The Iola City Council and school board will have some new faces in January, as voters made their choices Tuesday and ousted two incumbent Council members. Meanwhile, a race for Humboldt mayor is too close…

​​Service has always been important to Sofie Alexander. She credits her parents for setting a good example growing up in Kansas City. Later, when she attended DePaul University in Chicago, service learning was emphasized.  She…

John Wilson didn’t plan to be a teacher.  He grew up in Allen County and went to work with his brother after high school. “Then I just had this itch. I wanted to be a…

Robin Griffin-Lohman has always been fascinated by the power of words, and even more so when she read George Orwell’s “1984” in high school at Pomona. “I realized how language can be used to manipulate…

Allen Countians will head to the polls Tuesday to cast their votes in city and school board elections. Three contested Iola City Council races will be decided. Ron Ballard, who represents Ward 2, is being…

Gene Myrick understands he hasn’t made everyone happy in his four years on the Iola City Council. “If I was making everybody happy, I wasn’t doing my job,” Myrick said. He hopes he’s satisfied enough…

A few words of wisdom from former Iola Mayor John McRae struck a chord with Nich Lohman. McRae was speaking about the often thankless job of serving as an elected city official. “He figured 95%…

Asking hard questions, and giving hard answers, makes an effective city council member, Ron Ballard says. For example, a few years back Iola’s leaders were considering adding a solar plant on the edge of town,…

Should Joel Wicoff be re-elected to the Iola City Council, many of the issues facing the city, such as  balancing budgets, setting utility costs and dealing with changes in the ambulance program, may look quite…

BELLE PLAINE, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ Republican secretary of state did not violate the state’s open records law by ordering the removal of an election database function that generates a statewide report showing which provisional…