Lawrence city commissioners don’t yet know how they want to move forward on a new police headquarters after voters rejected a proposed sales tax for the project last week.

But commissioners at their Tuesday evening meeting said they do know one thing: The City Commission, not the Lawrence Police Department, lost the election.

“I want to apologize to the police department and the staff for taking it on the chin because of us,” Commissioner Jeremy Farmer said of the five-member City Commission. “The feedback I have gotten from hundreds is this didn’t have anything to do with the police department. I feel responsible for being one of the five reasons why the community sent such a strong message.”

Several members of the public spoke during the public comment section of Tuesday’s commission meeting. The message about what went wrong during the election was mixed.

Lawrence resident Matthew Herbert told commissioners it was clear that voters were upset by past spending decisions by the commission and what he called a commission attitude that treated money like it was a “renewable resource.”

“I feel like there is a great deal of mistrust in the community,” Herbert said.

Ted Boyle, president of the North Lawrence Improvement Association and a longtime Lawrence election watcher, told commissioners anger over the no-bid process that was used for a portion of the Rock Chalk Park sports complex was a “big deal” with voters.

Others urged the City Commission to consider property taxes or other ways to pay for the police headquarters project.

Hugh Carter, a former city commissioner, lamented the low voter turnout of about 48 percent.

“(The defeat at the polls) doesn’t mean the city doesn’t need a new police headquarters,” Carter said. “It means that they didn’t want to pay for it with a sales tax.”

Mayor Mike Amyx said he wasn’t ready to buy that analysis. He said he still thinks a sales tax is the best way to pay for a future project. But he said the commission also needs to look at all of its planned expenditures in the 2015 capital improvement budget and see whether there are some that should be cut or eliminated. He said making such cuts may help grow support for future funding of a police facility.

City Commissioner Terry Riordan said he’s pleased the City Commission put the issue to a sales tax vote rather than simply raising property taxes — an action that wouldn’t have required a public vote — to build the headquarters.

“Passing an increase on property taxes would have been the worst thing we could have done,” Riordan said. “It would have affected the city and the trust it has with the commission for years and years to come.”

Amyx said trust was a big issue he was hearing with voters. He said there have been concerns about the timing of the police project coming after the Rock Chalk Park project and other city expenditures.

“When you ask the public to support a project like this, we have to make sure we do our job on this side,” Amyx said of the commission. “We have to make sure we do our job a little better.”

Riordan said he expects the police headquarters to remain a topic of discussion for the commission for the foreseeable future, although the commission can’t increase property taxes to pay for the project prior to the 2016 budget process that begins next summer.

“If we try the best we can, and we keep working at it, we can come back and provide the police with the property facilities that they need,” Riordan said.