Month: July 2015

UG Commission to meet tonight

The Unified Government Commission will meet today for a budget workshop at 5 p.m., followed by a UG Commission meeting at 7 p.m.

The budget workshop is scheduled at the 5th floor conference room, Suite 515, City Hall, 701 N. 7th St., Kansas City, Kan. The regular commission meeting is scheduled at the Commission Chambers, lobby level, City Hall.

On the agenda for the 7 p.m. meeting:

• An ordinance that would remove the landlord training requirement for rental properties.
• A resolution adopting an agreement with Bonner Springs for the Bonner Springs Neighborhood Revitalization Plan No. 5.
• An ordinance authorizing the UG to acquire property for the Merriam Lane-County Line Road to 24th Street improvement project.
• A resolution that would set a public hearing date of Aug. 13 to consider the creation of a Community Improvement District for the Turner Woods Project, 130 acres south of I-70 and Riverview Avenue along the southwest corridor of the Turner Diagonal in Kansas City, Kan.
• A plat of Kaw Point Industrial Park on Fairfax Road next to Kaw Park, being developed by NorthPoint and owned by the UG.
• A plat of Az-Zahra Center, 84th and Leavenworth Road.
• A plat of Family Dollar Place, 34th and Leavenworth Road, developed by Triple C Development.
• A resolution authorizing an agreement with the Unified Food and Commercial Workers District Union Local 2, for the UG and public safety dispatchers represented by the UFCW bargaining unit.
• Several Land Bank items are on the agenda, including some transfers from the UG that were listed as delinquent.

Also on the agenda is an award presentation of the APPA Reliable Public Power Provider to the Board of Public Utilities.

To view the agenda items in detail, visit www.wycokck.org, click on “Public Meetings” and then “Full Commission.”

Kansas Bioscience Authority shrinks staff, stops investing

by Laura Ziegler, Heartland Health Monitor

Facing additional funding cuts from the state, the Kansas Bioscience Authority has laid off seven of its 13 full-time staff members and altered the primary focus of its mission – to invest in bioscience startups in the state.

The KBA also will stop making any new investments in its portfolio of companies.

The recent downsizing was unavoidable, KBA President and CEO Duane Cantrell told The Wichita Eagle.

“This is just a responsible response to the level of funding we’ve received,” Cantrell said.

“Our objective is to certainly get us to a point where those who have the obligation and right to make those decisions are in a position to then fund it and rebuild the staff … or if they choose to shutter the KBA, that’s a decision that the Legislature and the administration will have to make,” he said.

The moves come as the public-private, venture capital organization – already suffering from millions of dollars in state funding cuts – faces possible extinction.

In May, a committee of the Kansas Senate discussed a bill that would fold the KBA into the Kansas Department of Commerce. Under the bill, which didn’t make it to the floor, KBA assets and revenue would go into the coffers of the Department of Commerce.

Both the governor’s office and some lawmakers have indicated the KBA might be a casualty of the state’s precarious budget situation.

Attempts to reach Cantrell, legislators or the Brownback administration Tuesday for further comment were unsuccessful.

The KBA has not been without troubles in the past. Tom Thornton, its first president and CEO, suddenly and inexplicably resigned his $265,000 a year post in April 2011 following criticism over the way the agency operated.

Gov. Sam Brownback later ordered an independent forensic audit. In 2012, the audit revealed that funds had been mismanaged and that Thornton had erased files from his office computer before resigning. A criminal investigation followed. Ultimately, the Johnson County District Attorney declined to file criminal charges. While he found numerous violations of KBA policies, he said none of them were criminal.

The KBA was created in 2004 by the Kansas Economic Growth Act with more than $500 million in tax receipts from bioscience companies. The legislation was designed to promote and support the highly touted “animal health corridor,” a concentration of global animal and human health industries that was billed as a Silicon Valley-like hub of research, investment opportunities and lucrative jobs.

Thornton and the board of the KBA were intimately involved in the effort to win the federal National Bio and Agro Defense Facility for Manhattan.

The nonprofit KHI News Service is an editorially independent initiative of the Kansas Health Institute and a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor reporting collaboration. All stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link back to KHI.org when a story is reposted online.

– See more at http://www.khi.org/news/article/kansas-bioscience-authority-shrinks-staff-stops-investing#sthash.hvUd2xAS.dpuf

Motorcycle crash reported at I-435 and State

A motorcycle crash was reported at 3:48 p.m. July 22 at I-435 northbound exit ramp to State Avenue, according to the Kansas Highway Patrol.

The trooper’s report stated the driver was exiting at State Avenue when he lost control and left the roadway.

The motorcyclist, a 71-year-old man from Gladstone, Mo., had a possible injury and was taken to the hospital, according to the trooper’s report. He was wearing a helmet.