News and notes from around town:

• City Hall staff members want to start having a discussion about annexing a rural neighborhood that isn’t so rural anymore. City commissioners at their meeting on Tuesday will be asked to allow staff to begin annexation discussions with residents of the Miller/Wells Acres area. The neighborhood is just north of Riverridge Road and east of North Iowa Street. The area once was a typical rural subdivision, but the city has been knocking at its door for quite awhile as development on North Michigan Street has picked up and as industrial and residential development along North Iowa Street has continued.

Residents of the neighborhood — which has about 50 homes — already have city water service, although they pay higher rates than city residents. At least two of the homes also have been allowed to connect on to city sewer service. Staff members said they have had several inquiries over the years about city sewer service for the area as septic systems have begun to fail.

City Manager David Corliss said he wants to discuss possible annexation with the neighbors for several reasons, including that the area is now surrounded by the city.

“We think there is perhaps a tax equity issue to address,” Corliss said. “They are benefiting from quite a few city services.”

Taxes for residents in the neighborhood would go up, based on current tax rates. Essentially, the main change in tax bills would be that residents no longer would pay taxes to the Wakarusa Township, but would start paying to the city of Lawrence. Lawrence’s mill levy is about 10 mills higher than Wakarusa’s. The city estimates that a property owner of a $150,000 home would experience an annual increase of $150.79 in property taxes, or about $12.50 a month. Residents also would start paying the city’s stormwater fee, which likely would be about $4 per month for most homes.

But some other costs may go down. The city estimates average water bills would decline from $25.32 per month to $18.27 per month, and that trash rates would drop from $16.83 per month to $13.85 per month. The bigger unknown, though, is whether homeowners would be able to substantially lower their home insurance costs once the city’s fire department becomes responsible for providing fire protection. The city’s insurance rating currently is a two, while Wakarusa Township’s is a nine. The lower the rating, the lower home insurance premiums generally are.

• If you think that annexation would provide a nice boost to the city, there’s a piece of property not far from there that would provide a much bigger one: Westar’s coal-fired power plant. The idea of annexing the Lawrence Energy Center, which is just northwest of the Miller/Wells Acre area, has been on a City Hall backburner for more than a year now.

We wrote about the issue in August 2009, after there had been some rumblings about it. The article estimated that if the plant were in the city, city property tax collections would increase about $900,000. It also would cause the Wakarusa Township to lose about half of its property tax base.

Corliss said back in August that there were reasons to study an annexation. The plant receives city water service — it bought 33 million gallons in 2008 — and it long has been assumed that any major fire at the plant will be fought primarily by the city’s fire department. City leaders also were upset that Westar declined to help pay for multimillion-dollar improvements to the Bowersock Dam. The city is confident those improvements help provide water to Westar’s intake pipe on the Kansas River. Westar disagreed, and didn’t pay any money toward the dam. If the power plant were in the city limits, their taxes would help pay for the improvements.

Westar, though, has long fought an annexation. At one point, they estimated it would amount to an extra $1 million a year in taxes for the plant, which would be passed along to electric customers. But the 2009 article found — and Westar agreed — that the total tax increase was about $290,000, since the plant no longer would pay Wakarusa Township. Furthermore, the article pointed out that Westar would be able to spread that $290,000 increase over its approximately 300,000 accounts in its northern territory. In other words, that’s about a $1 per year. Westar, though, said the idea was still a bad one because they couldn’t see any significant benefits of being in the city limits.

It now appears the idea isn’t going anywhere at City Hall in the near future. A staff memo on the subject once was listed on the City Commission’s list of future agenda items, but now it is not even there.

“We’ve just had other projects to work on,” Corliss said. “I think it is eventually something we want to talk about. But it is a labor-intensive effort to go through that process.”

And, likely, a contentious one. Corliss said he briefly talked with Westar about the subject. He said they still had concerns.

“I think they basically said, ‘We love Lawrence, but we don’t want to be in Lawrence,'” Corliss said.

• Assuming that snow isn’t stacked up all the way to the fourth floor of City Hall on Tuesday, commissioners are scheduled to have both a meeting and a study session. The study session topics deal with a proposed Environmental Chapter to Horizon 2020, and a new Northeast Sector Plan that spells out future land uses for property near the Lawrence Municipal Airport. The two issues have the potential to be contentious. Both the Lawrence Board of Realtors and the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce have written letters opposing the current version of the environmental chapter. Both expressed concerns that the new chapter may add so many environmental regulations that it will be difficult for future economic development projects to move forward. But the plans also have drawn criticism from others who believe they do not quite go far enough to protect prime farmland, especially in the Kansas River valley, from future development. The study session is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall.

• Plans to figure out more about the city’s arts community are moving forward. Commissioners on Tuesday are scheduled to authorize a requests for proposals on the “Lawrence Arts Economy.” The study — requested by the Lawrence Cultural Arts Commission — would examine the needs of the arts community, the current and potential impact the arts has on the Lawrence economy, and would provide the city information to create a strategic plan. The city approved $5,000 in funding for the study in December. The study is expected to be completed in the first half of 2011.

• As previously reported, city commissioners are expected to tweak the employment contract of City Manager David Corliss. Commissioners on Tuesday are scheduled to approve changes that will add $1,500 per year to the amount of deferred compensation the city provides for Corliss’ retirement fund. The new contract also will allow Corliss to accrue up to 900 hours of vacation leave — that’s about four months — and will allow him to cash out vacation hours in excess of 600 hours. Corliss’ base salary will remain unchanged at $130,000 per year.