BREAKING NEWS
UPDATED AFTER PRINT DEADLINE
In an open records case brought by the newspaper, a state judge ruled Friday that the City of Marion acted in “bad faith,” “failed in its duties,” and attempted to shirk responsibilities in ways that would have rendered Kansas Open Records Act “useless.”
District Judge Ben Sexton granted the
Peabody police chief Philip Crom abruptly resigned at a city council meeting Monday night.
“The last couple of weeks have been kind of tough for me stress-wise,” Crom said. “My doctor has told me it’s time to hang up the chief’s spot and go back to something a little less stressful.
A 13-year-old Hillsboro boy spent about an hour Thursday locked inside a Pizza Hut bathroom until police and firefighters could free him.
The lock mechanism on the heavy metal door failed, Fire Chief Ben Steketee said, and the boy was unable to open it.
Robert Spohn isn’t your typical rapper, as he will be the first to admit.
The Centre High School senior is soft-spoken and humble. He doesn’t smoke or drink. He is a far cry from the braggadocio, party-loving emcees who tend to top the hip-hop charts.
Today’s beauty is tomorrow’s ecological beast
By FINN HARTNETT
Staff writer
Callery pear trees, also known as Bradford pear after a popular cultivar, are in full bloom around the county.
Rejecting dismissal motions by the city and county, a federal judge ruled Friday that the
“As alleged here,” Judge Daniel D. Crabtree wrote, “defendants manufactured probable cause to procure search warrants, used those search warrants to raid the newspaper’s place of operations, and plainly violated the terms of the search warrant to seize the newspaper’s every computer, effectively shutting it down.”
A year and a half after former Marion County deputy and Burns Police Chief Joel Justice Womochil, 39, was arrested on child pornography charges, he was sentenced Thursday to 60 years in federal prison at Petersburg, Virginia.
He was ordered to serve two consecutive 30-year sentences for conspiracy to commit sexual exploitation of a child. He pleaded guilty to the charges Oct. 9 in return for dismissal of other charges.
An independent audit Tuesday concluded that Hillsboro ended 2024 with half as much money as hoped in its general fund.
The audit by the Adams Brown CPA firm did not find any problems, city administrator Matt Stiles said, but rather “primarily reflects non-recurring capital projects and expenditures.”
A Cooperative Grain and Supply employee who collapsed and stopped breathing at work Monday spent nearly three hours being worked on by paramedics and hospital staff before he was taken to Kansas Heart Hospital.
Ambulance crews from both Hillsboro and Marion responded to the crop production facility at 10:52 a.m. and worked on Lowell Foth, giving him cardiopulmonary resuscitation and defibrillating him twice before he was taken to Hillsboro Community Hospital by Hillsboro ambulance.
Arrested twice last week, a 27-year-old Marion man faces multiple charges of violence including rape and kidnaping.
A complaint filed March 21 in the first of three criminal cases against Paul A. Huddleston says that on Feb. 7 he drove recklessly, refused to stop for police and drove under the influence of alcohol or drugs, without a valid license, and with improper stop or turn lamps and defective stop or tag lamps.
Proposed amendments to the county’s wind farm overlay regulations will be discussed at a public hearing May 22.
Commissioner Clarke Dirks gave the amendments to commissioners and planning director Sharon Omstead March 24.
County planning commission members provided answers Thursday to questions county commissioners asked them last fall to investigate.
The questions came in response to reports that an expanded wind farm might be located in Menno, Liberty, East Branch, and West Branch townships.
Marion County’s new health department building, featuring a laboratory, a pharmacy, a reception room with large portraits of county residents, a drive-thru garage, and a plethora of storage rooms, officially opened Monday.
Roughly 40 attended a ribbon-cutting for the $1.6 million building at Main and Thorp Sts. in Marion.
“You campaign in poetry but govern in prose.” Mario Cuomo’s pontification on the pretense of politics was both an indictment of promises not delivered and an explanation why details often derail them.
These days, we hardly have to worry about whether national politicians are letting details derail promises. Pesky things like the Constitution and decades of legislation don’t seem to be stopping the MAGA freight train.
ANOTHER DAY IN THE COUNTRY:
Make yourself useful
Speaking to him Thursday, Bob Brookens was not wearing a dress shirt, tie, and slacks, the familiar garb he donned as a local attorney for 46 years.
Having retired last Halloween, Brookens dresses a bit more informally these days.
Hutchinson Community College nursing student Kelli Christ, daughter of Andrew Christ and Nanci Heath of Goessel, has been named a 2025 New Century Workforce Scholar and will receive a $1,500 scholarship.
MEMORIES:
15,
30,
45,
60,
75,
110,
145 years ago
Marion won’t field a softball team this season because of a lack of players, but it will compete in four other sports, including a joint swimming team with members from Marion, Centre, Hillsboro, and Peabody-Burns.
Track
Hillsboro hopes to rely on experience to advance in five sports this spring.
Track
Centre will field its own track team but will join with two other schools for other spring sports — Herington for baseball and Marion for swimming and golf.
Despite practicing with Marion, Centre has its own golf coach and will be scored separately.
Returning veterans provide high hopes for Goessel in both golf and track this season.
Golf
Peabody-Burns will field its own track team and join with other county teams for two other sports this season — Hillsboro for baseball and Marion for swimming.
Track