Editorial: Important input

It’s too bad that Lawrence missed an opportunity to take a studied, community-oriented approach to planning for a new police headquarters facility.

A couple of unfortunate perceptions apparently contributed to the demise this week of a proposal to have an ad hoc committee take a broader look at Lawrence police operations to help guide the city’s course on a new police headquarters building.

Commissioner Stuart Boley had proposed the committee as a way to promote the kind of community input and buy-in that apparently was lacking last November when voters turned down a sales tax to fund a police facility near the West Lawrence interchange on the Kansas Turnpike. Voters at that time voiced a number of concerns about the location and cost of the building, the use of sales tax to fund the project and the city’s failure to show exactly how the facility would benefit the community.

Although it’s uncertain which of those issues was of most concern to the public, a majority of city commissioners on Tuesday decided they knew everything they needed to know about the topic and that further input from an ad hoc committee of community and law enforcement people wasn’t needed. It was particularly unfortunate that the idea of an ad hoc committee was viewed as anti-police or part of a sinister “political agenda.” The Lawrence Police Department is a public entity that works for local taxpayers, who should be fully engaged with its operations. An ad hoc committee would have drawn on the department’s expertise while also allowing civilian members to provide additional information and perspective.

The idea that local residents have nothing to contribute to this discussion was fed by Commissioner Matthew Herbert who said at a recent meeting, “I don’t pretend to have any idea of how to run a police facility, and I don’t think my neighbors do either.” While it’s true that the police chief knows a lot about police operations, Herbert and the rest of the commissioners still have a responsibility to oversee those operations and the services police provide to Lawrence. By Herbert’s logic, the city should disband all of its advisory boards and simply leave policy decisions up to the “experts” in every city department without any input from that pesky “public.”

From their discussions, it appears commissioners are preparing to move forward on a police facility that is similar, if not identical, to what voters turned down but put that building at a different location and divert enough money from other city needs to pay for it without seeking additional voter approval.

The Lawrence police need some improved facilities, and it’s unfortunate that the kind of ad hoc committee proposed by Boley wasn’t appointed years ago to study this issue and make a recommendation based on the community’s needs. Without that input, commissioners now are depending on individual conversations and comments and a few public meetings to determine what the taxpayers of Lawrence want them to do about police facilities. It’s an important decision that deserved a more thoughtful process than it apparently will receive.