3 shots fired in the 500 block of Pennsylvania Street around 1:15 am.
Additional witnesses in the neighborhood reported they heard 2 to 4 shots fired in the area of Inge Street.
No witnesses were able to provide any suspect description.
The Garden City Police Department is requesting assistance from the community, if they have any information related to this incident they should call the Garden City Police Department (620) 276-1300, Crime Stoppers (620) 275-7807, or text your tip to Garden City PD, text GCTIP and your tip to Tip411 (847411).
TOPEKA – The House agriculture committee on Monday passed a bill that would institute stiffer penalties for water rights owners who don’t file their annual usage reports on time.
Senate Bill 337 would levy a $250 civil penalty for failure to report one year of water usage by the March 1 deadline. Failure to report two consecutive years could result in a fine up to $1,000. Repeat offenses could result in a water usage suspension. The bill applies to owners of water rights for agricultural, industrial or municipal use.
The current version of SB 337 is a substitute bill incorporating language from House Bill 2491, which includes a provision that allowed the state’s chief engineer to use telemetry to monitor and enforce water usage in real time.
Rep. Shannon Francis, R–Liberal, voiced concern that the Department of Agriculture wouldn’t have the will to shut off water access to a city or to industry centers.
“We definitely have the will to do that,” Lane Letourneau, water appropriation program manager for the Kansas Department of Agriculture, said in testimony before the House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources.
A number of agricultural trade associations and governmental entities lined up to voice support for the bill in written testimony.
“We think the timely filing of water use reports is important in tracking whether or not right holders are using water within the confines of their permitted allocation,” Leslie Kaufman, CEO of the Kansas Cooperative Council, said.
Letourneau said the vast majority of Kansas water rights holders submit their reports on time, but at the moment, the KDA doesn’t have the authority to levy a fine higher than $250 or suspend users’ rights. Letourneau said 94 percent of water users submit reports on time, while an average of 60 individuals don’t submit their reports by June 1. Of users who don’t submit reports at all, approximately 10 are repeat offenders. Letourneau said the offenders are often municipalities and feed yards.
“There is concern that some water users decide to pay the annual penalty fee rather than submit the water use report,” Letourneau said.
Water usage management is a constant concern in western areas of Kansas where the Ogallala Aquifer provides water for irrigation and municipal use. The Southwest Farm Press, a news source for agriculture in southwestern states, reported the aquifer’s levels had dropped 8 percent from the beginning of the aquifer’s industrial development.
Elephants of the Zambezi River Valley under construction at the Sedgwick County Zoo- courtesy image
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A judge has denied an animal rights group’s request to stop an import of elephants from Swaziland to three American zoos, including the Sedgwick County Zoo.
The Wichita Eagle reports that Friends of Animals’ wildlife law program filed a federal lawsuit to stop the importation of 18 African elephants. The group opposes keeping elephants in zoos because they are migratory and social animals.
Court records say that with a court hearing looming, the three zoos moved on Tuesday to anesthetize and load the elephants for a flight to the U.S.
The animal-rights group found out and asked for a restraining order to halt the transfer. A U.S. District Court judge denied the order, saying that sedating elephants again for a later transfer would be unsafe.
It’s official. That’s the word from the USD 489 administration on a petition seeking a half-cent sales tax question be put on the ballot along with the $94 million bond issue.
USD 489 Board of Education members Sarah Rankin and Lance Bickle (right), along Superintendent Dean Katt, discuss a city sales tax that would be used to help pay for a $94 bond issue with the Hays City Commission in January.
The Board of Education, administration and a group of volunteers sought the required ten percent of signatures from registered Hays voters after the Hays City Commission declined to put the question on a ballot in January.
The group has collected over 1,600 signatures, in an effort to ensure the required number of signatures would be able to be verified.
The Board needed approximately 1,227 signatures.
The petition will now go to the City Commission at their March 17 work-session.
The half-cent sales tax, if supported by voters, would go into effect when the Ellis County sales tax for the same amount that would sunset in 2018. The special county tax was used to support renovations at the Ellis County Courthouse and a new EMS building.
In effect tax rates would stay the same for Hays residents.
The sales tax would be used to offset the total cost of the bond issue and would sunset in 10 years.
The petition, however, does not guarantee the timing of the sales tax election. The City Commission could still push the question to a regular city election. The earliest that may occur is August of 2017, if there is a primary election for city officials. If not the question would be pushed to the November general election in 2017.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Authorities have arrested a Kansas man in the killing of his wife in northeast Kansas.
Jackson County sheriff Tim Morse said in a news release that the 66-year-old man was arrested Tuesday. The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that the sheriff’s office received a 911 call in October from the couple’s home.
The husband told dispatchers he had found his 61-year-old wife unresponsive. She died the next day at a Topeka hospital.
The sheriff’s office opened an investigation, and an autopsy indicated the woman died from trauma to the spleen.
A search warrant on the husband’s residence was served Tuesday morning.
KDWPT
GREAT BEND – Come “taste” the outdoors with outdoors writer/photographer Michael Pearce at the Kansas Wetlands Education Center (KWEC), 592 NE K-156 Hwy, Great Bend. Pearce will present “Savoring the Kansas Outdoors, One Bite at a Time” at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 13. The event is free.
Attendees will have the opportunity to taste some of Pearce’s wild game cooking, prepared with recipes included in Michael Pearce’s Taste of the Kansas Outdoors Cookbook, a book he published with the Wichita Eagle in 2014. During the program, Pearce will conduct cooking demonstrations and share game cooked with some of his favorite recipes for tasting.
The book features 53 recipes for Kansas wild game, more than 100 photos and a selection of stories that have appeared on his Wichita Eagle Outdoors Page. Recipes include everything from venison and elk to turkey and fish, with tantalizing titles: Venison Pumpkin Chili, Grilled Walleye Ribeyes with Lime and Rock Chalk Gobbler Gumbo. The book was named a prestigious “Notable Book of Kansas” by the state library association.
As the outdoors writer at The Wichita Eagle since 2000, Pearce has written about a wide variety of outdoor topics from catching crayfish at Cheyenne Bottoms to reporting on political issues that threatened Kansas wildlife and outdoor traditions. Before his days at the Eagle, Pearce frequently contributed to the Wall Street Journal, Outdoor Life and scores of other publications for 19 years.
For more information, contact the KWEC at (620) 566-1456.
