This is a different type of stimulus to spend.

If you’re in the market for a car, a big screen TV or any other product that will require you to dig deep into your wallet, you may want to buy it in Lawrence sooner rather than later.

Come Wednesday, Lawrence will have a new sales tax that will make every retail item in the city a little bit more expensive.

“I hope it doesn’t cause people to shop elsewhere, and I really don’t think it will,” said Mayor Mike Dever. “There obviously are a lot of people in favor of it because they voted for it.”

City voters in November overwhelmingly approved three separate sales taxes that add a total of 0.55 of 1 percent to the city’s sales tax. The new sales tax rate will be 7.85 percent.

Two of the sales taxes will provide funding to the city’s public transit system. The third will provide a new revenue source for additional street maintenance and infrastructure work.

“The new funding is going to be important to us,” Dever said. “We’ll be able to do work on streets that have been waiting for funding, and we’ll be able to work on areas before they become a major problem for the transportation system.”

The transit tax will help the city’s T bus system better coordinate with Kansas University’s bus system. The new money also will help purchase new buses.

Lawrence retailers are hoping the new taxes don’t come at a cost to their business. John Kiefer, a longtime Lawrence retailer and owner of Kief’s AudioVideo, said he thought the tax wouldn’t impact retailers that sell relatively low-priced items. He said retailers of bigger-ticket items will have a bit of an adjustment period.

“Overall, I don’t think it will affect Lawrence too much,” Kiefer said. “But it will get talked about, probably more than it deserves, for a while.”

To put it in perspective, here’s how the extra tax will affect the price of some items:

• Sales tax on a $25,000 car will increase by $137.50

• Sales tax on $150 worth of groceries will increase by 83 cents.

• Sales tax on a $10 meal will increase by 6 cents.

For those who want to do their own math, multiply the price of an item by 0.0055 to determine how much the new tax will add to the item.