The city of Lawrence is looking to hire more people to work at a city-operated campsite for the homeless so that the North Lawrence camp can have 24-hour per day, seven-day per week staffing. City Manager Craig Owens told commissioners at their Tuesday evening meeting that finding staffing has been a challenge, but the city was bettering its salary offers to try to attract individuals with specific qualifications in the field of serving the homeless. “We have tried to hire employees who are trained in that and who have knowledge in this space that we just frankly don’t have,” Owens said. “This is new for us.” Owens in his briefing didn’t provide details on those salary ranges or how much the city expects to spend on providing staffing at the site, which is located on city-owned property between Johnny’s Tavern and the Kansas River levee in North Lawrence.
Source: LJWorld

Lawrence has an official goal to be the “most business-friendly community in the region,” but a new survey found that less than half of the city’s business community currently finds the city friendly. City commissioners at their meeting Tuesday evening received the results of the community’s first business satisfaction survey, which included responses from 308 business representatives in the community. A headline finding of the survey was that 51% of all respondents did not find the City of Lawrence to be business friendly. “Lawrence has developed a bad reputation,” one of several hundred anonymous comments left as part of the scientific survey read. “Developers and businesses do not want to come here because they make it so difficult.” But the survey also suggested that many of those businesses have learned to live with it. Despite a majority of residents saying the city was not business friendly, 59% of respondents said they were satisfied or very satisfied as a place to do business.
Source: LJWorld

The interest rate table above illustrates recent changes in a sample of MBIS “investment grade” yields. Every issuer’s credit is different. For rates that may be applicable to your municipality, contact our Municipal Bond Advisors, Larry Kleeman, Beth Warren and Henry Schmidt.

Newton businesses will receive a letter and information in the coming days about the City’s new Newton Business Registry. The purpose of the registry is to streamline local businesses’ administrative work with the City by establishing a single record of contact information and licensing and permit needs. For example, this registry would have been extremely helpful in recent years as the City was rolling out information about COVID-relief grants available to businesses. There is no fee for the registration, and it is not mandatory to operate a business in Newton.
Source: City of Newton