City may allow side-by-sides for city streets
Hays Daily News
Side-by-side alternative vehicles may show up before long on the city streets of Hays, if enthusiasts of the small, nimble non-automobiles get their wish.
Used primarily for sport or agriculture, the smaller than standard, four-wheel vehicles are popular with farmers and with those who like to play on sand dunes and off-road.
At Thursday’s regular work session of the city commission, a group of residents asked the commissioners to approve an ordinance allowing them on the streets of Hays.
The vehicles, some of which can go upwards of 65 miles an hour, already are legal on the highways of Kansas, as well as in the towns of Ellis, Victoria, Ness City, Garden City, Dodge City and other cities in western Kansas.
Fewer visitors meant less demand for services, and the local leisure and hospitality businesses cut jobs by 41%, according to the Explore Fairbanks report.
4:20
KINSLEY, Kansas In the late 1980s, drought left the wells that supply water to the city of Hays and Russell in western Kansas precariously low. The near-catastrophe sent city leaders on the hunt for more water.
“We were just trying to survive from one year to the next,” former Hays mayor and city councilman Eber Phelps said.
The cities researched their options, including looking into purchasing water from several nearby reservoirs.
It looked like foresight. The two cities had locked in water rights that would allow them to grow in a relatively parched part of the world. It may yet prove to be just that if years of fighting with the farming neighbors of the R9 end in a win.
Hays Daily News
Opponents of Hays and Russell developing their 7,000-acre R9 Ranch as a municipal water source are guilty of a double standard, according to Hays city manager Toby Dougherty.
Speaking to the Hays City Commission at its regular work session last Thursday evening, Dougherty said attacks by Big Bend Groundwater Management District No. 5 and WaterPACK, a nonprofit agriculture irrigation lobby, show the state’s water rights rules aren’t being applied fairly.
The $80-million R9 project has been in the works for more than 25 years, with Hays and Russell navigating the state’s complicated legal and regulatory process to develop the groundwater source. The project will pipe water 67 miles from the R9 Ranch in Edwards County to Ellis and Russell counties.