Flatland is exploring the implementation of Opportunity Zones in the Kansas City area, on both sides of the state line, and tracing their impact.

If you want to drive home to college students the importance of filling out the census, you might want to focus on driving home. Brittan Brenner has gained that bit of wisdom as a community development specialist with the city of Pittsburg, Kansas. That thought was not top of mind even a couple years ago when she was a student at Pittsburg State University. “Driving three hours on (U.S. Highway) 400 is a lot easier now than when I started college even,” Brenner said of trips to her hometown of Wichita. Population-based highway funding is one way the rubber hits the road with census data, and Brenner is using that as one example in convincing students to take this year’s census seriously. That is easier said than done even in the best of times. But the COVID-19 outbreak has made the task even more complicated, but no less critical to college towns like Pittsburg. Now that students are scattered to the wind with campuses closed, the hardest part is reminding parents and students that the young adult’s official residence is the dorm or off-campus apartment in which they live. It is not the home address where they are living temporarily. Brenner has been working with Pitt State officials for almost a year to ensure the most accurate count possible of students to ensure federal funding for years to come. And then, the COVID-19 closures started hitting right as census forms were showing up in the mail. “We were sitting there in a frazzle wondering how we were going to fix…...

The three main counties in the Kansas City area — Wyandotte and Johnson in Kansas, and Jackson in Missouri — would have to boost bed capacity for the homeless by about 60% virtually overnight as the coronavirus begins to peak.

Nearly half of U.S. child care centers say they may not survive the financial losses stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.

It can be easy to miss as you motor along Swope Parkway near Bruce R. Watkins Drive on the east side of Kansas City, Missouri. Yet this broad swath of open space, wedged between the parkway and Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard, is a public park named for the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The official Kansas City Parks and Recreation sign sits near the tennis courts, the main amenity in the 42-acre park. Once known as Brush Creek Park, the parks board renamed it in 1978, with a big push from Cleaver, the former city councilman and mayor who now serves in the U.S. House of Representatives.  The park is not neglected. The parks department recently installed new lights for the tennis courts and resurfaced them as well, and it is now soliciting public input on how to spend $250,000 in deferred maintenance funds earmarked for the park. Still, to a certain segment of the community, this vast, windswept parcel is an underwhelming tribute to MLK. That sentiment stands out as one of the most noteworthy outcomes of Flatland’s analysis of the about 660 public comments submitted to the city as it tries to build a consensus around the best way to honor King. The question has bedeviled the city for months. The Envelope Please Flatland reviewed hundreds of written submissions — most sent by email, but others penned in perfect cursive and sent by snail mail — and analyzed a parks department spreadsheet that logged all the responses. The public comment period ended last week, but…...

Learn the history of the short-lived Monarchs and Blues baseball rivalry in the '20s.

The famous "Truman Torah" given to Harry S. Truman after he recognized the founding of Israel has been reunited with the son of the rabbi who provided the gift.

A veteran Kansas City-area U.S. Census Bureau employee is seeking answers after being forced to resign.

Kansas City area community leaders are grappling with how to encourage housing affordability.

Missouri is a big-time producer of turkeys.

Stymied in Roeland Park, immigrant-rights advocates are looking to gain a foothold in Wyandotte County in their effort to make Kansas more “safe and welcoming.” Spearheaded by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Kansas, along with various other organizations, the coalition wants localities to issue their own municipal IDs and to set clear guidelines on when local law enforcement can help the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency The thrust of the ordinance is in line with what Kansans have stood for ever since joining the union as a free state, said the ACLU’s Ellen Glover. “Safe and welcoming are Kansas values,” she said. But when discussing the ordinance last month, the Roeland Park City Council opted instead to simply update the police department’s operations manual with a written immigration policy presented by the police chief. The policy states that, in the absence of a criminal warrant, the city will cooperate with federal immigration authorities only after taking public safety and other factors into consideration. That appears to be the end of the matter, said City Administrator Keith Moody. Roeland Park only considered the ICE non-compliance language. But the Unified Government (UG) of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, is also pondering the establishment of the municipal ID. To date, no other Kansas municipality is known to have adopted an ordinance of this sort. The UG Board of Commissioners is expected to hold a meeting on the ordinance in January, and elected officials have raised many questions. A draft ordinance, which supporters said is similar to language adopted…...

With cold weather setting in, and winter fast approaching, advocates for Johnson County’s homeless population are scrambling to provide overnight shelter.

The State Historical Society of Missouri has announced receipt of a $250,000 lead gift from the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation toward relocating and expanding a research center at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Editor's Note: According to unofficial results available right after the Nov. 5 election, Kansas voters approved the constitutional amendment by a tally of 60% to 40%. That means Kansas will no longer have to adjust its census figures. All the counties in the Kansas City area voted for the amendment. You might be hearing chatter about the U.S. census, as the federal government gears up for its once-a-decade headcount next year. But Kansas voters are going to have a census question of their own long before that — in the form of a question on the Nov. 5 state ballot. The measure would eliminate a constitutionally mandated adjustment of federal census numbers, which is designed to ensure college students and military members in the state are counted in the location of their permanent residence. Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab called the language “burdensome, antiquated and expensive” in written testimony to the Senate Ethics, Elections & Local Government Committee earlier this year. He also noted that Kansas is the only state in the country that requires such a recount. Schwab estimated the adjustment for the 2020 census would cost approximately $834,000. That is hardly worth the price tag, he said in an interview, given that the adjustment from the last census only resulted in reassignment of approximately 13,000 people across the state’s 105 counties. The language in force today essentially requires the secretary of state to separately contact college students and military members to see if they want to change the designation of their permanent residence. (The language also requires…...

We have been hearing a lot about the census lately, and for good reason: The national headcount is coming around next year. But the U.S. Census Bureau does not exactly sit on its hands in between the once-a-decade population tally. It churns out a ton of data, including the annual American Community Survey, which the bureau calls its “most detailed look at America’s people, places and economy.” The latest round of survey data came out today, culled from questionnaires sent to approximately 3.5 million randomly selected addresses around the country. Here’s how some of the numbers stack up for the Kansas City metropolitan area: 2,142,419: Population$65,768: Median Household Income87.3%: Households With Broadband Internet 83.8%: Commuters Who Drive Alone23.5 Minutes: Mean Travel Time To Work33.8%: Unmarried Males 15 and Older27.8%: Unmarried Females 15 and Older9.2%: People Without Health Insurance6.9%: People Living Below Poverty Level19.4%: German (Most Common Ancestry)3.1%: Latin America (Provenance of Foreign Born Residents)...

For Dino Lam and his brother, the Vietnam Cafe is more than a restaurant. It's a family legacy passed down from their father. "He learned us from the heart," Lam said, "so now we have to do the same things." Some diners mistake the cafe for a Chinese restaurant, Lam said. But if they stay, they often become regulars. One of the house specialties is Vietnamese coffee, where drip coffee is poured on top of condensed milk. Wait staff bring it to tables so customers can make it themselves. Lam said 39th Street is a great place to be, particularly given the variety of people drawn to the area by the University of Kansas medical school and hospital right across the street from the cafe. “The Block” takes viewers on a journey through Kansas City’s streets to get a sense of the people and cuisine – the fabric of KC’s neighborhoods. But this isn’t just a food show. There’s history, culture and unknown facts about Kansas City. You’ll go inside kitchens, see how food and drinks are made, and peek into the lives of everyday Kansas Citians working in the service industry. Check your local listings for re-airings of the episodes on KCPT. The series is also available online for KCPT Passport members....

Kansas City’s embrace of green space dates back to the late 1800s, when famed landscape architect George Kessler laid out its system of parks and boulevards. A century later, in 1991, the local chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects and Kansas State University drew on Kessler’s inspiration to develop MetroGreen. The report, and an ensuing action plan developed by the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC), envisions more than 1,000 miles of “interconnected landscape corridors” throughout seven counties on both sides of the state line. Expansion of the trail system along the Blue River is among the plan’s priorities, and that is where south Kansas City, Missouri, resident Sarah Hemme, 36, entered the picture. She lives in the Red Bridge area because of its proximity to mountain bike trails around the Blue River, and she had a question for curiousKC. She wanted to know which organizations, such as government agencies, nonprofits, or citizens groups, are “most proactive and effective at conserving, protecting, and restoring natural lands and open space” in the Kansas City area. Hemme knew about the volunteer-driven Urban Trail Co., which takes an eco-friendly approach to building and maintaining more than 100 miles of the rugged trails that Hemme and others enjoy. She also was somewhat familiar with Heartland Conservation Alliance (HCA), a Kansas City-based nonprofit that focuses on preserving land within the Blue River watershed. For a broader perspective on regional conservation and preservation efforts, curiousKC turned to Tom Jacobs, MARC’s environmental programs director. He has been at this work for more than three decades, and he…...

Five years ago, Kansas had the dubious honor of being the worst state in the nation when it came to protecting adolescents against a cancer-causing virus. Missouri was not a whole lot better. The measure, released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was the rate at which states were vaccinating kids against HPV, or human papillomavirus, a common sexually transmitted infection. It can cause cancer in both men and women. New CDC data released late last month had Kansas health officials crowing. The figures showed that Kansas, like Missouri, has made significant strides in the number of young people getting at least one dose of the vaccine. That data came from a 2018 national immunization survey of  parents or guardians of teens between the ages of 13 and 17. The two states have outpaced the nation in annual percentage point gain. Even so, Kansas and Missouri still rank down the list in the percentage of this group of young folks that are getting at least one dose of the HPV vaccine. They came in at 42nd and 44th, respectively, with rates of a little more than 60 percent. Rhode Island tops the list with a rate of 89.3%. Mississippi ranked at the bottom with a rate of 51.7% The Kansas Department of Health and Environment attributed its success to a number of initiatives, including development of an HPV Toolkit by the Immunize Kansas Coalition and focusing on provider recommendations to patients. For years, public health officials have vigorously promoted the vaccine to counter worries by some parents…...

When Molly T. Marshall became president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary here in 2004, this was the inside joke among board members: “We flipped her the keys to the Titanic.” No wonder. The American (not Southern) Baptist school, then at 31st and Minnesota in Kansas City, Kansas, was broke, physically falling apart and down to only 78 students. Marshall, now starting her final academic year before retiring, recalls: “What we faced at the old campus was $17-18 million of deferred maintenance. We faced armed robberies on campus. We faced a dwindling student population with about seven students to one faculty member. That was not sustainable. Our endowment had been basically bled out and it was underwater. If we stay, we probably die. If we move, we have a shot at continuing our mission.” For starters, the school released four of its 12 full-time faculty members and cut half (eight) of the rest of its staff. It also declared “financial exigency,” a euphemistic term for bankruptcy. Then it began to imagine a new future. “It was very difficult to think about leaving KCK,” Marshall says. “And I knew that we would get criticism for leaving the urban area. But it was absolutely necessary.” So in 2006 the campus moved to 6601 Monticello Road in western Shawnee, Kansas, and — with financial help from a family foundation and a going-out-of-business St. Louis church — essentially started over. “I didn’t really begin to breathe for another year,” Marshall says. “Then we began to gather some momentum in terms of financial support.” Today Central…...

For teachers, the classroom is their workplace. They can definitely lend that experience to a student who wants to go into education. But what about the kid that wants to pursue architecture or the multitude of other fields? That's where the Northland CAPS Teacher Academy comes in. The program introduces teachers to working professionals who can explain the challenges and needs of their industry. The teachers leave with an understanding of how to tailor instruction to help students prepare for the work world. Teachers also leave with real-world applications that help students make the connection between school work and careers. American Graduate: Getting to Work” is a two-year a public media initiative made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. As part of its participation in the project, Kansas City PBS is highlighting some highly regarded workforce development programs in our region....