photo by: Mike Yoder

Lawrence Community Shelter, 3655 E. 25th St.

The crowd at a town hall meeting held Wednesday to address issues at the Lawrence Community Shelter agreed the gathering was a good first step.

That’s what the shelter’s executive director, Trey Meyer, had hoped it would be, after a series of struggles in the past year. Last summer, the shelter was in an emergency financial situation; its kitchen was shut down in March; and it was later found to not be complying with a requirement to hold quarterly meetings with its neighbors.

The town hall was an effort to comply with the meetings requirement, which was part of an agreement with the city when the shelter moved from downtown to 3701 Franklin Park Circle in 2012. Another public meeting is scheduled for October, and Meyer said he’d like to host two every year going forward.

“In the past we haven’t done as great a job as we would have liked in following our management plan, and one of our strategic objectives at the shelter this year is to do a much, much better job of that,” Meyer said. “This is part of executing that game plan. For our first effort, we are extremely pleased and looking to build on that.”

About 40 people — shelter staff, its board of trustees, people who live near the shelter and others — gathered at Union Pacific Depot on Wednesday night to discuss the shelter, its mission and other issues.

Meyer responded to questions about the shelter’s finances, saying it has outsourced its accounting work to the accounting firm Mize Houser & Company.

That move was taken at the end of last summer, after the shelter received $100,000 in emergency funding from the city and Douglas County. At the time, the Internal Revenue Service had informed the shelter that it owed $37,000 in back payroll taxes, which a board member said was an oversight.

Attendees also inquired about the shelter’s current financial situation. Meyer said that since 2014 the shelter has cut its budget from about $1.2 million to $993,000 this year. The decrease involved cuts to staff and “streamlining to become more efficient,” Meyer said.

Meyer is hoping the shelter receives the same amount in city and county contributions in 2017 as it is this year. Budget requests are currently going through the city and county commissions.

For 2017, the Lawrence Community Shelter requested $335,100 from the city — up from $199,600 it received for 2016. City Manager Tom Markus’ recommended 2017 budget calls for the shelter to receive the same amount it is this year, which Meyer said would be adequate.

“We are very pleased as an organization that the city appears to be choosing the same level that it did last year,” he said. “If we get level funding for 2017, then we’re going to be in good shape toward hitting our marks, having a balanced budget and maintaining our current level of service.”

City Commissioner Lisa Larsen, who was at the town hall Wednesday, said the amount for the shelter that Markus proposed was “going to be stable, as far as I know.”

Meyer also said he thought Douglas County would maintain the same amount of funding as last year: $115,000.

In response to questions about its kitchen being shut down one day in March, Meyer said: “We’re in better shape.”

An inspector with the Kansas Department of Agriculture found violations in the shelter’s kitchen, including fresh rodent droppings. Staff worked overnight to clean the kitchen, which was reopened the following morning.

“We have since then adopted some new practices to try to stay as far ahead of that as we can,” Meyer said. “So far, so good.”

One attendee said conversations like Wednesday’s needed to “reach a wider audience.”

Meyer agreed, saying part of the shelter’s strategic objectives for 2016 is improving its communication with the public. He said shelter staff was working on a plan to better use social media to “tell stories” and “communicate what we do.”

“One of our strategic objectives this year is to be better at telling our story and to participate in the narrative about us,” Meyer said. “Part of that is standing up and addressing concerns that the public may have.”