Opinion: Tough work ahead for lawmakers See B1
2017 1867
Sports: More substate action See B1
The Weekender Saturday, March 4, 2017
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DOWNTOWN SUMMIT
David Broyles, from left, Pat Haire and Carolyn Whitaker were among the participants at a “Re-Imagine Downtown Humboldt” summit Wednesday evening. Below, David Gant votes on issues he considered important for downtown’s future. REGISTER/SHELLIE SMITLEY
HUMBOLDT RE-IMAGINED By BOB JOHNSON The Iola Register
H
UMBOLDT — Humboldt is a snapshot of smalltown America. Challenges are aplenty: Revitalizing its downtown, cleaning up eyesores in the neighborhoods, providing affordable housing and finding ways to attract visitors and residents. The last census estimate had Humboldt at a touch over 1,900. Time was Humboldt’s
downtown was a bustling center of commerce, said David Broyles, as he moderated a session Wednesday evening attended by 80 folks who had come to envision ways to re-
capture past glory. The picturesque square, with historic bandstand, once had all sorts of stores and shops facing it, even a movie theater. If a woman wanted a new dress, a man a pair of slacks, they found them in Humboldt. Ace Sterling sliced ham and weighed rump roasts behind the meat counter of his City Market. Bob Adams had just the notions in his Ben Franklin five-and-dime. Newlyweds dashed to Harold’s for new furniture. Need tools or a pound of nails? Stop by the Grange.
Want chicken feed? Go to the farm store on Eighth Street. Need a prescription filled? Roscoe’s and Garvey’s drug stores could fill the bill. Thirsty for a beer? Stop by the Bivouac or Leo’s pool hall, or sometimes another joint down the street. At mealtime, restaurants were plentiful. On Saturday nights a couple from southeast of town pulled their old car up next to the square and sold jars of fresh honey that bees produced from sweet clover. See HUMBOLDT | Page A6
Bridge Street in downtown Humboldt
Bowlus hearing Tuesday By RICHARD LUKEN The Iola Register
A question 50 years in the making may be answered soon. A petition filed by the USD 257 Board of Education is asking a legal authority — Judge Robert Fairchild of Lawrence — to examine the school district’s ties to the Bowlus Fine Arts Center. Last August, school board members, who also serve as trustees to the fine arts center, directed attorneys from Johnson Schowengerdt P.A. to file a petition asking the court to review Thomas Bowlus’s will and charitable trust, which paid for the fine arts center’s construction as well established an endowment in the early 1960s, and gave the school district responsibility for the center’s operations. School officials say the main purpose of the court hearing is to ensure the Center’s future by learning exactly what the parameters of the trust are, including whether the school district could hold what are considered fine arts classes elsewhere without violating the trust’s terms. Tony Leavitt, president of the school board, noted in September the petition poses “the hard questions that I think people have purposely avoided since the Bowlus was put in place. “We have to find out See BOWLUS | Page A5
Court: State does not spend enough on schools By JOHN HANNA The Associated Press
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ highest court on Thursday ordered the state to increase its spending on public schools, which could further complicate the state’s dire budget problems and increase pressure to undo large tax cuts championed by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. The unanimous state Supreme Court ruling gave the Republican-controlled Legislature until the end of June
to enact a new school funding law. Lawmakers were already working on one and considering raising income tax cuts to help close projected budget
Quote of the day Vol. 119, No. 89
shortfalls totaling more than a $1 billion through June 2019. Brownback said in a statement that lawmakers have a chance to pursue “transformative educational reform” and called for new school choice measures, without being more specific. The court did not specify the size of a school funding increase, fueling debate over how much lawmakers must boost the state’s nearly $4.1 billion in annual aid to its 286 school districts. Attorneys for four school districts that sued the state over education fund-
ing in 2010 said the increase must be at least $800 million, but lawmakers didn’t immediately accept the figure. “We’ll be like the proverbial chicken on a June bug if the state tries to do it on the cheap,” said Alan Rupe, one of the districts’ attorneys. Many moderate Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature favor rolling back the large income tax cuts enacted in 2012 and 2013, which the conservative governor pushed as a way to stimulate the economy. The state has struggled to balance its bud-
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” — Mahatma Gandhi 75 Cents
get ever since, and even some Republican voters have come to view the tax cuts as a failure. Lawmakers last month approved a bill that would have increased income taxes to raise more than $1 billion over two years, but Brownback vetoed it. He favors raising cigarette and liquor taxes and business filing fees, along with internal government borrowing and other accounting moves. Brownback and legislators See SCHOOLS | Page A3
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