De Soto

Kansas City, Missouri, had several ballot questions to vote on — including a sales tax that could determine the future of the public bus system. Cities across Johnson and Wyandotte county also chose winners in local council, mayor, school board and other consequential races.

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 7! While Kansas City, Missouri, has no candidates on the ballot, voters will have several important questions to answer. In Johnson and Wyandotte counties, voters will have all kinds of local council, mayor, school board and other races to decide.

Diversity initiatives, book bans and teaching about race divided races for some Johnson County school boards down ideological lines.

City officials say the small city of De Soto, Kansas, is preparing for the influx of people and infrastructure that will arrive with the construction of Panasonic's battery plant.

Last week, Panasonic announced that De Soto, Kansas, has been chosen as the site of the company's new $4 billion electric vehicle battery plant.

Locals say De Soto needs to improve its infrastructure before thousands of people potentially move to the town. The Panasonic battery plant slated for development on the site of an old toxic ammunition plant gives them pause.

Panasonic announced on Wednesday it has chosen De Soto, Kansas, as the site of a massive new factory. The plant will be the largest vehicle battery production facility in the world and will cost $4 billion to construct.

The KC Food Hub is seeing an uptick in schools buying from them after districts faced supply chain disruptions during the pandemic.

Soon after the start of the new semester, several school districts in Johnson County have re-instituted mask mandates after seeing high rates of COVID-19 transmission among students.

Johnson County school districts began reporting their first COVID-19 data for the 2021-22 school year this week. All four northern Johnson County districts are each reporting dozens of students either with confirmed positive cases or in quarantine.

The CDC is expected to release new guidelines for reopening schools on Friday, but vaccines for teachers won’t be a requirement.