A look at the city manager’s recommended budget, and the heat he is taking for it

photo by: John Young

New Lawrence City Manager Tom Markus flashes a smile as he is introduced at a City Commission meeting in March at City Hall. Seated next to Markus is Assistant City Manager Diane Stoddard.

Despite concerns to the contrary, Lawrence is still a city of the arts. These days, the newest creation from artists are arrows — available for free if you promise to shoot them at City Manager Tom Markus’ proposed 2017 budget. Or, perhaps, Markus would tell you they seem to be aimed a bit more at the architect than the document.

City commissioners tonight will take another important step in crafting the 2017 budget. Tonight is the night they essentially have to figure out whether they are going to raise property taxes to support the budget. Markus has presented a recommended budget that keeps property taxes steady, but makes several cuts, including eliminating the city’s director of arts and culture and reducing some funding for the Lawrence Arts Center.

This is the most contentious budget process we have had in several years. Normally a debate over whether to put a stop sign at the corner of Po and Dunk draws more public comment than the nearly $200 million budget the city approves. This year, though, commissioners have gotten what they say they always want: A public that cares about the budget.

I spent some time on Monday talking with Markus — who is going through his first Lawrence budget process but is a veteran at crafting budgets for other cities — and I’ve also been spending time reading the document. Here are a few observations:

• City Commissioner Matthew Herbert got his hand slapped for saying he thought this budget was putting us on a path to becoming Topeka. It certainly wasn’t a great strategy on Herbert’s part for creating neighborly relations. (He has since apologized.) But I guess I will say something similar: This budget debate is starting to sound like the kind they have in the statehouse in Topeka. It is clear that there are some people who don’t like Marcus’ idea of cutting some arts funding. That’s perfectly fine. It may not be a good decision.

What happens in Topeka when you don’t like an idea somebody has proposed is this.

Step 1: Compare the proposer of the idea to someone who is unpopular. In Topeka, that is usually President Barack Obama. In Lawrence, it works much better to compare the person to Gov. Sam Brownback. Read social media or some of the comments city commissioners are receiving, and you’ll see some arts supporters are comparing Markus to Brownback.

Step 2: Tell people if they support this idea, they can’t be considered a true (fill in the blank here.) In Topeka the blank is usually filled in with conservative. There are certain things you can’t say and still be considered a conservative, we are told. In Lawrence, it is a bit more complicated, but what I’m hearing in this debate is that you can’t propose a cut to the arts and claim to understand “Lawrence values.” To be fair not everyone who has opposed the budget cuts has used these tactics, but there has been more of it than normal in Lawrence. There have been social media chains circulating asking people to ask commissioners to fire Markus.

I guess I would point out a couple of things. These proposed cuts to the city budget are predicated on Markus’ strong belief that the city should not dip into its reserve funds to balance the budget. A reticence to dip into reserve funds has not been a hallmark of the Brownback administration. And on the subject of “Lawrence values,” there is no doubt than an appreciation for the arts is among them. But I think the overriding value in Lawrence is tolerance and an openness to beliefs different than your own.

Again, this isn’t meant to say that people shouldn’t oppose the proposed cuts to the arts or anything else. The recommendation may not be a good one. But it seems like the opposition could be argued in a way that sounds less like those we so often criticize in Topeka.

I believe Markus is holding up fine from some of the personal criticism he is receiving for this budget proposal, but he did say something interesting in my interview with him: “I do have a mantra of attacking the issue and not the person.”

But Marcus has been in this game long enough to know that doesn’t always happen.

“It is fine to focus on me,” Markus said. “I’m the one making the recommendations.”


• It will be interesting to see if city commissioners start taking some of the heat soon. A large reason Markus’ recommended budget is crafted in this manner is because of a directive from the city commission. The arts funding and other cuts could be reversed if commissioners are willing to raise the property tax rate. I asked Markus why he didn’t propose that. The answer was simple: “The commission has expressed a strong desire not to have a tax increase. That has been my motivation.” Markus said he understands why the commission doesn’t want to have a tax increase. But I didn’t sense that Markus thinks the community will fall off a cliff if a moderate tax increase is implemented. I think he is worried, though, if the city decides to forego a tax increase, forego the cuts, and instead just dip into its reserve funds.

“The state has put itself in fiscal peril, it seems to me,” Markus said. “My concern is what else might happen. We are supporting a lot of issues and people in this community. They’re depending on us to be able to make good on the things we say we can fund. A healthy fund balance helps ensure we can do that.”


• The numbers, especially as they relate to arts funding, are pretty interesting. Some of the opponents of the arts cuts have made it sound like the city is completely defunding the arts. That’s not the case. It is true that the director of arts and culture position would be eliminated. Those responsibilities would have to be absorbed by other city staff members or the director of the Lawrence Arts Center — Markus said both options are feasible — or those duties simply won’t get done. When the position was created several years ago, arts leaders were ecstatic because it was seen as a sign that Lawrence was elevating itself to a different level as an arts community. The position has some symbolic value, and that is making this debate an emotional one as well.

The arts center also is proposed to receive a cut in funding. It would lose $55,000 in funding, and some have characterized that as a slashing of 50 percent of the Arts Center’s city funding. That’s not accurate. It is a loss of 50 percent of one line item of the Arts Center’s city funding. Specifically, it is the line item for general maintenance of the facility. Other line items, such as the $30,000 the city provides for scholarships for kids to attend Arts Center programming was not cut. Neither was the line item to pay for utilities and other service contracts that the Arts Center has. The city also is not making any changes to the more than $230,000 a year it spends to retire the debt on the building that houses the Arts Center in downtown Lawrence. (Arts Center officials remind there also was a multimillion dollar private fundraising campaign that helped construct the building too.)

In terms of how much funding the Arts Center will receive under Markus’ recommended budget, it totals just more than $445,000. The $55,000 cut amounts to about an 11 percent reduction compared to 2016 totals. None of these totals include city funding for the Free State Festival, which is likely to receive city grant money again in 2017.

How much money various outside agencies receive from the city historically has been a hot potato. Recently, the Arts Center has fared better than some. For instance, in the proposed 2017 budget the new Peaslee Center vocational school is set to receive about $150,000, the Lawrence Humane Society about $360,000, and the Lawrence Community Shelter about $200,000.


• In my conversation with Markus, I heard two things about the future that caught my attention: Markus thinks more cuts to the City Hall workforce are likely, and he thinks the community needs to adjust its thoughts on economic development.

On the employee front, Markus said he’s implemented a plan where every position that becomes vacant at City Hall now must come to him for a review of whether the position can be reshaped, reduced or eliminated. He noted personnel costs are the city’s biggest expense.

“We have to take a hard look at that,” said Markus, who said cutting positions through attrition is much more preferable than cutting filled positions.

On the economic development front, Markus noted the city’s growing dependence on sales tax as a revenue source. He said that should cause the city to think carefully about its economic development strategies.

“I think our attitude about economic development will have to change,” Markus said. “I know there is a vocal group of people in town that won’t like me saying that.”

He went on to say: “I don’t like incentives but they are part of the environment. I don’t want to pay a dollar more than we have to in incentives. But, in my view, compared to other places, Lawrence has been fairly fiscally conservative in how they use them.”

Lawrence has a city manager who is not afraid to speak his mind. It likely also will have an arrow factory that remains pretty busy.