Lawrence City Manager Mike Wildgen isn’t worried about paying off the costs of building two aquatic centers, part of a health building and several other parks projects in town.

But he’s not about to suggest taking on any more projects — at least for a few years — as he waits for the city’s collections of sales-tax revenues to pick back up.

“We’re kind of in a maintenance mode right now. We’re trying to maintain the projects that we started, and keeping them in shape,” Wildgen said.

“You’re unlikely to see a huge new recreation center or something like that because I don’t think the sales tax will support the bond issues and the maintenance at the same time.”

Wildgen said he didn’t anticipate having any problem paying off the debts from projects financed from a pool of money generated by a 1-cent countywide sales tax approved by voters in 1994.

In that election, voters agreed to bump up the sales tax in exchange for:

• Expanded parks and programs, handled by the city.
• Construction and operation of a new Douglas County Jail, handled by the county.
• Construction of a public health building for the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department, Douglas County Visiting Nurses Assn. and Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, a project to be handled by both governments.
• A reduction in property-tax rates, both for the city and the county, that essentially would offset the cost of a separate bond issue from the Lawrence school district, which would build Free State High School and upgrade other schools in the district.

Today, county officials fear that their share of the sales-tax revenues won’t be enough to cover all of its expected debts, possibly as early as 2007. Such a shortage could trigger an increase in property-tax rates or cuts in services.

That’s not the case at City Hall. While Wildgen hasn’t run any detailed projections for the city’s share of the revenues, he doesn’t expect an approaching shortfall — even as sales-tax receipts lag behind projections.

Some of the city’s debts come off the books in 2008, he said, which should pump some “flexibility” back into the budget process.

“We don’t plan on adding a lot of new debt in the next few years,” Wildgen said. “We’ll be in a holding pattern. We’re trying to maintain what we’ve got.”