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The Lawrence City Commission approved substantially more debt in their 2024-2026 budgets than ever before, for an average of $118 million each year for three years in a row.1 For comparison, in the previous three years from 2021-2023, the commission approved an average of $40 million of debt per year.2
On Tuesday, the commission will consider authorizing issuing $184 million in debt, the largest amount of debt the city has ever issued in a single year.3
Total and per capita debt
The city had a total of $429 million in debt at the end of 2024, which equals $4,410 of debt for each Lawrence resident.4
If the city issues all of the debt approved for 2026, the city’s total debt will be about $650 million by the end of 2026.5 This is a 52% increase in the city’s debt in two years, and this total debt would equal $6,680 per Lawrence resident.
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In 2025, the city actually took out more debt than the cost of the approved projects because it has reissued some of their past debt each year. The city hasn’t clearly documented how much of their annual debt is new and how much is reissued, so the projections above are based on how much debt the commissioners have approved, rather than how much they have issued, for 2025 and 2026. (The city is changing some of their debt practices this year, so their approved and issued debt should be better aligned in the future.)
The city’s debt payment plan
The city’s debt payment plan indicates that, by 2030, the city is anticipating paying $21 million more in debt payments each year than in 2025.6 This is a 64% increase in annual debt payments in just five years, and it will be paying off this debt for the next 25 years.
On the other hand, the city had deficits in its operating budget in 2024 and 2025 and had to cut $6.6M in costs to balance the 2026 budget.
One type of city debt is paid for with our city utility fees. The city is able to afford increases in this type of debt because it has increased utility fees an average of 6 to 8% each year between 2020 and 2028. The cumulative impact over this eight-year period will be increases of 60 to 80%, or even more, depending on household size and type, and the city plans to continue increasing them 4 to 7% each year.7
The second type of city debt is paid for with our property taxes. The city is paying for some of this increased debt by using cash reserves through 2032. But in 2033-2035, the city plans to dip into reserves that their fund balance policies don’t authorize them to use, because they are intended for “economic downturns or large-scale emergencies.”8 The city’s debt payment plan does not show how it plans to pay for this debt beyond 2035, even though it will be paying for it until 2050.9
Starting last March, the Coalition for Collaborative Governance repeatedly asked for the city’s long-term debt payment plan. The city released these plans months later, in August and October. This implies that either these plans previously existed and the city did not transparently share them when community members requested them, or that these plans did not previously exist and were not available to the city commissioners when they made their debt decisions for 2024-2026.
Fortunately, for the commission’s deliberations this Tuesday, the city provided extensive long-term debt payment plan information for the proposed $184 million debt issuance. Our coalition appreciates the city’s responsiveness to community advocacy requesting that this type of information be provided each time the commission considers issuing debt.
Long-term impacts
The past commission approved taking on this debt to pay for major capital improvement projects, including
• repairing streets, water mains, sewer lines and stormwater drainage pipes;
• improving our main water treatment plant;
• remodeling City Hall;
• expanding a fire station;
• expanding utilities west of the South Lawrence Trafficway; and
• the city’s most expensive project: the new campus for our Municipal and Services Operations department, which costs $130 million.10
The past commission unanimously supported these debt issuances, indicating commissioners believed that these projects all need to happen in a short window of time. Their approval also indicates they believed that the city has the capacity to pay for these substantially greater annual debt obligations for the next 25 years.
Can our community afford an extra $21 million per year in debt payments when the city had to cut $6.6 million to balance the 2026 operating budget?
The city’s debt payment plans suggest that the city’s recent debt decisions have already maxed out our community’s financial capacity to pay for it. Their plans also assume that the city will take out only $16 million in new debt each year between 2031 and 2035, which is substantially less than the amount approved any year in the 2020s.11
This means that our current and future commissions may have little to no capacity to take on additional debt to respond to our community’s infrastructure needs for a decade or more.
Additionally, the only financial commitment the city is legally bound to is paying its debt obligations. So if the city’s debt commitments surpass its revenues or if the city has unexpected infrastructure needs, future commissions’ choices will be to increase property tax rates, increase utility fees more, and/or cut city services.
One of our city’s strategic plan commitments is sound fiscal stewardship, which promises “Efficient use and sustainable management of resources that align with community priorities. We build and maintain public trust while using our resources to achieve high value.”12
We hope that the past commission’s decisions fulfill this commitment and that they have invested wisely. We also hope that the current commission thoroughly evaluates the sustainability of this debt and manages our city’s future finances to successfully weather the next decade. And we believe it’s valuable for our community to better understand the financial situation that our community, our city government, and our city commissions will be managing for many years to come.
Meeting info
Lawrence city commissioners will begin their regular meeting at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday, March 3 at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St. See the complete agenda at this link.
Commissioners hear public comment in person at City Hall or via Zoom; register for the Zoom meeting at this link. The commission will accept written public comments emailed to ccagendas@lawrenceks.gov until noon the day of the meeting.
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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More Community Voices:
Holly Krebs: Looking at the bigger picture as Lawrence City Commission considers $184M in debt (Column)
- Agenda Item Reports, Final Budget 2024 (pp. 77 & 80), 2025 (pp. 58 & 64), and 2026 (pp. 136 & 141), General Obligation Bond and Water/Wastewater Revenue Bond Revenue.
- Agenda Item Reports, Final Budget 2023 (pp. 55 & 57), Final Budget 2022 (pp. 7-11), and 2021 Adopted CIP (pp. 1-6).
- Agenda Item Report, General Obligation Issuance 2026.
- City of Lawrence, 2024 Annual Financial Review, p. 16. U.S. Census Bureau, Quick Facts, Lawrence city, Kansas, population estimates, July 1, 2024.
- Debt as of 2024 is $429M; 2025 approved debt is $137M; and 2026 approved debt is $126M – See notes 1 & 4 for references. Anticipated principal payments in 2025 and 2026 are $40M. City of Lawrence, 2025 Final Official Statement, p. A-5.
- City of Lawrence, 2026 Proposed Budget & Capital Improvement Plan Questions & Answers, p. 19. City of Lawrence, Lawrence Water Wastewater Rate Model Excel spreadsheet, Dashboard tab, Debt service.
- See How will Lawrence’s utility rate increases affect your household?, by Holly Krebs for full references. City of Lawrence, Lawrence Water Wastewater Rate Model Excel spreadsheet, Dashboard tab, Rate revenue increases.
- City of Lawrence, 2026 Proposed Budget & Capital Improvement Plan Questions & Answers, p. 19. City of Lawrence, 2025 Budget Book, pp. 196 and 203.
- City of Lawrence, 2025 Final Official Statement, p. A-5.
- Agenda Item Reports, 2026 Final Budget, pp. 136 & 141.
- City of Lawrence, Lawrence Water Wastewater Rate Model Excel spreadsheet, CIP tab, Future debt funded water and sewer. Mathews, R. City of Lawrence Finance Director, Personal communications, August 2025.
- City of Lawrence, Strategic Plan, Commitments.
