Lawrence city commissioners on Tuesday voted 3-2 to approve the city’s 2025 budget and five-year capital improvement plan.
Commissioners previously voted 3-2 to set the maximum mill levy — or property tax rate — at 36.807, which would have been an increase of 3.6 mills over the current rate. The rate would have resulted in triple-digit property tax increases for many residents.
The revised budget lowers the mill levy, or property tax rate, just slightly — to 33.197 mills from 33.207. Most residents will still see their city property taxes increase. The city’s total assessed valuation has increased about 7.6% since 2024.
Commissioners during their last meeting agreed to ask voters to consider a sales tax increase to fund homelessness services. Read more about that in this article.
The revised budget also includes several requests commissioners made during their last meeting. One of those requests was to consider giving across-the-board 1% cost of living adjustments to non-union employees, rather than 2%. That would save about $200,000, staff members said.
Commissioner Amber Sellers suggested possibly applying lower raises only to executive-level employees. She reiterated on Tuesday that she was not a fan of reducing the raises across the board.
Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical leaders have pushed for the past few years to build new fire stations, citing slower response times to some hotspots in the city’s outskirts as city limits have expanded. The 2025 budget will now delay the start of construction of those stations by one year. The five-year capital improvement plan estimates that the stations will ultimately cost about $29.5 million.
Simon Stephenson, secretary of the firefighters union, IAFF Local 1596, thanked commissioners for restoring staffing to LDCFM. The budget does delay the start of construction on Fire Stations 6 and 7.
“It’s not the stations that save people, it’s the people, so the idea of reducing people to build a building is not going to get us where we need to go,” Stephenson told commissioners. However, he said he has a little bit of concern about the budget “pitting us against the rest of the city employees by decreasing their salary increases from 2% to 1% next year.”
In discussion, Commissioner Brad Finkeldei said he believes the city does need the additional fire stations, “but I also think we have to find a way to get there in a fiscally responsible manner.”
Commissioner Lisa Larsen said the city needs to talk to folks and look at cutting programs ahead of next year’s budget. She said she’s concerned about drawing down funds from the city’s reserves and what that could do to the city’s bond rating and interest rates.
Larsen said next year, she wants to look at discrepancies in some entities being charged for services and other entities not being charged, and why some agencies have large cash reserves.
She and Sellers voted in opposition to the budget; Finkeldei, Mayor Bart Littlejohn and Vice Mayor Mike Dever voted in favor of it.
“I’m really concerned about the long-term sustainability,” Larsen said. “I know we’re going to work on that next year, but I think that we could have maybe gone a little deeper this year on cuts.”
See the agenda item with the complete budget and capital improvement plan at this link.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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