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TUESDAY • MAY 17 • 2011
Khatib: ‘We’re not really staffed appropriately to get ahead of crime’
City opens budget study today ——
Significant increases in property tax, water/sewage rates are expected By Chad Lawhorn clawhorn@ljworld.com
many in the downtown area, said Leonard Allen, a Westar spokesman. The damaged lines are associated with the Westar substation at Sixth and Tennessee streets, the same place where similar lines led to a similar problem back on Dec. 6. That outage was said to have knocked off about 8,000 customers — including the Douglas County
It is budget season at Lawrence City Hall, which means it also is a season full of questions that often have dollar signs attached to them. Commissioners at an afternoon study session today will begin crafting a budget for 2012, and they’ll do so with what has become a standard warning from the city manager. “It will be very challenging,” City Manager David Corliss said. “I think it will be difficult to cut more personnel and equipment expenses without impacting service delivery.” In other words, cuts that may come to the 2012 budget are more likely to be noticed by residents than those that have been made in past budget years. How much residents will notice likely will depend on how city commissioners answer the questions. Here is a look at several questions that commissioners will face this summer: ● How much will your property tax rate go up? There will be a significant property tax rate increase at City Hall for the first time since 2003. Voters last year approved a 1.5 mill levy increase to fund an $18 million expansion of the Lawrence Public Library. That increase will begin showing up in the 2012 budget. But a bigger question is how this City Commission elected last month feels about property taxes. The last City Commission was loath to raise the mill levy, but two new faces have joined the group. They’ll get a test right away as new police Chief Tarik Khatib is asking for $1.2 million in new funding to add police officers to the force. Funding that request likely would either take a brand new sales tax or an increase in the property tax rate. Add the police request and the alreadyapproved library project together, and that would be about a 3
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Please see CITY, page 4A
Kevin Anderson/Journal-World Photo
LAWRENCE POLICE OFFICER LAURIE SCOTT, center, takes information from Haskell Indian Nations University student Joelle Mansfield while investigating a report on a possible stolen bike last month. Police Chief Tarik Khatib is asking the city for a budget increase to add several new officers and detectives; the size of the city’s police force has not increased since 1999.
Police chief seeks to beef up force By George Diepenbrock gdiepenbrock@ljworld.com
In the three months since he was tapped to lead the Lawrence Police Department, Chief Tarik Khatib has often mentioned one statistic. In 1999 the department had 79 patrol positions — the same number it is allotted today. The other point he mentions is that Lawrence’s crime rate is higher than that in Overland Park, Olathe and Lenexa in Johnson
County and university communities, such as Norman, Okla., and Boulder, Colo. Khatib said those numbers are keys in a recent request Khatib to city leaders for $1.2 million to add 10 patrol officers, a detective and three sergeants. In a memo, Khatib highlighted targeting certain
crimes such as fraud and property crimes and repeat offenders who have multiple arrest warrants. A $1.2 million increase in funding — to the department’s approximately $14 million budget — would amount to an increase of 1.4 mills to the city’s property tax rate, or $32 per year more annually for a $200,000 home. “The bottom line is, I would like to identify a long-term plan for law enforcement in the community,” Khatib said.
The city in the last decade has added certain officer positions through grants and other means, like school and neighborhood resource officers, without beefing up regular patrol numbers, city officials said. Lawrence Mayor Aron Cromwell said commissioners have also asked the department to do more in recent years without adding positions — like a request for officers be assigned Please see POLICE, page 2A
Outages blamed on power lines weakened by age By Mark Fagan mfagan@ljworld.com
No cinnamon rolls. No croissants. No coffee. And Chuck Magerl, proprietor of WheatFields Bakery, considers himself lucky that the power went off when it did — warming his refrigerators, cooling his ovens and otherwise fouling batches upon batches of baked goods on Sunday morning.
Disaster averted, at least for now. “We’re grateful that it happened this Sunday and hopeful that it won’t happen next Sunday,” Magerl said, of the blackout that lasted from 6 a.m. to about 8:15 a.m. “The idea of thousands of people in here for (Kansas University) graduation in the morning, and trying to figure out where to go, and what to do, and where to eat ... ” A chuckle finished the
thought, but the prospect isn’t funny. The upcoming KU commencement is big business for retailers, for hoteliers, for restaurateurs and everyone else along and astride Massachusetts Street, not to mention seemingly everywhere else in town. And now that the central business district has endured four power outages in a little more than a year, concerns are mounting that
plugging in and turning on might not always produce the desired result. Officials at Westar Energy say Sunday’s outage occurred because a splice failed in underground lines that run through the same manhole. The failure produced a “violent discharge of energy,” enough to damage other lines in the manhole and knock out power to a wider area: nearly 5,000 customers at the outage’s peak,
Brownback signs measure tightening abortion clinic regulations By John Hanna Associated Press Writer
TOPEKA — Kansas will require annual, unannounced inspections of abortion clinics, impose new health and safety rules specifically for them and prevent them from using telemedicine systems to dispense preg-
Brownback
nancy-terminating drugs under legislation signed Monday by Gov. Sam Brownback. The new law takes effect July 1. Abortion opponents said the changes will protect patients, but abortion rights supporters fear they will drive one or more of Kansas’ three abortion clinics out of business.
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Health and Environment to write standards for exits, lighting, bathrooms and equipment. KDHE would issue annual licenses, have the power to fine clinics and could go to court to shut them down. The law comes with new rules for administering abortioninducing medications, such as
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Brownback, an anti-abortion Republican who took office in January, has publicly called on the GOP-dominated Legislature to create “a culture of life,” and it has responded by passing a raft of measures. Along with mandating annual inspections, the new law directs the Kansas Department of
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RU-486. Only a licensed physician will be allowed to provide the drug, in the presence of the patient. Clinics won’t be allowed to dispense such drugs to patients at far-away sites through telemedicine systems. “In order to make money Please see BROWNBACK, page 2A
COMING WEDNESDAY We’ll tag along as the city’s solid waste task force gets a look at what city trash crews do.
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