photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

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

To see what people think about the 2027 budget, the City of Lawrence is rolling out an online engagement platform and hosting “drop-in” sessions where people can share their thoughts this spring.

The city announced in a press release Friday that Engage Lawrence, an online platform “designed for broader community engagement,” is now collecting budget feedback. The site has several options that people can use to share their opinions, including a brief survey, spaces to submit questions or open-ended comments and the online budget simulator tool called “A Balaning Act” that the city has used in the past.

In Engage Lawrence’s survey, respondents can give their opinions on two important topics in the 2027 budget cycle: Fire Medical Station 6 expansion and Parks, Recreation and Culture membership fees.

As the Journal-World reported, Lawrence city commissioners in March discussed the financial commitment needed to staff a new fire station that will address a gap in services on the northwest side of town. To fund the staffing and operations of the station, city staff said about $4.5 million in new funding would be needed, and they proposed a 3-mill increase to the property tax rate to accomplish that. The survey asks whether you would prefer to raise taxes, cut city services or a combination of the two to fund the expansion, and, if you wanted to cut services, which ones you would cut.

Membership fees for the city’s recreation centers began this year, and they were part of a series of adjustments the city made during last year’s budget process to close a $6.5 million budget hole. The city’s monthly Parks and Recreation membership report for February, the most recent data available, said the city had sold a total of 3,341 paying memberships by the end of that month, generating an estimated $208,000 in revenue. This question asks whether you would want to keep the membership program for next year, and, if not, how you would offset the loss of the revenue from memberships.

In addition to the surveys, the new platform will feature more open-ended spaces for residents to share their feedback. That includes a section on the website called “Budget Brainstorm,” where residents can share their own ideas and review ideas other people submitted. There is also a portion on the platform where users can submit questions about the budget that will be answered by the city’s budget team. That information will be available publicly to anyone who views the site.

The Engage Lawrence platform also will allow residents to use the “Balancing Act” interactive budget simulator, which highlights how funding decisions can affect services.

Alley Porter, the city’s budget, strategy and performance director, said in a news release that a budget is a “reflection of (the) community’s values and priorities” and that listening to the community’s opinions was a way to make sure “decisions are rooted in what matters most to the people we serve.”

Along with the online engagement platform, city staff will be answering questions in person at two informal events at local coffee shop Uplift Coffee’s two locations. One will be on Tuesday, March 31, from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. at the 4000 W. Sixth St. shop; the other will be Monday, April 6, from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. at the 624 N. Second St. shop. City staff will be set up at a table at the coffee shop to “answer quick questions, share information, and connect” with the community, according to the news release.

To answer the survey and submit ideas to the city’s online engagement platform, you have to register with your email address. The link to the website is https://engage.lawrenceks.gov/2027-budget.