photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Lawrence City Hall is pictured on Oct. 11, 2024.

Although Lawrence’s 2025 budget was only approved a couple of months ago, the city is seeking community members to be a part of a special committee to help make budgeting decisions for 2026, a year for which the city manager says Lawrence will face tough choices.

The city announced Friday that it is creating a Community Budget Committee for help in crafting the 2026 budget. The committee will meet approximately six times over eight months, beginning in December of this year. These meetings will not be open to the public, and some confidentiality may be required during the process.

City Manager Craig Owens said as part of a press release the community is facing “significant financial pressure” heading into the next budget cycle, and more input will be helpful in figuring out which priorities the city should focus on.

“Our process is better when informed community members work together on solutions that account for what our fellow neighbors want and need,” Owens said. “Collaboration and compromise will be necessary.”

Alley Porter, a budget and strategic initiatives manager with the city, told the Journal-World the city expects to seat seven people on the committee. Along with the Community Budget Committee, the city will start an Employee Budget Committee drawn from city staff in preparation for the 2026 budget.

Interested community members are encouraged to apply on the city’s website: lawrenceks.org/budget/future. Applications are now open and will close Nov. 15. Owens will select the committee from the pool of applicants.

City staff and Lawrence city commissioners felt that more work was needed to address future budgets and that the 2025 budget was unsustainable.

The $518.7 million budget, which was approved Sept. 3, kept the city’s mill rate about the same, a dramatic change from the initial proposal in July that would have raised the levy by 3.6 mills but which faced public backlash during an Aug. 20 public hearing. To decrease the mill rate, commissioners used $1.6 million of the city’s general fund balance in place of tax revenue that would have been generated by a mill levy hike.

Mayor Bart Littlejohn said at the time that “hard discussions” would be needed. Commissioner Lisa Larsen went even further, saying during the public hearing on the budget that “we need to look at every single program in our city.”

Porter said the 2025 budget was adopted with a structural deficit in the city’s general fund, and that the city would continue to have that kind of imbalance in future years if changes weren’t made. Porter said having additional perspectives to help steer potentially difficult budget discussions would be welcome.

“It is a challenge that we want to confront with this committee,” Porter said.

The city anticipates announcing members of the Community Budget Committee in late November.