Lawrence’s 150th birthday isn’t until Sept. 18, 2004, but the festivities might begin in just nine months.

Robert Foster, who serves on the Sesquicentennial Commission, said during a meeting Wednesday that a committee planning a Sept. 18, 2004, parade also would like to plan a July 4, 2003, parade to kick off the birthday events.

Foster, a professor and former director of bands at Kansas University, said the kickoff parade would draw attention to the other activities that the commission had planned.

“It’s a wake-up call to the community that something big is going to happen,” he said.

That parade would be a “neighborhood parade,” he said, with as many community groups and children participating as possible.

Committee members have proposed the parade on Lawrence’s birthday be representative of Lawrence history, starting with American Indian groups and progressing to the present. Foster said he was expecting so much interest in that parade the commission might have to limit participation.

“Otherwise we might have an eight-hour parade,” he said.

Foster said KU officials had assured the commission there wouldn’t be a home football game that day.

The plans would need to be approved by the Festivals Committee and the entire Sesquicentennial Commission before they could become official.

In other business Wednesday, Clenece Hills, president of the Sesquicentennial Commission, promised the group that efforts to bring a presidential debate to Lawrence in 2004 wouldn’t undermine other projects under way.

“We have no intention of asking funding through the Sesquicentennial Commission,” she said. “There’s a separate fund-raising activity that will take place.”

Officials have said they would need to raise at least $500,000 to stage the debate.

Other possible projects to celebrate Lawrence’s 150th birthday include:

 A memorial to the New England Immigrant Aid Company, the first group to settle Lawrence. A possible site would be on city land east of the Clinton Lake dam.

 A gala performance on Sept. 18, 2004, followed by a family performance the next night.

 Commissioning art, music and theater performances.

The commission on Wednesday also heard Richard Norton Smith, director of KU’s Dole Institute of Politics, talk about projects under way at the institute.

The commission’s next meeting is at 4 p.m. Oct. 23 at the Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vt.