Diane Bui, owner of Lawrence Pawn & Jewelry, actually is an electrical engineer by training. That’s good, because she said she needs some fast-firing circuits to know which deals to make and which deals to reject at the pawn counter. “I have to be able to quickly assimilate information,” Bui said. “Unlike those TV shows like Pawn Stars, I don’t have experts in the back room.” But Bui does ...
As city officials were responding to the news of a $17 million misstatement in the city’s utility fund, a Lawrence city commissioner revealed new information that showed the severity of problems that the city’s finance department has been trying to correct for years. Commissioner Stuart Boley said recently that in October of 2014, the city missed making a bond payment that was due on city debt. The missed ...
News and notes from around downtown Lawrence: • The pizza and Philly cheesesteak restaurant Grinders is in the process of closing its downtown Lawrence restaurant. Again. This time it appears to be for good. Grinders is the creation of Kansas City hipster restaurateur Jeffrey Rumaner, who prefers to go simply by the name Stretch. You may remember that Grinders closed its Lawrence restaurant in July, but ...
As the year draws to a close, leaders at Lawrence Memorial Hospital are getting their arms around a $20 million surprise. The hospital at the beginning of the year had budgeted to collect about $11 million in profits from the hospital’s basic businesses. Instead, LMH is on pace to post about a $10 million operating loss. Add those together, and that is a more than $20 million of unexpected bad news. ...
A $17 million mystery has been solved in the City of Lawrence’s utility department, but, no, the answer isn’t going to lead to any breaks on your rising water bill. City Hall officials have acknowledged that they made a bookkeeping error of about $17 million that artificially inflated — for at least two budget years — the amount of money that showed up in the city’s water and sewer utility fund. ...
I’ve found that a few beers around a roaring fireplace can be good entertainment — especially if everyone remembers the key phrase “stop, drop and roll.” West Lawrence residents may get to check out some of that fun, as an East Lawrence brewery has opened a westside location. We reported in March that Lawrence Beer Company filed plans to open a location near the shopping center at Bob Billings Parkway ...