The Lawrence Times

The city’s Sustainability Advisory Board on Thursday will hold a special meeting to discuss a draft ordinance that would prohibit establishments from providing or selling single-use disposable plastic bags. The city has been discussing similar measures for a few years now. A previous draft of the ordinance would have required establishments to charge customers 15 cents per single-use disposable bag for any purchase. Produce bags and reusable bags are not included in the proposed ban. Single-use disposable paper bags would still be allowed. Source: The Lawrence Times

For more than a century, Kansas students have earned credits — and, after enough of them, a high school diploma — based on how much time they spend in a classroom. The age-old “Carnegie unit” approach to education became the academic law of the land way back in 1906. And it stuck: One credit equals about 120 instructional hours in one subject. Kansas requires students to pass at least 21 credits to graduate from high school. But a group in charge of evaluating the state’s graduation requirements says that classroom time makes for a poor yardstick for measuring learning. So it [...]

It took three years for officials to notice lead was seeping into the city’s drinking water.  Missouri regulators had given the green light in 2014 for Trenton to start adding monochloramine to its drinking water to disinfect it without the harmful byproducts of chlorine. But by 2017, the city noticed something alarming. Lead levels in drinking water in the northwest Missouri town — population 5,609 — had spiked. Over the next two years, one-quarter of the homes tested exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s action level — 15 parts per billion — at least once. Source: The Lawrence Times

The Lawrence City Commission on Tuesday approved a plan for a work group that will revise how complaints against Lawrence police officers are handled. The existing Community Police Review Board has long wanted greater authority than the scope that city law currently allows — a scope so narrow that since the board was created in 2018, it has not reviewed a single complaint. The current ordinance only allows CPRB members to review appeals of the police department’s decisions in complaints about bias-based policing. Starting in 2020, at the direction of the Lawrence City Commission, board members began drafting an ordinance that [...]

Some Lawrence folks have found their tap water to smell and taste rather unappetizing lately. The city says its Municipal Services and Operations department is working to address it. “The Clinton Water Treatment Plant is currently treating water with elevated levels of geosmin, a byproduct of naturally occurring algae,” according to a news release from the city. “The geosmin poses no health risk to residents or their pets but may cause a noticeably earthy smell and taste in the water.” The city says some people can detect geosmin at very low levels; others may not notice it at all. “The City [...]

Multi-modal Transportation Commission members listened to Old West Lawrence neighbors Monday and voted unanimously to hold off on approval of the city’s plan for permanent traffic barriers in the neighborhood. Several neighbors believe that through their group efforts, they have created a better plan to make the streets safer than what the city and consultants have proposed. The traffic devices placed throughout the neighborhood’s streets last fall sparked some disagreements among neighbors and had been a divisive issue. However, most of the vocal residents of the neighborhood — which spans approximately from Sixth Street south to Ninth Street and from the [...]

The Lawrence Preservation Alliance’s upcoming “After La Yarda” historic walking tours will take tourgoers through the La Yarda neighborhood to learn about the past and present of its people. La Yarda was a tight-knit community of Mexican American railroad workers and their families living in housing owned by the Santa Fe Railroad from 1920-1951. Located near the Kaw River, the La Yarda neighborhood was destroyed by a major flood in 1951. But residents did not leave Lawrence after the flood. They worked together to find new living arrangements, and many former residents and descendants of La Yarda are still living in [...]

One day in 1973, The Wall Street Journal published a review of Kansas tourist attractions. It was not kind. “Kansas is trying to promote tourism,” the Journal noted, “but it really doesn’t have a heck of a lot to promote.” The column singled out the godfathers of Kansas roadside tourism — the World’s Largest Ball of Twine in Cawker City, the World’s Largest Hand-Dug Well in Greensburg and the folk art town of Lucas — for particular ridicule, with pause breaks in the spots where the Journal expected its audience to chuckle at Kansas’ expense. Source: The Lawrence Times

A group of local people and organizations have collaborated to create a guide to the most accessible routes along the Lawrence Loop. People living with mobility limitations may view nature trails as resources they cannot use as they could be difficult to navigate, said disability activist Dot Nary. “Equal access to recreation is an ongoing issue,” Nary said. “There are already so many barriers to getting physical activity if you have difficulty walking or if you use a wheelchair or walker, so knowing where you can go to enjoy nature, to get some exercise, and not encounter barriers is a huge [...]

The Lawrence school district has cut six dozen education positions, 11.5 classified staff positions and 6.5 district-level administrator positions, according to a staff presentation Monday evening. The school board made about $6.41 million in budget cuts this spring. The board gave staff guidance on where to make cuts but allowed staff to make decisions about which specific positions would be cut, and from which buildings. “Reductions were made through retirements and exits,” Kristen Ryan, executive director of human resources, told the board. “We did not have to use our reduction in force policy, and teachers whose positions were reduced were given [...]