Sack out in a Lawrence hotel room, have an extra cocktail every now and then, and tell yourself that you’re doing Lawrence City Hall budget-makers a favor in the process.

City commissioners are close to passing a 2016 budget that makes a bet that hotel stays and liquor consumption both will increase in Lawrence in future years. Commissioners at their meeting tonight will take a key procedural step in approving the 2016 budget. They’ll publish the proposed budget and set a public hearing of Aug. 4, at which point they’re scheduled to approve the budget and the tax rate for the coming year.

So, let’s take a look at how this budget is shaping up:

• The Rock Chalk Park project is completed, but it is still having an impact on the city’s budget. The proposed budget calls for taking $150,000 a year out of the city’s guest tax fund to make a portion of the annual debt payment for the city’s $10.5 million recreation center at Rock Chalk Park. Currently, all the recreation center debt is being paid for through the city’s proceeds of the countywide 1 cent sales tax.

But commissioners believe it would be appropriate to pay for some of the debt from the guest tax fund. Guest tax fund revenues come from a special tax that is charged on Lawrence hotel rooms. The city surmises that the eight-gym recreation center helps bring people to town for overnight stays, particularly for youth basketball and volleyball tournaments.

Guest tax money legally can only be used for functions that promote tourism, overnight stays and other activities that will generate more guest tax revenues. The countywide sales tax, on the other hand, can be used for any governmental purpose. So, by shifting $150,000 a year in payments to the guest tax fund, that frees up sales tax money for the city to use for other purposes. It is worth noting that the previous City Commission argued that when voters approved the countywide sales tax in 1994 they were given a “political promise” that the city’s share of the sales tax would be used for recreation projects. That was one of the key arguments from the past City Commission why they felt justified in using the sales tax to fund the recreation center in the first place without putting the issue to a public vote. Whether you subscribe to the political promise theory depends largely on how you remember 1994. Regardless, the city has the legal authority to spend the sales tax revenue on any governmental purpose. It doesn’t have such authority with the guest tax funds.

An issue to keep an eye on, though, is whether hotel stays in Lawrence will increase much over the next several years. The city is betting they will because by adding the $150,000 in debt payments, the guest tax fund is projected to spend more money than it will collect in 2016. The deficit is estimated to be about $40,000. That’s not a major problem in the near term. The guest tax fund has a healthy fund balance, and can afford to operate at a loss for a few years. But, eventually, the fund will need to move into positive territory to remain healthy.

The more significant issue with this change seems to be that residents were told — granted, by the previous commission — that there was no need to vote on the recreation center project because the sales tax funds were being used for what they were intended for by voters. Now, a portion of those funds will be used for other purposes, and the recreation center is beginning to affect other parts of the city budget. At the moment, the impact is fairly minimal because the $150,000 only represents about 10 percent of the annual debt payment the city makes on the recreation center. But we’ll see if this is the beginning of a new trend where the recreation center affects multiple areas of the city’s budget.

• City commissioners are making an even bigger bet on liquor taxes. The proposed budget calls for about $350,000 in funding for the WRAP program, which puts mental health/social workers in Lawrence schools. The city is planning to fund that program from the special alcohol fund, which gets its revenues from a special tax charged on drinks served at bars and restaurants. There has been some other shifting of special alcohol dollars to try to accommodate the new WRAP funding, but it is a politically difficult fund to cut expenses in because several social service agencies are funded from the tax revenues. So, the net result is the proposed 2016 budget has the special alcohol fund spending about $52,000 more than it is projected to receive in revenue next year. Unlike the guest tax fund, the special alcohol fund does not have a healthy fund balance. City staff members are estimating the fund will completely spend down all its reserves by the end of 2018. What will change that scenario is if liquor sales increase faster than expected in the coming years. But as we’ve previously reported, for some unknown reason, drink sales at bars and restaurants actually have declined the past two years in Lawrence. Betting on liquor sales to increase in Lawrence, though, generally has been a good long-term strategy.

• The proposed budget that commissioners will discuss tonight is different from the recommended budget prepared by interim City Manager Diane Stoddard. The biggest difference is that Stoddard’s recommended budget called for a property tax rate increase of 1.057 mills. City commissioners balked at that increase, however, and the proposed budget now calls for the property tax rate to hold steady.

That means some items had to be cut from the recommended budget to make items balance. (Well, sort of balance. More on that in a moment.) But it also means the city is getting more aggressive in projecting how much revenue it will receive in 2016, at least in one area. The proposed budget calls for $250,000 more in license and fee revenue than what Stoddard’s recommended budget called for less than a month ago. The increase is expected to come from the city’s new rental licensing and inspection program, which gets in full gear in 2016. To be clear, the city is not proposing to increase what it charges landlords; it has just chosen to get more aggressive in its projections on the amount of money the program will raise in 2016.

As for the part about the city’s budget balancing, what is proposed is not a balanced budget. The proposal calls for general fund spending to exceed revenues by about $895,000. But city officials are hopeful that won’t be the case. The city over the last several years has routinely budgeted to spend more than it receives in revenue, yet at the end of the year it has managed to finish with a slight surplus of revenues over expenses. Sometimes revenues — like sales tax collections — increase more than expected. Other times, the city manager’s office put on hold or eliminates certain purchases to keep expenses in line with revenues. The city’s total general fund budget has about $79.7 million in expenses, which is up about about 5.2 percent from 2015.

Among items that are getting a cut in the budget compared with what was in Stoddard’s recommended budget are:

• $25,000 in Planning Department funding that was to be used for various studies;

• $86,000 in the street maintenance division. The money was to be used to buy additional road salt. To be clear, the city will have road salt for the winter season. It just won’t buy as much as once planned.

• A nearly $189,000 reduction in the amount of overtime the Lawrence Police Department pays in 2016. That one caught my eye because a reduction in overtime seemingly would mean a reduction in the number of hours police are out on the street because the city is not adding any full-time officers as part of the 2016 budget. But I checked in with Mayor Jeremy Farmer about the cut, and he said the $189,000 reduction still will allow the Police Department to have at least the same number of hours available for overtime as it does in 2015. Police leaders, though, were asking for an increase in the number of hours they could use in 2016, and commissioners balked at that strategy.

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Look for a discussion among commissioners on how the police and fire departments use overtime. Commissioners recently received a new report about just how much overtime is used in those two departments. The fire department spent $609,812 in overtime costs in 2014 for firefighters. Police officials spent $543,651 on overtime for police officers and another $603,938 on overtime for detectives in 2014. As we previously reported, the Police Department has been unable to staff a nighttime detective division, meaning that detectives often are called in for overtime when an investigation needs to occur during the nighttime hours. Police department leaders asked for about $1.2 million in funding to staff a nighttime detective division in 2016, but the funding is not included in the proposed budget.

At some point, I think city commissioners are going to have to figure out what the right size is for the Police Department. What will be interesting is whether they figure that out before they make decisions about what type of police headquarters building to fund. Knowing how large the force will be today and in the future is important in the design of the facility, but the bigger issue probably is figuring out how to spend what could be limited resources. If the city spends $20 million or more to build a police headquarters building, and then determines it needs to spend multiple millions more to add police officers shortly thereafter, will that be politically viable? That’s a big question that could have some big implications for the community and the Police Department.

Commissioners meet at 5:45 p.m. tonight at City Hall.