A program that lets law enforcement obtain surplus equipment from the Department of Defense isn’t a step toward “militarizing” the Lawrence Police Department, Chief Rich Lockhart said on Tuesday evening.
At its regular meeting on Tuesday, the City Commission voted unanimously to give the Lawrence Police Department permission to participate in the DoD’s Law Enforcement Service Office program, which ...
Lawrence city commissioners all agree that they want a new fire station in northwest Lawrence – but they don’t yet agree on a proposed property tax increase to fund the expansion.
On Tuesday, the City Commission had its first chance to discuss city staff’s 2027 budget proposal, which among other things would raise the property tax rate by 3 mills to help fund operations for the future Fire Station 6. The ...
The City of Lawrence's preliminary budget for 2027 would include an approximately 3-mill property tax rate increase for fire and medical expansion, and city commissioners will get their first chance to discuss it at their meeting next week.
On Tuesday, the commission will be asked to give feedback on several issues related to the 2027 budget, including their thoughts on the proposed mill levy increase to ...
James Chiselom doesn’t like to talk about how the Lawrence Community Shelter looked in 2024, when he started as executive director.
“People couldn’t feel safe here, people were abused here, people were victimized here,” he said. The shelter had cycled through seven other leaders in roughly a decade, and less than a year earlier it had warned that closure was imminent without more funding and ...
One of Mike Dever’s regrets from his earlier terms on the City Commission is that “I went eight years without spending money on art.”
Dever first served on the commission from 2007 to 2015, a time that included the Great Recession. Back then, he said at Tuesday’s Lawrence City Commission meeting, “we weren’t building, we weren’t spending, we weren’t constructing very many large projects, so the ...
What do cities, counties and educational institutions need to do to avoid fines of up to $125,000 a day under Kansas' new anti-transgender bathroom law?
The answer at the local level seems to be: We're still trying to figure that out.
The law, SB 244, took effect in February after the Republican-controlled Legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly's veto to pass it. Its provisions require public ...
