THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL NEWS MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 201212A www.cjonline.com

entity to be part of a catalyst for making that area vibrant,” Haley said, adding that Gov. Sam Brown-back is aware of Quindaro’s his-torical significance. “It will be good for the area, it will be good for Sen. Haley’s legacy, and it will be good for Gov. Brownback’s legacy and the Legislature.”

Haley and four other investors registered as Village East LLC in 2005. The company’s sole purpose is to restore or develop the site, which was formerly the Bryant Butler Kitchen Nursing Home and Douglass Hospital. Haley said he currently has no concrete plans for the property, but he believes it could be a natural spot for apart-ments or tourism.

Haley said he would like to pro-cure taxpayer money for it, which he acknowledges would benefit him financially.

“I would hope so — I’ve invest-ed quite a bit in it,” Haley said. “I haven’t invested as much in terms of actual dollars as other members of the LLC, but a lot of sweat equi-ty. It would be hopefully for David Haley’s profits and others.”

Haley stressed he always pro-vides "full disclosure" of his own-ership stake in the property. He said the project has sentimen-tal value for him and the other members of Village East because they were born at Douglass Hos-pital.

But as Haley seeks government funding, his county government seeks property taxes from him.

Wyandotte County property re-cords show that Village East owes

$2,087.44 on the Quindaro prop-erty. More than half of that is back taxes and penalty fees from 2009 and 2011.

Haley, who also owns property in Belize, said Village East disputes the amount owed on the Quindaro property because it believes Wy-andotte County reneged on an abatement agreement by charging the company for illegal dumping.

Unified Government spokes-man Mike Taylor said Haley pro-tested the 2009 amount in 2011, and the issue was decided in an informal hearing.

"Unless he filed a Court of Tax Appeals case the Unified Govern-ment is not aware of, the process is finished," Taylor said via email. "His taxes are due 45 days after the 2009 decision date of 3/28/11. He owes for delinquent special as-sessment for trash and debris and delinquent property taxes."

Haley also personally owes about $1,100 in delinquent prop-erty taxes and fees on two rental houses across the street from his Cleveland Avenue home. Taylor said the county has garnished Ha-ley's legislative pay to make up some of the difference.

Haley, the nephew of “Roots” author Alex Haley, said his inten-tion for the Village East property is to find a developer who will help restore an area rich in African-American heritage.

The original Quindaro settle-ment, a few hundred feet from the hospital, was a key stop on the Un-derground Railroad. Once in dan-ger of becoming a landfill, its ruins were saved by National Park Ser-vice grants.

The grants were awarded in part to the African Methodist Epis-copal Church, an organization with deep roots in the area’s Afri-can-American history. The church supported Western University, which was originally the Quindaro Freedman’s School, established in the 1860s to educate the chil-dren of escaped slaves and black settlers.

The church also long main-tained Douglass Hospital, which was the first black hospital west of the Mississippi River when it was founded in 1899. The nursing home was added in the 1970s, but both have subsequently closed. The hospital was torn down, and the nursing home is falling into a condition that is barely distin-guishable from the much-older Quindaro ruins nearby.

Monte Gross, a volunteer with the Wyandotte County Historical Museum, said the building’s downfall was “right in line with the decline of the whole area” that began in the 1980s.

“The interesting thing about it is, why can’t they just completely clear the site?” Gross said. “It looks like it’s a war-zone kind of relic.”

Jesse Hope III is the founder and curator of the Old Quindaro Museum and Information Center. He and Haley were part of a group of activists who helped scuttle the landfill project.

Hope said the nursing home’s current condition “takes away” from the neighborhood.

“I know people have said it’s a

real eyesore,” Hope said. “I‘ve seen it when it was up and operating, and it was a beautiful building. I think a lot could be done with it, but I’m afraid that opportunity might have passed.”

Wyandotte County property re-cords show that the land and building were sold for $207,803 in 1992. Its appraised value in 2012 was $17,520.

A Kansas City, Kan., Christian organization called It is Written Ministries was awarded a building permit for the site in 2005. Haley said the group wanted to build a “megachurch” in the historic neighborhood.

“They had a dream, and I repre-sented them on that dream,” Ha-ley said.

But the project fell apart, and Haley said that is when he and his partners took over.

They chose the name Village East to draw comparisons to the booming development of Wyan-dotte County’s Village West retail and entertainment complex.

But for now the building re-mains an unsecured and unau-thorized shelter for constituents like Johnson, whom Haley said was unknown to him.

“He should not be staying in BBK,” Haley said. “He is not there with any permission of Village East. The place is uninhabitable, obviously.”

Andy Marso can be reached at (785) 295-5619 or andy.marso@

cjonline.com. Follow him on Twitter @andymarso.

Continued from Page 1A

Haley: Senator talks of ‘sweat equity’

Kansas switched to a new federal formula for calculating graduation rates three years ago.

Under that formula, gradua-tion rates have hovered around 67 to 70 percent for USD 501 over the past three years. USD 437 has shown the stron-gest gains in greater Topeka, from 87 percent in 2009-2010 to 95.5 percent in 2011-2012.

Kansas' graduation rate rose from 83 percent in 2010-2011 to 85 percent last year. Kathy Toelkes, communications di-rector at KSDE, said the rate was likely helped in part by the changes in recordkeeping un-der the new system, but school districts also were working hard to graduate more stu-dents.

Statewide, about seventy percent of male African-Amer-ican students and 81 percent of female African-American stu-dents graduated last year, and about 73 percent of male and 81 percent of female Hispanic students finished. For USD 501,

the rates were about 53 percent and 78 percent of male and fe-male African-American stu-dents, respectively, and about 64 and 74 percent of Hispanic male and female students.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Depart-ment of Education has pub-lished a table of state-by-state graduation rates for 2010-2011, the first year in which all states followed the federal formula for counting graduates and dropouts.

Kansas, with 83 percent, shared 12th place with six other states: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and New Jersey.

In the No. 1 spot was Iowa, with an 88 percent graduation rate.

In the past, varying ap-proaches to tallying rates — in-cluding how to record transfers and home-schooled students, for example — made rates dif-ficult to compare.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen can be reached at (785) 295-1285

or celia.llopisjepsen@cjonline.com. Follow her on Twitter

@Celia_LJ.

Continued from Page 1A

Grad: Federal formula used to calculate rates