The way governmental units approach their budgets is a little different than the process that occurs around the kitchen table for most families.

For families, the first consideration is how much money they have to spend. They look at their income and savings. Then they look at how much of that money must be spent on basic needs such as food and shelter. If there is any money left over, they consider more optional items: perhaps replacing an aging appliance, making a home improvement or taking a family vacation. They probably won’t have money to do everything they want to do so they make choices.

It’s a little different for government entities. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. Governments look at all their financial obligations. Then they look at other things they want or need to do. They listen to staff members and local groups with special interests and decide what projects and initiatives they want to pursue. Then they look at how much money they have. If they don’t have enough, they may cut back on spending, but they also have the option of raising fees or taxes to help fund their wish list.

The city of Lawrence is just getting started on this year’s budget process, but it already looks like a tax increase is in our future. Just to maintain current city services, officials say, will require a property tax increase of about 1.5 mills. Then comes the additional spending requests.

At the top of that list is a new police headquarters, which is likely to cost about $30 million. City officials still are pondering whether to fund that facility using a sales tax, property tax or some combination of the two. Also on the list is increased funding to help cover operational expenses for two new facilities in Lawrence: $200,000 for the new Lawrence Community Shelter and $212,000 for the new Lawrence Public Library. A couple of new initiatives also are on the wish list: $162,500 to help Douglas County Senior Services promote the county as an attractive retirement destination and $600,000 to help the Economic Development Corporation of Lawrence and Douglas County develop its new technical education center.

All of these are worthy goals, but how much can the city afford? Thankfully, at least one city commissioner questioned the advisability of spending $200,000 to create a new public works position to oversee city efforts to improve sidewalks, bike lanes and other forms of non-motorized transportation. Those efforts have a strong support group in the community, but as Commissioner Mike Dever pointed out, it makes more sense to use existing staff to come up with a plan of attack on sidewalks and bike lanes rather than creating a new office to figure out how to spend money the city currently doesn’t have.

Lawrence wants a lot of things and it doesn’t always do a good job of prioritizing its wants and needs — not just for this year but for the years ahead. It seemed like a good idea to build a new library and then a new recreation center. Then, oops, we need a new police headquarters building and we’d like to have a new technical education center and better sidewalks, more retirees and on and on.

It’s not that the proposals aren’t attractive, but unless or until the city can broaden its tax base, additional spending often is going to result in additional taxes.

Maybe, at least for now, it would be good for the city and other local government units to get back to more of a kitchen table approach to budgeting.