The front page of Tuesday’s Journal-World didn’t hold any good news for Lawrence taxpayers.

Lawrence residents usually are willing to pay their share of taxes for necessary city, county and school projects, but it’s disheartening to see how reflexively local officials jump to the conclusion that increased sales or property taxes are the best answer to about any budget challenge.

Lawrence school administrators shared with the school board Monday night that their calculations indicate the school finance bill passed by the Kansas Legislature would result in a loss of $1.7 million in budget authority for the Lawrence district next year. The bill has not yet been signed by the governor, but Superintendent Rick Doll already was looking at the legislative provision that will allow the district to increase its local option budget — raised through local property taxes — from 31 percent of its base state aid to 33 percent.

“If this all holds true, you can count on a recommendation from us to go to a 33-percent LOB,” Doll said.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that state officials are trying to push more of the cost for K-12 education back to local taxpayers, but it’s disappointing that local officials are willing to give so little consideration to any option except raising local property taxes to help finance their budget.

Also on Tuesday’s front page was a story about the city considering a November election to approve special funding for a new police station — not just any police station but a new 85,000-square-foot facility on 10 or 15 acres with a price tag of up to $30 million. The city has been doing a lot of building recently, with the new library and a new recreation center nearing completion, so why not add one more major project?

All it takes is more tax money. City staff members have estimated that a sales tax increase of 0.25 to 0.35 cents would do the trick. That would put the local sales tax at 8.95 or 9.05 cents on the dollar and would require voter approval, perhaps in November. A property tax increase is another option, but city officials haven’t figured how much the levy would have to be raised to accommodate the project.

Lawrence has a lot of needs (or wants?) but its tax base simply isn’t growing enough to pay for all those projects without increased sales or property tax rates. As noted at the outset, local taxpayers should be willing to pay their share for truly needed budget increases, but they might feel better about it if they believed school and city officials were trying a little harder to find other solutions rather than jumping so quickly to the option of increased taxes.