Plans have been scrapped for a west Lawrence “satellite” library, the city’s library director said Monday afternoon.

“We’ve adjusted our thinking on that,” Bruce Flanders told the Lawrence City Commission during the first day of hearings on the 2005 city budget. “We’re now looking at downtown locations exclusively.”

At least one commissioner had praise for the decision, saying the lone downtown branch of the Lawrence Public Library has been underfunded for years.

“I really do like the idea of putting city services in neighborhoods,” Commissioner Boog Highberger said. “But we should get the library up to the quality it should be before we start spreading it out.”

Earlier this decade, the city reserved more than $200,000 for a proposed west Lawrence branch library, despite opposition from some officials and community members who thought the library should be solely downtown.

In the last year, library officials have turned their eyes toward expanding or relocating the main library elsewhere downtown.

“The satellite thing didn’t get communicated as well as we wanted,” said Craig Penzler, chairman of the Lawrence Public Library board. “Quite frankly, I think we’re on a better track now, anyway.”

Flanders requested that $100,000 of the money saved for the satellite library be used instead to hire a consultant to work on expansion plans. If approved, he said, the consultant could begin work this summer.

“This is more like the Topeka model,” Flanders said, “where they put all their resources into one facility — and they make it so attractive that people are willing to drive for miles.”

Dina Haberty, a circulation worker at the Lawrence Public Library, sorts through some returned books Monday afternoon. Library director Bruce Flanders withdrew a request for a satellite library location and asked for funds set aside for the project to go toward improving the main site in downtown Lawrence.

The library budget request was similar to others that commissioners heard Monday: City departments want to shed the budget constraints of recent years to keep pace with Lawrence’s growth.

Neighborhood Resources Director Victor Torres, for example, asked commissioners to add a building inspector to his four-person staff. Inspectors are so busy, he said, that 356 of 1,423 inspections so far in 2004 have been delayed.

“We want to make sure we can provide the service we need to,” Torres said.

Assistant City Manager David Corliss sounded a similar alarm about the city’s legal services department, though he didn’t formally request additional staffing.

“I don’t know that we’re able to provide the level of service and competency that we need to,” Corliss said. But, he added, “you’re going to hear that in stereo this week, so you need to balance all of that.”

Highberger said commissioners would have to weigh those requests against holding the line on property taxes. That will be a challenge, he said.

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“There are a number of necessary improvements that have been postponed,” he said. “And the costs of services we’re already providing are increasing.”

Budget hearings continue at 2 p.m. today in the city manager’s conference room on the fourth floor of City Hall, Sixth and Massachusetts street.