BARTON COUNTY – Alcoholic liquor or cereal malt beverages are currently available for sale on Sunday in Ellinwood and Hoisington but not in Great Bend or outside the city limits in Barton County.
That could change soon after Barton County Commissioner’s approved a resolution Monday that will allow Sunday sales of alcohol in unincorporated areas of the County.
The issue came to light after the board approved a liquor license for Esten Millard who plans to open Outer Limits Liquor just North of Great Bend, near the U.S. 281-Juco Road intersection.
Millard plans to sell alcohol on Sunday’s from that location. In Commissioner Homer Kruckenburg’s absence, the board voted 3-0 to allow the Sunday sales with Alicia Straub abstaining from the vote.
“Because Ellinwood has allowed Sunday sales and Great Bend has not, it puts me in that position where I don’t feel like I can make that decision for them, said Straub. “I don’t want to stop this individual from starting a business. I think it’s great that we have young people who want to start new businesses. As far as Sunday sale, I can’t make that decision at this point,” she said.
Commissioner Jennifer Shartz said she had no problem voting for the resolution since any one opposed will have 61-days to conduct a protest petition. That could put the measure on a ballot to be voted on.
County Clerk Donna Zimmerman told the board that a petition would need to contain 5-percent of voters who cast ballots in the last presidential election which was in 2012. She says that would be around 200 signatures, although she always encourages anyone who is conducting a protest petition to get twice the amount of signatures than needed.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A district attorney says more charges are likely in the investigation of a missing 7-year-old boy and unidentified human remains found on his father’s property.
Michael A. Jones — a 44-year-old who works as a bail bondsman in Topeka — made his first court appearance Monday on charges of child abuse, aggravated battery and aggravated assault with a firearm.
Police who went to Jones’ home Wednesday to investigate a domestic disturbance were told about the missing boy and human remains were later found in a barn. Wyandotte County District Attorney Jerome Gorman declined Monday at a news conference to address a report that officials are investigating whether the remains had been fed to pigs.
Six other children living in the house are in state custody.
Investigators call the crime scene one of the most gruesome they’ seen.
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KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas man is being held on $10 million bond after police were made aware of his missing 7-year-old son and found unidentified human remains on his property.
Michael A. Jones made his first court appearance Monday. The 44-year-old Kansas City bail bondsman is charged with child abuse, aggravated battery and aggravated assault with a firearm.
Prosecutors say he doesn’t appear to have an attorney.
Police were called to Jones’ home Wednesday to respond to an unspecified disturbance. While there, investigators were told Jones’ son had been missing “for an extended period of time.”
Police didn’t say who told officers about the boy, but say human remains were later found in Jones’ barn. Prosecutors say Jones is accused of assaulting a woman and “torturing or cruelly beating” his 7-year-old son.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Public records advocates are pushing for state legislators to bring the Kansas Open Records Act regarding disclosure of police records more in line with open record laws in other states.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports changes in the law are supported by Harold and Alberta Leach, the Kansas Press Association, the Kansas Association of Broadcasters and the Kansas Sunshine Coalition for Open Government.
The Leaches feel authorities were secretive about the investigation of their teenage son’s 1988 disappearance. Randy Leach went missing from a graduation party along with the family’s car. Authorities refuse to release the investigative records to the Leaches.
State Rep. John Rubin said he will hold hearings, possibly in January or February, to receive input from the public, prosecutors and law enforcement with the hope of drafting a bill to correct some problems with the law.
Chancellor Little during a forum on alleged racism last month
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — The University of Kansas’ chancellor says hiring a new provost and addressing campus concerns about race are among her top priorities.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little was hired by the university in 2009. She says it is expected to take six to nine months to hire a new provost. A national search will be conducted to find a replacement for Provost Jeff Vitter, who is leaving the school to become chancellor of the University of Mississippi.
The chancellor is also looking to make more efforts to address race-related issues at the University of Kansas. She moderated a campus forum on the topic earlier this month.
Gray-Little says addressing retention is a key issue in bolstering diversity efforts, citing the gap between retention rates for black students and all other students.
OTTAWA – A Kansas toddler was injured in an accident just after 1p.m. on Monday in Franklin County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2002 Toyota Celica driven by Maribel Leal, 22, Wichita, was northbound on Interstate 35 at Rock Creek Road five miles southwest of Ottawa.
The car drifted off the roadway and struck a bridge pillar.
A passenger in the vehicle Josue Mancares, 2, Wichita, was transported to Ransom Memorial Hospital.
The child was secured in a car seat. However, the seat was not properly secured in the vehicle, according to the KHP.
Leal was possibly injured but refused transport from the scene.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is boosting the amount of corn-based ethanol and other renewable fuels in the U.S. gasoline supply. That’s despite sustained opposition by an unusual alliance of oil companies, environmentalists and some GOP presidential candidates.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a rule to increase production of ethanol to be blended with gasoline through 2016, a decision that could reverberate in Iowa’s crucial presidential caucuses. While some candidates have supported higher levels of renewable fuels, conservatives like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz call the government’s longtime support for ethanol “corporate welfare.”
The decision doesn’t necessarily mean a higher percentage of ethanol in an individual driver’s tank, and isn’t likely to have much effect on gas prices. But it does mean there will a higher supply of the home-grown fuel overall.
Photo by Bryan Thompson Navigator Lyn Weatherhead, with the Southwest Kansas Area Agency on Aging, assists a client with enrollment for the health insurance marketplace. Through an effort known as Cover Kansas, navigators are working throughout the state to help people enroll in health insurance for 2016.
Since enrollment opened Nov. 1 for 2016 health insurance in the federal marketplace, an effort called Cover Kansas has branched out across the state to help Kansans find a plan that best suits their needs.
At a recent outreach event at the Dodge City Public Library, most of the chairs in the public meeting room were full as people waited for the consultations with marketplace navigators.
Don and Louise Tawzer, of Dodge City, signed up for insurance through healthcare.gov last year, after Don retired from the job that had furnished their health coverage. But he turned 65 this spring, so he’s now on Medicare.
Louise isn’t there yet, so she needs coverage in 2016 through the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare. “We’re looking at roughly $1,200 more a year next year for the same plan, according to the letter we got from Blue Cross Blue Shield,” Don Tawzer said.
“There may not be anything available, but we just want to look and see if there’s something that’ll help.” The Tawzers sat down with health insurance navigator Lyn Weatherhead, from the Southwest Kansas Area Agency on Aging.
“What we can do is just go through, without putting any of your information in, go in and take a look at the plans that they offer, based on your income, and just see what there is available,” Weatherhead said. After reviewing their options, the Tawzers concluded that Louise’s current policy is probably their best option — even though the premiums will be nearly $100 a month higher than this year.
“Because of our income, we do have some help with the credit on your taxes, or whatever they call it. So, if we didn’t have that, it would be considerably higher,” Don Tawzer said.
About 80 percent of the people who buy insurance through the federal marketplace get some level of premium tax credit. But premiums aren’t the only costs that need to be taken into account. “The biggest cost for us has been the prescription part,” said Don Tawzer, who added that his wife’s drug costs “went up dramatically” when they left the insurance through his former employer.
Another important consideration is the cost of co-payments, co-insurance and deductibles. Don Tawzer said there’s a limit to the out-of-pocket costs his wife is required to pay per year — but it’s around $5,000.
Those expenses also are a big concern for Joe and Sylvia Ascencio of Dodge City.
“Deductibles are pretty high. Like, for instance, for us the deductible it’s $2,500 for each one of us,” Joe Ascencio said. “And so, in a way, it’s like not having insurance. So, the insurance is good if you go to the hospital, you break a leg or something.
Other than that, it really doesn’t help.” Until April, the couple had health insurance that was furnished at no cost to them by Joe Ascencio’s employer.
“I was insured, but I lost my job,” he said. “So I was forced to retire two years earlier. So I end up with no health insurance, no coverage, and here we are. So we had to find a solution.”
Ascencio is diabetic, which without the Affordable Care Act would’ve made it challenging to get insurance on his own.
He’s grateful for the coverage the federal marketplace offers. Like the Tawzers, he appreciates the federal subsidy, which knocks the premiums down to a manageable level.
“If I didn’t have any help from the federal government, I won’t be able to pay this much money, so I’d have to do without insurance,” he said.
“And I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there doing exactly that, because the insurance premiums are so, so expensive.” Both families said they’re thankful to have a well-trained insurance navigator to guide them through the enrollment process and to help them understand the choices and trade-offs among the 26 coverage plans available in Kansas.
Bryan Thompson is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A special legislative committee studying options for reformatting K-12 public education funding in Kansas is preparing to review conflicting research studies.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports the 15-member committee’s task is to lay the foundation of a new school finance formula.
The Kansas Policy Institute is pushing a report that points to the inability of the state’s $3.6 billion program targeting at-risk students to close the academic gap between poor and wealthy students.
The Kansas Association of School Boards released a report this month arguing a link exists between funding of schools and student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Legislators and Gov. Sam Brownback eliminated the old finance formula and imposed a block-grant system for two years. A three-judge panel in Shawnee County District Court ruled the system was unconstitutional, but the decision is being appealed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy says the House will aim to pass legislation by year’s end overhauling a program that allows visa-free travel to the U.S.
The so-called visa waiver program lets people from 38 countries visit the U.S. for 90-day stays without obtaining a visa. It has come under scrutiny following the Paris terror attacks since some of the suspected perpetrators were from countries on the list.
McCarthy outlined several changes House Republicans would like to see to the program. They include requiring all countries to issue electronic passports and requiring all passengers to be screened against a database of lost and stolen passports.
Changing the visa waiver program appears to have bipartisan support in the House and the Senate and general agreement from the White House.
Firefighers work to extinguish a house fire in the 400 block of Rahm Sunday evening (Photo by Terry Tebrugge/Salina Post)
SALINA – A fire in a duplex in central Salina has been blamed on an overloaded electrical system, according Salina Fire Marshall Roger Williams.
Two occupants of one side of the duplex at 404 Rahm Street escaped without injury.
There was no one home in the other side of the duplex at the time of the fire.
Firefighters were able to quickly extinguish the fire, which prevented it from spreading to the other half of the duplex.
One side of the duplex was extensively damaged by fire and heat, while the other side was not damaged.
The two occupants of the damaged side were assisted by North Central Kansas Chapter of the American Red Cross.
The occupants of the other half were asked to stay elsewhere for Sunday night due to the fire damage next door and because they had an infant, according to Williams.
Williams said that five cats lived in the damaged half of the duplex. Two of them were recovered, one was found deceased inside the residence, and the other two were not located.
He said the home had an excessive amount of items plugged into electrical outlets, which overloaded the home’s electrical system.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — The Lawrence City Commission will soon receive a home improvement retailer’s request for public incentives to construct a production plant and warehouse in the city.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports that the commission will receive the official request Tuesday in which Menard Inc. will ask to advance the proposal to city staff and the Public Incentives Review Committee.
Last week the Lawrence chamber of commerce announced the proposed project, which would create more than 100 jobs.
An application submitted by Menard Inc. says the company is seeking a 50 percent, 10-year tax abatement. It’s also requesting a grant of nearly $550,000 from the city that would be paid over 10 years. Lastly, it requests that the city give the company ownership of an on-site warehouse at no cost.
A public hearing for the request is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 5.
MEDFORD, Okla. (AP) — The U.S. Geological Survey says a 4.7 magnitude earthquake struck northern Oklahoma early Monday. There are no immediate reports of damage, but the quake was felt throughout much of the state and into Kansas.
Earthquake occurred at 3:49am & had a 4.5M. Located 16 miles WSW of Medford, Ok. Details can be found here: https://t.co/WCeZYA6UXM#kswx
The USGS says the quake hit at 3:49 a.m. in extreme northern Oklahoma. The epicenter was 16 miles west-southwest of Medford, or about 80 miles south of Wichita, Kansas. The USGS gave the earthquake a preliminary magnitude of 4.5 but upgraded it to 4.7 later Monday. Also Monday, a 3.0 magnitude quake struck just outside the Oklahoma City metropolitan area at 5:50 a.m. Another 4.7-magnitude temblor hit northern Oklahoma on Nov. 19. That earthquake prompted state regulators to shut down some oil and gas wastewater disposal wells in the area and reduce the volume at others.
