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WEDNESDAY • MARCH 26 • 2014
Rehearsal gets right to the point
CITY COMMISSION
Inspection program wins approval By Chad Lawhorn clawhorn@ljworld.com
After years of debate, Lawrence will have a rental licensing and inspection program that will cover essentially every rental unit in the city, but it won’t begin as soon as once expected. A divided, and sometimes quarrelsome, City Commission approved the new program on a 3-2 vote, but agreed that inspections of multi-family rental units won’t begin until July 2015. That’s six months later than inspections had been proposed to begin. “We need to do this program, but if we don’t get it right in the very beginning, Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo we are going to shoot ourFREE STATE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS BREAK INTO DANCE TUESDAY while performing “Walk the Dinosaur” during a selves in the foot for the dress rehearsal for Encore ‘14 at Free State High School. Live performances begin Thursday and go through Saturday; long-term,” City Commisshowtime is 7:30 p.m. each day. sioner Jeremy Farmer said. Farmer and commissioners Terry Riordan and Bob Farmer Schumm voted for the new program. Mayor Mike Dever and Commissioner Mike Amyx voted against the plan. The program will: l Require essentially every landlord in the city to pay an annual license fee to the city, ranging from $14 to $17 per dwelling unit. l Landlords will have 10 percent of their rental units subject to a city inspection evFor many school districts, including Lawrence, the bill as a whole By Peter Hancock ery three years. If the units of landlords Twitter: @LJWpqhancock would result in a net loss of state funding because the additional score highly enough, they will qualify for an incentive to be inspected every six years. money in so-called “equalization aid” would not result in any new Topeka — A school finance bill that Landlords will pay a $50 fee for each unit will soon be debated in the House spending authority. inspected. budget committee would add $129 mill Inspectors will be checking for a varilion in state funding targeted mainly at ety of violations related to health and safety poor school districts, but it would also cation, which calculated the impact of said districts would have to make up code violations. cut transportation aid for every school a provision in the bill that changes the themselves by taking money out of Commissioners heard more than an district in the state, including nearly way transportation aid is calculated. classroom expenses. hour’s worth of public comment on the $190,000 for the Lawrence district. Statewide, KSDE said, cuts in transIn fact, for many school districts proposed program, both for and against the That’s according to an analysis by portation aid would total roughly $15 Please see SCHOOL, page 2A the Kansas State Department of Edu- million, money that education groups
School finance bill would cut $15 million in transportation aid
Please see RENTAL, page 2A
NEIGHBORHOODS
Pinckney residents question how to reduce crime, disorderliness By Stephen Montemayor Twitter: @smontemayor
From the front door of their home on Sixth Street in the Pinckney neighborhood, Melinda Toumi and her family have seen intoxicated drivers, fights, drug activity and a dead man on the sidewalk. “It is a stressful environ-
ment,” said Toumi, vice president of the Pinckney Neighborhood Association and a resident for more than a decade. Each time her family has had to call police, Toumi said, they’ve been pleased with the response. But a recent letter to the Journal-World written by a Pinckney resident expressed
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the incidents and how best to deal with them. The letter writer, Kristen Renfro, expressed concern about crime in the neighborhood and near Burcham Park, where a man was stabbed by a friend at a campsite recently. Renfro declined to be interviewed for this story, but within the past year, she wrote, her
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a different view, and that was the topic at a recent neighborhood association meeting. Confronted by periodic episodes of crime, often involving suspicious people trespassing on property, Pinckney residents are considering the source of
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The KU Natural History Museum presents:
Behind the Glass
A conversation about the Panorama’s history, condition, conservation and history with conservator Ronald Harvey and author Bill Sharp
March 26 – 7:30 pm The Commons | 1340 Jayhawk Blvd
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vehicle and her husband’s have been broken into. On separate occasions, outside their home, Renfro observed a man holding a broken beer bottle while talking to himself and jumping in front of passing vehicles. She saw another man lying on the sidewalk, shouting profanities Please see PINCKNEY, page 2A
Clinton Lake levels drop Concerns are rising at City Hall as the water levels at Clinton Lake continue to fall to levels not seen since 1981, when the lake was first filled. Page 3A
Vol.156/No.84 34 pages