photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

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

As the City of Lawrence crafts its 2026 budget, city staff will hold a public feedback session Monday night using an online tool to help highlight priorities.

At the session, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Lawrence Public Library, attendees will use the interactive tool called “A Balancing Act” to mimic the choices city leaders make to create the budget. The tool, which the city has used for three years now, breaks down the services a department can provide on a scale of 1 to 5 — with one being very minimal service and five being “world class” — and adds how much it would cost. Residents then can increase or decrease service levels to the various departments and increase or decrease taxes to make sure the budget is balanced.

As part of this session, the city said people who attend the meeting will work as a team and submit a balanced budget that balances the competing priorities of everyone at the table.

Lawrence is currently projecting a $6.5 million budget deficit for 2026, and city leaders have begun the budgeting process earlier this year, creating two budget committees and providing some initial options to the City Commission in January, as the Journal-World reported.

As well as the Monday night meeting, the city has the Balancing Act program available to fill out on its website. That will be open to the public until the end of February. The city said it will gather all those entries and present the results to the City Commission at a future meeting.