JUNCTION CITY — One member of the public spoke to the Geary USD 475 Board of Education Monday evening concerning recent alleged racial comments endured by some JCHS students at the Junction City – Manhattan football game on Oct. 11.
Mary Edwards noted that she was a concerned parent of a youth attending Junction City High School.
” I would like to know what the status is of the racial harassment incident that occurred Oct. 11, 2019 at the football game in Manhattan,” she said.
Edwards added she would like to know why the JCHS administration has not kept the parents informed or even informed the parents of the incident.
Mary Edwards addressed the USD 475 board Monday night / Image courtesy USD 475
Edwards stated the Board is in charge of the policies and creating the curriculum for the district.
“So I first ask that you either create or update a policy that provides instruction for the high school administration and school staff to follow if and when another incident occurs.” Edwards wants to see the schools required to provide diversity and inclusion training for school administration, staff and students. “Also require training for staff administrators on best practices, on how to respond to racial harassment as well as training for the students on what they need to do when they encounter these situations.”
Both the Geary County and Manhattan – Ogden school districts have previously issued statements indicating that they are working together to investigate the events and deal with the racial behavior as they move forward.
There was no response from the Board to Edwards Monday evening, but that is normal practice during the public comment period. Those sessions are intended to allow members of the public to give input to the school board and administration.
HUTCHINSON — The Hutchinson City Council will take action on the new rental inspection program during Tuesday’s agenda session.
The city is proposing a licensing fee structure with incentives rather than the current permit fee. The Housing Commission has denied a recommendation on the proposal. That came during a meeting on Oct. 19 on a 4-2 vote.
“There were still some concerns from the housing commissioners that is this really going to solve any of the problems,” Planning Director Ryan Hvitlok said. “We also had two new slots filled on the commission so that changed the vote a little.” Several other members of the commission were absent, which also skewed the numbers, according to Hvitlok.
Hvitlok says the reason this has drawn so much attention is that most landlords in Hutchinson are not used to this kind of program, which is usually seen as routine business by owners of larger apartment complexes in metro areas.
“If you look at where the majority of rental licenses programs are in Kansas, they are in the K.C. metro area. They tend to be the larger landlords and it’s more of an expectation. They just see it as a part of doing business,” Hvitlok said. “We have a lot more individual landlords. These are generally local people that have put some money into the community to try and invest. So for them, I think it is a bit of a cultural shock.”
Hvitlok says that, while this program may not be the full answer, he feels that the council is wanting to keep the ball moving forward when it comes to better rental housing.
“Obviously we’ve made some good progress on it (condition of rental housing) with the international property maintenance code, but also the rental registration program,” Hvitlok noted. “I think that is the concern with some of the Housing Commission and (what) City Council members have voiced is they really don’t want to lose that momentum and kind of start going back to where we were 10 years ago.”
Tuesday’s City Council meeting begins at 9 a.m. in the Hutchinson city offices.
OSAGE COUNTY — A Kansas woman originally jailed on 20 counts of alleged animal cruelty has entered a plea agreement in the case.
Shaffer-photo Osage County
On October 31, Christi L. Shaffer, 53, Lyndon, entered pleas of no contest, was convicted of two counts of animal cruelty and one count of allowing a dangerous animal to be at large, according to the sheriff’s department.
Shaffer was sentenced to the maximum sentence allowed by law on all counts and the sentences were ordered to run consecutive for a controlling sentence of 30 months in the Osage County jail.
She was further ordered to serve 45 days of that sentence. The balance of the sentence was suspended and she will serve a 36 month term of probation.
Shaffer also agreed to relinquish ownership of the dogs and Magistrate Judge Shannon Rush severed her ownership interest in the dogs not to own or possess animals of any kind during the term of her probation.
Shaffer was fined $1,100.00 and was ordered to pay restitution to the Osage County Sheriff in the amount of $1,222.39 for veterinary care that had been provided for the dogs.
In mid-October, the Osage County Sheriff’s office issued a public warning about the emaciated Alaskan Tundra Shepherds that were reported loose west of Lyndon, according to Sheriff Laurie Dunn.
The dogs had been moved and authorities did not know where.
As part of the plea agreement Shaffer was ordered to provide information concerning the location of the dogs.
Sheriff Dunn investigated the validity of the information provided and has been in contact with the individual in possession of the dogs. Fortunately, this individual appears to have provided excellent care for the dogs. Their condition has greatly improved. Some of the dogs have already been adopted and the remaining dogs will receive appropriate care until permanent adoptive homes are located.
Virgil Earl “Sonny” Martin, 82, died on Sunday, November 3, 2019, at Lane County Hospital in Dighton. He was born on February 21, 1937, at Garden City the son of Roy Miles & Leah Elizabeth (Litzenberger) Martin. He married Elsie F. Burnett on September 11, 1960, at Dighton.
Sonny attended Sunrise Country School in Finney County. He served in the 21st Artillery Division of the United States Army. After his discharge he farmed and ranched for Harold Mulville and Charles Bosley in Lane County and then went to work for the Farmers Co-op Elevator in Dighton until he retired. He was a member of the American Legion Post # 190 of Dighton. He was a member of the Pawnee Valley Boys band that played for dances and events in the area as the guitarist and vocalist. He enjoyed dancing, playing cards, fishing, hunting, boating, camping and in later years bingo but especially playing music with his family and friends. He was preceded in death by his Parents, 2 Brothers- Herman “Bud” Martin and Roy “Barney” Martin, 3 Sisters- Erma Martin, Marian Buell and Edith Snyder and Sister-In-Law- Charlotte Martin.
He is survived by his 3 Daughters- Coral Klitzke of Bonner Springs, Mele Barber of Frisco, Texas and Angela Bechard of Bonner Springs, Brother- Darrell Martin (Ruby) of Dighton, Sister- Betty Brungardt (Tom) of Garden City, Sister-In-Law- Anne Martin of Dighton, 6 Grandchildren- Morgan Klitzke, Courtney Klitzke, Derek Barber (Kristen) , Meagan Barber, Silas Bechard & Kori Bechard and 2 Great-Grandchildren- Kyla Barber and Teague Barber.
Funeral Service will be at 10:30 AM Wednesday at the United Methodist Church in Dighton with Rev Berniece Ludlum officiating. Burial will be in Dighton Memorial Cemetery with military honors by American Legion Post # 190 Honor Guard and Kansas Army National Guard Honor Guard. Memorials are suggested to American Legion Post # 190 Honor Guard or Lane County Long Term Care in care of Boomhower Funeral Home. Condolences may be posted at www.garnandfuneralhomes.com
Enter for a chance to win tickets to see Ray LaMontagne at Salina’s Stiefel Theatre. Click HERE for more on the performer. Photo courtesy Stiefel Theatre.
Herman Joseph, Bricker, 79, of Cushing, Oklahoma, and former Russell, Kansas, resident died on Sunday, November 3, 2019, at the Drumright Nursing Home in Drumright, Oklahoma.
Services are pending at this time for 10 A.M. on Friday, November 08, 2019, at the Pohlman-Varner-Peeler Mortuary in Russell, Kansas.
Pohlman-Varner-Peeler Mortuary of Russell, Kansas, is in charge of the funeral service arrangements.
KANSAS CITY (AP) — Emotions that simmered for nearly a year over the renaming of an historic major thoroughfare in Kansas City, Missouri, for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led to a tense scene at a black church as get-out-the vote efforts wound down ahead of residents going to the polls.
photo courtesy Save the Paseo
About 100 supporters of keeping the King name for the 10-mile boulevard were at a rally to court voters Sunday when opponents walked into the Paseo Baptist Church and stood along its two aisles. Those against the King name stood silently and did not respond to calls for them to sit down. Several speakers and people in the crowd told them they were being disrespectful.
On Tuesday, the debate will end, as voters decide if Kansas City’s reputation as one of the largest cities in the U.S. without a street named for the iconic civil rights leader will cease. The boulevard had been named The Paseo, and a group named Save the Paseo collected 2,857 signatures in April — far more than the 1,700 needed — to have the name change put to a public vote. Many of the opponents who stepped inside the small church along the boulevard Sunday were wearing Save the Paseo T-shirts at the voter rally.
Many supporters of the Martin Luther King name have suggested the opponents are racist, saying Save the Paseo is a mostly white group and that many of its members don’t live on the street, which runs north to south through a largely black area of the city. They say removing the name would send a negative image of Kansas City to the rest of the world, and could hurt business and tourism.
Supporters of the Paseo name bristle at the allegations of racism, saying they have respect for King and want the city to find a way to honor him. They are opposed to the name change because they say the City Council did not follow city charter procedures when deciding on the name change and didn’t notify most residents on the street about the proposal. They also say The Paseo was an historic name for the city’s first boulevard, which was completed in 1899. The north end of the boulevard is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The City Council voted in January to rename the boulevard for King, responding to a yearslong effort from the city’s black leaders and pressure from the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civil rights organization that King helped start.
U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a minister and former Kansas City mayor who has pushed the city to rename a street for King for years, was at Sunday’s rally. He said the protesters were welcome, but he asked them to consider the damage that would be done if Kansas City removed King’s name.
Photo Courtesy Save the Paseo
“I am standing here simply begging you to sit down. This is not appropriate in a church of Jesus Christ,” Cleaver told the group.
Tim Smith, who organized the protest, said it was designed to force the black Christian leaders who had mischaracterized the Save the Paseo group as racist to “say it to our faces.”
“If tonight, someone wants to characterize what we did as hostile, violent, or uncivil, it’s a mischaracterization of what happened,” Smith said. “We didn’t say anything, we didn’t do anything, we just stood.”
The Rev. Vernon Howard, president of the Kansas City chapter of the SCLU, told The Associated Press that the King street sign is a powerful symbol for everyone but particularly for black children.
“I think that only if you are a black child growing up in the inner city lacking the kind of resources, lacking the kinds of images and models for mentoring, modeling, vocation and career, can you actually understand what that name on that sign can mean to a child in this community,” Howard said.
If the sign were taken down, “the reverse will be true,” he said.
“What people will wonder in their minds and hearts is why and how something so good, uplifting and edifying, how can something like that be taken away?” he said.
But Diane Euston, a leader of the Save the Paseo group, said The Paseo “doesn’t just mean something to one community in Kansas City.”
“It means something to everyone in Kansas City,” she said. “It holds kind of a special place in so many people’s hearts and memories. It’s not just historical on paper, it’s historical in people’s memory. It’s very important to Kansas City.”
“How to Prevent Identity Theft” will be the topic of the Hays After 5 Christian Women’s meeting from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 11. The event will take place at the Rose Garden Banquet Hall, 2250 E. Eighth.
Speaking will be Kristen Schmidt with the Hays office of the Northwest Kansas Area Agency on Aging.
“This is a topic that all women need to be educated about, so we invite women of all ages to attend,” said Linda North, program chair.
Also on the program will be inspirational speaker Marti Ford of Topeka. Ford said for several years she lived in fear and tried to control life. After several tragic events, including divorce, she said she began to see that some of her problems were “self-inflicted.”
Ford will share how she took steps to be an “overcomer” in her presentation titled “Moving From a Life of Fear to Trust and Peace.”
Cost of the dinner program is $12.50. Reservations are due by Thursday to (785) 202-1036 or to [email protected]. Hays After 5 is affiliated with Stonecroft Ministry of Overland Park.
The director of buildings and grounds told the Hays school board on Monday it could no longer wait to make repairs on some of its older buildings.
The school district had postponed some major repairs, especially on the older elementary schools, because it had hoped to pass a bond issue to build a new elementary school and make other repairs.
However, two bonds have failed since 2016. Although the school board discussed mounting a third bond attempt, no plan ever took shape.
Rusty Lindsay, buildings and grounds director, told the board he was going to have to significantly rewrite his capital improvements plan, because issues at Wilson and O’Loughlin elementary schools were becoming serious enough they could no longer wait.
Lindsay said he hoped to have the revisions to the school board by January.
Repairs to leaks at the transportation shop also can no longer wait, he said. The repairs are likely to be costly, Lindsay said, because there is asbestos that will have to be removed during the repairs.
Work to the Roosevelt Elementary School roof is set to begin in the next week and a half, weather permitting. The district also finally received an order of locks to finish replacing interior door locks at Roosevelt, Hays Middle School and Hays High School. The locks at Roosevelt will be replaced over Christmas break, and the locks at HMS and HHS will replaced over spring break.
Buses
Russ Henningsen, director of transportation, came before the board to request the purchase of two diesel route buses and one gas route bus as part of the district’s five-year transportation plan.
The bids on the buses were updated Monday. The total cost for the buses will be $283,987, which was $20,013 under budget.
Board member Greg Schwartz asked Henningsen about the possible purchase of a coach activity bus. He said that was a possibility, but he recommended the purchase of the route buses this year, because they are needed more. They also are less expensive than the coach buses, which can cost about $240,000.
Superintendent Ron Wilson acknowledged a new activity bus is needed. He said the district could include that purchase in its transportation purchases for the next fiscal year. If it ordered the bus in July, the district should have it delivered before the end of the fall semester 2020.
The school district transports about 335 students per day 541 miles per day on its regular daily route. When activities are added in, the district is averaging 1,900 miles per day and 561 passengers per day.
Henningsen said the district needs all of the buses it has now. It has eight route buses and five activity buses. He said it is not uncommon to have all five activity buses out at one time. The district also uses activity buses for spares when route buses break down.
SHAWNEE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a gas leak that left one dead and have identified the victim.
First responders on the scene late Friday photo courtesy WIBW TV
Just after 8p.m, Friday the Topeka Fire Department was dispatched to possible gas leak at a residence in the 900 block of SW Warren in Topeka, according to Lt. Shane Hilton.
Topeka Police were requested to assist with forcing entry into the home. Once inside, first responders found a woman later identified as 36-year-old Brandi Prchal. She was pronounced deceased by medical personnel.
A second person was taken to the hospital in serious condition.
Due to suspicious circumstances witnessed by the responding officers, the residence was secured and Crime Scene Officers and Detectives were investigating the scene, according to Hilton.
Authorities have not released the cause of Prchal’s death or additional details.
The Kansas Statehouse is going to shake Thursday afternoon, when a group of economic/tax/business experts deliver the Consensus Revenue Estimate (CRE) for the state for the upcoming fiscal year.
That obscure document will become the legislative basis for the budget for the remainder of this four-month-old fiscal year, and the number on which the upcoming legislative budget machinations will be based.
And…while the state is looking a little better in terms of revenues—that’s the taxes you have paid—there remains all that talk about a recession that would reduce state receipts.
While the CRE talks about the state of the Kansas economy and makes observations and predictions about the state’s health, the real key will be the prediction of the movement up or down and by how much of the State General Fund (SGF).
It is the SGF which is the fuel for almost everything Gov. Laura Kelly will propose in her upcoming—second—budget as governor, and almost everything the Legislature will do in this upcoming session, after which House and Senate members will stand for re-election.
Will there be enough revenue flowing into the SGF to make good on its spending approved last session for the remaining months of this fiscal year? Will there be enough revenue flowing into the SGF for meeting the state’s expenses, to pay the bills that it agreed to last year?
And…will there be enough money to expand programs that are beneficial to the state and its people, and which people?
Nope, the CRE isn’t likely to become the topic of discussion in many bars across the state, but it is going to be a major factor when the upcoming session convenes in January.
If revenues remain stable…well, that’s good news because it probably means that the state can meet its obligations—and remember, those obligations include a boost in spending on K-12 schools over the next four years which lawmakers approved last session and which the Kansas Supreme Court is going to enforce if necessary.
But for nearly everything else ranging from spending on highways to raises for state employees to ever-increasing spending on social service programs and just keeping the lights on, that CRE is the key to how Kansans live.
Will there be spare money for some sort of tax cuts that we all like? Enough that the revenue stream from, say, sales tax on food can be reduced through a tax reduction, and keep everything else running? Enough that the state can expand Medicaid to maybe 130,000 Kansans without health-care insurance, at an estimated cost of maybe $40 million?
Those are all the downstream calculations that are going to be made based on that CRE memo we’ll get later this week.
Putting together that CRE has been going on for several weeks. It’s this week that the Division of Budget, Legislative Research, the Department of Revenue and three economists from state universities will assemble their final best-guess of the money that is going to be available to finance state government for the rest of this fiscal year and next.
Remember, this is the election year legislative session, and while one can expect a little reach by lawmakers who want something catchy to campaign on, bullet points for their palm cards, such actions will cost the state money, or reduce income to the state.
And remember, also, that we are heading into an election year in which the governor’s name isn’t going to be on the ballot, and she’ll be looking into the future when she can stand for re-election and would like to have some nice moves to use in that 2022 election year.
Happy Thursday?
Syndicated by Hawver News Company LLC of Topeka; Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report—to learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit the website at www.hawvernews.com
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