New city commissioners offered ideas for attracting new businesses, collecting unpaid special assessments and providing employee parking downtown. Mayor David Longhurst suggested temporarily suspending interest charges against people owing special assessments and designating underused metered parking lots downtown for free employee parking.

Jere McElhaney, 25, celebrated the 10th anniversary of an injury that nearly took his life. While on a junior high field trip, he had been hit in the chest by a piece of wire thrown by a power mower. McElhaney’s heart was penetrated but he was rushed to Lawrence Memorial Hospital where surgeon Wayne Hird, a well-known cardiology expert, had done work that extracted the wire, repaired the heart and literally brought McElhaney back among the living. Hird later took part in the wedding of the young man whose life he had saved.