News

L&T staff report

A complaint has been filed against the Seward County Commission for violating Revenue Neutral rate with the Seward County Clerk.

According to the complaint filed by Leader & Times Publisher Earl Watt, when the RNR letters sent to taxpayers included an explanation of the requested 25.868 mill increase, the letter set a cap of 21 mills for the pending tax case and 4.868 mills for the rest of the county budget. But according to the new budget increase of 13.4 mills, only 2 mills are being applied to the court case and 11.4 mills are attributed to the rest of the budget.

EARL WATT

   • Leader & Times

Sources within Seward County have stated Seward County Counsel Nathan Foreman has tendered his resignation.

Foreman has been the county counselor for several years.

His resignation comes at a time when the county is facing several challenges to its recent tax increase as well as while the county is facing a court case with Arkalon Energy over the valuation of the ethanol plant, although that case is being handled by an outside legal firm.

A request was made to county administration for the resignation letter and for a plan to replace Foreman, but there was no response as of press time.

ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

Parts of Adventure Bay Water Park are starting to show their age and need upgrading, and Tuesday, the Liberal City Commission got to hear some proposals regarding just that.

“As everyone will remember, at the July 8 meeting, the Liberal City Commission approved an agreement with Waters Edge Aquatic Design to do a full scale facility review of Adventure Bay Water Park. The intent of the audit was to identify potential safety and equipment concerns and provide an estimate of repairs versus a quote for a complete overhaul of the park,” City Manager Scarlette Diseker said. “With Adventure Bay starting to age, city staff felt this assessment would assist in starting a conversation about the future plans of the water park and how the commission wishes to move forward. With ongoing talks between the City of Liberal, Seward County Community College, and USD 480 regarding the need for a new indoor swimming facility, we feel the condition of the existing park needs to be examined and taken into consideration before funds can be appropriated either way. The quotes were as follows: for the repair of existing facility (pump house, basin, features, pool deck, office, and restrooms), that would be $1,748,500, and a total overhaul and reconstruction of a new facility would be $7,657,000. Not included in the overhaul quote were utilities, parking, parking lot lighting, furniture, fixtures, equipment, and contractor’s general conditions. There is a lot to consider, and I wanted to make sure these conversations were taking place before the public.”

ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

Recruitment and retention for the USD 480 schools has long been a topic and Monday evening, Director of Recruitment and Education Ashley Kappelmann talked to the USD 480 school board about ways to help with just that.

“To give the board an idea of the current reality, right now, there are 209 licensed teachers in classrooms – and I went through and just looked at positions in the classroom – and there are 98 unlicensed staff in classrooms right now as classroom teachers,” Kappelmann said. “Out of those 98, four of them are currently student teaching, 55 of them are currently on a plan to get certified,  26 are not currently on a plan but working toward implementing a plan, and a lot of that is because we’ve been working to find colleges and universities that would work with us for our specific situations. Right now, there are 11 in the classroom not currently on a plan – when we started this, that number was 16, so that means there are five who decided to get on a plan for licensure. There is some projected growth, we’ll have more staff currently student teaching who should be certified by this coming spring. And if everyone stays on track for their anticipated completion date, we should have 23 staff members on track to be certified by the start of the 2026-27 school year, which is great. It’s great seeing the fruits of that labor that’s been going on for quite some time by this point. We estimate that number to be around 49 by 2030 in terms of having all their licensure obtained. It’s really exciting what we found when we started putting all of this information together, and we’re on a good track compared to before.”