CAMPUS/AREA
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, December 8, 1994
3A
Residents say city neglects east side
Area repair needs not being funded
By Carlos Tejada
Kansan staff writer
Editor's note: This is the fourth of four stories about growth in Lawrence.
Bob Zimmerman says he is a victim of Lawrence's steady growth.
Zimmerman, Lawrence resident, can't drink the tap water at his eastside home at 1743 Barker Ave. The pipes, which carry the city's water to his part of town, were laid down in 1897 and now taint the water with rust. Zimmerman said he now drank bottled water from the grocery store.
The city has no plans to upgrade the pipes because, city officials said, it doesn't have the money. Still, because of growth-related demand, city water rates needed to be raised, they said.
"Maybe we should slow down this growth and concentrate on our current problems," he said.
Zimmerman's claim is an increasingly common one. Some residents and city officials say the city can't support its fast growth rate, which ideally should pay for itself through taxes. They say the increase in population and households brought on by Lawrence's2.5 percent growth rate is putting a strain on city services. The city spends its money creating new sewers and roads for new development instead of revamping older areas of the city.
And when the city finally improves
services, that cost is passed on to the entire city, not just the new development creating the strain, they say.
West-side developers disagree. They say the growth has given the community an economic boost. They also say some city officials are looking for a scapegoat to avoid paying for decaying sewers and roads.
Myles Schachter, an urban planning consultant who has worked for the city in the past, said development should pay for itself but didn't. He said the city was paying for growth through Lawrence's half-cent sales tax, Douglas County's 1-cent sales tax, and increased garbage and water rates.
Schachter said each additional house cost the city between $8,000 and $10,000 a year through city services, education, roads and other city privileges. Property taxes and sales taxes don't make up that amount, he said.
Jo Andersen, Lawrence mayor, agreed with Schachter that higher taxes and rate increases were due to growth.
"Hell, yes, it's because of growth," she said. "The question we have is, how are we going to pay for it?"
Andersen said the solution was impact fees. Impact fees are charged to the developers who build new houses. The developers then pass that cost on to the home buyers. The
fees are designed to make up for the cost of roads, sewers, education and other costs to the city.
The city does not charge impact fees at this time, Andersen said.
But Ron Durlfinger, president of the Lawrence Homebuilders Association, said impact fees were a bad idea. He said such fees would destroy Lawrence's real estate market.
Durfling also said opponents of growth misstated the problems of aging roads and sewers. He said west-Lawrence development was being used as a scapegoat to find a way to pay for city services, which the city should have improved years ago.
"It's a politically expedient way of diverting attention from aging infrastructure that won't pay for itself," he said.
New development isn't completely paid for by the city, Durflinger said. Developers pay for streets, sewers, water meters and other improvements within the neighborhood itself. The city pays for extensions of services to those neighborhoods.
Durfinger said the $100 million brought to Lawrence by new residents boosted the economy and more than made up for any costs.
"If Jo Andersen or Myles Schachter would like to remove that contribution from the community, then they would truly see a time of no growth," he said.
Durfinger said much of the talk of impact fees and the negative aspects of western development came from a bias against the class and lifestyle of the residents.
Lawrence will spend a combined $3.8 million on miscellaneous capital improvements in 1995 and 1996. Of that, $2.2 million will go to improvements on the east side of the city, which is aging and in some places outdated. Some residents say Lawrence spends too little on east-side infrastructure, some of which is old and outdated, and too much money supplying water and street service to new developments on the west side of the city.
1) Street widening $1.6 million
2) Street redesign $78,000
3) Traffic signals $175,000
4) Street maintenance $214,000
5) Street maintenance $128,000
Source: City of Lawrence Krista McGloohon/KANSAN
Water leak leaves Ellsworth without heat
Kansan staffreport
Ellsworth Hall residents yesterday found no comfort from the 34-degree cold. The heat was off in the building.
Phil Garito, associate director for student housing maintenance, said the heat in the residence hall was off because of a water leak in the basement of the hall.
The heating system in a residence hall is one continuous pipe, Garito said. When there is a leak on one of the floors, pipes to the floors above the leak must be shut down and drained.
After that, maintenance must fill all of the pipes with water again, which takes about two hours, he said.
Although there was no heat in
Ellsworth because of the leak, there was no effect on the plumbing, Garito said.
The heat was back on at Ellsworth by 5 last night.
Students still had both hot and cold water.
Special hours for some student services
The problem surfaces in any one of the residence halls about once a month, Garito said.
During finals, some student services will keep their regular hours, and others will increase them.
The Computer Center
Friday and Saturday: Open 24 hours. Assistance will be available from 7:30 a.m. to midnight.
Sunday through Thursday: Open 24 hours. Assistance will be available from 7:30 a.m. to 2 a.m.
Kansas Union
Monday through Thursday: 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Friday and Saturday: 7 a.m. to midnight
Sunday: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Libraries
Anschutz Science Library and Watson Library
Monday through Thursday: 8 a.m. to midnight
Friday: 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Saturday: 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Sunday: Noon to midnight
Art and Architecture Library
Art and Architecture Library
Monday through Thursday: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Friday: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Saturday: Noon to 5 p.m.
Sunday: 1 to 10 p.m.
Spahr Engineering Library Monday through Thursday: 8 a.m. to midnight
Friday: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Saturday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sunday: Noon to midnight
Law Library
Law Library
Monday through Friday: 7:30 a.m. to midnight
Saturday: 8 a.m. to midnight
Sunday: 10 a.m. to midnight
Robinson Center
The Fitness and Weight Room
Monday through Friday: 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m.
to 10:30 p.m.
Saturday: 8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Sunday: 1 to 10:30 p.m.
The Swimming Pool
Monday through Friday: 5:30 to 10 p.m.
Saturday: 2 to 10 p.m.
Sunday: 2 to 10 p.m.
Watkins Memorial Health Center
Good luck on finals, and have a great winter break!
Monday through Friday: 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. (A $25 service fee will be charged after 4:30 p.m.)
Saturday: 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (A $25 service fee will be charged after 11:30 a.m.)
Sunday: 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (A $25 service fee will be charged all day Sunday)
Students concerned about lack of lighting Few lights create false feelings of security on campus locked from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Students who park behind the building must walk around to the front to get in during those hours.
By Ashley Miller
Kansan staff writer
Students living in the residence halls are concerned about the lack of lighting in their parking lots.
Several of the lots have burned out
lights or what s. dents feel to be not enough lights, which leaves some feeling unsafe when they park at night.
Lights in the Oliver Hall and Corbin Hall parking lots are burned out or broken.
And Amanda Jo Harkins, El Dorado senior, said students in McCollum Hall were concerned because the parking lot behind the hall had only two lights. She lived in the hall three years before moving to Sellardis Scholarship Hall this year.
Harkins, who also was president of the hall last year, said McCollum was on the University improvements list for more lights.
However, she said she did not know where the hall ranked on the list and thought the lights would not be fixed soon.
"I'll come back as an alumna in 20 years, and they'll still be complaining
"There's a false sense of security." Harkins said. "You feel like you're so close to the hall. But you have to walk by parked cars, and there are some trees out there. And the back doors are locked to create security within the hall, but that creates a problem outside the hall."
The back doors to McCollum are
Amanda Jo Harkins El Dorado senior
about the lighting," Harkins said.
Donna Hull
assistant director of the parking department,
said the lights in residence hall parking lots were necessarily the responsibility of the department.
"There are different kinds of lights on campus," Fultine said. "Some are fixed by parking, some are fixed by facilities operations, some are fixed by housing and some are fixed by KPL."
Hultine said lights rented from Kansas Public Lighting, 333 W. 9th, including those in the Olver Hall parking lots, often took longer to repair because complaints were often made to either parking or housing departments, which in turn has to call KPL.
New speaker says he is often mislabeled as being radical
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — Tim Shallenburger, nominated by his fellow Republicans to be the next speaker of the Kansas House, is a man nobody seems to know.
Shallenburger says he has been mis-labeled because of a youthful indiscretion committed during his first term in the Legislature. He says he's nothing like his image.
"I believe I've been painted a much more radical conservative and much more hard-nosed than I ever dreamed I was," he said. "I don't recognize that person."
Governor-elect Bill Graves readily concedes he knows little about Shailenburg, other than his reputation as a fiscal conservative. Graves is scrambling to learn more about the man who will run half the Legislature during Graves' first two years in office, and maybe longer.
He says he never set out to become a politician, didn't hold strong views until he arrived in Topeka eight years ago, and his political philosophy is shaped more by his family and his life experiences than ideology.
He has no college degree but worked his way up to be vice president of his hometown bank in Baxter Springs.
He was active in the Young Republicans, yet never held public office until he was elected to the House in 1986. He didn't crack the GOP leadership until 1993 when he became speaker pro tem.
But on Jan. 9, the 40-year-old Shallenburger will become the 42nd speaker in the history of the Kansas House of Representatives, succeeding Bob Miller of Wellington.
He ousted Miller in a GOP caucus election last Monday, 45-34, the first time a sitting speaker has been defeated in a bid for a second two-year term.
Shallenburger points to humble roots in extreme southeast Kansas as having forged his personality. He is open, cheerful and positive — nothing like the sinister plotter he has been painted by legislative colleagues and some in the media.
He says he got that reputation because he joined with a dozen other House dissidents who became known as "The Rebels" during his first two years in the Legislature. Their major agenda was to make life miserable for then-speaker Jim Braden. Pushing a conservative agenda was a means to that end.
His reputation now is that of a challenger to the status quo, and that has struck fear into the hearts of those who backed Miller for the speakership.
They should relax, Shallenburger said.
"You should never take the political differences you have with others personally," he said. "I think it's a fear of change and a fear that they were on the wrong side of something.
"There are people walking around in fear and shock. They're fearful of whether they'll have a desk. So I'm calling people to tell them we'll have desks for them, and we'll even stock them with pencils."
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