photo by: City of Lawrence

The Lawrence City Commission convenes at City Hall for its meeting on Jan. 3, 2023.

On the heels of a community survey about sidewalk repair, city officials said discussions about whether the city will take on more financial responsibility for repairs would take place as part of the upcoming budget process for 2024.

As part of its meeting Tuesday, the Lawrence City Commission received the results of a community survey in which the majority of respondents said the city should take full responsibility for repairs. The commission received the survey results as part of the city manager’s report portion of the meeting, rather than as a regular agenda item, and the commission did not discuss the topic.

City Manager Craig Owens said after the meeting that any changes to the city’s current sidewalk repair program, which uses a cost-share format for homeowners, would be discussed within the context of the city’s larger capital improvement program as part of the 2024 budget process. The commission typically begins budget discussion in the spring and approves the budget in late summer.

Commissioner Courtney Shipley, who pushed for the survey and has long advocated for the city to take on repairs, said after the meeting that she was grateful that staff had conducted the survey. Though Shipley noted that like all surveys the city administers through its Lawrence Listen platform the results do not represent a scientific sample, she said the results still had a lot of value.

“I think it’s pretty clear what the public thinks, and I’m really excited to have that data,” Shipley said. “… I think there were some pretty clear attitudes in there about how people want things funded and when.”

The current program, which began in 2019, provides financial assistance to lower-income homeowners and those with more than one adjacent sidewalk, and has so far resulted in the city paying about 70% of the total repair costs. The city also pays for repairs related to city street trees and infrastructure, as well as contractor costs such as removals, grading and contractor mobilization. The city put out the survey in October to ask residents to weigh in on how the city’s sidewalk repair program should be funded, among other questions about how the city handles sidewalk repair.

Specifically, the city asked respondents to rate on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest, whether they were supportive of funding 100% of sidewalk repairs with existing city resources, rather than a new property tax, sales tax or the existing cost-share format. About 61% of respondents indicated that they either supported or strongly supported that option, and about 17% indicated they were opposed or strongly opposed. By contrast, about 28% of respondents indicated they supported or strongly supported the existing cost-share program, with about 48% indicating they were opposed or strongly opposed. The other funding methods — a new property tax, a new sales tax, or benefit districts that assess costs to properties by project area — all had little support.

When asked whether the city should increase or decrease its current timeline for completing repairs, which are estimated to take another eight years, 41.6% said spending should increase to speed up the repairs; 52.4% said spending should stay about the same; and 6% said spending should decrease to lengthen the time it takes to complete the repairs.

All of the responses to the survey’s multiple choice questions are included in the commission’s agenda, which is available on the city’s website, Lawrenceks.org.

In other business, the commission:

• Received an update from city staff on the development of a sustainability policy for capital projects. The policy will incorporate sustainable practices into the siting, design, construction, remodeling, repair, maintenance, operation, and deconstruction of city facilities and infrastructure. Projects entering the design phase prior to Jan. 1, 2024, would not be subject to the policy.

• Received a request to annex approximately 143.41 acres located at the southeast corner of U.S. Highway 59 and the South Lawrence Trafficway and referred the request to the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission for consideration and recommendation. The recommendation from the Planning Commission will come back to the City Commission for future consideration.

• Awarded Bid No. 22045 for the Lawrence Multimodal Transfer Center (the new bus station) to MCP Build Inc. and authorized the city manager to execute the construction contract in the amount of $7.18 million.