When Baldwin City Chamber of Commerce director Jeannette Blackmar walks down the community’s downtown streets, she sees blank canvas all around her. “There’s a lot of wonderful walls that lend themselves to murals,” she said. “There’s no shortage of canvas downtown.” There’s also no shortage of local artists with the talent to design murals, or of local stories for the works to tell residents ...
Keen downtown observers may have noticed in the last week that the hands of the four clocks on the tower of the Douglas County Courthouse are stuck at about seven minutes after 1 o'clock. David Sparkes, county buildings and grounds director, can give you a more precise reading of the stopped hands by referring to a dial in the clock tower. The dial is a reference for the person using a crank to set the time of ...
The Douglas County Commission on Wednesday will restart discussion of the jail overcrowding issue with fresh information on the number of inmates. The discussion is scheduled for the County Commission’s 4 p.m. meeting. Commissioners will meet again at 6 p.m. for two planning issues that require public hearings. Douglas County Sheriff Ken McGovern is scheduled to present to commissioners new numbers on the ...
The Eudora school board approved a 2018-2019 budget that lowered the mill levy and invested all the new money it received from the state in district staff, Superintendent Steve Splichal said. The board approved the budget at an Aug. 23 meeting. The action set the district’s mill levy at 70.63 mills or 0.743 mills lower than its 2017-2018 budget. At 70.63 mills, the district’s share of taxes on a $150,000 ...
Cole Andersen has overseen scores of reclamations of mined-out quarries, but the one completed at a site on the western edge of Douglas County is special to him. “Absolutely,” said the environmental, health and safety manager for Mid-States Materials LLC. “The end use is so unique. I’m out there all the time. It’s absolutely beautiful.” The project reclaimed three phases of Mid-States’ Big ...
District leaders are now acknowledging that the Lawrence school board never did take a stand-alone vote to give Deputy Superintendent Anna Stubblefield a $20,000 raise. Instead, the raise — which amounted to about a 13 percent pay increase — was approved earlier this month as part of the district’s overall budget, which included a 30-page summary that broke down details of the budget and included ...