CITY MANAGER’S REPORT
Week ending April 9, 2010
Compost sale a success
At the city’s Spring Compost Sale in March a total of 2,220 cubic yards of compost (equivalent to 1,443 tons) was distributed and a total of $11,240 was generated during the sale. Lawrence community compost is made from the weekly collection of residential yard trimmings, which includes grass, leaves, and small woody debris. A total of 1,446 vehicles participated. Please see the attached report for more details.
Community Egg Hunt
The Parks and Recreation Department conducted the Community Egg Hunt on Saturday April 3, 2010. Over 1,000 children received Egg Hunt Goody Bags provided by Hy-Vee. The city’s partnership with Hy-Vee allows the Egg Hunt to continue being a free event to the public. Please see attached photos.
2009 annual report now available
The City of Lawrence’s 2009 annual report is now available for viewing online. Annual reports are an additional communication tool used to provide information to citizens, businesses and other interested individuals about the overall progress made during the previous year. This year’s report utilizes the City Commission’s goals as the foundation for building the report. Each department provided information on different programs, services and events during the year that reinforce the City Commission’s goals. The 2009 annual report highlights projects selected for funding through the 0.55-percent sales tax passed by the voters in November 2008. Additionally, the city was the recipient of numerous American Recovery and Reinvestment Act projects which are described in the annual report.
City website usage update
The City of Lawrence website, lawrenceks.org, received 229,676 visits from January 1 to March 31, 2010 and had 661,035 pages viewed during that time period. In March, the city announced its intention to apply for the Google Fiber for Communities project. In turn, a web page was created to inform the public about our efforts. That page was the most visited page in March with 16,154 visits.
A database of frequently asked questions is available on the city web site at http://lawrenceks.org/faq. Visitors can search the database by keyword (example: fire) and instantly be presented with links to FAQs that match that keyword. Content for the FAQ database comes from the city department pages, as most departments have a FAQ section. More FAQs will be added to the database over time, and city staff will use web usage statistics from the application to improve content on the city web site.
Below are the top five viewed answers for the last 30 days:
1. Do I need a permit to install a fence?