CITY MANAGER’S REPORT

Week ending November 21, 2008

 

Turn lane improvements to accompany O’Reilly’s development

On October 24, 2008, the Planning Director approved a site plan for a new O’Reilly Auto Parts store at 300 W. 23rd Street, on the south side of 23rd Street just east of Checkers. The site plan was approved with the agreement of the applicant that a physical improvement would be constructed to accommodate access to the site while promoting the safety of through traffic on 23rd Street. The applicant has proposed a center left-turn lane that will provide for safe left turn movements into the O’Reilly site as well as the Checkers site. The applicant has agreed to finance and construct the center turn lane. Please see the attached memo, drawing of the preferred option and aerial photo for more information.

 

Planning and Development Services website enhanced

The Planning and Development Services web page (www.lawrenceks.org/pds/) is consistently visited over 3,500 times per month. Denny Ewert, Renee Yocum, and Eric Gruber have worked to implement several new features to increase customer service and fulfill important Matrix Report recommendations. These include:

  1. Beginning with applications submitted during the week of November 24th, certain application materials, such as the site plan and application form itself, will be posted to the web page. This will allow citizens the ability to view more information to get a better sense of what an application entails.
  2. A stand-alone planning commission (PC) agenda, separate from the full PC agenda packet, will be posted to reduce the time it takes to download the entire packet. A common request since launching the web-based PC packets has been that the agenda should be posted separately from the full agenda packet since the full packet is often quite large and can be time consuming to download.
  3. A Building Codes Interpretation Manual has been added to the web page. This should prove helpful to the development community as it includes information on how interpretations are determined and includes several interpretations to date. As interpretations are needed, the manual will be populated.

 

2008 Douglas County property tax levy information

Please see the attached documents produced by Douglas County, summarizing assessed valuation, mill levies and property tax receipts of the various taxing jurisdictions in the county.

 

KDOT suspends construction lettings for two months

KDOT has announced that it will suspend most construction lettings for the next two months in the face of budget shortfalls and funding uncertainties at both the state and federal level (see attached letter). This announcement does not affect any Lawrence projects at this time.

 

Permit review times improving

Permit review times for residential permits significantly improved in September and October with the reorganization of the Plan Review Division in the Planning and Development Services Department. After the former plan review manager retired the department built upon his success and dedicated two employees to the plan review function. Under the supervision of Building Safety Manager Barry Walthall, the division reorganized the plan review work area and worked to increase communications with internal divisions and applicants. The division’s goals include reviewing residential permits within five days of receiving a complete application and reviewing commercial permits within 15 days of application 100% of the time. On the commercial side, staff remains challenged in reviewing several large apartment complexes, accounting for the inability to reach the goal at this time. Please see the attached table for more details.

 

2008 Holiday Bazaar a success

The 2008 Holiday Bazaar, sponsored by the Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department, was held at the Community Building on Sunday, November 16. This was the sixth straight year the event has been sold out to the exhibitors – with 130 exhibitor spaces sold. Staff was pleased with turnout for the event. Please see attached photos.