Emily Wolf

The plastic netting covering Parkville’s wetlands project will be gone by spring after city officials approved a $29,140 donation to remove the potentially hazardous material on the contractor’s dime.  The netting is the most visible of several problems with the wetland restoration project in Platte Landing Park that the city of Parkville and U.S. Army […]

As COVID-19 infections continued to rise in Kansas City, Missouri, in January, the KC Municipal Court took a step back and returned to virtual operations for a few days. The statistics behind the decision were grim: About 20% of all court workers were infected or isolating due to close contact with an infected person. On […]

The athletic fields in Parkville’s Platte Landing Park have seen better days. Faded lines and dry grass mark the spaces meant to be used as venues for baseball, soccer and other sports for youths and their families.  A lack of upkeep and their small size has resulted in the fields attracting few visitors. Instead of […]

Every year, the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, appoints hundreds of people to the city’s dozens of boards and commissions, which give ordinary citizens a voice in everything from city planning to liquor control. Those appointments keep Alphia Curry constantly busy. As the city’s boards and commissions manager, she’s responsible for compiling information on dozens […]

A wide expanse of plastic netting sits partially buried by dirt and vegetation in Parkville’s Platte Landing Park. Intended as the base of an ongoing wetlands restoration project, the netting has instead become an expensive — and dangerous — nuisance. The City of Parkville in 2017 signed an agreement to participate in a restoration project […]

With winter in Kansas City, Missouri, comes snow. And with snow comes the full force of the KC snowplow crew. Responsible for clearing hundreds of routes each day, drivers have for years been forced to rely on old-fashioned maps to guide them.  “I rode with a driver last season and he literally had a paper […]

In April, ex-KCK firefighter Jyan Harris won a racial discrimination lawsuit in federal court against his old employer, the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas. A federal jury awarded him $2.4 million in damages, money that Harris needs to support his family. Eight months later, Harris hasn’t seen a cent. “In some […]

Are all of Kansas City’s board and commission members filling out required conflict of interest forms? Do those forms include the necessary questions to determine whether a conflict exists? The Kansas City, Missouri, auditor’s office is now examining those questions in a new audit that’s a follow-up to a 2019 inquiry that found multiple VisitKC […]