The world may have been bumpy in 2024, but shoppers were steady. The city of Lawrence’s budget: Less so. We now have a year’s worth of sales tax collections in the book, and Lawrence’s 2024 totals don’t look much different than 2023 figures. Lawrence sales tax collections were up by 1% from a year ago. Statewide, the story was much the same, with an average growth rate of 1.4%. Steady, though, means ...
Here’s a resolution for you in 2025: Use fewer forks. It might save you money (although wet wipe bills may eat into some of those savings.) What possibly could be my point? Not to quibble, but I have four of them. (I think that is true even if we are talking about a spork.) Forks can cost you money — and I learned that by reading the details of the law that eliminates the state sales tax on grocery items, ...
East Lawrence is set to get another affordable housing project, but the broader community may get something that proves even more valuable out of the venture — an affordable housing method. As we reported last month, a project in the Warehouse Arts District in East Lawrence was selected by the City Commission and the city’s Affordable Housing Advisory Board to receive $450,000 in local grant money. ...
Douglas County still has a poverty rate above national and state averages, but over the last five years, its poverty number has posted the second largest decline of any county in Kansas, new data from the Census shows. Douglas County finished 2023 with an overall poverty rate of 13.3%, meaning that about 14,920 residents were making less than what the federal government says individuals and families need to ...
At a time when American universities are struggling to find a message that resonates with the public, along comes a U.S. leader who is having no such problem with a message: Universities are the enemy. That actually was the title of a 2021 speech by U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, who, of course, is now set to become vice president of the United States next month. It is a message that has caught the attention of ...
News and notes from around town: ••• There soon will be a new housing development in northwest Lawrence called Beth’s Ranch. It’s named as such because the site at the southeast corner of Sixth Street and George Williams Way for decades was home to a horse ranch. I can’t say for certain what type of horses roamed the pastures there, but I’m guessing they weren’t race horses. It seems nothing ...