Kansas Department of Transportation logo for K-10 West Leg South Lawrence Trafficway Study

The recent completion of the South Lawrence Trafficway has added another focus to the city’s annual list of priorities for Kansas lawmakers.

New to the city’s list, which includes 23 items this year, is the identification of funding for a lane expansion for the west leg of Kansas Highway 10, which adjoins the new portion of the trafficway.

“The design has been discussed but there has not been any funding, and that could be something that we want to encourage the state to identify,” Assistant City Manager Diane Stoddard told the Lawrence City Commission at its meeting this week.

The commission voted unanimously to approve the priorities, including the item encouraging the state to fund the four-lane expansion. Currently, that section of the highway only has two lanes, and an expansion could improve the highway’s intersection with Kasold Drive, among other intersections.

The entry states that now that the four-lane, eastern leg of K-10 has been opened, traffic on the western leg of K-10 between Interstate 70 and Iowa Street has increased. That has made expansion of the highway and intersections more pressing.

“Funding to expand the lanes and improve the safety of at-grade intersections should be identified,” the document states.

The funding for a lane expansion for the west leg of K-10 is in addition to existing priorities regarding transportation, including increasing the amount of state funding that supports maintenance of state highways within city limits. The statement also makes it known that the city doesn’t approve of the Legislature taking money from the highway fund to balance the state budget.

Another priority previously identified by the city will also see some enhancements. Mayor Mike Amyx suggested that even stronger language be added to an existing entry supporting an extension of the exemption period for a handgun ban in city buildings.

“I know that there’s a lot of concern in our community about this, as there should be,” Amyx said.

The city’s exemption to the state’s new open carry law is set to expire in January 2018. Once the exemption expires, the city would have to install “adequate security measures” in each city building in order to prohibit concealed weapons. City Manager Tom Markus said the prospect of installing security measures — which the state has said could include metal detectors and guards — would be costly.

“I think we have almost 50 different venues,” Markus said “It’s a very expensive proposition to put it in one or two, let alone all of them. And then how do you start to pick and choose which buildings it goes into?”

The other addition to the priorities is an item regarding city and university relationships. The entry states that the city will collaborate with and support both the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University on their legislative issues and agendas.

Vice Mayor Leslie Soden said she appreciated that addition.

“I really like the addition of supporting Haskell initiatives,” Soden said. “That can have a really large economic impact on our city.”

Other items listed by the city deal with social issues, property taxes and the legislative process itself. A selection of some of those entries follows:

• Greater legislative transparency: “Tax and budget proposals should have adequate public hearings and public notice. Recent sessions have seen the Legislature wait until the eleventh hour to finalize budgets and work bills in the wee hours of the morning — making the legislative process inaccessible to your constituents.”

• Gender and marriage equality: “The City of Lawrence supports marriage equality in Kansas and opposes any legislation that fails to recognize marriages between two people of the same sex. We also strongly encourage the state to amend the Kansas Act Against Discrimination to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

• Local control of taxing and spending decisions: “The Lawrence City Commission urges the Legislature to remove the tax lid imposed on municipalities. Local elected officials should determine the appropriate spending and taxing policies of their community. The tax lid measures adopted during the 2015 legislative session and the revisions adopted during the 2016 session present unworkable constraints for local governments. A repeal of these tax limits would return budgetary authority to where it should be — local units of government.”

Once the city’s list of priorities has been finalized, a copy will be provided to the Legislature. The full list is available on the city’s website.