TEG
TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2016
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PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING
FAMILY OWNED SINCE 1895
Good Evening
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Keep the fireworks in
Topeka to a minimum.
WWW.EMPORIAGAZETTE.COM
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MAN AIRLIFTED TO TOPEKA AFTER MONDAY EVENING WRECK
By Jessie Wagoner
[email protected]
A 22-year-old man Junction City
man was airlifted to Topeka Monday
evening after he was injured in a motorcycle wreck west of Allen.
An injury accident was reported
at 6:51 p.m. Monday in the 300 block
of Road G. Admire and Allen First
Responders were initially called to
the accident. Shortly after 7 p.m.,
Emporia First Responders were dispatched. Zach Pyle, 22, of Junction
City was airlifted to Stormont Vail
Health in Topeka. His condition was
unavailable at press time, though he
was alert when authorities arrived.
Scanner traffic indicated he had sustained a laceration to the head along
with elbow and leg injuries. He also
reported having stomach pain at the
scene.
“Pyle made an evasive maneuver,
heavily breaking to avoid slowing
traffic in the (eastbound) direction
due to a cow in the south ditch,”
Lyon County Sheriff’s Deputy Tera
Titus said in a statement issued late
Monday night. “Pyle laid his motorcycle down and slid into the south
ditch.”
LifeTeam helicopter was dispatched to the area around 7:10 p.m.
and landed on Highway 56 about 10
minutes later, causing traffic to be
diverted around the scene.
Emergency crews on scene indicated LifeTeam had taken off with
the patient at 7:41 p.m. and was en
route to Stormont Vail Health in Topeka. Traffic was allowed to resume
shortly after.
The accident is still under investigation by the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office.
That came hours after a two-vehicle accident in Emporia resulted
in minor injuries Monday afternoon.
At approximately 2:15 p.m. Monday, an injury accident occurred
at the intersection of Commercial
Street and Ninth Avenue. Emporia’s police and fire departments responded to the scene.
Traffic was slowed around the accident area as one lane was blocked.
The Emporia Police Department
provided traffic control at the scene.
Two vehicles were involved in
the collision and minor injuries were
reported. The cause of the accident
and names of the drivers have yet to
be released.
— Emporia Gazette News and
Online Editor Zach Hacker contributed to this report.
SPECIAL SESSION
BEGINS THURSDAY
By Jessie Wagoner
[email protected]
Legislators will return to Topeka
on Thursday to address the issue of
education funding.
The special session is focused
on developing a strategy to respond to the Kansas Supreme
Court’s ruling that the state is not
funding education equitably.
In order to meet the equability
requirement, it is likely the state
would need to provide an addi-
tional $30 to $40 million to education.
The Supreme Court tasked lawmakers
with correcting the problem by June 30
to avoid a possible closure of schools.
Representative Don Hill said a resolution is likely, but won’t come quickly.
“We have a challenge to meet,” Hill
said. “I don’t know that it will come real
quick or be real easy, but the way I’m seeing it is the legislature has no choice but
to make a good faith effort. I think that
will happen and I think it is helpful that
the governor has gone on-record saying
he thinks the equity issue needs to be
solved and upwards of $35 to $40 million
needs to be spent.”
House and Senate Democrats did reveal a plan to fund
close to $39 million to address
equity. The proposal would
use $15.2 million from the current extraordinary needs fund,
$13 million from a job creation
fund in the Kansas Department
of Commerce, $7.3 million by
freezing the level of funding for
virtual school funding, $3 million from federal welfare funds
and $750,000 set aside for tax
credits for private school scholarships.
“The Democrats have come
up with a plan that is at least an
example of where there’s some
money to be found within our
current structure,” Hill said.
“Those may not be the best examples, but they are concrete
examples that the public and
the legislature can get their head
around.”
The special session is expected to extend into next week,
however, a resolution is expected
prior to the deadline of June 30.
BUDGET
ISSUES
TOP ERC
DISCUSSION
By Mary Ann Redeker
[email protected]
The 2016 – 2017 budget
topped discussion at the Emporia Recreation Commission’s
meeting Monday evening at
Lee Beran Recreation Center.
The board considered two
budget proposals, one based
on the current
6.5 mill levy
and one for an
8 mill levy. A
motion was
unanimously
passed to approve for publication the
budget based
on the 8 mill McEvoy
levy.
The mill levy refers to the
tax rate that is applied to the assessed value of a property. One
mill is $1 per $1,000 of assessed
value.
“We left the authority to go
up an additional 4 mill back in
2009,” Director Tom McEvoy
said. “We opted to, because of
the major recession going on,
to increase the mill levy an additional 2.5 mills. We had lots
of meetings and discussions
over what we wanted to use
the additional four mills for. We
have a long list of items that we
need to make improvements
on. We have been doing a lot of
deferred maintenance over the
last 30-plus years. The board
decided to go ahead and maximize the additional mill and
half for the additional 4 mills.”
McEvoy said the board has
been discussing capital improvement projects and other
issues affecting the budget.
“We have $3.8 million in
capital improvements,” he said.
“We have our roof, which needs
to be repaired. We are having
to put money into maintenance
issues and not our programs.
We’ve been underfunded for a
number of years. We are needing to upgrade our ball fields,
and water and drainage have
been the biggest costs wit