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City agrees to expand rental inspection program By Chad Lawhorn clawhorn@ljworld.com
From mold on the ceiling to faulty smoke alarms, problems in rental properties across the city soon will be more likely to be caught by city inspectors.
Lawrence city commissioners on Tuesday agreed to move forward with a program that for the first time makes every rental unit in the city subject to random inspection. The program, which is expected to begin by late next year, would add
about 4,000 apartment inspections each year. “We want to find bad landlords and get them to correct their behavior,” City Commissioner Bob Schumm said. “This is about the health, safety and welfare of our citizens.”
The city currently operates a rental licensing and inspection program, but it only covers rentals in single-family neighborhoods. The new program will cover rentals in all types of zoning designations and neighborhoods.
Wheat harvest off to slow, wet start
The program, estimated to cost about $385,000 per year to operate, won’t result in every rental unit in the city being inspected every year. As proposed, the program would seek to inspect 10 percent of a landlord’s Please see RENTAL, page 5A
CITY COMMISSION
Lawmaker berates KU, regents over spending ———
University disputes House speaker’s claim that it’s wasting money on salaries, pay raises By Scott Rothschild srothschild@ljworld.com
to very poor condition. The trade group Kansas Wheat says harvest activity has spread as far north as Hays and as far west as Scott City. Early indications are that the harvest has been coming in as good — and as bad — as had been anticipated, depending on where the rain had fallen.
TOPEKA — House Speaker Ray Merrick on Tuesday criticized the Kansas Board of Regents and Kansas University over spending and salaries, including pay raises given to university leaders. In response, This KU spokesman competJack Martin said, “We would wel- ing for come Speaker profesMerrick and his sors colleagues to visit the university to — they learn how we’re don’t educating lead- teach ers and making discoveries. We’d classes anyway. The also like to show graduate assistants them how we are do the teaching. saving money in There are very few administrative operations that professors that sit we then reinvest in the classroom and in teaching and teach.” research.” Last week, the regents approved — Kansas House Speaker Ray a nearly 14 per- Merrick, R-Stilwell cent, or $60,000, pay raise for KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little. The regents approved raises for all six public university leaders, saying the increases were needed to bring them up to the pay of chief executives at peer institutions. The raises were all privately financed through the schools’ fundraising associations. The increase brought Gray-Little’s salary to $492,650. Of that amount, $271,986 is state
— The Associated Press contributed to this report
Please see KU, page 2A
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Richard Gwin/Journal-World Photos
TUESDAY’S LIGHT RAIN put a temporary damper on the Lawrence-area wheat harvest as this combine owned by Kermit Kalb sits in a field east of Baldwin City after a test cut. BELOW: a closer look at the ready wheat.
Serious cutting expected shortly By Giles Bruce gbruce@ljworld.com
Area wheat farmers were able to get some cutting in this week before Tuesday’s rains put a damper on the start of the harvest season in Douglas County. Local grain elevators reported minor activity in the fields the past couple of days, predicting that the harvest will begin in earnest later this week. “We got in one load this morning,” Verlyn Gilges, of Baldwin City Feed Co., said Tuesday afternoon, adding
that the farmer was from Eudora. “Of course, the rain put a stop to that.” In the southwest part of the region, the Overbrook Co-op had yet to see any action as of Tuesday afternoon, though locations in Burlington, Waverly, Burlingame and Ottawa had received some loads of wheat. “I think we will by the end of the week,” said Mark Easton, branch manager of the Overbrook Co-op. “We might even get some in the next day or so if it stops raining.” Growers like Kermit
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Kalb, who farms east of Baldwin City, did some test-cutting on Monday and planned to resume the harvest this week once the wheat dried some more. Kansas Agricultural Statistics Service reported Monday that 8 percent of the state’s winter wheat crop has been cut. The agency said 45 percent of the Kansas wheat crop was in poor
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Worried about loans Unless Congress takes action before Monday, rates on any new subsidized student loans are set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. Page 3A
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Vol.155/No.177 30 pages