Not even Lawrence’s longtime tradition of a community fireworks show is safe from COVID-19. A representative of the local Jaycees club confirmed Wednesday that the show along the Kansas River won’t happen this year. “We safely could shoot off the fireworks, but we don’t have a way to safely have everybody watch the fireworks,” said Sherri Cannon, a member of the local Jaycees club that has conducted ...
It could have been worse. It is a phrase I utter every time I leave a homemade haircut with both ears, and it also may echo in the city’s finance department after Lawrence leaders received their first sales tax check that has been slashed by the pandemic. The city’s May sales tax collections were down 7.1% compared with the same period a year ago, which amounts to about a $150,000 hit to the city’s ...
Perhaps you noticed that May hasn’t been great on many fronts. (Granted, I have figured out how to gain weight despite having my mouth mostly covered, which is surely an advancement in ingenuity.) When it comes to unemployment, the news isn’t great anywhere, but there are some particularly troubling signs in Douglas County. In short, Douglas County’s unemployment rate is growing faster than most urban ...
There has been good news on the medical front, if not necessarily on the money front, at Lawrence's hospital. At a Wednesday meeting, members of the hospital’s nonprofit board of trustees heard about millions in dollar losses related to the COVID-19 disruptions and reduced the total compensation of LMH Health's chief executive officer by more than $100,000. But it also heard that a relatively mild number of ...
In-person dining in Lawrence didn’t make a lot of noise on Monday — the first day local regulations allowed eateries to reopen their dining rooms — unless you count the leaf blower. Along Massachusetts Street in downtown Lawrence, I counted only three restaurants that had their dining rooms open for lunch: Pita Pit, Jefferson’s and The Jayhawker inside the Eldridge Hotel. There was a bit more ...
Maybe Lawrence homebuyers in April already had a key aspect of our new lives figured out: If forced to live with a stay-at-home order, you will want to do so in a better home. (Pandemic philosophy: Your nothingness becomes smaller if you do it in a larger space.) Whether it was that realization or something else, local home sales were strong in April, despite any pandemic-related fears. In a sign that may be ...