Month: July 2017

UG budget adoption scheduled Thursday night

The Unified Government’s budget is scheduled to be adopted at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 27, at the UG Commission meeting at the Commission Chambers, lobby level, City Hall, 701 N. 7th St., Kansas City, Kansas.

The UG Commission will consider several items, including budget items:

• The amended 2017 budget and 2018 budget for Kansas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte County. This was proposed at $357.9 million with a 2 mill tax decrease at earlier budget presentations; the city of Kansas City, Kansas, mill levy for 2017 was 41.875 mills and the 2018 proposed mill levy was 39.875 mills. The Wyandotte County mill levy was 38.813 for 2017 and the proposed 2018 mill levy was 39.813 mills. The agenda that was posted in advance did not include the amount of the city and county mill rate in the proposed resolution as of this morning – that is to be added later, according to an agenda note.
• 12.5 mills for 2018 for the Self-Supported Municipal Improvement District (the Downtown Improvement District);
• 6 percent increase for sewer service charges beginning January 2018;
• A PILOT fee on the BPU bills of 11.9 percent for 2018, the same as the previous year;
• The new five-year consolidated plan and annual action plan for Community Development Block Grant.

Also on the agenda is a report by the UG administrator about the Indian Springs planning process.

Planning and zoning items also are on the agenda. They include:
• Special use permit to sell produce on site at 2911 N. 81st St., R&R Enterprises;
• Special use permit for a child day care at 2818 Wood Ave., This Little Light of Mine;
• Vacation of right-of-way at 812 Waterway Drive, CHWC Inc.;
• Vacation of utility easements at 9000 Haskell Ave., Randy E. George;
• Vacation of utility easements at 5420 Leavenworth Road, LaVert Murray with Murray and Associates;
• Preliminary and final plan review for a monastery at 919 and 921 Homer Ave., Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas;
• Ordinance vacating the utility easements at 4907 and 4909 N. 126th St. and 12456 and 13458 Meadow Lane;
• Resolution authorizing the UG to enter into a wholesale wastewater treatment service contract with the city of Edwardsville;
• Plat of Ronnebaum Acres, east of Hutton Road along Nelson Lane, being developed by Michael Ronnebaum.
• Permission to apply for the fiscal year 2018 Federal Victims of Crime Act grant of $270,672 to fund salaries and benefits for four full-time staff, office training, office supplies and emergency assistance for victims.

Nominations to boards include:
• Nomination of Deloris Pinkard to the Wyandotte-Leavenworth Area Wide Advisory Council on Aging, submitted by Commissioner Mike Kane;
• Nomination of Ida Pryor to the Wyandotte-Leavenworth Area Wide Advisory Council on Aging, nominated by Commissioner Gayle Townsend;
• Nomination of Tim Ryan to Self-Supported Municipal Improvement District, nominated by Commissioner Mike Kane.
• Nomination of Deidra Tolan to Drug and Alcohol Advisory Board, nominated by Commission Jane Philbrook.

There are Land Bank items also on the agenda, including:
Applications (which are yard extensions unless otherwise noted):
• 2201 N. Hallock St., Dan Gaines III, property acquisition;
• 2213 N. Hallock St., Dan Gaines III.
• 1518 S. 8th St., Diana Davila;
• 1214 Orville Ave., Larry Brown;
• 3044 N. 32nd St., John Randolph;
• 3205 Wood Ave., Andre Hampton;
• 903 Osage Ave., Oliver Small Engine;
• 905 Scott Ave., Carlos Nava Jr.;
• 2946 S. 36th, Brian Roberts
• 1872 N. 28th, Christian Castro-Perez.
• Donations to Land Bank:
• 244 Highway Ave. from William and Emma Rehm Trust.

Almost all Stony Point customers without power reconnected; current outage number in KCK is about 400

Almost all of the Stony Point homes without power have been restored as of this morning, according to the Board of Public Utilities. However, a few of the homes may need to have a licensed electrician make repairs before power can be restored.

Capital Electric trucks drove through a Stony Point neighborhood in Kansas City, Kansas, on Thursday morning. A BPU spokesman said almost all of the homes there now have power.

Wet items were stacked on the curb in front of a building in the Armourdale area of Kansas City, Kansas, this morning; the Kansas City area received more than 4 inches of rain.

Last night’s storm added more outages; area under a flood warning until 1:45 p.m. today

All but a few of the Stony Point area homes without power from Saturday’s storms have now been restored, according to David Mehlhaff, a spokesman for the Board of Public Utilities.

However, the thunderstorm on Wednesday night caused more electrical outages in Kansas City, Kansas, pushing the customer outage number up to about 400, he said. Many of those outages are in the Rosedale and northeast areas of Kansas City, Kansas, he noted.

The storm on Wednesday night, along with more than an estimated 6 inches of rain, caused some flash flooding throughout the metropolitan area today.

At 10:55 a.m. today, the National Weather Service has issued a flood warning for Wyandotte County until 1:45 p.m. today, as well as southeastern Leavenworth County, Johnson County, northwestern Cass County, Clay County, southern Ray County, eastern Platte County and Jackson County.

With 4 to 6 inches of rain having fallen over the area already, the weather service warned that Kansas City, Kansas, and surrounding areas may experience flooding.

Mehlhaff said those few homes in Stony Point not reconnected will need more extensive work on their meters. At some homes, the meters were pulled from the structures. Those customers need to call a licensed electrician and have repairs done before their electricity can be restored.

At the height of the Saturday storm, about 21,000 people were without electricity in Wyandotte County, about one-third of the BPU customers, he stated.

According to Mehlhaff, more than 40 crews are focusing their efforts to try to get all power restored to everyone who can have power by the end of the day, if they can.

The BPU spokesman said customers still without power or having problems with their electricity are encouraged to call the BPU outage line at 913-573-9522 or they may email [email protected].

The Kansas River in Kansas City, Kansas, was rising Thursday morning, but it was well below flood stage. According to NOAA, the Kansas River was at 18.72 feet where flood stage is 33 feet, at 10:45 a.m. Thursday.

Teachers union, state square off for second Kansas Supreme Court showdown over tenure

by Celia Llopis-Jensen, Kansas News Service

A fresh legal challenge to the state’s 2014 elimination of teacher job protections has reached the Kansas Supreme Court, close on the heels of a separate lawsuit that proved unsuccessful six months ago.

At stake are due process rights for thousands — or even tens of thousands — of teachers who had earned them before the Republican-led Legislature passed and Gov. Sam Brownback signed the repeal.

In name, the case is a battle between the school board of a 270-student district in rural Butler County, east of Wichita, and two teachers dismissed from their jobs in 2015.

At its heart, however, the case is a showdown between the state’s main teachers union and the state itself. The Kansas National Education Association is representing the plaintiffs, Sallie Scribner and Mark McNemee. Attorneys for Kansas have filed a brief intervening on the side of Flinthills Unified School District 492.

“We’re here really to protect the constitutional concept that the law matters and process matters,” KNEA general counsel David Schauner said Monday, “and the Legislature isn’t free to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, without recourse.”

The KNEA argues that taking tenure away from teachers who had already earned it was equivalent to depriving citizens of their property without due process — a violation of the U.S. and Kansas constitutions.

The state rejects that characterization and says teachers never had a constitutionally protected right to keep their job protections. And even if a property right did exist, it argues, the Legislature’s vote to repeal tenure was sufficient to end it.

The repeal was “clearly constitutional,” the state’s brief argues.

“Plaintiffs may disagree with the policy the Legislature adopted,” it says, “but the law does not violate the Due Process Clause.”

The parties finished filing briefs in late June. The KNEA predicted this week that oral arguments, which haven’t yet been scheduled, will take place in September at the earliest.

‘Non-probationary’ status

Scribner had worked at Flinthills for 18 years and McNemee for 16.

At the end of the 2014-15 school year, the Flinthills school board informed both in writing that their contracts wouldn’t be renewed, without stating reasons or allowing independent hearings.

Prior to July 1, 2014, the board would have been required to take those steps, but it argues Scribner and McNemee no longer had tenure in light of the 2014 repeal.

A third teacher, Monica Pharr, lost her job at Kansas City, Kansas, USD 500 in the same manner and sued in Wyandotte County, also with representation by the KNEA. The district court stopped that suit this month, pending the outcome of the Flinthills case at the high court.

The Flinthills case could restore due process for all teachers who had earned tenure before the repeal and haven’t switched employers since then. Under the law as it previously existed, teachers needed to complete three-year probationary periods at their districts before reaching what was formally called “non-probationary status.” This guaranteed them due process in case of termination or contract non-renewal.

The KNEA does not have a reliable count of how many of Kansas’ approximately 40,000 public school educators would regain tenure if the Kansas Supreme Court sides with the union. Schauner said more than 20,000 or 25,000 teachers “would not be at all surprising.”

The 2014 changes

The Legislature ended tenure in 2014 amid protests at the Statehouse by hundreds of red-clad teachers from across the state.

The Kansas Supreme Court had ordered lawmakers to increase funding for poorer school districts — part of a long-running and still ongoing school finance lawsuit.

The Legislature, controlled at the time by conservative Republicans, complied with a funding increase but included a tenure repeal. The process angered opponents because it involved late-in-the-night votes, and because the topic surfaced through an amendment on the Senate floor without hearings in either chamber.

The KNEA sued that summer, contending lawmakers had violated a Kansas Constitution clause that bars cramming unrelated matters into a single bill.

It lost at the district court and appealed. In January the Kansas Supreme Court ruled the 2014 legislation hadn’t run afoul of the restriction.

The claim in the new lawsuit — that the state unconstitutionally stripped tenured teachers of their property — bears similarities to an argument that another branch of the National Education Association made in North Carolina after that state ended tenure in 2013.

The idea that a property right had been violated resonated with North Carolina’s Court of Appeals. But the state’s Supreme Court ultimately struck down the retroactive tenure repeal without weighing in on the property argument. Instead, it found the law had violated contractual obligations.

The property rights argument was not successful at Butler County District Court, prompting the KNEA to appeal.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service, a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio and KMUW covering health, education and politics. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ. Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link back to kcur.org.

See more at http://kcur.org/post/teachers-union-state-square-second-kansas-supreme-court-showdown-over-tenure