Lived here 30 years and the rates go up every year only the reason changes. Multiple millions are siphoned off each year to subsidize inefficient government at city hall. One would think that in 30 years someone would have had a single idea how to become more efficient.

I looked thru the city budget yesterday. Every revenue stream is at an all time high and still this city cannot get enough. City management staff are knocking down some significant salaries , living the good life , and delivering very little to the citizens of Lawrence.

While subsidizing every yahoo group in town , delivering efficient basic core services seems to escape this group. The commission has been of little use as they have never seen a proposal the didn't like and more recently have become cheerleaders for thier own pet projects which seems a conflict to me.

Finally I can't wait to see the new sewer plant under water as they are putting it in an active flood plain draining directly into the Wakarusa. Brilliant !

Fees on properties that will benefit? That would be RCP and everything west and south of 15th, even Menards. It's all downhill from the west and it will go to Prairie Park, the jail, the homeless shelter.

Prairie Park is the "new" East Lawrece!

The plant should be paid for with excise fees on properties that will benefit from the new plant or in other words new growth should pay for itself.

It is clear however that the current system does not support the growth that has already occurred so sharing part of that cost is ok. However this article says that it is going to require more increases until 2017 and that is not acceptable.

The sewer and water treatment plants have had massive increases over the years, both in rate increases and due to population and housing increases. Has anybody at the city really evaluated how that additional revenue has been spent over the last 20 years before handing over a big check to build what should have already been paid for? Unlikely. The first step before authorization of spending should always be to evaluate current expenditures: How much are employees making? How are those employees performing at their job? Is their job really necessary? What technology changes/improvements can reduce operating costs? How many people are twiddling their thumbs on a regular basis? Could some functions be outsourced to private contractors more cost effectively and efficiently? How many city vehicles are really required for the true job related travel? Would it be more cost effective to eliminate some vehicles and reimburse travel to employees using their own vehicles? (Vehicles were quite the scandal a few years ago - which tells me the city owns too many.)

Businesses do this all the time because it makes sense. Governmental bodies don't because the don't have to. If the funds aren't there they just take them from taxpayers.

I agree we need improvements and maintenance of these facilities. I just don't agree that we haven't already paid for them and the city owes them to us - not the other way around.

Of course, ...I think that we should buy all of those REC Center fans, a new limo each, to go along with their expensive Feeding Habits, at the public feeding trough..........NOT !!!

And now for a toast to : future construction cost over runs at the public expense, future Mega-Events that go elsewhere, as they weren't supposed to,....and an issue that the voters should have voted on that doesn't fit well into the day to day operations of a city,...... like fire, water, police, trash, parks,..... that fit much better into the area of responsibility of a City Commission, that are a public trust .

I am resigned to the idea that there is no such thing as the tooth fairy,....that if Saint Nicholas ever lived, that it wasn't in 2013,....... & that he didn't give away new sewage treatment plants or replace aging municipal water pipes as a gift to the good public of his time .

We live in a time where there exist a collective disconnect.... between most of our ears....as to how our expensive water and sewer treatment systems that we take for granted daily came to be .

None of us can remember the days before 1911, or so, when chlorination came to be the expected public water supply health standard & people started drinking safely from systems that were originally only fit for fire service, animal watering or boiling on a stove, if you knew enough to do that ( and that early chlorinated water was still full of fine suspended unfiltered sediments in river supplied systems, of who only knows what ? ).

People drank from local wells .

Local wells that became polluted with human and animal run off ( do-do ) and the drinkers there of became sick for their own thirst, with water born diseases .

No doubt, some died from drinking the water back then . It just happened . Others survived their illnesses .

Like it or not, without safe water and sewer systems, some of us would have die young .

If you have ever been bitten by a spider, stung by a wasp or bee, bitten by a dog, scratched on the face by a cat ( that lost it ) or lived thru totaling a car or some unpleasant life experience, you have probably have figured out that stuff happens !

Somebody else built and paid for a large parts of the water and sewer systems of LAWRENCE KS,....... for us..

What's happening now, is that we have to fix the aging or disfunctional parts of those systems that we have inherited,, so that some person fifty years from now can assume that it all just appeared for them, ....for free,..... to use and abuse, as they so wish, ......as we have done before them .

To me, there is little that is political about being able to flush a toilet .

The cost for this whole thing is a "stinger".........but the City Commissioners did the best thing that they could in this situation, for the city of Lawrence, as it is,.....and for generations to come . I hope that future City Commissions stay the course and that the public holds them to account and keeps them out of water and sewer revenues, till this thing is done and over with......which like a car, is never going to run forever without upkeep and repair costs.

Schumm and the other city commissioners voted last week to give Fritzel $500,000 - $700,000 worth of water a year for free to water the landscaping, soccer field, and track field at Rock Chalk Park. Fritzel is leasing the stadiums to KU, KU is paying Fritzel $1,300,000 a year, they will only use the track 3-4 times a year, soccer about 16 times a year, Fritzel can use the stadiums and fields for free anytime KU isn't using them. Fritzel will make millions of dollars a year hosting events in those stadiums on those fields. Why would the city agree to supply the water to Fritzel for free. It's a private business receiving free water from the City.

Why? Everyone should ask Schumm, Dever, Carter, and Cromwell every time you see them.....why? Ask Corliss, why?

Fyi.... Fritzel is not paying any developments fees usually collected by the City, Fritzel received 100% real estate tax abatement, sales tax relief on all materials thats another $1,000,000 in savings, Fritzel is being paid $925,000 for the architectural drawing for the rec center drawn by an architect Fritzel chose not the City. Ask them why?

The housing boom died in 2007 and took the economy with it. It is still costing taxpayers their jobs,retirement plans and medical insurance.

The housing boom we do not want again for no one can afford the runaway inflation that brought people owing more on their homes than market value will bring to real life. More and more new residential will do nothing to restore property values......in fact quite the opposite.

The more the city expands it's borders the more it cost to maintain. If residential growth paid for itself and was financially positive, Lawrence would never be in a budget crunch. But with increased numbers of residential you have increased demand on services, and historically the funding of revenues generated by residential does not pay for the services they require from a municipality.

Thus more and more cost of living increases aka endless tax increases.

The one hidden cost of growth is more and more crime = big tax increases yet does not stop crime.

So many of the issues that should be put before the voters are not.

The increases in cost of preparing for new growth never stop. Whether the growth takes place or not.

I could get behind this far more than Rock Chalk Park. Cant we learn to spend our money wisely in this town?

but while we're signing ourselves up for more & more projects, lets take bets on how long before they start asking for the new jail, or more handouts to dougy compton, or repaving the yellow brick road to the arts district or just building a new school. The library is barely started & we're already talking about more.

“These are basic, core services that we’re talking about here,” Amyx said.

Jayhawk Park is not.

Sounds like socialism to me. Where is Dave Trabert with his free market solutions?

If the city really needed a water plant, it would build itself. (sarcasm)