City Hall proposes tax increase to fund boost in city salaries, mental health workers in schools

More money is needed to keep city employees from leaving for other jobs, and that means city residents will be asked to pay a bit more in property taxes in 2016, according to a recommended budget from the city manager.

Interim City Manager Diane Stoddard is calling for a 1.057 mill increase in the city’s property tax rate to fund additional employee wages and reinstatement of city funding for a program that puts mental health and social workers in the school district.

Labor agreements near

New multiyear work contracts for the city’s fire department and police department are close to being finalized.

City Hall officials and leaders with the Lawrence Professional Firefighters union and the Lawrence Police Officers Association announced Thursday afternoon that they have reach a “conceptual agreement” on new work contracts.

Firefighters and the city are close to finalizing a four-year agreement, while the police officers will consider a three-year agreement. The memberships of the firefighters and police groups still must ratify the proposed contracts. City commissioners also must approve the contracts. Commissioners are scheduled to discuss the contracts at their July 14 meeting.

Details of the proposed contracts haven’t yet been released, but Interim City Manager Diane Stoddard said her recommended 2016 budget calls for a variety of increases for both groups based on results of studies that looked at police and fire wages in cities such as Olathe, Kansas City, Lenexa, Overland Park and Topeka.

The bulk of the approximately $900,000 that would be raised by the tax increase would go to increased wages.

“Reinvesting in our employees has been a theme,” Stoddard said of the proposed budget, which was released Thursday afternoon.

The budget calls for an average 3 percent wage increase for employees who qualify based off employee reviews. That’s an increase from the average 2 percent wage adjustments that have been more common at City Hall in recent years. The city’s unionized or collective bargaining employees — firefighters and police officers — also would receive additional pay.

Some of the pay increases are targeted, Stoddard said. She said some senior level employees in police and fire will receive additional increases because a wage survey determined that the city was offering competitive pay for entry-level positions but was lagging area communities for more senior positions. Stoddard said some supervisor positions also need a pay increase because their salaries sometimes aren’t in line with the employees they are supervising.

“In some cases, the employees are making more than the supervisors are,” said Stoddard, who said that situation was most common in the police and fire ranks, where supervisors are not included in the collective bargaining agreement.

In total, the city is proposing about $1.5 million in new funding for various compensation improvement programs, with about $500,000 coming from the proposed property tax increase and the remainder coming from other existing funding sources.

The proposed property tax increase would add a little more than $19 a year to the annual tax bill of a $160,000 home. The budget won’t become final until commissioners approve it in late July or early August. Commissioners are set to discuss Stoddard’s recommendations at a 3 p.m. study session on Tuesday at City Hall.

Here’s a look at other items from the proposed budget:

• $350,000 of the proposed tax increase would be used to fund the WRAP program, which places social and mental health workers in public schools. The city stopped funding the program — which is a collaboration with the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center — in 2008. Several commissioners have said they want to see the program funded again. The $350,000 amount would be equal to what the city was funding prior to eliminating funding. The city is still gathering information about how many new social workers that would allow the program to add.

• The budget does not include any money for a new police headquarters building, but Stoddard said the City Commission could still take action this year to build a new facility. That’s because the city could temporarily finance the construction of any facility until the 2017 budget without requiring a tax increase. When bond payments would begin in 2017, the city then would need to either approve a tax increase or make cuts elsewhere to make the necessary bond payments.

• The budget also does not fund a request from the police department for additional detective and investigations personnel. The department currently is unable to consistently staff a nighttime detective unit. Detectives often are called in to work overtime for crimes that happen in the evening hours. Stoddard said funding the $1.2 million request would have required an additional tax increase of 1.4 mills.

Stoddard said her office needs direction from the commission on how to address police needs. The fire department also requested funding for additional firefighters to increase staffing levels on certain shifts.

“It will be a continued issue of discussion,” Stoddard said. “We have to identify the right resource levels and figure out what the City Commission believes the community can afford.”

• The budget does not propose an increase in the city’s guest tax, which is the special tax charged on hotel rooms. The budget, however, recommends that the city’s parks and recreation department receive about $230,000 in guest tax money to fund the existing program that maintains the landscaping in downtown Lawrence. Using guest tax funds for such purposes is a new strategy by the city. Previously the city has used the guest tax program almost exclusively to fund events and other items directly related to tourism.

• $200,000 is proposed in the city’s capital improvements plan to fund sidewalk and bicycle improvements. That money would be in addition to funding that is provided for such improvements that are part of traditional street projects. The budget also proposes $200,000 in funding to begin funding a long list of approved traffic-calming devices that have not been built because of a lack of funds.

• The Lawrence Public Library is recommended to receive a $200,000 increase in operational funding. Stoddard is recommending the increase come from cash reserves earmarked for the library. She said commissioners will need to figure out a long-term plan to sustain the funding because dipping into cash reserves likely won’t be feasible in future years.