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The Weekender Saturday, April 15, 2017
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City gets funding for Washington bridge By RICHARD LUKEN The Iola Register
A bicycle and pedestrian bridge spanning Elm Creek along South Washington Avenue will soon become reality. Iola and Thrive Allen County were notified Friday the city will receive a $197,000 Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism grant for the bridge’s construction. When tacked on with other grants already pledged, Thrive and the city have patched together more than $257,000. “I cannot begin to tell you how excited we were to hear the news,” Damaris Kunkler program manager at Thrive, said. “This effort started years ago.” The city will oversee con-
bridge will connect Iola with the former Lehigh quarry site, now home to Elks Lake, the Lehigh Portland Trail complex and Elm Creek Park. The steel truss bridge also would provide many of the 600 Gates Corporation employees easy access to either walk or bike to work.
At left is a steel truss pedestrian bridge, like one that will span Elm Creek along Washington Avenue. struction and installation of a 150-foot truss bridge, projected to cost about $260,000. “We’ve done all of the engineering,” Assistant City Administrator Corey Schinstock said. “We just need to firm up the final plans, and the paperwork will follow.” It’s too soon to tell when
construction will start, he said. “We’ve still got some time to get everything lined up,” he said. “The letter we received wasn’t the grant itself. It was just a letter telling us the grant was being awarded.” The original cost estimate
— $257,000 — may change slightly, Schinstock acknowledged. “That estimate was from a year ago, but we have other grants lined up in case those numbers change. It shouldn’t be too out of line from those first projections.” The bicycle and pedestrian
Finances, school formula front and center By BOB JOHNSON The Iola Register
Kansas legislators are home for their annual break between regular and veto sessions. This year, the state’s desperate fiscal situation weighs heavily on their thoughts. When they return May 1, emphasis will be to construct a school finance formula that increases aid to schools, as well as address a looming $1.1 billion shortfall for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. “That’s the heavy lifting we’re looking at,” said Rep. Kent Thompson, who represents much of Allen and Neosho counties in the House. Make no mistake, “heavy
lifting” is not hyperbole. First on the agenda will be school finance. Kansas Supreme Court justices earlier issued two rulings, the first saying block-grant funding, which
U.S. drops ‘mother of all bombs’ on ISIS GBU-43/B Massive Ordinance Air Blast The MOAB, nicknamed the mother of all bombs, is the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal. In service since 2003, the bomb is designed to be dropped by a C-130 plane and guided by the plane’s GPS system.
Length: 30 ft. Weight: 21,600 lbs. Weight of explosives: 18,700 lbs. Explosive yield: Equivalent to 11 tons of TNT
6 ft.
Graphic: Tribune News Service Source: Federation of American Scientists, U.S. Air Force, Air Force Armament Museum
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. forces in Afghanistan on Thursday struck an Islamic State tunnel complex in eastern Afghanistan with “the mother of all bombs,” the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat by the U.S. military, Pentagon officials said. The bomb, known officially as a GBU-43B, or massive ordnance air blast weapon, unleashes 11 tons of explosives. When it was developed in the early 2000s, the Pentagon did a formal review of legal justification for its combat use. The Pentagon said it had no early estimate of deaths or damage caused by its attack, which President Donald Trump called a “very, very successful mission.” The U.S. military headquarters in Kabul said in a statement that the bomb was dropped at 7:32 p.m. local time Thursday on a tunnel complex in Achin district of Nangarhar province, where the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State See MOAB | Page A3
Quote of the day Vol. 119, No. 119
eliminated weighting and other factors meant to make funding equitable, was unconstitutional, and ordered legislators to develop a new formula. To date, machinations are trending toward what was in
place for more than 20 years before block-grant funding was instituted. Thompson occasionally has described the abandoned formula as “being fine, just not adequately funded.” The financial burden for schools has fallen to the state since that formula was constructed in the 1990s; first with a 35-mill statewide property tax levy, then 37 and finally 20, when dot-com spin-off fattened tax revenue. The trick is to make the math arrive at an equitable plan with adequate revenue to provide a good education. Discussions have centered on increasing school aid by $150 million for each of the
KUNKLER noted the emotions surrounding Friday’s announcement. Thrive’s initial efforts to attract funding for the pedestrian bridge were spearheaded by John Robertson, a grant writer who died in November 2015. “This was successful because of that first grant he wrote,” Kunkler said. “There are still awesome reminders of his work.”
Trump seeks ‘maximum pressure’ on North Korea WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has settled on its North Korea strategy after a two-month review: “Maximum pressure and engagement.” U.S. officials said Friday the president’s advisers weighed a range of ideas for how to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, including military options and trySee TRUMP | Page A6
See ISSUES | Page A6
STICKER SHOCK
Allen County Substance Abuse Task Force Project Coordinator Jaime Westervelt led a group of Iola High School students into area liquor and convenience stores as part of the annual Sticker Shock Initiative. The students attached informational stickers and bottle hangers to alcohol products as a way to inform customers of the penalties for providing alcohol to minors. Pictured above, left to right, are: Olivia Taylor, Hunter Preston, Alexis Heslop, Ryan Geiler and Westervelt. At right, Heslop plants a warning tag on a 6-pack of Mike’s. REGISTER/RICK DANLEY
“Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.” — Salvador Dali, Spanish artist 75 Cents
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