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The City of Lawrence is facing a $6.5 million deficit next year. In February, they asked our community for input about how to solve this problem. The city gave us the options of reducing budgets for departments, such as the police and parks and recreation, or increasing taxes.
We greatly appreciate their effort to involve the community in this important community decision-making process. Unfortunately, we do not believe the city’s budget engagement process fulfilled their strategic plan commitments to practice collaborative engagement with our community and to provide transparent access to data.
The city’s community engagement only allowed participants to provide input about the budget through A Balancing Act, a program that made them solve the complicated puzzle of eliminating the deficit by making 49 funding decisions.
Additionally, the city’s budget engagement opportunities addressed only 24% of the total budget. Residents did not receive information about the expenses that made up 45% of the 2025 budget — capital investments and debt payments.
The city’s capital investments (large, one-time investments) have increased significantly in the last two years. This year, they are expected to be $151.6 million, which is 4.5 times as expensive as they were in 2023.
The city’s debt payments on investments have been 25-30% greater for the last two years than their previous highs. This debt is paid for with portions of our community’s property taxes, sales taxes and utility fees.
As of this month, our city has a total debt of $462.7 million, which is a 19% increase from just last April. (Total debt equals the “est. principal outstanding” for general obligation bonds, general obligation temporary notes and revenue bonds.) This means the city is currently carrying $4,810 of debt for each Lawrence resident, which equals $19,240 of debt for an average household of four.
The Coalition for Collaborative Governance is a nonpartisan group of engaged residents who are advocating for the city to actively involve the community in its decision-making processes and to provide more transparency about city information.
Due to the limited scope of the city’s budget engagement offerings, our coalition asked the city to host community engagement events regarding the 45% of the city’s budget that includes capital expenses and debt service. The city considerately replied that they will post answers to some of our coalition’s questions on their website, but they reported that their staff does not have the capacity to host community engagement events at this time.
Because we believe our community would benefit from more public discussions about these important issues, our coalition will independently host a community conversation about the Lawrence city budget. Please join us from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 5 at the Lawrence Public Library auditorium for an educational presentation and community discussion about the city’s budget, debt and capital investments. We will compile participants’ feedback and present it to the city.
For more details about the city budget, please read our full independent analysis of the city’s capital expenses, debt and budget deficit. We offer this research to increase budget transparency. We believe this information will help our community better understand the city’s financial situation and be able to provide informed feedback to our city government.
If you would like the city to provide more community engagement about their budget, please ask your city commissioners to provide these opportunities by emailing them at commissioners@lawrenceks.org and ccagendas@lawrenceks.org.
To learn more about the Coalition for Collaborative Governance, please visit our website, and if you’re interested in supporting our research and advocacy, please sign up for our email list.
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About the writer
Holly Krebs (she/her) is the lead organizer of the Coalition for Collaborative Governance. She has a background in public policy and was a Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commissioner before changing career paths to become a health care practitioner. She is a longtime Lawrencian who operates Kinetikos Healing Collective and is the mother of three children.
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Holly Krebs: Lawrence community deserves transparency and a voice on city budget, debt (Column)
“Because we believe our community would benefit from more public discussions about these important issues, our coalition will independently host a community conversation about the Lawrence city budget,” Holly Krebs, of the Coalition for Collaborative Governance, writes in this column.
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