photo by: File Photos

Plenty of big stories happened in Douglas County in 2021. Clockwise from top left: A child gets a COVID-19 vaccine at a local vaccine clinic; Rontarus Washington Jr., whose murder case was recently dismissed; tents in Watson Park; newly elected City Commissioners Amber Sellers and Bart Littlejohn, who may be the first Black residents to serve on the city's governing body in more than 100 years; the Douglas County Courthouse, where leaders will be hashing out where to spend millions in pandemic aid; and Kennedy Elementary School, which the school board voted to close.

Yes, with a publication date of Jan. 2, this year-in-review is at least a day late by traditional standards. But, it wouldn’t be fitting for a review of 2021 to be on time. After all, in 2021 the end of the pandemic was at least a year late.

On that front, it is worth noting that this year in review isn’t a ranking of the top stories of the year. We did that because we felt the pandemic already had won enough top honors. So, instead, this year in review is merely a compilation of some of the more noteworthy stories that the Journal-World covered in 2021.

With that said, though, we will start with the pandemic because we don’t want to make it mad. You saw what happened when we started talking about it being on its way out the door. It grabbed a letter of the Greek alphabet that we didn’t even know existed and started wreaking a new breed of havoc.

So, cue the pandemic and our 2021 Year in Review.

• Pandemic tolls: The simplest storyline of the pandemic is the numbers. We began the year adding about 71 new cases per day. As of Dec. 29, we ended the year adding about 55 new cases per day, according to figures kept by the Lawrence-Douglas County health department. In the middle of the year, the virus reached its slowest stages, adding about 1.5 cases per day in June.

As the omicron variant takes hold, though, case numbers may become less and less meaningful. Public health experts expect them to soar, but early evidence suggests an omicron case is less likely to produce severe illness or hospitalization than a delta case, especially among the vaccinated. LMH Health ended 2021 with about 15 COVID inpatients, which was less than half its patient levels during the peak of the pandemic. But, the numbers don’t tell the whole story, as leaders say LMH is stressed as the hospital struggles to keep enough caregivers healthy and employed to keep up with not only COVID demands but also more ordinary health care cases. Keep an eye on that situation. It could be a major story of 2022.

After starting the year in short supply, COVID vaccines became plentiful in short order in 2021. Douglas County ended the year with about 72,000 people — or about 62% of Douglas County’s eligible population — fully vaccinated. However, only about 32,000 people had taken the extra step of getting the recommended booster dose of the vaccine.

And, perhaps, the most important number of all is there have been 111 Douglas County deaths attributed to the pandemic since it began. When we reported on that number at the end of 2020, there were approximately 30 Douglas County deaths attributed to the virus.

In terms of day-to-day life with COVID, the community ended the 2020-2021 school year with a mix of hybrid and remote learning at K-12 schools and the University of Kansas. But with the start of the 2021-2022 school year in August, kids were back in classrooms. It wasn’t always smooth, as we reported in early September that more than 400 students were in quarantine in the Lawrence Public Schools system. But then school districts, with guidance from the state, started implementing “test-to-stay” programs that allowed students who were deemed a close contact of a positive COVID case to remain in school, as long as they passed daily COVID tests. Those programs ended up saving thousands of days of lost school for students throughout the county.

Bars, restaurants and other venues ended the year with relatively few restrictions on gatherings, although some venues, like Liberty Hall, voluntarily implemented programs requiring proof of vaccination to enter. Thus far local governments haven’t sought to implement broad requirements of that sort. Douglas County commissioners in August did approve a mask mandate for children 2 to 10 years old, winning praise from some in the community, but also sparking a couple of tense public meetings where a group of people heckled county commissioners over the mandate, which was allowed to expire in late December. Commissioners enter 2022 considering whether a countywide mask mandate is warranted with rising case levels. Thus far, though, there has been little discussion of lockdown-like restrictions that were in place earlier in the pandemic.

• Seeking shelter: It was a wild year at the Lawrence Community Shelter. The homeless shelter saw another leader depart, and capacity levels plunged due to staffing issues and concerns for social distancing needs at the shelter. During the same time, tents became a much more common sight in Lawrence. In August, the city estimated that there were more than 200 people living outside, often camping in parks or other wooded areas. At the end of the year, the city was running a cold-weather shelter at the Community Building in downtown, but also struggled to get enough volunteers to keep it staffed. In 2022, the city’s budget calls for the creation of a new Housing Initiatives division, which is designed to get the city more involved in issues of the homeless.

• Piles of cash: Speaking of budgets, the city and county received huge allotments of federal funds related to pandemic relief. The city is expected to get about $19 million in federal funds over two years, while the county is expected to get about $23 million in funds. The city approved a budget that has about an $8 million deficit, which it plans to fill with the first installment of its federal funds. The county did not take that approach, but rather approved a budget with a 1 mill property tax increase. The county has not decided how to spend the bulk of its $23 million federal allotment, but has said the funds could be “game-changers” in how the community addresses human services.

• Stressed schools: While the Lawrence school district received federal funding too, it also faced state funding problems as enrollment in the district declined sharply during the pandemic and hasn’t fully recovered. In April, the school board voted to close Kennedy Elementary School in eastern Lawrence. In December, district leaders began floating the idea of closing New York Elementary in East Lawrence, with the idea of converting it into a Montessori school. That decision is still pending, as board members evaluate how to cut anywhere from $3.3 million to $7 million from the district’s overall budget.

• Diversity wins: When new Lawrence city commissioners took their seats in December, the group was hailed as likely the most diverse in the city’s history. It is believed that newly elected commissioners Bart Littlejohn and Amber Sellers could be Lawrence’s first Black commissioners in more than 100 years. Courtney Shipley, who is Hispanic, also was elected by fellow commissioners to serve as mayor. The five-member commission, at times in 2021, also included two openly LGBTQ commissioners — Lisa Larsen, who was the top vote-winner in November’s elections, and Jennifer Ananda, who did not seek reelection. In the November school board elections, voters also made Kay Emerson, a Black candidate, the top vote-winner.

• Court reversals: Days before Christmas, Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez dismissed two high-profile felony cases: a first-degree murder case against Rontarus Washington Jr. and a rape case against Albert Wilson. Washington’s murder case dated back to 2014 and previously had produced a hung jury in 2019. Wilson’s case had attracted national attention after a judge ordered a new trial following Wilson’s rape conviction after new attorneys successfully argued that Wilson’s previous counsel did not effectively use thousands of text messages from the victim in the case that could have cast doubt on certain allegations. Earlier in the year, Valdez’s office also took the unusual step of seeking court approval to have a previous murder sentence reduced by 25 years. A Douglas County district court judge agreed in May to reduce the sentence of Sarah Gonzales-McLinn from 50 years to 25 years. Gonzales-McLinn was convicted in 2015 of the murder of Harold “Hal” Sasko, the owner of the local Cici’s Pizza restaurant. Gonzales-McLinn had argued that she was a victim of abuse, and that her previous counsel had been ineffective, urging her to reject a plea deal that would have resulted in a 25-year sentence. Ultimately, Judge Amy Hanley agreed that her counsel was ineffective and ordered the new, reduced sentence.

• Police shake-up: New faces are plentiful on the public safety scene. KU hired Nelson Mosley, a former Wichita police officer and chief of the Rose Hill department, as its new police chief and director of the Office of Public Safety. Later in the year, the city of Lawrence hired Rich Lockhart, a former Kansas City, Mo. police officer and chief of the Warrensburg, Mo., department, as its next police chief. But not everything is settled with the police department. The city’s Community Police Review Board wants a new ordinance that would strengthen the board’s oversight and a review of complaints against the police department. But city commissioners haven’t yet backed the request of the review board.

• Utility pain: In what has become a multi-year trend, Lawrence city commissioners did approve a new round of water and sewer rate increases. The latest increases are expected to add $86 a year to the average residential water and sewer user’s bills. That’s likely less than the increase many residents will see on their natural gas bills. Thanks to an arctic blast in February — which produced record high natural gas prices for reasons that aren’t yet fully understood — customers of Black Hills Energy likely will spend the next five years paying off extraordinary gas expenses. The latest proposal from the utility would increase the monthly bill of a typical resident by $12 a month for the next five years.

• A slowdown: Lawrence received its once-a-decade Census population numbers in 2021, and we’re still not a city of 100,000 people. The Census Bureau counted 94,934 people in Lawrence, well below the 103,000 that city officials had estimated. Still, Lawrence and Douglas County both grew during the decade. The city posted growth of 8.3% for the decade, while Douglas County grew by 7.2%. Both of those rates are a slowdown from historic norms, but that followed a national trend. The Census Bureau reported U.S. population grew at its slowest rate since the Great Depression. Lawrence and Douglas County, though, did grow well by Kansas standards. The Lawrence metro area was the second-fastest growing metro in the state, trailing only Kansas City.