Lawrence city commissioners are set to follow through on a campaign promise of allowing the public to audit how new sales tax dollars are spent.

Commissioners at their meeting on Tuesday are expected to approve the creation of a citizen sales tax audit committee that is designed to ensure that funds from three newly approved sales taxes are spent only for public transit and previously agreed upon infrastructure items.

“I think it is our responsibility to involve the public in this process since they are the ones who voted on these sales taxes,” Mayor Mike Dever said.

Voters on Nov. 4 overwhelmingly approved three citywide sales taxes – a three-tenths of a percent sales tax for a host of specific infrastructure items, a two-tenths of a percent tax for basic transit operations, and a five-hundredths of a percent tax for expanded transit operations.

The committee won’t advise commissioners on how to spend the sales tax dollars, but will review revenues and receipts to ensure that the money is being spent only on items that voters authorized. The ballot language for all three sales tax questions specifically limited how the tax collections could be spent. In particular, Question No. 1 limited its uses to rebuilding or maintaining existing streets, purchasing firefighting equipment, replacing a stormwater pump station in North Lawrence, and building a hike and bike trail in east Lawrence.

Questions No. 2 and 3 restricted spending to public transit items.

Commissioners at their meeting on Tuesday are not set to appoint specific individuals to the committee. Instead, they are expected to approve an ordinance that creates the committee.

Among the details:

¢ The committee will consist of five city residents, who will be appointed by the mayor. Members will serve three-year terms, except in the beginning the terms will be staggered.

¢ The group will meet at least once every six months, and will provide a written report at least twice a year to the City Commission.

¢ The committee can review any of the city’s “records, receipts, invoices or other materials” that a majority of the committee deems necessary to do its work.

¢ The group will meet in public and its work will be subject to the Kansas Open Records Act.

Dever said he wants to have members appointed by early 2009. He said the committee should be made up of a variety of types of residents, and said he’ll be seeking nominations from neighborhood associations and the city’s public transit advisory committee.

The audit committee is a first for Lawrence. City Manager David Corliss proposed the idea after seeing other areas, such as Sedgwick County, use the process to monitor sales tax spending.

Corliss said the committee should provide residents with a greater level of accountability, but he said it also could be useful if future commissions ever decide to seek voter approval to renew the sales taxes. All three taxes will expire in 10 years.

“We would be able to point to the results and say we delivered the progress that we promised,” Corliss said.