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LJWorld.com
THURSDAY • JUNE 9 • 2011
Firefighters take on ‘Energy Smackdown’
Low: 70
Today’s forecast, page 10A
INSIDE
District, teachers at odds over pay ——
Proposal turns savings from insurance into one-time raise
Cat uses a few lives, but has more Lawrence police assisted animal control officers May 29 in the 100 block of Michigan Street when officers found an injured cat inside a trap on the side of a residence. The cat had also been shot twice. Now named Bullet, the cat is recovering at the Lawrence Humane Society and will be available for adoption. Page 3A SPORTS
Camp scrimmage had big moments Cole Aldrich joined the Kansas Jayhawks in a scrimmage game at Bill Self’s basketball camp Wednesday and squared off against Thomas Robinson in a battle of the big men. Page 1B
By Mark Fagan mfagan@ljworld.com
Task force chosen for consolidation plans The Lawrence school district now has 26 volunteers to help guide plans to shrink its number of elementary schools. Page 7A
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QUOTABLE
Because government funding goes away, is art going to die? No. Art will live on.”
By Christine Metz
Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical will see which one can save the most energy. The competition — billed the “Energy Smack-
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The inefficiency of the way we are doing it The drumbeat for a larger — perhaps mandatory — right now is costing us curbside recycling program money.”
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INDEX 10A 4B-10B 9A 2A 10A, 2B 9B 5A 8A 2A 9B 1B-3B 5A, 2B, 9B 20 pages
Energy smart: The Journal-World makes the most of renewable resources. www.b-e-f.org
down” — ends with the firefighters from the winning station being treated to a barbecue lunch, which as it turns out is a fairly big incentive. “The thing that really surprised me was how competitive the firefighters have been,” said Horn, the Lawrence and Douglas County sustainability coordinator. Horn has spent time
Please see CITY, page 2A
Please see TEACHERS, page 2A
educating the three shifts that work at each of the five stations. She’s shared tips on saving energy, and they’ve added some of their own. “They’ve come up with some really creative, hilarious ideas. And they are definitely excited about beating each other,” she said. Please see FIREFIGHTERS, page 2A
City urged to offer curbside recycling clawhorn@ljworld.com
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Firefighters are typically trained to put out flames, but lately sustainability coordinator Eileen Horn has been instructing them about the importance of turning off the lights. For the next four months, the five fire stations and administration building that make up
By Chad Lawhorn
— Linda Browning Weis, new chairwoman of the Kansas Arts Commission, who says she is confident she and other arts advocates can raise enough private dollars for programs. Page 3A
Mayor Aron Cromwell said the task force will spend a lot of time on studying possible curbside recycling options, including the idea that all city residents must be required to pay for curbside recycling and would be provided with a special bin to collect material for recycling. “One of the themes that keeps coming up is communities that are most successful with recycling have everybody do it,” Cromwell said. “Everybody would have two containers and you would have the choice
Stations going head to head to reduce energy consumption cmetz@ljworld.com
SCHOOLS
The Lawrence school district wants to pay its teachers another $500 for the coming school year, a one-time raise that would be paid in December using money the district expects to save from reduced costs on health insurance. The offer came Wednesday night from the district’s negotiating team and, after negotiators for the teachers’ union spent 45 minutes reviewing their notes, their response could be summed up with three simple words. Thanks for nothing. “That’s not ‘their’ savings,” said David Reber, lead negotiator for the Lawrence Education Association. “That’s our money. If the insurance costs less, we should be able to get better insurance or something else, because that money is already ours. “Essentially, it’s smoke and mirrors to make it look like they’re giving us something when, in fact, they’re not.” The district’s proposal came in response to an earlier request from the teachers’ union, a call for giving all 925 or so licensed educators in the district a $1,500 raise for the 2011-12 school year — giving all teachers pay bumps that would not revert back to 2010-11 levels for the next contract year. The divide is among the biggest issues being negotiated in pursuit of a new work agreement for licensed educators. Formal negotiations started three months ago, and Wednesday’s meeting was the f irst time administrators had offered a counter proposal on compensation. The $500 raises would cost the district about $462,500 in all, or about as much as the district plans to save next year from an 11 percent drop in insurance premi-
Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo
SCOTT NISSEN, AN ENGINEER WITH LAWRENCE-DOUGLAS COUNTY FIRE MEDICAL STATION 5, reads a newspaper Wednesday by natural, instead of electric, light. Station 5 is in a four-month competition with the other fire houses to see which one can conserve the most energy.
in Lawrence grew a bit louder Wednesday. At a meeting hosted by the city’s Solid Waste Task Force, several members of the public asked the cityappointed group to consider ways to get residents to recycle in much greater quantities. Even one of the owners of the six privately owned curbside recycling companies in the city said he thought the city ultimately
— Chris Scafe, owner of Sunflower Curbside Recycling, saying multiple private haulers can’t get enough customers to be cost-effective should provide curbside recycling services. “If you have never seen someone shoot themselves in the foot, this is your opportunity,” Chris Scafe, owner of Sunflower Curbside Recycling told the group.
Scafe said the current system of where multiple private haulers provide service is ineff icient because it is difficult for any one hauler to get enough density to cost-effectively pick up the recycled goods. He estimated that many of his customers were spaced about a half-mile apart. “The inefficiency of the way we are doing it right now is costing us money,” Scafe said. The Wednesday evening “public input session” attracted about 30 people but fewer than 10 speakers. A majority of them spoke about recycling issues.
As Relay for Life nears, 50-year survivor recalls horrors that cancer patients used to endure Patients who had cancer often weren’t told. Families kept it a secret, because it wasn’t unusual to lose In the summer of 1961, friends if you told them you had cancer.
By Jane Stevens
jstevens@ljworld.com
Stewart Grosser was 22 years old and on top of the world. He’d just entered the U.S. Navy Off icer Candidate School in Newport, R.I., and was looking forward to a career in the Navy. He’d graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and married the love of his life, Eileen Katsur. A couple of weeks after starting OCS, he developed a high temperature and began coughing up blood. He became very weak, was hospitalized and treated for pneumonia. During OCS, he had one more bout and was hospitalized. Even though he wasn’t feeling his best, he finished
school at the end of November. He was home on leave when he was hit again with a fever so high that he became delirious. He was admitted to a civilian hospital, where physicians determined he had a tumor in the bottom lobe of his right lung. “The doctors told my wife and mother that it was malignant,” recalls Grosser, now 72. “But they didn’t tell me.” Those were the dark days when the word “cancer” rarely crossed people’s lips.
Cancer usually was an automatic death sentence. When it was referred to at all, it was called “the Big C.” Patients who had cancer often weren’t told. Families kept it a secret, because it wasn’t unusual to lose friends if you told them you had cancer. Grosser was transferred to Philadelphia Naval Hospital, where he had the lower lobe of his lung removed. He was given temporary duty at a reserve center in Pittsburgh. “I just hung out there,” said Grosser. “They couldn’t make me active duty. I would’ve loved it, but I was pretty ill.”
Stewart Grosser, now 72, was a young man in the Navy when he was diagnosed with cancer. His family was told of the diagnosis, but he was not. One evening, he heard his wife tell her mother during a phone call that Grosser had cancer. He confronted her, and she suggested they talk to his physician. “Your growth has come back,” his doctor told him. “You have 24 months to live.” Please see CANCER, page 2A
Relay for Life The American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life 2011 will take place this weekend at Free State High School track, 4700 Overland Drive. Hundreds of cancer survivors, their families and friends will remember those whose lives have been claimed by cancer. Survivors celebrate one more year of life. Stewart Grosser, a 50-year survivor of cancer, his wife and some members of their large family of five children and 13 grandchildren will celebrate his 50 years of surviving cancer. Opening ceremonies begin at 6:45 p.m. Friday. The luminaria ceremony starts at 9:15 p.m., the fight-back ceremony at 3 a.m. Saturday and the closing ceremony at 5:30 a.m.