Amid all the negative aspects of the city’s current budget woes, there is at least one small silver lining.

The need to make cuts in the current year’s budget has prompted Lawrence city commissioners to delay adding more items to the list of traffic-calming projects that are awaiting city funding.

The city has eliminated one staff position and plans to leave several others unfilled to help meet the commission’s directive to cut $3.5 million from the city’s operating budget. Although many Lawrence residents probably think the city can handle that kind of administrative belt-tightening, they are less enthusiastic about a proposed 6 percent across-the-board cut to funding that already had been approved for a number of local social service agencies. Such cuts, they say, amount to balancing the city’s budget by taking services away from residents who need them the most.

One move that almost anyone in Lawrence would applaud, however, is the commissioners’ decision to delay approval of more traffic-calming and pedestrian safety projects until they can have a broad discussion about the need and funding for such projects.

In recent years, roundabouts, traffic circles and other structural traffic impediments have become the solution du jour for about any group of residents that wants to slow traffic through a Lawrence neighborhood. The city’s Traffic Safety Commission has recommended and city commissioners have approved about a dozen projects that now are on a list waiting for funding to become available.

On Tuesday, however, city commissioners declined to add five more projects to that list, saying they wanted to take a look at the whole traffic-calming picture during budget discussions this summer. Given the city’s current financial status, it only makes sense to make sure that the traffic projects on the list are both an effective and cost-effective way to deal with perceived high-speed traffic in residential neighborhoods.

At the current rate, one might wonder if all the projects now on the list could even be completed before some other traffic-calming fad replaces the current infatuation with traffic circles and roundabouts.

For whatever reason, taking a timeout to evaluate these projects will be a positive step for Lawrence.