THE FOLLOWING COMMUNICATION IS FROM RAYTOWN CITY ADMINISTRATOR DAMON HODGES IN WHAT TO DO IF YOU HAVE CONCERNS ABOUT A ROADWAY BLOCKED BY STORM DEBRIS.
On Saturday night around 11:30pm Raytown was hit with strong winds from a storm. Not sure of wind speed but Lees Summit had winds at airport of 74 mph. Our Police department received calls and coordinated with Public Works to address the trees down across roadways.
Two major changes are in store for bus riders in Raytown.
The City of Kansas City has decided to discontinue the route that services Raytown along Blue Ridge Cutoff.
Another change will be the elimination of the Flex Service Raytown bus riders use for transportation in and around the Raytown area.
The Flex Service will be replaced with a new alternative Transportation Service name IRIS.
IRIS will transport Raytown passengers to any location in Raytown, Kansas City, Gladstone, Riverside and Liberty, Missouri. The cost of the transportation service to riders is set at $4 and $5 (one way). Round trip costs $8 to $10.
OUR VIEW . . .
If the new IRIS program works as well as it is promised it is the best alternative for bus riders in Raytown. Raytown riders will be expected to pay a fee for using the bus service.
We wondered how our costs and figures stack up to other cities under the program. The closest city we could find that mirrors Raytown in some respects (but not all) is Liberty, Missouri.
They have opted to partake in a similar program as is being suggested for Raytown. To understand how the two cities stack up to each other, consider the following.
POPULATION / Raytown POPULATION / Liberty
SIZE OF CITY / Raytown SIZE OF CITY / Liberty
9.93
square miles 29.1
square miles
Cost per ride / Raytown City Limits Cost
per ride / Liberty City Limits
to be determined $3.00 per ride
This last part does bring some questions to mind. Even though the population of the two cities is similar, the size of the two cities is not.
Raytown is only one-third the size of Liberty. This means there are fewer miles of streets to service by the ATA. With that in mind, Raytown’s service fee for traffic limited to the City of Raytown has yet to be determined.
The Raytown Board of Aldermen is expected to discuss this contract at its next business session scheduled for Tuesday, June 4, 2024. Location and starting time of the meeting are as follows:
WHERE: Raytown City Hall, 10000 East 59th Street, Raytown, Missouri 64133
WHEN: Tuesday, June 4, 2024. Meeting begins at 7:00 p.m.
THE PUBLIC IS invited to attend. The
Public will be able to address the Board, state questions and participate in Public
Comments as the first order of business.
USE THIS LINK TO Comment AND VIEW COMMENTS
"Swirl"
BY JESSIE CARGAS
Raytown's newest art sculpture has been unveiled at Colman Park.
The sculpture is located the north entrance to the park near the veterans
monument (northwest corner of of 59th and Lane Street).
The sculpture is on lease and expected to remain in place for two years.
USE THIS LINK TO Comment AND VIEW COMMENTS
When will the bridge over 350 Highway
at Blue Blue Boulevard be repaired?
.png) |
| THE PAUL LIVIUS REPORT |
A number of readers have contacted us regarding the closed lane on the Blue Ridge Boulevard bridge over 350 Highway.
We received the following explanation from Missouri Department of Transportation (MODOT)
MoDOT is in progress of
designing bridge repairs so that we can open Blue Ridge Blvd over MO 350 by the
end of 2024. The bridge was struck by an oversized load, and damaged
enough that we had to close one lane on the bridge. It is possible there
will be additional closures in place while we make those repairs this
summer. MoDOT is in
progress of designing bridge repairs so that we can open Blue Ridge Blvd over
MO 350 by the end of 2024.
Not the best news, but at
least we now know how long the wait will be.
Raytown Alderwoman Elected
to Hickman Mills School Board
Raytown
Alderwoman Bonnaye Mims has been elected to the Hickman Mills School Board.
Mims is currently serving her second term on the Raytown Board of Aldermen.
Holdings more than one elected position in Missouri is
allowed under State Law. So it is legal.
Not all governing bodies allow voting members of their
elected officials to hold more than one seat in public office at a time. The
current Jackson County Legislature has four members on it who were School Board
members. The County Charter does not allow for its elected officials to hold
office in while serving on the Jackson County Legislature.
Those four members had to resign their positions before
being sworn in to serve on the County Legislature.
The questions remains . . . it is a politically wise decision
to hold to publicly elected positions at one time?
Time will tell. Mims is up for re-election to her seat on
the Raytown Board of Aldermen in April of 2025.
 |
| INTRODUCTION BY GREG WALTERS |
Raytown students wanted a crackdownon violence, guns in school.Making the right changes is tricky.
Originally
published on the St. Joseph Post
By Maria Benevento
In early February, Raytown
High School sophomore Harper York crossed the street to pick up some M&Ms
from a Casey’s store before her next rehearsal. Suddenly, she turned around
from the checkout and saw a “mob fight” had broken out.
When the chaos died
down and she got over her initial shock, Harper made a break for it.
“I don’t think I’ve
ever run so fast across the parking lot in my life,” she said. “And before I
cross the street, I look back and another (fight) is starting. … I can hear
police sirens and ambulances, and people are on the ground, and people are
crying. And it’s just like: Is this who we are?”
While the gas station fight
was the biggest Harper had seen, physical altercations in or near school had
become common.
Even bystanders weren’t safe.
A few days later, junior Chase Dernier ended up near a fight that turned into a
large-scale shoving match. He got slammed into a wall, hitting his head hard
enough to make it ache for days.
 |
| RAYTOWN HIGH SCHOOL |
The last straw came
when school officials confiscated three firearms from students in a two-week
period.
Chase and Harper recruited
classmates and other district residents to call leadership, attend the February
school board meeting and sign up for public comment. They pushed for changes
such as longer suspensions for students who fight and adding metal detectors to
school.
Since that public
pressure, students say Raytown High School has made effective changes, such as
hall sweeps targeting students who aren’t in class. They’ve also seen signs
that the district is seriously considering other measures such as installing
weapons detectors.
Superintendent Penelope
Martin-Knox said fully solving the problems of frequent fights and guns
entering school requires combing through all the ideas to find what will
actually work.
Schools throughout the
country have been grappling with the ways traditional discipline and security
tactics can cause long-term harm to students who make mistakes, exacerbate
racial disparities and make school feel a little like jail.
Martin-Knox has also watched
other districts seize on solutions that fail, such as when weapons make it past
metal detectors.
“I don’t want to give people
a false sense of hope,” she said. “I just need to make sure that what we do is
going to be as effective as it possibly can be.”
Reiko Groves first appeared
in front of the school board to perform a song from Raytown High School’s
spring musical, “Six,” which reimagines Henry VIII’s wives as pop icons.
Reiko wishes she could have
focused on her performance alone.
Instead, still in costume,
the high school junior returned to the front of the audience and addressed the
board as herself: a teenager worried about guns and violence.
“I go from performing for
this great show that I was so proud of, to now I have to go speak about how,
even though I love the (school) building, I don’t feel safe in it,” she said
later. “I have to go fight for … almost my ability to perform (and) make sure
everybody’s safe while performing.”
After students’ basic
physical safety is secure, Reiko said, “we can focus on the well-being of our
students to find solutions to not only survive, but thrive in Raytown schools.”
Students say the school
climate hasn’t always been like this. But during the fall semester, violence
started to feel like an everyday thing.
Incidents reached a peak in
December, according to district data reported to the board. Students were in
school for less than three weeks that month. But during that time, there were
50 suspensions for fighting and school officials confiscated three firearms.
Harper said she started
begging her parents to let her stay home from school, even though it meant she
would miss beloved activities like theater rehearsals. Chase, normally proud of
his high attendance, was skipping school to lie in bed, feeling “mentally
drained.”
They weren’t aware of the
firearms found in December until later, but they did hear about three
additional guns found during a two-week period in late January and early
February.
The weapons weren’t fired or
brandished, Martin-Knox said. School officials found them by searching students
after suspicions were raised: a bullet found on a hallway floor, a phone call
about a social media post.
The students said they
weren’t planning to use the guns at school, Martin-Knox said.
“I heard the reasonings of,
‘You don’t know where I have to walk when I go home. You don’t know what
happens when I get off the bus. I have to go to a relative’s house in a different
community somewhere. And I just need to safeguard myself,’” she said.
But bringing a gun to school
is a “nonnegotiable” that comes with legal consequences and the student’s
permanent removal from in-person school, Martin-Knox said.
Consequences for fights can
vary, but some students have argued they should be harsher.
“They think they’re trying to
help the students,” Chase said. “But in reality, by lowering the suspension
rates, it’s not holding students accountable.”
A rumor that suspensions for
fighting have been uniformly reduced to three days from nine days isn’t true,
Martin-Knox said. But she has emphasized to principals that they have
discretion to set suspension lengths based on the circumstances.
Martin-Knox said schools also
need to figure out how to help students understand and take responsibility for
their actions when they return from suspension.
“Because otherwise,” she
said, “I’m going to send you back out there, (and) you’re going to do it
again.”
Schools nationwide are seeing
more verbal and physical aggression from students since the return to in-person
school after the pandemic, said Kenneth Trump, a school safety consultant.
Administrators face pressure
to solve those issues, he said, especially when there are high-profile
incidents involving weapons.
“It puts school leaders at
great risk of what I call ‘do something, do anything, do it now and do it fast’
type of policy and practice rather than having a comprehensive assessment done
of their safety,” he said. “We’re seeing many cases where that includes turning
to physical security measures, security hardware products and technology.”
Those solutions don’t always
work as promised, Trump said, especially when they aren’t executed perfectly.
Locally, Kansas City Public
Schools faced a lawsuit when a knife used in
a fatal stabbing made it through a metal
detector.
“Your
high school coach and a teacher’s aide and the principal working the screening
at the front doors, (who) probably got an hour of training, total, on a new
product they spent millions of dollars for in your district, is not going to be
comparable to the TSA,” he said.
And
when those staff members are pulled from other areas of the school, they lose
opportunities to interact, head off conflicts before they escalate and build
relationships with students who might be willing to tell a trusted adult about
a weapons plot.
“One of the best, strongest
security measures in a school is a visible, actively supervising adult,” he
said.
That has borne out at Raytown
High School, according to several students who credited a reduction in fights
to regular hall sweeps — where students late to class are locked out, rounded
up and warned or disciplined — and increased patrolling by security staff
and administrators.
Some of the security measures
can be double-edged swords.
Reiko says she understands
why the school no longer holds assemblies — they were leading to fights — but
is sad to miss out on the experiences.
The hallway sweeps can be
anxiety-inducing, and she’s been stopped and questioned more often while on
legitimate errands for her classes.
But she also appreciates the
reduction in fights and being able to go to the bathroom without finding all
the stalls filled by students skipping class.
“Probably the hardest part
about this is finding that balance between … making sure it is truly a safe
environment, but also not making it feel like it’s a prison or giving
punishment that’s too harsh,” she said.
Students said they’d
appreciate weapons detectors in schools despite potential drawbacks, such as
feeding into racist stereotypes and perceptions that the school is dangerous.
Martin-Knox isn’t ruling out
metal detectors in schools, but she says she needs to think through what
schools would need to make them work, such as locking and putting sensors on
additional doors and windows.
“I’m not going to invest
district money, taxpayer money, or even grant money on something just to say
I’ve done it,” she said.
The district has already
begun increasing security measures for sporting events, which can bring large
numbers of unknown people onto school grounds, Martin-Knox said.
At its March meeting, the
board approved purchase of a weapons detection system that it hopes will
streamline the security scans, spending $300,000 in Department of Elementary
and Secondary Education safety grant funding and more than $22,000 in other
district funds.
The system can be set to target dense metal shapes that might be a firearm, said Josh Hustad, director of facility operations, allowing people to pass through more quickly without taking small items out of their pockets and bags.
USE THIS LINK TO Comment AND VIEW COMMENTS
Greg's Favorite Places
ZIG ZAG FALLS
Zig Zag Falls is 7/10ths
of a mile along one of the most scenic trails in Mount Hood National Park. Most
waterfalls in the Mount Hood National Park are vertical. Multnomah
Falls is the tallest waterfall at 620’ tall. Zig Zag Falls
is unique because it stretches out for 7/10ths of a mile. The fast moving water reminds one of a river or creek with rapids, but the fall is steep enough to be regarded as a true waterfall.
NEGATIVE IONS: As you walk along Zig Zag Trail you can sense the rush of air propelled by the waterfall. There is no touch, or taste, but you can feel the negative ions.
Negative Ions are generated by breaking the surface tension of the water.
Falling water does this. Inhaling these ions increases the amount of these negative ions in your brain, killing germs that cause illness, and increases serotonin levels (improving mood, mental alertness, and relieving stress).
The amount of negative ions in the forest, especially near moving water, is thousands of time greater than in your home.
No wonder waterfalls are such popular hiking destinations.
No comments:
Post a Comment