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In February, the City of Lawrence provided community engagement opportunities for residents to “express their priorities for the budget” and address the city’s expected $6.5M deficit next year. They provided an engagement program, called A Balancing Act, that was an exercise for residents to balance the budget.
The Coalition for Collaborative Governance researched and analyzed the city’s community engagement offerings to determine if these fulfilled the city’s strategic plan commitment to collaborative engagement “to drive action and build trust in our government.”
Our research shows that the city engaged our community earlier in the budget process this year than ever before and that they transparently shared the input they gathered with the City Commission. We thank them for their efforts to improve the process of gathering and using community input.
Our research also indicates that the city’s engagement tool
- only allowed participants to provide input if they successfully made 49 funding decisions that eliminated the deficit,
- was so challenging to use that it discouraged participation,
- only addressed 24% of the city’s total budget,
- did not allow participants to provide input about the rest of the budget, and
- produced some biased results.
For more details, see our full analysis of the city’s budget community engagement and transparency.
Our coalition believes our community deserves the opportunity to provide more substantive feedback about our priorities for the city’s 2026 budget. We requested that the city provide more community education and engagement opportunities, but they reported that their staff doesn’t have the capacity to provide these.
So our coalition is independently hosting a community conversation about the Lawrence city budget from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, June 5 in the Lawrence Public Library auditorium.
This event will include
- A short educational presentation about the city’s budget, debt, and investments by Holly Krebs, the coalition’s lead budget researcher
- A short video about the city’s capital investments by city staff
- Questions and answers with Krebs and Kristine Polian, our municipal finance expert
- Small-group discussions for participants to express their concerns, priorities and suggestions for budget improvements
- A survey to capture additional feedback
We will compile participants’ feedback and present it to city staff and elected officials. We also encourage community members to provide feedback directly to the City Commission at commissioners@lawrenceks.org and ccagendas@lawrenceks.org and/or at their budget meetings on June 17 about the city’s capital improvement plan or July 8 about the city manager’s proposed 2026 budget.
The Coalition for Collaborative Governance also analyzed the city’s budget process based on their “Sound Fiscal Stewardship” commitment, which states they will provide “sustainable management of resources that align with community priorities” and “transparent, easy access to relevant, accurate data for budgeting and decision making.”
To fulfill this commitment, we believe the city needs to offer better community engagement to know our community priorities for the budget. We also believe they need to offer more transparent, easy-to-access budget information.
Although the city’s budget books provide lots of information, our research experience also led us to conclude that substantial information about the city’s budget and debt was not clear or was not available and, therefore, did not fulfill their commitment to transparency.
For example, 28% of the city’s 2025 revenue is labeled “Miscellaneous,” making this a bigger revenue source than sales tax and property tax combined. The description for this category of revenue lists six small sources of revenue, but doesn’t mention the debt-financed revenue that makes up 93% of this category.
You can read more about the challenges we faced in researching the city’s budget in our full report, and you can also learn more about the city budget by reading the budget analysis we published last month.
Our coalition is advocating for our local government to provide more transparency and collaborative community engagement. Until the city can adequately offer this, our coalition is trying to fill the gap and model what our community would like to receive from the city. We hope our efforts serve the community and encourage the city to improve their future engagement opportunities and budget transparency.
You can visit our website to learn more about the Coalition for Collaborative Governance and sign up for our email list if you’re interested in supporting our research and advocacy.
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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: Community members face challenges engaging with the city, researching the budget (Column)
