photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Lawrence Mayor Lisa Larsen reads a proclamation declaring Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023, as "Hank Booth Day" during a Lawrence City Commission meeting.

Local radio icon Hank Booth, who died in early July, was recognized at the Lawrence City Commission’s meeting on Tuesday as “a man whose voice will forever echo in our hearts and whose spirit will forever resonate in our community.”

That’s how Booth was described in the proclamation read by Mayor Lisa Larsen, which designated Oct. 10, 2023, as “Hank Booth Day.” Larsen said that Booth’s work as a broadcaster touched people’s lives around the city.

“I don’t know of many people in Lawrence that haven’t been impacted by his work throughout the decades,” Larsen said.

Booth was best known by many for the more than five decades he hosted the weekday radio show “According to the Record with Hank Booth” on KLWN and for covering high school sporting events. Booth died at age 77 on July 7 following a short illness.

The proclamation recognized Booth not just for his radio work, but also as a “loving father and grandfather, a dedicated community leader, and an unwavering beacon of positivity and compassion.”

In other business, commissioners:

* Heard concerns from a group of public commenters about incidents involving homeless people at their businesses, workplaces or properties.

For example, Dan Hughes, the longtime owner of Sunflower Outdoor and Bike Shop, described incidents where he found an individual doing “whippets” — small canisters of nitrous oxide that people use to get high, often in the form of whipped cream aerosol canisters — and has had to remove jars of urine from the store’s dressing rooms. Another commenter, Big Mill owner Brad Ziegler, said he’d witnessed people performing sexual activities across the street from the restaurant in the middle of the day and had to call the police.

Ziegler also claimed that Lawrence police officers didn’t make any arrests after that incident, but instead told him and patrons of the restaurant who witnessed it to relay their concerns to city commissioners. Larsen then asked city staff if they could find out more about the police response and whether there was a pattern.

“The past few or several meetings we’ve had businesses and individuals come up and talk about enforcement regarding the situation in the downtown area as well as throughout town, and I would appreciate it if we could get some sort of response as to what our policy is or is not,” Larsen said.

* Granted final approval to a text amendment amending the city’s Land Development Code to make all residential zoning district types subject to the same standards for developing two detached dwelling units on the same parcel of land. The City Commission granted preliminary approval to the code change at last week’s meeting.