Wichita East High School principal Ken Thiessen said that parents weren’t notified about a student being arrested Tuesday for having a gun in his school locker because doing so would have been more disruptive than the incident, which was handled quickly and quietly by police. But should that be the criteria for whether to keep parents informed? If the incident is serious, such as a student bringing a gun and ammunition to school, parents should be told, regardless of how much disruption the incident caused.
Kansas Gas Service’s latest plan to raise rates $32.7 million is raising the ire of many ratepayers. Residential customers are irked at the idea of paying about 9.1 percent more as large commercial users pay an average of 8.2 percent less and some unnamed users pay 20 percent less. Small businesses would pay 2.5 percent more. KGS is also seeking a 10.75 percent rate of return for its investors, which strikes many people as excessive in this down economy.
It’s good that the city is taking steps to curb the illegal placement of signs on public property, utility poles or in the right of way between a city sidewalk and the street. Workers in the Office of Central Inspection remove as many of the signs as they can, but they can’t keep up – especially during a campaign season. The City Council voted Tuesday to allow trained volunteers to help remove illegal signs. It also voted to authorize fines starting at $50 and rising to as much as $1,000 per sign for repeat violations. That may be appropriate in some cases, but the city needs to not go overboard issuing fines.
