Craig Lentz finally has been awarded custody of his son after 7 years. His son Noah was adopted without Mr. Lentz’s consent in 2004. RaytownOnline.com reported on the custody dispute almost exactly one year ago.
This new video on the battle is from FOX 4 Kansas City and we thank them for providing the embedding code that allows RaytownOnline.com to add the video to this article.
For more on this click HERE to read the FOX 4 Kansas City article.
The Ron Ballenger family got to see a lot off the crocodiles while waiting for the all clear for roaming gorillas at the Kansas City Zoo. The Ballenger family joined others in the crocodile house for safety at the zookeepers direction.
Click HERE to read the KC Star article on the incident.
Readers may have noticed the site down for short periods of time recently. This is due to the following.
1. I moved the location the site is hosted. 3 times the cost, but about 20 times the hardware speed. I share a server with 20 times fewer other sites.
2. I have added caching which resulted in the site loading in 2/3 the time.
3. There were module conflicts that slowed loading and caused error messages.
In plain English, the site is on a faster computer, a speedup program has been added, and the software has been tuned up. We have gone from a maximum load time in the past of about 30 seconds to a load time of 5 to 8 seconds.
The holiday shopping season is almost upon us. If ever there was a time when buying American made sense, it is now. Most Christmas purchases are optional, so why not choose something made here and help keep Americans working.
Here are a few links the feature American Products.
Robert (Bob) Smith resigned from the Raytown Park Board on Oct. 1st, 2011. Mr. Smith has served on the Park Board since 1990. He was elected Vice-President in 1993 and has been Board President for the last 12 years.
Some key acomplishments:
1990 Bob played a major role in securing revenue bonds in the amount of 1.4 million dollars to fund improvements to Super Splash USA, the department’s family-oriented aquatic facility. Through Bob’s leadership, the revenue bonds were retired two and a half years early, saving the city $84,000 in interest.
During Bob’s tenure as Board President, the Department received eight grants, including both federal and state, totaling more than $1,652,287 to renovate, upgrade and build new parks and facilities. The Parks Department has acquired three new park facilities. These include the Rice-Tremonti Home, the first wooden home built in Jackson County in 1844, a historic structure listed on the National Register of Historic Homes; Henry C. Kritser Park; and the Raytown BMX Track, a truly unique competitive bicycling facility, which opened in 1999.
During Bob’s leadership the Board brought forth the Park’s Recreation and Open Space Master Plan in 2001.
In 2004, Bob worked on the “Raytown Reaching For Tomorrow” campaign and served as chairperson of the implementation phase of the completed strategic plan. This planning process took more than a year and called upon residents to determine the direction of city government.
Bob has been and will continue to be active in the Raytown community in areas other than the Parks Board. He is a board member of Shepherd’s Center of Raytown and delivers Meals on Wheels. He also is an active member of Raytown Crime Watch.
249 Raytown residents had their water cut off recently for unpaid city sewer bills. NBCactionNews.com has a story on this and are nice enough to provide the code to imbed their video on websites and blogs. Here it is courtesy of nbcactionnews.com.
Dan Ferguson, Jackson County, Missouri, Public Information Officer, 816/881-3271
Tom Gerend, Mid-America Regional Council, Assistant Transportation Director, 816/701-8303
Open Houses Scheduled To Discuss Future Mass Transit Options in Jackson County
In an effort to gain public input on how to best enhance transit service in the Kansas City metropolitan area, the Project Partnership Team for the Jackson County Commuter Corridors Alternatives Analysis (JCCCAA) will host several opportunities for community comment over the course of the next week.
The purpose of each event is to discuss transportation needs along the I-70 and Rock Island corridors and to seek public input on transit options under consideration.
The first opportunity is an open house from 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, September 27, 2011. The open house will take place at the Independence Regional Ennovation Center, 201 North Forest Avenue, Independence, Missouri.
Short presentations will be given at 4:30 and 5:30 p.m. to update the public on the alternatives analysis process, which is a necessary step in applying for and receiving federal transportation dollars to help construct new transit systems.
To complement this formal open house, additional opportunities for comment will be available to the public. The project boards from the open house will be displayed at key locations in the corridors from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Project partnership and consultant team staff will be on hand to answer questions from 5 to 7 p.m. These meetings will take place according to the following schedule.
September 28, 2011
Mid-Continent Library
6131 Raytown Road
Raytown, Missouri
September 29, 2011
Union Station
30 West Pershing Road
Kansas City, Missouri
Last December, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) awarded a competitive grant of $1.8 million to the project partnership team in order to study a regional transit system. The grant funds are being used to conduct this alternatives analysis along the I-70 and Rock Island commuter corridors as well as a recently completed study that identified a preferred route and use of streetcars for a starter line in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
The partnership team includes Jackson County, Missouri, the City of Kansas City, Missouri, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) and Mid-America Regional Council (MARC). The partners hired a consultant team led by Parsons Brinckerhoff. Also on the team are Olsson Associates, TranSystems, Taliaferro & Browne, KOA and Shockey Consulting Services.
Future open houses will be held in other Jackson County communities in November 2011, January 2012 and March 2012. Dates, times and locations for those events will be announced as soon as they are available.
For materials and updates on the commuter corridors Alternatives Analysis as well as other regional studies, visit MARC’s SmartMoves website at:
Please notify MARC at (816) 474-4240 at least 48 hours in advance if you require special accommodations to attend this meeting (i.e., qualified interpreter, large print, reader, hearing assistance).
Mr. Carson worked for NAACP progressive values for decades, in many cases, long before the rest of the country had adopted these values. He was a lifetime member of the NAACP. He was a groundbreaker in the community. He was the first African American probation officer in Kansas City and one of the early leaders of Freedom Inc.
Mr. Carson worked hard for the NAACP and the community at many levels, from community organizing to regional organizing, from local issues to national issues.
He will be missed.
Bill addressing the 2000 Missouri State Democratic Convention
Visitation will be at 9:00am, Friday Sept. 9th at the Second Baptist Church located at 39th Street and Monroe on the North West corner. The funeral will follow at 11:00am and burial will be at Leavenworth Kansas on Monday.
The video was taken from a longer video covering a fundraiser in Feb. of 2008. The posted version had to be changed, as ever a gentleman, Bill insisted I also identify his friend Opal Cushon in the clip.
Missouri currently has a tax credit for seniors and the 100% disabled who have an income that falls below a certain level. The range is below $27,500 for a single renter t0 $34,000 for a married homeowner. The maximum tax credit is $750 for a renter and $1,100 for a homeowner. If the owner of the rental property does not pay property tax, the renter does not qualify, regardless of income level or disability status.
The Missouri Legislature may cut this tax credit next week in a special session as part of a economic stimulus bill. This bill potentially impacts both Raytown and the larger Raytown School District because of the higher proportion of seniors in the area. You can click here to read a document that shows how many people in this area benefit from the Circuit Breaker law, broken down by State Legislative Districts. Raytown’s districts are 42, 43, 48 and 49. While Raytown only has portions of these districts, expanding the area to include the Raytown School District gives us the majority of the voters in the combined total.
Click HERE for a KMOV (channel 4 in St. Louis) story on this issue.
The proposed stimulus package has many elements, but the only portion that seems to have a definite dollar amount and recipient is a plan to build a China trade hub in St. Louis with a price tag of $360 million dollars. The Missouri Budget Project has a online paper describing this project that can be accessed by clicking HERE. The article does not seem to support the plan.
Last year, seniors lost The Homestead Preservation Credit benefit that protected them from property tax increases of over 2.5% in a non-reassessment year or 5.0% in a reassessment year. The legislature simply stopped funding the program. There was little press coverage of the termination of this benefit for seniors. Readers can do a Google search of NEWS on “homestead preservation act Missouri” or any variation of that and see how many results you get and how many mention the program’s termination. The press coverage of the new proposed economic stimulus bill has focused primarily on where the money would go, not where the money to pay for it is coming from. This easily could become another benefit that seniors and individuals with disabilities may lose before they know anything about it.
I urge readers to contact their State Representatives and tell them if they are for or against this change. If any reader has found information that seems more positive about the proposed stimulus package, I will be glad to add a link to that information. Comments are encouraged, as long as they are polite and not personal attacks.
Click Here for the synopsis of the proposed legislation.
Click Here for the complete document (356 pages of legalese).
Click Here for an article in the Columbia Missourian.
Click Here for an article in the St. Louis Business Journal that seems to support this “Missouri Compromise”
Click Here for the Google search on Missouri Compromise. The above link seems to trap you into a request for a paid subscription.
For 64133 there were 511 claims filed for redemptions of $260,969. There were 718 tax credit claims filed for a total credit redemptions of $496,695. That means 1229 low income Raytown Seniors in the top half of the city benefit from the Circuit Breaker program.
RaytownOnline apologizes to Mr. Prejean. His incident was at the same time and also involved a motorcycle, but it occured at 100th Terrace and Blue Ridge Blvd. He was not the individual who crashed, fled and was arrested on 87th Street in Raytown on Aug. 4th.
A computer glitch resulted in all emails from 5/17/2011 to 8/13/2011 dissapearing. A word of advice, keep the size of your email inbox down. Get rid of junk, and transfer old messages to an archive folder.
Many of the emails have been recovered using repair software. It is unclear what percent of the lost emails were recovered, but it was at least a large majority and I can recommend SysTools Outlook Express Restore. If you sent RaytownOnline a message in this time frame, you may want to resend that message.
This problem resulted in less content than normal getting posted on RaytownOnline.
Our Lady of Lourdes School will not reopen for the 2011-12 school year. Reverend Steven C. Rogers sent a message citing low enrollment (only 57 students have pre-registered) as the cause.
There will be an informational meeting at 7pm on Wednesday. August 10th in the Parish Hall. Principals from neighboring Catholic Schools will be there to facilitate students transferring to another Catholic School.
————————————————————————————————————————
Statement of Daniel Peters, EdD, Superintendent of Schools
Catholic Diocese of Kansas City ~ St. Joseph
concerning
Our Lady of Lourdes School, in Raytown, Missouri
(Kansas City, MO / August 9, 2011)For 59 years, Our Lady of Lourdes Parish has offered an excellent education to generations of young people in Raytown, Missouri. The school was established to serve families who desired superior academics, spiritual formation, and social growth for their children. As many school alumni can attest, the school achieved its mission, and the fruits are evident in successful lives.
Ten years ago, 199 students attended Our Lady of Lourdes School. As of August 8, however, only 57 students were pre-registered for this school year. In recent days, a parish and diocesan team met to consider alternatives. After considering what was best for the students, Bishop Robert Finn has accepted our recommendation not to reopen the school for the 2011-12 school year. This decision was made mindful of the dedication and selfless service of our school faculty and staff. I am asking other Catholic school administrators to give first priority for staffing any available positions to the teachers and staff of Our Lady of Lourdes School.
Without a doubt, Our Lady of Lourdes School offered each student a very personalized learning experience with superior academics. Our mission to educate the whole child also challenges us to offer co-curricular, and age-appropriate athletic and extra-curricular activities. Current enrollment prevents the full experience that each student deserves.
Area Catholic schools already are assisting families through this time of transition.
Route 350 to Close July 22-24 Near Raytown for Bridge Demolition
RAYTOWN, Mo. – Route 350 will close one weekend for bridge demolition between 63rd Street and Gregory Boulevard (71st Street) beginning late Friday, July 22, and re-open by early Monday, July 25, weather permitting.
The weekend closure, starting at 10 p.m. Friday, July 22, will mark the start of two bridge projects over Route 350 near Raytown. Route 350 will re-open by 5 a.m. Monday, July 25, but lanes may be narrowed at times to accommodate bridge work.
The Blue Ridge Cutoff bridge, built in 1936, will be redecked and rehabilitated. The 67th Street bridge, built in 1925, will be replaced. Both bridges are expected to re-open in September. Traffic will detour to Gregory Boulevard, I-435 and 63rd Street during the weekend closure of Route 350. Once the 67th Street bridge is removed, periodic lane closures on Route 350 will be in place for debris removal at Blue Ridge Cutoff bridge and for construction of the new 67th Street bridge.
Motorists traveling either Blue Ridge Cutoff or 67th Street will be directed to other local routes for several weeks until the structures re-open.The two bridges are among 10 in Jackson County that are being repaired or replaced this year as part of the Safe & Sound Bridge Improvement Program.
MoDOT also is replacing bridges, decks or making other structural improvements to bridges in Independence, south Kansas City, Lake Lotawana and Greenwood in Jackson County this year. Some of these bridges have been or will be closed to through traffic for up to 60 days sometime this year to allow the contractor to complete work quickly. The closures detour traffic to nearby routes, affecting school bus, emergency service and postal routes.
These bridges are among more than 800 statewide that are being repaired, redecked or replaced through MoDOT’s Safe & Sound Bridge Improvement Program. Most of Missouri’s worst bridges will be fixed through this accelerated program, including more than 145 in the eight-county Kansas City District. This year alone, MoDOT will fix more than 70 bridges and complete all scheduled Safe & Sound bridges by the end of 2012.
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