photo by: Bremen Keasey

City commissioners discussing the $3.5 million funding agreement with the Lawrence Community Shelter during the Tuesday night meeting.

Lawrence city commissioners on Tuesday voted to approve a $3.5 million funding agreement with the Lawrence Community Shelter to provide supportive services for people experiencing homelessness, with the expectation that the shelter will rely less on city funding in the future.

Commissioners voted unanimously to approve the agreement, which lays out that LCS will provide emergency and winter sheltering services, with the expectation that facilities be fully utilized when there is demand for them. The shelter has a capacity of 125 beds in its main building, as well as Pallet cabins behind the building that can accommodate 48 people. It also operates The Village, which has 50 Pallet cabins at 256 North Michigan St.

The agreement also includes “sustainability goals” to gradually reduce the funding LCS receives from the city. The agreement says LCS should reduce its dependence on city funding by 10% by the end of the year and 25% by the end of 2026, with the shelter submitting a plan this year that will outline how it will find sustainable funding sources.

Initially, the item was set to be considered under the commission’s consent agenda, in which a group of items can be approved on a single vote, but Mayor Mike Dever moved to remove the item for a separate vote in part to highlight the future reductions in funding.

photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

James Chiselom, the new executive director at the Lawrence Community Shelter, is pictured Monday, Jan. 8, 2024.

James Chiselom, the executive director of LCS, said during the meeting that the organization has started to make moves to reduce reliance on the city for funding. Chiselom noted that the shelter had made some changes, including contracting with a director of strategic development and public relations to find outside funding sources like grants or donations, and he told the commissioners that LCS would present the sustainability plan in April.

Last year, LCS received around $3.4 million from the city, with an initial $2,677,699 funding agreement in January and an additional $756,550 through an addendum in December, as the Journal-World reported.

Brandon McGuire, the assistant city manager for Lawrence, said this was the first year that LCS would be not partially funded with federal dollars. McGuire said $600,000 would come from the Special Alcohol Fund. The rest of the funds would come first from the expanded Affordable Housing Sales Tax Fund, with the remainder coming from the city’s general fund.

As the Journal-World reported, in November, Lawrence voters approved raising the city’s affordable housing sales tax from 0.05% to 0.10% to provide more funding for services to help people experiencing homelessness. McGuire said the city was grateful for that result, which allowed the city to continue to fund its homelessness services.

Commissioner Amber Sellers said she was supportive of the funding agreement. She said that having an operational emergency shelter is a key part of the city’s A Place for Everyone plan for affordable housing, and that its safety net services are a “community benefit.”

As part of the agreement, LCS would also be expected to provide services during the day, including helping clients obtain necessary documents, assisting individuals going through substance use treatment programs and providing guests with three meals a day.

In other business, commissioners:

• Voted to implement a demolition moratorium for two groups of potentially historic structures currently being surveyed — a step that preservation advocates pushed for after the passage of the Land Development code.

The commission adopted an ordinance that would create a temporary demolition moratorium for the University Place Neighborhood — generally south and east of the KU campus — and certain structures scattered throughout the city that are associated with the founders of the Lawrence chapter of the NAACP.

The city is completing historic surveys for both of those groups of buildings, and the moratorium would delay the demolition of any structure built before 1975 in those areas as a way to ensure the preservation of historic resources.

Preservation advocates initially called for the moratorium in November, as the Journal-World reported, and commissioners asked city staff to explore the idea soon after the approval of the Land Development Code. Some neighborhood associations, especially the one for University Place, also wanted the moratorium out of concern that the new development code could allow for potentially historic homes to be torn down to make way for new development, changing the character of the neighborhood.

Jeff Crick, Director of Planning & Development Services, told the Journal-World in an email the moratorium will allow the city to complete the surveys to understand the “architectural heritage” at those locations.

“Historic areas and structures help embody our history and those unique qualities that we associate with Lawrence,” Crick said.

The surveys would likely be completed and sent to the city in September. The ordinance includes exceptions for property owners to seek the demolition of their structure as well as a provision for the commission to lift the moratorium for properties deemed as unsafe or dangerous and must be demolished to “protect the health, safety, and welfare of the community,” according to a city memo.

• Approved awarding a pair of construction contracts to Emery Sapp & Sons to upgrade utility crossings that would be complete along with the expansion of the South Lawrence Trafficway.

The total project for improving or adding new waterlines and sewer lines across K-10 would cost just under $14 million, which would be funded by money in the city’s capital improvement program, as the Journal-World reported.

In total, the work would add four utility crossings that would extend west of K-10 and improve or relocate two crossings that already exist, which could open up the possibility of more development for the city west of K-10. The project manager said the work on the utilities should take about 18 months, with the crossings completed by the end of 2026.