SHAWNEE COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities in Shawnee County are investigating an armed robbery are asking for help to identify suspects.
Just before 2a.m. Friday, two men entered a fast food restaurant in the 1900 Block of SW 10th Street in Topeka, according to a media release.
The suspects, one white and one black used a handgun in the robbery and left the scene with an undisclosed amount of cash, according to police.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Topeka police.
HFHEC
VICTORIA — Habitat for Humanity of Ellis County is urging eligible home-seekers to apply for its latest project.
“This house has been lovingly renovated by Habitat volunteers, with fresh paint and new floors, windows, appliances and more,” said Roberta Martine, president of HFHEC’s board of directors. “We are very grateful to the Ellis County community for coming together to create this home and looking forward to finding a homeowner family that will thrive here.”
The spacious, 2,085-square-foot home is centrally located at 901 11th, Victoria, near excellent schools. It features three bedrooms (with two rooms that could be reconfigured as additional bedrooms), one-and-a-half baths, a detached garage and 8,200-square-foot lot. Built in 1951, the 10-room home includes central forced-air heating and cooling. The home is valued at $110,000, and a Habitat homeowner will have low monthly expenses.
Click here for more details about the home and photos.
To be eligible for Habitat homeownership, a family must meet the following criteria:
Eligibility criteria and downloadable application forms are available online at hfhec.org. HFHEC staff is available to help with applications and loan forms. For more information, call (785) 623-4200.
“At Habitat for Humanity, we believe that everyone deserves decent, affordable housing and that homeownership helps strengthen families and communities,” said Leslie Wyatt, executive director of HFHEC. “Habitat provides our family partners with a hand up to a better future. Our program is not a handout – families contribute sweat equity for their homes and assume a mortgage.”
For more information, go to hfhec.org.
HAYS-Eagle Communications, Inc. announces the election of Travis Kohlrus to the company’s board of directors.
Kohlrus has been General Manager of Eagle’s Broadband division since January 2012 and has worked in the telecommunications and customer service industry for over 20 years.
“Travis’ considerable experience combined with his knowledge of the broadband industry will benefit the board greatly as we continue the growth and expansion of our employee-owned company,” said Eagle Communications president Gary Shorman.
“We are excited to have him further involved in our corporate governance.”
Prior to joining Eagle Communications in 2003, Kohlrus spent seven years working for Sykes Enterprises Inc. as a Senior Client Services Manager. He directed customer service and support for many Fortune 500 companies, managed over $10 million in annual revenue, and over 300 customer service agents.
Kohlrus is the current president of the Ellis Alliance and the Ellis Industrial Development Corporation boards. He is a graduate of both Leadership Hays and Leadership Kansas.
He has served as chair of the Hays Area Chamber of Commerce and is a founding advisory council member of the Hays Area Young Professionals.
Kohlrus volunteered time as a big brother for the local Big Brother and Big Sisters chapter for 11 years.
He previously served as former Campaign Chair and President of the United Way of Ellis County and is also active in Gideon’s International.
He currently serves on the board of the Nebraska Cable Communications Association.
Travis and his wife Susie have two children Tanner, 12 and MaKenzie, 9.
In addition to Kohlrus, the board elected Ken Braun elected as Director Emeritus and Eagle Communications President Gary Shorman was appointed Vice Chairman.
Eagle Communications, Inc. is a Kansas-based Broadband Services and Media Company with more than 285 Employee-Owners. The company operates 28 radio stations in Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri, as well as cable TV systems in 59 Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado communities. The company also offers e-business solutions, web hosting, telephone service, high-speed internet, and wireless internet in most service areas.
HSO
The final concert of the Hays Symphony Orchestra season with Shah Sadikov, conductor, will be held Sat., May 6, at 7:30 p.m. in the Beach/Schmidt Performing Arts Center at Fort Hays State University.
Free tickets may be reserved in advance by contacting [email protected].
The season grand finale will feature Dvorak’s New World Symphony, Elgar’s Nimrod, and Rutter’s Requiem with Fort Hays Singers, FHSU Choir and the Smoky Hill Chorale conducted by Dr. Terry Crull.
This free concert made possible by a generous donation from Dr. Michael Meade. The post-concert reception is sponsored by Downtown Hays Development Corporation.
LENEXA— Grantham University announced its March local graduates of the university’s online degree and certificate programs.
“We are so proud to congratulate these graduates on trusting our team with their dreams. What an accomplishment!” said Dr. Cheryl Hayek, Grantham’s interim university president and chief academic officer. “It gives us such great pleasure to see students’ hard work result in an education that will help set them up for success in the next exciting chapter of their lives.”
Given the flexibility of the 100% online university’s course schedule, Grantham students finish their programs and graduate each week of the year.
Northwest Kansas graduates are:
Hays
Rose Klaus, AS Business Administration
Rose Klaus, BS Business Administration
Ryan Rymer, BS Nursing (from RN Associate)
Oberlin
Jeremy Gaster, AS Computer Science
Smith Center
Jason Baetz, AA Criminal Justice
Melody Baetz, AA Criminal Justice
Today
Rain. High near 40. Windy, with a north northeast wind 18 to 28 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New precipitation amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible.
Tonight
Rain. Low around 35. Windy, with a north wind around 26 mph, with gusts as high as 36 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New precipitation amounts between three quarters and one inch possible.
Sunday
Rain and snow. High near 37. Windy, with a north northwest wind 25 to 29 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible.
Sunday Night
A chance of rain and snow, mainly before 1am. Cloudy, then gradually becoming partly cloudy, with a low around 34. Very windy, with a northwest wind 25 to 30 mph decreasing to 16 to 21 mph after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 40 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%.
Monday
Sunny, with a high near 58. West northwest wind 14 to 16 mph.
Monday Night
Partly cloudy, with a low around 40.
Tuesday
Partly sunny, with a high near 62.
Tuesday Night
A 40 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 43.
Wednesday
A 20 percent chance of showers. Partly sunny, with a high near 62.
Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development
Bangkok, Thailand. A German businessman is building a home and wants mosquito control. He is buying an insect control system from an entrepreneur halfway around the globe.
Paul Friedrichs is the owner of United Mosquito and Fly Control in Mission, Kansas. He is the entrepreneur who took his system to Bangkok.
Paul credits much of his success to his rural upbringing. He grew up on a dairy farm near the unincorporated community of Bremen, Kansas, with a population of perhaps 60 people. Now, that’s rural.
“We grew up among German Lutheran dairy farmers,” Paul said. “It was a very close-knit community. It’s the kind of place where everybody has known everybody for seven generations and everybody has the hymnal memorized.”
Paul’s family, friends and neighbors provided a strong support system for him and his brother and two sisters. During his first eight years of schooling, he was in a class of five at the local Lutheran country grade school. He went on to Marysville High School and then K-State where he studied agricultural economics. Paul credits 4-H, FFA, and the K-State College of Agriculture for providing him tremendous opportunities.
“I wanted to travel internationally,” Paul said. Through FFA, he went to Russia and Hungary. He worked on an agricultural exchange student program between K-State and a university in Mexico, and then earned a Rotary Ambassadorial scholarship which paid for his post-graduate degree from the London School of Economics.
“It was a tremendous experience and the Rotarians were wonderful,” Paul said. After returning to Kansas, he worked as an international trade consultant for a time and did contract sales for an agronomic mineral company. He eventually moved to Kansas City, where he met and married his wife Liz. He was also approached about another business opportunity: United Mosquito and Fly Control. Ultimately, Paul bought the business.
“The broker said, `Oh, you’re an ag guy, so you’ll know all about this.’ Then I found out this business served the equine industry, and we never had horses growing up on the farm,” Paul said. “I had no clue.” But Paul took to the business and has grown it ever since.
Today, United Mosquito and Fly Control has two primary business components: Fly control for equine and livestock operations, and mosquito control for residential applications. “This is a top-of-the-line system and many of our customers are horse owners,” Paul said.
“We have an automated spray system that is installed in barns and it really works well,” he said. This system saves labor and provides great relief for horses.
It uses a natural insecticide that is derived from a special variety of the chrysanthemum flower. Organic options are also available.
The mosquito control system similarly allows a person to be out on their deck, for example, without the hassle and worry of biting mosquitos. United Mosquito and Fly Control serves customers around Kansas City from Omaha to Springfield, Missouri and Columbia, Missouri to Manhattan – and beyond.
“A German businessman with factories around the world was building a home in Bangkok,” Paul said. “He contacted us and eventually contracted to buy our system. I was able to take my dad and he helped me install the system over there.”
“My dad’s a typical former dairy farmer,” Paul said. “Ask him to take two week’s vacation to go overseas and he’ll say `no way.’ But tell him you need him to help you build this system overseas, and he’s willing to help.”
Paul is also renting and farming ground on the edge of urban Kansas City, where investors have purchased land for future growth and development. He has continued to grow the United Mosquito and Fly Control business in the Kansas City area. For more information, go to www.unitedkc.com.
It’s time to leave Bangkok, where an entrepreneur who is originally from rural Kansas is installing a mosquito control system from far around the globe. We salute Paul Friedrichs and others involved with United Mosquito and Fly Control for making a difference with entrepreneurship. They’re helping create a better quality of life, as well as happier horses.
By SAM ZEFF
Just because Kansas had an election a few months ago doesn’t mean people aren’t already thinking about 2018 legislative campaigns.
Grassroots organizations in Johnson County are multiplying and starting to plot how they will elect more moderate Republicans and Democrats to the Kansas Legislature.
In November the Legislature took a swing into the political middle, in no small part because of a group called Stand Up Blue Valley that worked to elect candidates willing to pour more money into public education.
Stand Up campaigned for many new lawmakers, but its members want more votes in the Legislature that they hope will lead to even more school funding.
So Stand Up already is recruiting candidates for 2018.
“When you say 2018 it’s, like, exhausting to think about,” says Elizabeth Arnold of Leawood, a Stand Up Blue Valley founder.
Pressures From Topeka
Arnold has been giving some advice to the newest grassroots organizations in Johnson County: Save Olathe Schools and Education First Shawnee Mission.
“We’re facing, and have been for years, lots of pressures coming from Topeka,” says Tiffany Johnson of Prairie Village, an Education First founder. “We want people who will be standing up and advocating for our kids.”
At the top of the Education First agenda, Johnson says, is to elect some new members to the Shawnee Mission school board in November when three seats are up. That’s even more important to the group now that Superintendent Jim Hinson has said he’s retiring.
Hinson’s support of block grant funding and coziness at times with Gov. Sam Brownback made him unpopular with some teachers and parents in the district.
But always looming in the background is the next election, for the Kansas House.
“We wanted to get organized so we can also have an impact on the legislative races coming up in 2018,” Johnson says.
More Voices In The Discussion
If a march or protest is happening somewhere near Olathe, Nikki McDonald is likely to be there. She organized Save Olathe Schools with the aim of defeating conservatives at the polls.
“The powers that be are not listening very well. So it’s time for us to speak up and advocate for our children,” McDonald says.
State Sen. Molly Baumgardner of Louisburg is among the fiscally conservative lawmakers these groups are looking to replace in upcoming elections.
“I’m a conservative woman. I always have been. I don’t hide that,” Baumgardner says.
During a recent Saturday morning forum in south Overland Park, Baumgardner says she welcomes groups like Stand Up and Save Olathe Schools into the political fray.
“I am never opposed to having more people at the table for discussion, because I think it really brings back a more rich discussion and better ideas,” says Baumgardner, whose term runs through 2020.
So after one election cycle and most of a legislative session, how does Stand Up Blue Valley think its candidates have done?
Arnold says so far, so good.
“What we have seen is a willingness for them to show up and listen and communicate back to their constituents what’s happening, and that’s just such a great feeling,” she says. “We know that some of them may not always vote the way we like, but for the most part we see them working hard.”
Working hard is one thing, and results are another.
Lawmakers have yet to close a $900 million budget hole for the next two fiscal years and haven’t passed a school funding formula — two big issues that await them when they return Monday to Topeka.
Will the lawmakers supported by Stand Up deliver?
It likely will be close to summer before that question is answered.
Sam Zeff covers education for KCUR.org and the Kansas News Service. Follow him on Twitter @SamZeff
By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
Although the city terminated their contract, a lot of the effort done by the Wichita firm CDM Smith in the first design phase of rebuilding the Hays wastewater treatment plant can be used.
Stan Christopher of HDR Engineering, the city’s Owner’s Representative for the $28.4 million project, reviewed the improvements that will be made in reconstructing the 54-year-old facility during last Thursday’s Hays city commission meeting.
Commissioners awarded the Phase 2 construction contract to Burns and McDonnell/CAS Constructors during the same April 27 meeting.
Click HERE for a tour of the current facility with just-retired Wastewater Superintendent Roger Moerke.
Hays must meet new stricter mandates in wastewater treatment and discharge required by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE).
CLAY COUNTY- Three people were injured in an accident just before 10p.m. Friday in Clay County.
The Kansas Highway patrol reported a 2016 GMC Sierra driven by Alva C. Ditmars, 61, Washington, was northbound on Kansas 15 at the intersection of Kansas 80.
The GMC collided with a 2017 Ford F150 driven by Mark A. Pauley, 49, Omaha, that was eastbound on Kansas 80 and failed to stop at the stop sign.
The GMC caught on fire, according to the KHP.
Ditmars, Pauley and a passenger in the Ford Benjamin Pauley, 15, were transported to the Clay County Hospital.
All three were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Miguel Sano and Joe Mauer hit consecutive two-run doubles in the eighth inning and the Minnesota Twins rallied for a 6-4 victory over the Kansas City Royals on Friday night.
Sano also had a two-run homer in the fourth. He has eight hits in his last 11 at-bats.
The Royals have dropped eight straight.
Sano’s double high off the top of the left-center fence with the bases loaded scored Eddie Rosario and Byron Buxton. Two pitches later, Mauer doubled off Joakim Soria down the right-field line to score Max Kepler and Sano. Kepler had reached on a fielding error on Royals rookie right fielder Jorge Bonifacio.
Soria (1-1) retired only two of the seven batters he faced. Craig Breslow (1-0) retired the only batter he faced to pick up the win. Brandon Kintzler earned his sixth save in as many chances.
Salvador Perez hit s two-run homer and Brandon Moss added a solo shot for Kansas City.
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — With the 51st pick of the NFL draft, No. 7 was looking for a change of fortune in his seventh season as architect of the Denver Broncos.
General manager John Elway has grabbed some first-round steals and some late-round gems.
It’s Round 2 that’s been his bugaboo.
After starting his tenure with solid second-round picks in Rahim Moore, Orlando Franklin, Derek Wolfe and Brock Osweiler, Elway’s last four second-round picks proved more head-scratcher than headliner.
Adam Gotsis, Ty Sambrailo, Cody Latimer and Montee Ball have 11 combined NFL starts and Ball is out of the league entirely.
Elway chose Florida State defensive end DeMarcus Walker in the second round Friday night.
Walker was a consensus All-American and the ACC’s defensive player of the year after piling up 16 sacks and 21 1-2 tackles for loss during a sensational senior season that began with 4 1-2 sacks in the second half of the Seminoles’ opener against Ole Miss.
“I’m just a relentless player with skills,” said Walker, whose Twitter handle is @livinglegend_44. “I’m all in wherever they want to play me. I’m going to go after the quarterback to win games.”
Walker’s selection came 24 hours after Elway bypassed some highly regarded defensive players to finally plug a persistent, gaping hole at left tackle with Utah’s Garett Bolles .
The Broncos used their third-round selections on Louisiana Tech wide receiver/kick returner Carlos Henderson and Lamar cornerback Brendan Langley, who’s also a return specialist.
“I was born to play this game,” said Henderson, who caught 82 passes for 1,535 yards and 19 touchdowns in 2016 and can relieve pressure on Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders.
Langley replaces free agent departure Kayvon Webster in the Broncos’ “No Fly Zone” secondary.
Elway’s first draft, where he nabbed superstar Von Miller with the second overall pick, included Moore and Franklin, who combined to start 111 games in four seasons before leaving Denver as free agents following the 2014 season.
Moore started 48 games but is best remembered for giving up Jacoby Jones’ 70-yard TD in Denver’s devastating loss to Baltimore in the playoffs. Franklin started all but one game in his four years in Denver.
In his first three drafts, Elway had a five second-round picks and the only one who reached a second contract in Denver was Wolfe, the 36th overall pick in 2012.
Osweiler started seven games in the Broncos’ Super Bowl-winning season in 2015 but bolted to Houston in free agency after being benched for Peyton Manning in the playoffs. He’s now in Cleveland.
Some teams stick to the mantra of picking the best player available in the first round but tip the scales in the second round and give more credence to the voices of coaches than scouts, filling pressing needs they may have bypassed in Round 1.
Whether or not that played a role in any of Denver’s drafts, Gotsis, Sambrailo and Latimer were all called reaches by draft analysts. To a lesser extent, so was Ball, the only one of Elway’s previous eight second-round selections who got cut before his rookie contract was up.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Chiefs began bolstering their defense in the second round of the NFL draft on Friday night, selecting defensive end Tanoh Kpassgnon out of Villanova with the 59th overall pick.
The 6-foot-6, 289-pound Kpassgnon is the first player chosen from the Football Championship Subdivision school since offensive lineman Ben Ijalana in 2001. But despite playing at a smaller school, his raw athleticism and impressive Senior Bowl performance put him on many draft radars.
The Chiefs chose quarterback Patrick Mahomes II with their first-round pick Thursday night.
Much like Mahomes, who will be given time to develop behind Alex Smith, the Chiefs will expect a certain learning curve for their new edge rusher. Kpassagnon didn’t play football until the sixth grade, preferring instead to play soccer — until his buddies began to get interested.
His mother was against it for a while, but she ultimately signed him up.
He was lightly recruited and wound up at Villanova, where he piled up 45 tackles, 11 sacks and 21 1/2 tackles for a loss during his senior season with the Wildcats.
“The biggest transition is that everybody is going to be good. There’s no bad players in the NFL,” he said. “Just put me out there and I’ll make some plays. I’m ready.”
Kansas City also had needs at running back and middle linebacker, where Derrick Johnson is coming off a second ruptured Achilles tendon. But when Ohio State’s Raekwon McMillan went to Miami and fellow linebacker Zach Cunningham of Vanderbilt was chosen by Houston just ahead of the Chiefs’ only third-round selection, the Chiefs decided to fill address another of their glaring holes.
They recently released starter Jaye Howard, who missed much of last season with a hip injury, and offseason signing Bennie Logan could become a free agent after next season.
“I might have and a couple of interviews with them, but I didn’t have any private workouts,” he said. “They didn’t show as much interest as other teams. It was kind of a surprise.”
The Chiefs still had a third-round pick to make Friday night.
