Gardner has a plan for those late on electric bills; OP market returns to Pavilion
Gardner is doing something new this winter with customers who don’t pay their electric bills: shutting off their power for 15 minutes every hour.
Utility officials can impose the intermittent shutoffs through new “smart electric meters,” which should be fully deployed by mid-March throughout the city. The intermittent shutoffs were to begin when testing was complete, perhaps as early as mid-February.
“The feature allows the city to give utility customers the ability to maintain a livable inside temperature while encouraging them to pay their past-due balance or make payment arrangements,” Amy Foster, business services manager, said by email.
“It allows the city to continue its collection practices through the winter months and limit the past-due balance of delinquent accounts.”
The program may be unique to the Kansas City area. Foster said intermittent shutoffs are a relatively new feature for smart meters, and she knows of no other place locally where rolling shutoffs are employed.
In the past, Gardner’s only option was to disconnect power altogether for delinquent customers, but that didn’t happen during cold spells.
Now, the intermittent shutoffs will occur during the winter when the temperature is expected to dip below 32 degrees over the following 48 hours. “Otherwise, it would be a total shutoff,” Foster said.
However, customers can avoid either penalty by working with the city to pay off past-due bills. They can make those arrangements by contacting the utility billing division at 913-856-7535 or by visiting City Hall, 120 E. Main St.
OP Farmers’ Market returns to pavilion
Two years after the coronavirus forced the Overland Park Farmers’ Market to move, the popular event will return this year to the pavilion at 7950 Marty St. in the city’s downtown.
And the city says it will work with the Downtown Overland Park Partnership to bring outdoor entertainment back to the Clocktower Plaza during some market events.
However, to keep shoppers and vendors safer from the virus, the layout will expand beyond the pavilion onto Marty Street and into nearby parking lots. Parts of Marty will be closed during market hours.
“The expanded pavilion site allows vendors to provide more space between stalls, provides additional parking adjacent to the market site, including parking specifically for Farmers’ Market vendors, and adds nearby restrooms,” the city said in a news release.
Opening day is Saturday, April 16. The Wednesday markets will begin June 1.
During much of the 2020 season and in 2021, the market operated outside the nearby Matt Ross Community Center.
Mission hopes to ‘Recycle Right’ by checking bins
The city of Mission has joined a Johnson County program that aims to educate residents about the dos and don’ts of recycling.
Westwood previously participated in the “Recycle Right” campaign, in which county specialists walk through neighborhoods, peek into recycling bins and leave written material outlining which items, if any, should not have been recycled.
“Many people want to recycle but can be confused about what is accepted,” Brandon Hearn, environmental health scientist with Johnson County, said in a news release. “Our goal is to provide direct feedback on what shouldn’t be in recycle bins, provide them recycling options for things like glass that could be recycled elsewhere and give them a resource to turn to if they have other questions.”
The Johnson County Department of Health and Environment set Feb. 7 to make an initial sweep in Mission neighborhoods with Monday pickups.
The county said that changing market conditions have made it more important to avoid contaminating recycling loads with items that shouldn’t be there.
In Westwood, the most frequent problems included plastic bags, plastic product wrap or shrink wrap, bagged recyclables, paper towels and other non-recyclable paper. Bagged recyclables, which can get stuck in recycling equipment, end up in the landfill.
Two happy outcomes
Many days pass routinely for public service employees, but the heartwarming punctuation marks are most remembered. Two recent examples from Johnson County:
▪ During the last weekend of January, Shawnee firefighters rescued a dog named Bailey after the animal fell into icy waters near Johnson Drive and Pflumm Road. “The family later brought Bailey to the fire station so she could properly thank her rescuers,” the city said in a tweet.
▪ On Feb. 4, Lenexa police announced that officers delivered a baby in the passenger seat of a car around midnight the previous evening. The couple was on the way to the hospital when the child arrived.
Police said it was the second such delivery in five months. On Labor Day, ironically enough, an officer delivered his own son in the back seat of the car, just after arriving at the hospital. The baby came before he and his wife could get inside.
Lenexa now clearing snow from trails
Lenexa crews are doing something new this winter: clearing snow from recreational trails.
“Over the years, many residents have requested that the City of Lenexa remove snow from multi-purpose trails and trails within parks,” the city said in a news release. “Lenexa ordered the equipment needed to clear its trails in mid-2021, and it arrived in early 2022.”
The two John Deere Gators, costing $21,000 apiece, are also being used to clear school crossings that can become blocked by snow displaced by street plows.
Trails will be cleared during normal working hours on weekdays — after the snowfall has ended and all streets and public buildings are cleared. That’s when staff will be available for the job.
The trails may not be cleared after every storm, however. If the forecast indicates that the snow will melt on its own within 48 hours of a storm, it likely will not be removed. “Trails will not be treated with ice melt, so pedestrians should keep an eye out for areas of ice and refreezing in shady locations or areas with poor drainage,” the release said.
New exhibit explores redlining
A new exhibit in Overland Park explores how Johnson County and the rest of the Kansas City area were shaped by a pernicious practice called redlining that caused large-scale disinvestment in the urban core.
“Redlined: Cities, Suburbs and Segregation” will be open through Jan. 7, 2023, at the Johnson County Museum, inside the county’s Arts and Heritage Center at 8788 Metcalf Ave.
“Redlining was integral to the build-up of the nation’s suburban communities to the detriment of urban neighborhoods and communities of color,” the Johnson County Park and Recreation District said in a news release.
Under the practice, lending institutions and the federal government funded and supported home purchases for some people and neighborhoods, but not others. Although civil rights legislation outlawed redlining in the 1960s, the release said, “the legacies of the system continue to have their impact today.”
The exhibit features large-scale visualizations of redlining, restrictive covenants by neighborhood and voices from redlined urban communities. An interactive display allows visitors to compare present-day mapping data to redlining boundaries created in the 20th century.
A companion exhibit features works from the African American Artists Collective of Kansas City. Visit jcprd.com/Redlined to learn about related programming at the museum and more than a dozen other sites in the Kansas City area.
Feline fellowship at the library
Think you want a cat? Go to Olathe’s Indian Creek Library.
From 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on “Caturday,” Feb. 19, you can play with adoptable felines from the city animal shelter and decide if guardianship is in your future. The event also includes cat crafts and the showing of the movie “Puss in Boots” at 10 a.m. and “Cats” at noon.
The library is at 16100 W 135th St.
New date for Grand Marquis concert
A free performance by the brass/vocal band Grand Marquis, originally scheduled for January, will now take place at 7 p.m. Feb. 18 at Olathe’s Indian Creek Library, 16100 W. 135th St. The Kansas City-based group is known for American-style music from Kansas City blues to Memphis soul.
This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Gardner has a plan for those late on electric bills; OP market returns to Pavilion."