CITY MANAGER’S REPORT

Week ending November 12, 2010

October building permits:

There were 172 permits issued in October, compared to 187 permits issued in October 2009.  Permit valuation was $13,080,572 compared to $11,627,368 last year.  Fees were $69,063.96 for October versus $54,707.50 a year ago.  Permits were issued for 12 new single-family dwellings and one duplex last month.  This compares to 18 permits issued for new single-family dwellings in October last year.    Please see the attached memo, full report, and summary for more information.

Report on late night food stand downtown

On 09/14/10 the City Commission approved a street vendor license for the Last Stop Snack Shop at the southwest corner of 10^th and Massachusetts. This was the first new street vendor licensed since the City Code was changed to allow street vendors to operate until 2:30 a.m., and to staff’s knowledge is the only street vendor that operates until that time. The City Commission requested a report from the Police Department after 30 days regarding the operation of late night street vending. The Last Stop Snack Shop has been operating for several weeks and the Police Department reports no incidents of concern to date. The City Clerk’s Office, which licenses street vendors, has received no comments or complaints to date regarding the vendor’s operation.

Fire Medical Coroner Responsibilities

The fire medical department will be assuming full coroner responsibilities from the county that will include its current out-of-hospital death investigations and add all hospital deaths including follow-up and research for the coroner’s office.  The county will compensate the city for this additional work.

Retail Market Study available online

Planning staff has developed a Retail Market Study for the City of Lawrence in accordance with Horizon 2020 and the Land Development Code. This report analyzes the commercial market in the city for 2010.

Abatement progress made at 214 N. 6^th Street

On November 3, 2010, the Code Enforcement Division executed an administrative search warrant to enter the subject property to clean up the exterior yard code violations.  Prior to this enforcement action, staff had worked several code cases over the last several years involving this property.  A memo is attached with information on the abatement actions.

Farmland demolition bids received

The city received 15 proposals for farmland demolition services (see attached photo). Staff will evaluate the proposals over the next few weeks and then bring a recommendation for award to the City Commission.

New feature added to city website

The City of Lawrence is adding another tool to help communicate better with residents of Lawrence. The city uses two primary means of electronic communications with Lawrence citizens, a mailing list and social media. Although those two methods have been very successful, they have a gap that needs filled. News releases are important to the city, but there are other things that could be communicated which might not warrant an actual news release. Social media has its own restrictions that can make conversations awkward such as a character limit for a response, for example. To fill the communications gap, the city has added a blog called The City Current which can be found on the city website at http://www.lawrenceks.org/blog.  Content for the blog will be posted from city staff members on a variety of topics, and blog posts also will be distributed through the city’s Facebook and Twitter.