Multimedia Reporting (Adler-Noland)

The city of Lawrence is looking for long-term ways to raise additional revenue and decrease expenditures.

In a recent City Commission meeting the fourth quarter report showed that the city had spent more money from the general operating fund in 2006 than it had brought in. Budget Manager Casey Toomay, who gave the report, said the city used money from the fund balance to cover the difference last year, and anticipates the city will this year, as well. Toomay described the fund balance as a savings account the city can dip into when expenditures exceed revenues.

“While this addresses the problem in the short term, a longer-term solution will be needed,” Toomay said. “The City Commission may need to prioritize future expenditures in order to match anticipated revenues.”

City Manager David Corliss agreed with Toomay’s suggestion.

“We’re going to have to look at our expenditures very carefully and say no both to the small and the big that fall outside the budget,” Corliss said. He said the city needs to be more rigorous in its analysis of non-budgeted requests for money, but that he doesn’t want to refuse legitimate requests by pre-judging them. Corliss cited the library funding as a project the city chose to go ahead with even though it was expensive.

The general fund, which funds police services, fire medical services and park and street maintenance, among other services, comprises 39% of the city’s total budget.

Another issue discussed at the meeting was the sales and use tax revenue, which is part of the general fund. Toomay said the city expected to receive 4 percent more from these revenues in 2006 than it actually did. As a result, the city received about $466,000 less than it had predicted and included in the 2007 budget. Toomay said this represents a very small part of the city’s total budget. During the meeting Commissioner David Schauner had asked if the unexpected tax revenue shortfall would cause problems in the general fund budget. Toomay said it wouldn’t currently, but that a slower growth rate in tax revenues could pose a problem.

“The city will need to continue to review our expenditures and explore options for expanding our tax base, increasing existing funding streams, and creating new revenue streams,” Toomay said.

Finding new ways to raise revenue, however, seems to be more easily said than done. Schauner said sales and property are the city’s most lucrative sources of income, and that it is harder to get revenue from the fees the city administers.

“When the rubber meets the road,” Schauner said,” it’s very difficult to get that great big surge of revenue that will stay with you.”

Corliss suggested streamlining the city’s purchasing process as a way to minimize expenditures.

“We’re looking for efficiencies,” Corliss said. “We’re saying ‘how can we do things better?’”

Toomay said the city is hiring an internal auditor to examine city operations and look for additional ways in which the city could operate more efficiently. The 2007
budget also contained some measures to increase efficiency, such as having departments share certain equipment and using city staff for design work on projects rather than hiring outside consultants, she said.

Lawrence citizens can aid the city’s budget process by providing input on what they consider important, Toomay said.

“Citizens should speak out and let the city know areas where funding is needed to provide the level of service they expect from the city of Lawrence,” she said.

Lawrence will be conducting a citizen satisfaction survey in the coming weeks. Toomay encouraged those who are contacted to share their thoughts and suggestions with the city.

Whitney Baker, University of Kansas conservator, pauses to watch as one of her student assistants applies paste to the spine of an unbound book. The song “Our House” by Madness plays softly in the background, relieving the otherwise quiet atmosphere of the conservation lab.

“I really didn’t know what I would be doing when I went to college,” Baker said. “I never thought I’d be back here working at KU.”

Nor did she think she would be constantly working with books. Now, however, she loves it.

Although Baker’s military family moved around a lot, she came to think of Kansas as home. After graduating from Wichita’s Northwest High School, Baker came to KU to study Spanish and chemistry. She said she realized in her junior year that she didn’t know how she would use her degrees after graduating.

“I was in the Honors program, so I went to see J. Michael Young, who was then the director,” Baker said, her respect for Young evident in her voice. “He said, ‘I think you’re the kind of person who would enjoy repairing old books.’” She laughed. “Frankly, that didn’t seem too scholarly.”

Baker said Young told her to speak with Bill Mitchell, who worked with the KU library’s special collections. He showed her a professional journal about conservation.

“It seemed very scholarly,” Baker said. “You have to have a lot of chemistry to apply for grad school.”

That meeting with Mitchell sparked Baker’s interest in book conservation, and she applied to the Center for the Book at the University of Iowa, thinking she’d take classes for a year and then apply to graduate school if she liked the work. She did.

“It was a great place to be,” she said.

There are only about five graduate programs in conservation in North America and most of those focus on fine arts, Baker said. She applied to the University of Texas at Austin because its program focused on library conservation.

“Most students want to be paintings conservators,” Baker said, shrugging. She smiled. “I don’t know why. I guess it’s sexier than books.”

She was accepted to the three-year, 81-hour program and, as the final part of her degree, interned for eight months in the book division of the Library of Congress.

“I was actually offered a job,” she said, “but I just didn’t feel it was right. I ended up at the University of Kentucky, where I met my husband.” Baker laughed again and her hazel eyes twinkled. “Maybe that’s why.”

Baker worked as conservator for the University of Kentucky for more than three years and said she enjoyed her time there. When presenting a research paper at a conference in 2001, she was invited to go to Cuba for two weeks with a group of conservators to teach classes. There her Spanish came into play.

“That was an interesting place,” Baker said. “It seems so exotic to Americans. I had a lot of pre-conceived notions, a lot of which were wrong. It was great!”

In 2002, however, KU’s conservator position opened up, and Baker and her husband moved to Kansas so she could take the position. As KU conservator, Baker also teaches a class in the museum studies program.

One of Baker’s current students worked at Union Station in Kansas City, Mo., and suggested some of KU’s special collection items might be useful for display in the Dead Sea Scrolls special exhibit.

“I’m really happy that came about,” Baker said. “I was also happy to see one of my students involved and on the job.”

For Baker, the best difference between her position in Kentucky and her work here is her conservation assistant Adonia David. Baker appreciates having someone to help her with the student workers in the lab, and can’t seem to sing David’s praises highly enough. David feels the same way about Baker.

“Whitney is very knowledgeable,” David said. “Her willingness to share this knowledge, as well as her commitment to her employees, make her a wonderful boss. We do well down here in our little lab.”

Ashleigh Ferguson, an art history major from Olathe who works in the lab, agrees. “I’ve always loved it here,” she said.

Special Collections librarian Richard Clement described Baker’s work as essential to the library’s mission to preserve materials for future generations.

“She’s very modest,” Clement said. “She doesn’t toot her own horn much.”

Perhaps this is because of Baker’s outlook on her role as conservator.

“Not every day is roses, but it’s a good job,” Baker said. “I feel like it’s more of a calling than a job.”

With the recent increased awareness of global warming, the University
of Kansas is doing its part to further research on trends in global
climate change. KU is the lead member of the Center for Remote
Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS), which is conducting research in
Greenland and Antarctica as part of the scientific community's
International Polar Year.

"Our work in both places is based on land-based ice masses," Stephen
Ingalls, associate director of administration at CReSIS, said.
Ingalls said CReSIS focuses its research on land-based ice sheets
because ice sheets already in the water have no effect on ocean levels
if they melt.

This is the fourth international polar year since 1882. The current
polar year began in March and ends in March 2009. Ingalls said that a
team of KU and Ohio State University researchers will be deployed
April 24 with ice-penetrating radar equipment and that another KU
researcher will join a team of Danes in early May to survey deep ice
cores.

"The poles have very extreme conditions," he said, "so we go to
Greenland in our summer and Antarctica in the Austral summer."

CReSIS conducts part of its research by using satellite photos to
locate areas of general interest.

"We get a pretty good idea of what's going on with Greenland," Ingalls said.

After that, radar equipment is mounted on NASA aircraft and
successively smaller manned aircraft. Ingalls said a downside to this
method, however, is that it is difficult to get all the needed
supplies to the remote areas to support humans in extreme climate
conditions.

"I would imagine that, logistically, it's kind of like supporting
operations on Mars," he said.

To assist CReSIS' research efforts a team of KU scientists and
students designed an un-manned aircraft that will use
ground-penetrating radar to map the thickness of ice sheets.

"To do that we fly a long way close to the ground using power-hungry
science instruments," Rick Hale, associate professor of aerospace
engineering, and a member of the design team, said.

Hale said the team has spent two years on the project and has built
multiple prototypes to ensure an aircraft capable of living up to its
scientific requirements.

"We've built an aircraft that can fly 1,800 kilometers, roughly one
to two kilometers off the ground, for long distances in the harsh
Antarctic climate," he said.

Hale said the team uses a radio to communicate with the aircraft at short distances and communicates by satellite when the aircraft is farther away. He also said that the design team had had some difficulty integrating the systems on the aircraft so that the communication systems didn't interfere with the scientific equipment.

"We've been trying to manage a fairly tight schedule and a fairly tight budget," Hale said.

He said the team has started to order the materials to build the two
aircrafts, and estimated the project will have cost more than a million dollars by the time it is complete.

"We have expensive toys on this side of campus," he said jokingly.

Hale and the team will begin flight testing this fall at the Smoky Hills Air National Guard Range near Salina. He said the initial research mission will take place next summer in June or July.

When 17-year-old Marion Boyd, a high school junior from Overland Park, Kan., visited the University of Kansas, she hoped she wouldn't like KU as much as she had enjoyed her visit to Kansas State University.

"Initially I didn't really know much about KU, but I was so taken with K-State that I was really hoping I'd like one more than the other," Boyd said. "I liked K-State so much I thought 'I don't need to see another college.'"

Marion was only one of the many high school students to visit campus this semester during KU's 10 "Junior Day" events. No one knows for sure when KU began hosting junior and senior days, but the office of Admissions and Scholarships said the programs are at least a decade old. The department has always collected raw data about how many students attended the events each semester, but this summer will start analyzing that data to find correlations between student visits and when – or if – those students chose to attend KU. Lisa Pinamonti Kress, director of admissions and scholarships, said a recent restructuring of Information and Web Specialist Beri Lainjo's position allowed for this new way of analyzing data.

"A student could have come to a Junior Day but then entered KU as a transfer student," Pinamonti Kress said. "There's just so many ways to manipulate the data. That's what we're trying to figure out how to do."

Even though the University hasn't been able to analyze the correlation between junior and senior events and subsequent enrollment in KU, Pinamonti Kress said the demand for the events has increased.

"The way we know they've grown is we keep adding more Junior Days," she said. "We added two this year and they were still full." Pinamonti Cress said 150 – 200 visitors usually attend junior and senior events.

The department does not yet know how many students attended Junior Days this spring, but expects to have data from last fall evaluated by summer. Spring data will be ready some time in October.

"It's hard to get an accurate count," Pinamonti Kress said. She also said that, to her department, knowing the total number of students who visited campus is more important than knowing specifically which students attended a Junior or a Senior day.

"We would not quit having Junior and Senior days even if we weren't happy with the numbers because we just can't handle the number of people who want to visit," she said.

Both KU and K-State have hosted Junior and Senior Days for at least the past 10 years. The two colleges have similar formats for these events – which include a campus tour, lunch at a student cafeteria and free t-shirt – and both charge a $15
fee per visitor. Pinamonti Kress and Tamara Bowles, K-State admissions representative, said that the $15 fee doesn't entirely cover the cost of the events. Neither of them, however, view the extra expenditures negatively.

"I do think it helps recruit students, so it's worthwhile to us," Bowles said. "It is a great way to expose students to all the opportunities K-State has to offer."

Pinamonti Kress agrees.

"If we didn't spend it with campus visits we'd spend it on other recruitment," she said. "We don't want to increase the cost any more to our guests. You're going to have enough costs when you go to college." Pinamonti Kress said the average budget for junior and senior events was about $10,000. This amount is part of Admissions and Scholarships' normal budget and includes rental of the Kansas Union and of buses to transport the students throughout the day.

Pinamonti Kress added that students who have attended a Junior Day in the spring semester often come back for Senior Days in the fall.

"Especially if you come to the major-specific days you are going to get a lot more specific information," she said. "You could come to a Junior Day and a Senior Day and learn different information."

Marion Boyd plans to return to both KU and K-State next semester to attend Senior Days.

"While I enjoyed what I saw on both campuses, and I really loved what I had been exposed to, I think Senior Days is going to be necessary for both colleges so I can get a more in-depth view of my major at both colleges to make the decision," she said. If she decides to attend K-State Marion will major in biochemistry, but at KU her major would be chemistry with a biochemistry option because KU does not offer a separate biochemistry major.