2015 City Commission candidates for the April 7 general election, in order of finish in primary, from top left: Leslie Soden, Stan Rasmussen, Stuart Boley. From bottom left: Terry Riordan, Matthew Herbert, Bob Schumm.

On this, all six remaining candidates for the Lawrence City Commission agree: They think a new police headquarters can be built without a tax increase.

But when it comes to what type of building, where it should be, and what may have to be cut from the city’s budget to make it happen, the candidates vying for three at-large seats in the April 7 election have different views.

Here’s a look at various thoughts candidates shared about police department issues in individual interviews with the Journal-World.

Stuart Boley

Boley, a retired IRS accountant, said he agrees the police department’s current facilities are facing a variety of issues. But Boley said he wants to be careful about presenting too many possible solutions until he’s confident the city has a good feel for the entire circumstances surrounding the department. He said too much of the argument for a new police facility has been based on anecdotal evidence.

“I would like to see better metrics,” Boley said. “I think we have to go back and get better data before we decide what to spend. I think this decision needs to be data driven.”

Boley said, though, that he anticipates that the case for a new facility will be made. He said he does believe the police department faces some facility difficulties.

“I’m confident this is an issue that is going to be a priority for the new commission,” Boley said. “But we have to get the necessary information. The questions are what, where and how much?”

Boley said he thinks the commission likely will need to look at a different site than then one proposed during November’s sales tax election, which failed. Then, the city proposed spending $2.5 million to purchase a 47-acre site across from the Hallmark Cards production plant near the Kansas Turnpike and the McDonald Drive interchange.

“I think the commission failed to make the case for that site,” Boley said. “Voters didn’t understand why we needed to buy so much land. I think it will be hard to try that site again.”

Like all of the candidates, Boley said he thinks it will be feasible to come up with a plan to fund a new police facility without raising property or sales taxes. He said he finds sales taxes in particular already too high.

But if the desire is to build an approximately $25 million facility without a tax increase, there will have to be some changes to the city’s budget. Those could include some budget cuts or some capital improvement projects being delayed by several years.

Boley said he wasn’t yet ready to say which projects he may want to cut or delay.

“I haven’t identified anything in particular that should come off the plan, but it is important to address priorities with our budget, and I think police facilities should be one of our top priorities,” Boley said. “One of the issues we’ve had with this commission is prioritizing.”

Matthew Herbert

Herbert, a Lawrence High teacher, said he’s convinced the police department has facility needs that have to be addressed.

“There are real problems. They’re not making them up,” Herbert said of facilities that police officials have labeled as too small, outdated and inadequately designed. “I don’t think the community is resentful of giving the police new facilities.”

Herbert said he’s also convinced a plan should include a single facility that brings patrol officers, detectives and other personnel into a single location, which has been a strong recommendation from Police Chief Tarik Khatib. But Herbert said he’s equally convinced of something else: The project can’t rely on a new sales tax for funding.

“Our sales tax is already close to 9 percent,” Herbert said. “Bumping up an already regressive tax is going to impact the wrong people.”

Herbert has been critical of how the current City Commission decided to put the police headquarters issue to a sales tax vote. He has called the process “disingenuous” because he said if the police issue was really as large of a priority as commissioners claimed, they would have found a way to fund it in their existing budget. He said if commissioners wanted to put an issue to a vote, it should have been whether to proceed with the $22.5 million city investment in the Rock Chalk Park sports complex.

“I’ve told them that I think their work with Rock Chalk Park killed the police station,” Herbert said. “The thing that this issue has reminded me is you always have to be open and honest with the public. The first time people feel like you have cheated them, they will turn their back on you.”

Herbert said he believes there will be a way to fit a police headquarters into the city’s existing budget. But he said he could not yet identify specific projects that may need to be cut or delayed. He does know the criteria that he’ll use to evaluate projects.

“My priority always will be to fund public safety and infrastructure first,” Herbert said. “Projects that don’t address public safety and infrastructure are where I’ll start.”

Stan Rasmussen

Rasmussen, an attorney for the U.S. Army, said he sees a lot of inefficiencies with the department’s current configuration of facilities, which include a building at 11th and Massachusetts and another at Bob Billings and Wakarusa. He said he worries about the management and coordination challenges that presents to the department. He said he’s also heard anecdotal stories about evidence in storage at city facilities becoming damaged by mice.

“It is not a good situation,” he said.

Rasmussen said it is clear that efforts should be focused on building a new facility rather than trying to renovate or expand existing facilities. But he said he wants more dialogue on whether the plan should be for one large facility, or whether the community could benefit by having multiple smaller facilities in different parts of the city. He said he would continue to keep the previously proposed site near Hallmark under consideration, although he said if the price remains at $2.5 million it may not be feasible.

Rasmussen said addressing the police department’s facility needs in phases also is something that should be looked at. That could include selecting a site for a police campus and building a couple of smaller buildings to accommodate functions such as evidence storage or a shooting range. A larger building to house staff and equipment could then be tackled as funds became more available, likely within a five-year period. The phasing approach could make it easier to build the project without a tax increase.

“I do think a plan that doesn’t involve a tax increase is both likely and feasible,” Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen said he did favor the commission’s previous decision to favor a sales tax increase over a property tax increase to fund the project. He said a sales tax would make it easier for people outside the community to help pay for a portion of the project. But he said he’s committed to exploring all options to do the project without a tax increase.

“I feel like we should be respecting the vote of the people who said they didn’t want a sales tax,” Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen said he would need to study the issue more before he could offer comments on what projects may need to be delayed or cut to fund police facilities. He said the commission also will have to look at whether the department’s needs go beyond just brick and mortar facilities. He said he suspects the day soon will come where body cameras, for example, will be a necessity.

When it comes to funding police needs, though, Rasmussen said the city should use some creativity. For example, he said the city currently owns valuable property near the site of the new Bob Billings Parkway and South Lawrence Trafficway interchange. He said the city should sell the site, encourage commercial development on the site, and then perhaps dedicate the sales tax generated from the commercial activity at the site to police facilities.

He said residents probably have other ideas about how the project can move forward. He said making sure the community feels it has a chance to guide the project will be important.

“I just don’t feel like it was getting good community-wide discussion in the year or more leading up to this,” Rasmussen said. “The leadership the City Commission needs to provide is to bring those types of discussions to the forefront. You have to talk about projects like this, and it can’t just be for the six months before you want to put the ink on the deal.”

Terry Riordan

Riordan, a Lawrence City Commissioner and a physician, was part of the commission that put the previous police headquarters plan to a vote in November. He said he remains convinced the facilities are “totally inadequate.”

“They can function but I think they are minimally functional,” Riordan said. “We should have done this years ago. We didn’t, but we can’t change the past, only the future.”

Riordan said he’ll make a police facilities plan a priority, but said he’ll work harder to make sure citizens are more involved in the planning process.

“Engaging the public is something we haven’t done as well as I would have liked us to do,” Riordan said. “That’s a very important part of this. The public has to feel comfortable with the process because they haven’t in the past.”

Riordan said he’ll continue to advocate for a new, single facility rather than renovating or expanding existing facilities. He said he thinks the city made a mistake more than a decade ago when it purchased an office building at Bob Billings and Wakarusa and converted it into the current Investigations and Training Center for the department.

“It was like putting a grocery store on a third story without an elevator,” said Riordan, who is finishing his first two-year term on the commission. “It will work, but not very well. We need a new building that is designed to function as a police station.”

Riordan said he won’t continue to advocate for the site near Hallmark. He said voters have told him they want to focus on land the city already owns.

“I think that is reasonable,” he said.

He said that likely will mean a site in VenturePark, the new business/industrial park on the eastern edge of Lawrence, and a site behind the Wal-Mart at Sixth and Wakarusa are the most likely candidates for a facility.

Riordan said he’ll focus on figuring out how to fund a plan without a tax increase. He said that likely will involve delaying some road projects, including an improvement to Queens Road in West Lawrence and 19th Street leading into VenturePark. He said he does not want to delay a $2.5 million plan to rebuild portions of Ninth Street and create an arts corridor. He said delaying about $1.5 million in renovations to Fire Station No. 1 in downtown is a possibility, but he hopes to avoid it.

He said one area likely to be cut would be significant future parks and recreation projects.

“I think we have put enough toward recreation for awhile,” Riordan said. “Now I feel like we need to put it toward public safety.”

Bob Schumm

Schumm, a Lawrence city commissioner and a retired restaurant owner, said the current police facilities are in serious need of updating and consolidation. He said building a single facility to meet the needs is preferable to trying to renovate or expand existing facilities.

“You can always retrofit and remodel and make things do, but it is going to be very difficult and expensive,” Schumm said. “At some point you have to say, let’s start over and build what we need and make it last for 30 years or more.”

Schumm previously lobbied for the site near Hallmark Cards that was presented to voters in November. But he said he’s no longer interested in pursuing that site.

“It is off the table for me,” Schumm said. “It was clear to me after our listening sessions following the vote that a lot of no votes came in because they didn’t like the site. It was causing us to purchase more land than we needed.”

Schumm said he now thinks city-owned land behind the Wal-Mart at Sixth and Wakarusa is the best site. He said he likes that location better than city-owned land at VenturePark because it will be a more visible location for the police department.

On funding, Schumm supported the sales tax proposal that was put before voters in November. He said he does see a way to do the project without a tax increase.

“There is a real likelihood that it can be done, but whether the public really wants us to do it that way remains to be seen,” Schumm said.

Schumm said funding the project without a tax increase will require some tough choices about projects that will need to be deferred or cut. He said rebuilding the badly deteriorating Queens Road in West Lawrence likely would be delayed. So, too, would renovations for the downtown fire station, he said. He thinks the arts corridor project on Ninth Street would move forward, but was uncertain about how its timing might be impacted, or whether the city might have to take some money from its sales tax fund set aside for street maintenance to fund Ninth Street.

One area that is nearly certain to be impacted is the parks and recreation budget, he said.

“You are going to push a number of things for rebuilding and renovation further back,” Schumm said. “It will chew up a major amount of sales tax that would have gone for rehabilitation and maintenance of park facilities. But that may be the direction the public wants to go.”

Schumm said figuring out the public’s preferences will be important before proposing a specific plan. He said he would like the City Commission to appoint a group of citizens and stakeholders who can study a variety of options.

“The last proposal was basically staff led,” Schumm said. “That was fine with me because they demonstrated the need. But the downside is we didn’t have the public engagement up front that we needed. If we don’t get that this time, we’ll end up in the same place.”

Leslie Soden

Soden, the owner of a Lawrence pet-sitting business, thinks the city certainly needs to address the “deferred maintenance” that has occurred at police facilities. But Soden said she is less likely to support a major project that would build a new police headquarters facility on a vacant piece of ground.

“We’re missing the big-picture look at what we need to reduce demand for police services,” Soden said. “That’s step No. 1. I feel like this project is already a few steps down the road, and we haven’t done Step. No. 1.”

Soden said she does believe it could be feasible to expand into the significant amount of vacant space that exists at the current Investigations and Training Center at Bob Billings Parkway and Wakarusa Drive. She said the need to have all evidence stored efficiently in a single location also is important.

“But the voters just shot down a plan for a large, new headquarters, and I think there are a lot of reasons they voted no,” Soden said. “I think it is still a little inappropriate to just go all in again on a new facility and empty land.”

Soden said she wants to spend time reviewing what she calls the entire “emergency services system.” That includes the police, the fire department, the hospital and the jail. She said the city should become more involved in discussions with the county about its proposed expansion of the Douglas County Jail. That project could involve a crisis stabilization center that could serve people with mental health issues. Soden said the city needs to be involved because mental health care is the most glaring need in the community’s emergency services system.

“I want to make mental health care an actual City Commission goal,” Soden said. “That will steer a lot of decision making at City Hall. I know a lot of people think social service agencies aren’t a core service, but I see them as an important public safety service that helps reduce demand.”

Soden said she does not support using a new sales tax to fund police improvements. She said property taxes are a better source of funding for core city services. But she said she thinks there is a way to fund needed improvements through existing funds.

She said she would look at cutting or delaying improvements to 19th Street leading into VenturePark, and improvements planned for Ninth Street. She said she would not be in favor of delaying improvements to Fire Station No. 1 in downtown.

But she said before the city can hope to pay for the police project without a tax increase, commissioners first will need to change their policies about financial incentives for development projects.

“We can do this without a tax increase, especially if we stop giving money away to developers,” Soden said. “Everyone needs to pay their fair share of taxes. That’s what has to happen first.”

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