Month: August 2016

UG Commission to consider police body camera grant Thursday

The Unified Government Commission on Thursday night will consider a federal grant to be used for training and law enforcement body cameras.

The meeting starts at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 11, in the Commission Chambers, lobby level, City Hall, 701 N. 7th St., Kansas City, Kan.

Also on Aug. 11, a special meeting will begin at 6 p.m. on the fifth floor conference room at City Hall to discuss the Parks and Recreation Master Plan and the Police and Sheriff’s Operational Efficiency Study.

According to the UG agenda for the 7 p.m. meeting, the police and sheriff’s departments were awarded $102,314 from a federal grant. The Police Department is requesting $60,000 for staff training and the Sheriff’s Department is requesting $42,314 to purchase a truck, ballistic vests and an in-car camera, according to the agenda. The grant would begin Oct. 1, 2016, and end Sept. 30, 2019, and there was no match required for the grant, according to UG information.

Last year the UG turned down a body camera grant, and officials stated at the time that the program’s costs, such as storing photos, would be too high. Since then there has been a request by the police chief to approve the program.

Also on the agenda is a request from three organizations to spend their Hollywood Casino grant funding allocations later.

The extensions are for grants of $24,990 to Leadership 2020; $5,123 to Argentine Betterment Corp.; and an extension for Vaughn-Trent Community Services Inc.

Both the federal grant and the Hollywood Casino grant items are on the consent agenda, which does not require discussion.

Also on Thursday’s agenda:

– The President’s Volunteer Service Award will be presented to Sheriff Don Ash and Lt. Kelli Bailiff.

– The UG will be recognized on behalf of the family of the late Capt. Robert D. Melton.

– Master Plans and Master Plan amendments.

– Land Bank items include four properties to Jose Solis, 3826 N. 37th St., 3814 N. 37th St., 3820 N. 37th St., and 3816 N. 37th St.

There are also four Land Bank transfers to CHWC, which plans to build a single-family home on each lot. The addresses are 1135 Armstrong, 1133 Armstrong, 1131 Armstrong and 812 Waterway.

Inspector visited Verruckt ride two months before fatal accident, letter says

A letter released today by state officials says that the Schlitterbahn rides were inspected June 7, 2016.
A letter released today by state officials says that the Schlitterbahn rides were inspected June 7, 2016, by a private inspector in connection with insurance.

by Mary Rupert

The Kansas Department of Labor today released a letter that says an inspector working with an insurance company visited the Schlitterbahn water park on June 7, 2016, and found that the rides met their underwriting guidelines “with no disqualifying conditions noted.”

The water park in Kansas City, Kan., was the site of a fatal accident on Sunday, Aug. 7, that claimed the life of a 10-year-old boy, Caleb Schwab, who was riding the Verruckt, the world’s tallest water slide.

Parts of the Schlitterbahn water park reopened to guests at noon Wednesday, but the Verruckt water slide will be closed for the rest of this season, Schlitterbahn officials announced.

The Verruckt water slide has been in operation for about two years.

There was a disclaimer in the letter from the certified safety professional: “This survey reflects the conditions observed or found at the time of the inspection only, and does not certify safety or integrity of the rides and attractions, physical operations, or management practices at any time in the future.”

The records released included a ride list of all the rides at the water park, with checkmarks next to them.

This was not an inspection by the state of Kansas; it was a private inspection done by a private company for an insurance company, Haas and Wilkerson.

The Kansas Department of Labor on Tuesday requested that Schlitterbahn provide it with amusement ride records for the Verruckt showing the inspection records, plus certificate of inspection, certification of the inspector’s qualifications, results of testing, the operational manual, testing recommendations and inspection guidelines.

Kansas state law requires the owners of the park to do an annual inspection by hiring a qualified inspector – called a “self-inspection.” These records are required to be kept available at the owner’s location, not at the state of Kansas offices. The state law allows the state to check the records and to inspect the rides.

There was no record of a state inspector checking the Verruckt ride recently in the records that were released today by the Kansas Department of Labor, which is in charge of overseeing safety of amusement park rides.

The request from the Wyandotte Daily was for all records pertaining to inspections of the ride over the past two years. According to a statement from Kansas Department of Labor, the operations and maintenance manual of the Schlitterbahn has been sent to KDOL but it is not a public record because of an open records exemption regarding proprietary information.

A ride list from a Schlitterbahn ride inspection, with checkmarks next to the rides.
A ride list from a Schlitterbahn ride inspection, with checkmarks next to the rides.

Federal school funding lawsuit involving Kansas dismissed

A six-year-old federal lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of the Kansas school-funding system has been dismissed, Attorney General Derek Schmidt said.

The lawsuit, filed in 2010 by a group of parents and students in the Shawnee Mission school district, had argued that limits imposed by state law on local authority to raise and spend money on local schools violate the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs dismissed their lawsuit after two appeals to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver and an unsuccessful attempt to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their cause.

“We have successfully defended Kansas law against this challenge in federal court,” Schmidt said.

The federal lawsuit dismissed in July was Petrella v. Brownback. A separate state-law challenge to Kansas school-finance law, Gannon v. Kansas, remains pending in the Kansas Supreme Court with oral arguments scheduled for Sept. 21.