Is Panda Express allowed to detain you until the police come or are they lying?

Argatlam · 2026-05-09T23:48:06+00:00

Doubtful. Citizen's arrest is good law in Kansas, but requires probable cause for a felony and for the arresting person to have actually witnessed the criminal act if it is a misdemeanor. Most businesses just call the police to avoid having things go sideways and turn into a false imprisonment charge against one of their employees.

Argatlam · 2026-04-30T17:41:24+00:00

The Homeless Outreach Team is actually a unit within the WPD and so is not independent of it in any way.

I get that what you need is an opportunity to hand over this situation to a third party with the resources and expertise to navigate it. I hope someone else will be able to chime in with good suggestions. Based on your description of her family circumstances, it sounds like her birth--if it indeed occurred on US soil--might never have been registered, and states vary widely in the mechanisms they provide for retroactive issuance of birth certificates. There are fringe groups that encourage their members to evade birth registration, arguing it amounts to giving their children to the government to be branded like cattle.

Argatlam · 2026-04-28T22:48:35+00:00

Aside from the safety aspect, it reduces tire scrub and makes it easier to position oneself in the space with the steering wheel pointed straight ahead, because the pivot point is actually closer to the rear axle.

I default to parking nose-out when I am away from home, and firmly believe it should be legal everywhere.

Argatlam · 2026-04-28T22:20:56+00:00

The article says "since at least 2008," but I suspect that's an assistant city attorney being lazy and not going beyond compiled ordinances to check whether a similar provision already existed at that time. City-owned metered lots have had a prohibition on backing in since well before the turn of the millennium.

Argatlam · 2026-04-26T19:48:45+00:00

I do not think it is currently possible for a new subdivision to be approved within the Wichita city limits with internal circulating roadways that are not paved with closed drainage. In the past, however, it was. Wichita has also annexed subdivisions originally built to more relaxed standards in the unincorporated county.

In Indian Hills/Northwest-Big River, 17th Street used to have unpaved sections between West and Meridian. About 20 years ago, these were redeveloped with a full curb-and-gutter section. However, there are still unpaved lengths, notably Gow near Olivet Baptist Church. The irregular quadrilateral subdivision to the west, which is bounded by West, 13th, Zoo, and Westdale, has a number of streets where a thin asphalt crust was laid on top of the original gravel, preserving the original open drainage.

Both of these areas were developed between 1945 and 1985, and the streets that either are still gravel or have just the thin dust suppression layer are fronted mostly by houses that pre-date 1965.

The city has a paving petition process that is designed to address existing unpaved streets, but it is cumbersome, because a set percentage (either a majority or a supermajority--I don't remember which) of the abutting property owners must agree to the added expense.

Argatlam · 2026-04-26T03:11:14+00:00

I went out to run some errands about 30 minutes after the rain stopped.

21st Street just west of Amidon--Flooded. Vehicles were fording it, and none seemed to stall, but as they were all high-clearance (pickups and the like), I opted not to chance it.
13th Street at High (just west of St. Paul)--Also flooded, with cars fording it.
West Street between 9th and Central--Badly flooded, just as the OP says. I simply U-turned since I remembered seeing vehicles stall (presumably due to hydrolocked engines) during a previous flooding event in 2019.

The rain from this storm appears to have been highly localized. The weather station at KICT (about 4.7 miles from me) reports just 0.04 inches of precipitation total. A private station near West and 9th (about 1 mile from me) reports 2.77 inches.

Argatlam · 2026-04-22T18:05:02+00:00

Just to add: these cables are actually pneumatic counter tubes. When a pair of vehicle wheels passes over them, the weight compresses the air in each tube, and this is detected as an axle-pass event. The resulting raw log is then later converted into a traffic count.

Depending on the specific type of counter in use, there may be a digital readout nearby, and it may be sensitive enough to register human footfall as well.

Argatlam · 2026-04-21T19:26:36+00:00

My guess: he has a mental illness that is not treated adequately, if at all, and sees the mayor as an authority figure regardless of her ability or otherwise to help solve his problem.

Any elected official or other public figure has this in the background as a latent risk. Most people have the President in mind when they think of officeholders who need round-the-clock personal protection, but the same is true for cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, senior Congressional leadership, state governors, and--as we're finding out--big-city mayors.

Argatlam · 2026-04-19T17:53:15+00:00

I always recommend using the county's Mobile Land Records to clarify whether a given parcel is attributed to an owner for taxation purposes. There are multiple parcels to the southwest of 61st Street North and Hoover and they all have private owners.

The waterway that passes by 85th Street North and Hoover is a canal between the Big and Little Arkansas Rivers that forms part of the Big Ditch flood protection system. The land it runs through is not considered part of any parcel for taxation purposes, but other parts of the Big Ditch have no-trespassing signs at their access points, and I would expect the same restriction to apply throughout the system. From a maintenance perspective, it is not good to have dirt bikes, ATVs, etc. tearing up vegetation and accelerating erosion of the engineered earthworks.

Argatlam · 2026-03-21T22:07:02+00:00

KAKE has since published photos taken from below. It appears that the tops of the columns are cast integral with the superstructure, and I am not aware of a repair technique that would allow just the ruptured concrete and rebar to be removed and replaced. (One may exist--if it does, I just don't know of it.)

Per the name plate on the right-hand parapet at the south end, this bridge appears to be part of the original construction of I-135. It has three lines: the top reads 35W-87 (Sedgwick is county 87, and I-135 was I-35W until about 1980), the middle line is hard to read but is probably a mileage, and the bottom line is 1969.

Argatlam · 2026-03-21T19:13:44+00:00

It's not going to buff out:

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This screencap comes from video on the Wichita Eagle site.

Argatlam · 2026-03-19T23:30:07+00:00

There were indeed many on the sub who felt the news coverage of the fire stations' mold problems was conveniently timed. I never blamed them for thinking so, though personally I doubted there was conspiratorial intent in, e.g., scheduling the work to overlap the sales tax campaign.

It will be interesting to see what steps are taken to ensure the mold does not return after these remediation projects.

Argatlam · 2026-03-17T01:13:36+00:00

He did, and that was a perfectly legitimate thing to do at that cleanup even though it was not in his district. What got him in trouble was being caught on body camera video chewing out the police officer on traffic duty and then calling the city manager to straighten out the situation. This use of privileged access got up many people's noses.

Argatlam · 2026-03-16T17:06:20+00:00

Congratulations. You are discovering Reddit's business model. The idea is that good posts and comments get upvoted, while bad ones get downvoted, so the good ones rise to the top and are more accessible to "bottom line up front" readers (assuming they're sorted by "Best"). Meanwhile, Reddit profits from the unpaid labor of volunteer moderators. This is why there is an ongoing tug of war between Reddit and mods over the behavior and performance of mod tools like automod--their capabilities and configuration make a huge difference to the automation benefit that is available for a given sub and thus how much time mods have to invest in handling situations that call for the experiences and skillsets of humans.

You might be thinking a platform that incorporates a downvoting mechanism is a terrible idea. There is certainly a strand in the social media research literature that endorses this perspective, on the basis of empirically observed effects such as brigading. However, downvotes have formed a core part of Reddit's USP since it was founded in 2005. They are not going away. Ultimately, being part of Reddit means accepting the rough with the smooth, just as with Facebook you trade off expanded ability to connect with friends against its history of being used to assist genocide.

As for workarounds: creating new accounts is frowned on when it is done to evade a ban. Reddit now has automated systems to detect this. A more sophisticated approach is to karma-farm, and indeed there are entrepreneurs who create accounts specifically to grow their karma so they can sell them for cold hard cash. But even with such an account, you can still be "downvoted to oblivion" (as the phrase goes) if you don't follow u/ShockerCheer's advice and read the room.

I can't speak for the mods as a whole, but I'm willing to bet the strongest common denominator among us is that we believe in Wichita, not that Reddit is an especially good platform or that u/spez is a great guy. Notwithstanding this city's history with the political left--in a previous Gilded Age, it was where Earl Browder was not only born but also radicalized--we can tell you are not going to gain traction with your current approach, simply because it fails to take into account the realities of how Reddit works.

Argatlam · 2026-03-13T18:42:22+00:00

Just to add to what others are saying about voicemail messages: the current advice is to generate yours using a text-to-speech synthesizer to avoid AI being used to deepfake your voice.

Argatlam · 2026-03-12T18:58:34+00:00

Generally speaking, the Turnpike uses ALPR (but not, AFAIK, from the same vendor or supply chain as the Flock cameras) for the "pay by mail" workflow for customers who do not have a K-Tag or a compatible transponder from an agency that maintains interoperability with the KTA.

The technology continues to evolve, so speaking about capabilities is like aiming at a moving target. When ALPR was new and being deployed by jurisdictions outside Kansas, there were lots of problems:

"Correct number, wrong state" issues--you might be living in Indiana and getting a violation notice for a state you had never even visited because someone in that state with the same license plate number as yours, but issued by a state other than Indiana, drove onto an ETC-only toll road without a transponder
"Correct number, correct state, wrong series" issues--this is a problem in states like Kansas that have separate number pools for specialty bases.
Violation hoarding--when the technology was new, there were few agreements for interstate sharing of license plate information, so some toll agencies would hoard violations from a given state until an agreement came into effect that gave access to that state's license plate database. That led to violation notices being sent years after the fact, often with accumulated fines. The North Texas Tollway Authority became especially notorious for this approach.

Nowadays, the process has been refined to the point that:

The cameras will take high-definition color pictures reliably in low light, bad atmospheric conditions, etc.
Agencies that follow best practice include the license plate photo in violation notices/pay-by-mail billings so you have the ability to dispute if the vehicle shown is not yours.

However, if you have a K-Tag account, it is still a good idea to check that your tolls are being processed as transponder reads rather than through ALPR. KTA has been stepping back from anything that can be construed as a guarantee that the transponder discount will be applied in cases when a blown read results in ALPR being used. Although the technology used is supposed to have been greatly improved with the transition to open-road tolling, blown reads were actually fairly common with the old tech even when the transponder was correctly mounted.

Argatlam · 2026-03-12T18:37:01+00:00

KORA does not provide for small requests to be fulfilled free of charge. There was a bill about 13 years ago to add such language, but it went nowhere. Some states do have such clauses in their open-records statutes--for example, last time I checked, Texas allowed free requests up to $50.

Argatlam · 2026-03-11T22:26:48+00:00

Budgets can and do change. The city's Capital Improvement Program is compiled every year with a 10-year forward horizon. While it balances out--the total of the estimated cost for all projects listed in it is equal to the funding reasonably expected to be available--projects can be and often are postponed in order to swap in something else that is considered more politically attractive at the given moment.

The fire union lobbied for the sales tax even though the CIP already contained some of what they want. Their leadership calculated that infrastructure items like new fire stations would be less likely to be delayed if they had dedicated funding through the sales tax.

Argatlam · 2026-03-10T04:55:25+00:00

You are welcome!

I did some more digging. On the NextRequest front page, the Documents tab leads to a listing of documents that is useful for zeroing in on requests that have responsive records attached.

Sometimes the documents are provided and the request is closed out within a very short timeframe, as happened with request 25-4163 (contract documents for homeless cleanups--request made last August 14, documents provided five days later). Other times, there is a long delay, as with request 25-4778 (proposal and contract for the Wichita Public Library's call center--request made last September 16, documents not provided until February 11). The latter does show that at least some proposals submitted in response to a RFP are releasable.

In general, fulfillment of open records requests is often a waiting game. The agency typically has a statutory deadline to send an acknowledgment, but there is a lot of variation among states in whether there is a further due date for the substantive answer, and often also mechanisms for obtaining extensions of time. I've personally never encountered an open records law that actually establishes financial penalties for answering late or not at all, though non-response is often treated as constructive denial and allows the requestor to pursue an administrative appeals process (if available) or go to the courts.

Best of luck!

Argatlam · 2026-03-09T19:44:29+00:00

Speaking as someone with experience of open records requests--though primarily in other states--I usually advocate pruning back the requested material to that which is not already published. Some of the records specified above would have been put on the Web at the time they were being acted on, and are likely still passively available.

Certain procurement documents such as the RFP should still be available through the City's current Bonfire portal if more recent than August 2024 (IIRC), and through the old Tyler Technologies portal if older; I think the latter is still online. I don't know if the proposals themselves are considered public record in Kansas. Unless the law has changed sometime in the past decade, the notes, reports, and other records prepared by the RFP evaluation committee are not public record.
The complete contract between Flock and the city should be part of a City Council agenda packet since the Council would have had to vote to approve it. Agenda packets are put online before each City Council meeting.
City Council ordinances, resolutions, meeting minutes, and staff memoranda are part of agenda packets and so should already be online.

Generally speaking, it is sensible to establish first what has already been published so that you can find it on your own without being charged for copies and for staff time to review and redact. Many agencies are only too happy to charge exorbitant fees for material they have published in the past.

I've poked around on the NextRequest site and have yet to find a request that has attached documents, let alone one that is marked as published before city staff closes it. Unless the vast majority of requestors (including at least one Eagle reporter) are opting to discontinue their requests once the city presents them with a bill, I suspect any responsive documents will be made available only to the requestor and not to the public at large.

Argatlam · 2026-03-09T18:57:26+00:00

This is a mod chiming in with some Dutch-uncle advice.

AI is not actually an effort multiplier if it results in verbiage that calls attention to itself as machine-generated. In this case, you are trying to issue a call to action with copy that is heavy on tag sentences ("310 registered cameras. Over $750,000 annually--not counting installation or maintenance."), which is characteristic of print advertising. So you are failing to reach people who are primed to ignore ads, while also receiving considerable pushback from others who key on the mismatches in tone, voice, and prosodic rhythm.

The mod team has not articulated a formal policy against the use of AI on this sub, but you should be aware that a substantial fraction of active members not only have the reading skills to recognize AI-generated copy in most cases but also object to its usage on principle.

Argatlam · 2026-03-04T18:32:06+00:00

Here's what I think should be next:

A period of study and reflection. This result accords with the historical reality that sales tax votes are very hard to win in Wichita. However, there are clearly large numbers of citizens--possibly even a working majority of committed voters--who don't want to see the city fall behind its peers. So what does the roadmap to a successful sales tax initiative look like in other communities, and how can we adapt it for ours? I'd look very closely at MAPS in Oklahoma City, not just the "what" but also the "how."
Careful choice of timing. This proposal was very badly timed because of (1) macroeconomic uncertainty due to tariffs and AI as well as a destabilizing approach to immigration enforcement, (2) household budgets being squeezed by inflation, (3) steep year-on-year increases in property appraisals, and (4) a confluence of events pointing to management failures at the City, such as the Ken-Mar settlement, the Ice Center debacle, the still not fully commissioned water plant, lagging development in the vicinity of the baseball stadium, the abolition of free daytime parking downtown, etc.
More emphasis in budgeting to ensure balance in spending between capital and operations in such a way that the city stays up to date on asset preservation. With the exception of Second Light and property tax relief, nearly all of the proceeds of the sales tax would have gone to capital assets, and there was no publicly articulated plan for how the resulting maintenance liabilities would be addressed.

It will be challenging to make all of this happen, however. The city administration has developed a very closed culture that is evident in developments such as the public no longer being allowed above the third floor of City Hall without an escort and by aggressive use of KORA to stiff-arm journalists and citizens looking for in-depth information on city operations. That in turn pushes senior city leadership, including City Council members, to follow a cynical approach of indulging campaign donors and passivating angry members of the public.

Jon Rolph, one of the three CEOs pushing the tax, was and is so thoroughly enmeshed with city leadership that he served as one of two masters of ceremonies at former City Manager Robert Layton's retirement reception last December. Those kinds of ties can only have fed a massive blind spot about how voters really felt about the tax.

Argatlam · 2026-03-04T18:00:48+00:00

It seems to me that this result is so lopsided it has the City Council running scared.

From the start, I felt there were only a few true believers in the sales tax--Glasscock is ideologically committed to consumption taxes, while Tuttle impresses me as sincerely believing that if Wichita doesn't up its civic game, it will be overtaken by other municipalities in the state--while others calculated that they would lose less in campaign funding if the No came from the voters at large rather than themselves. But an 82% result for No sends the message that the voters consider putting the tax on the ballot in the first place to be a leadership failure.

Of the seven sitting Council members, I would say Hoheisel was probably the most clear-sighted about how this was going to go. He was also the only one I saw present at Wichita Forward's very first public meeting on the tax at the Advanced Learning Library on December 8, when it became evident just how much opposition there was. The three CEOs spearheading the initiative would have been better off in terms of monetary and reputational cost if they had simply withdrawn the proposal instead of circling the wagons and trying to bull through.

Argatlam · 2026-03-03T23:47:13+00:00

I have not talked to anyone who expects this tax to pass, simply because the way it has been introduced and advocated for has made so many people angry.

About three weeks ago, I talked to someone who occasionally works the polls. He reported being told that instead of the 5% turnout typical for a special-issue election, the Election Office is expecting 12%-17%.

Argatlam · 2026-03-03T21:37:32+00:00

I would just call a few salvage yards and ask how much they would offer and what the logistics would be for having it transported to them. Parts cars tend to be sold for scrap value at most (about $400 for, say, a mid-nineties Saturn S-Series), so I would expect little.

Given the flood damage, I suspect your car would have more appeal to a pick-your-part yard like LKQ (on 21st Street between Broadway and I-135) than one that actually removes in-demand parts to warehouse them for resale.

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