photo by: City of Lawrence

Affordable Housing Advisory Board Vice Chair Shannon Oury, front, addresses the Lawrence City Commission as other members of the advisory board sit behind her at a city work session Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019, at City Hall.

As the city prepares to spend up to $1 million annually to address a shortage of affordable housing, city leaders are asking that the process for awarding the funds be further refined.

The Lawrence City Commission met with members of the Affordable Housing Advisory Board as part of its work session Tuesday, and the two bodies discussed the board’s goals and strategies for using the funding as well as the board’s method for evaluating proposed affordable housing projects.

Commissioner Stuart Boley noted that for the last grant process, the board had given two of the proposals the same score but had recommended that only one of them be fully funded. The commission ultimately indicated to the board that it was interested in fully funding both proposals, but Boley said the board hadn’t provided the commission enough detail regarding its funding recommendation.

“We didn’t understand what the difference was and what that process was that brought us from an identical scoring, but then funding one (proposal) at 100 percent and one at 55 percent,” Boley said.

AHAB Vice Chair Shannon Oury said that each organization seeking a grant from the city gave a presentation, and that during those presentations the board asked questions and discussed the proposals further with the applicants. Oury said those discussions informed the board’s funding recommendation, and that the board is already working on changing its scoring process to better reflect those discussions.

As part of its meeting Monday, the board indicated that it would use its March meeting to refine the criteria for funding proposals and the scoring matrix that the board uses to evaluate them.

“We talked a lot about refining our matrix and developing something that gives us a little bit better vehicle to communicate why we made our decisions,” Oury said.

Mayor Lisa Larsen said that the commission would like the board to provide as much of its discussion as possible to the commission so commissioners can better understand the board’s reasoning. Larsen added that she knows the board is aware of the issue and she appreciates that the board is paying attention.

Lawrence voters approved a sales tax in 2017 that will provide about $1 million annually to the city’s affordable housing fund for the next 10 years. Funds from the sales tax will start coming in later this year and, together with $350,000 of support from the city’s general fund, will provide about $850,000 this year for the city’s housing fund, according to a city staff memo to the commission.

The board reviews applications for the funds and makes spending recommendations, which are then sent to the commission for consideration. The board recently developed five short-term goals with potential ways to provide additional affordable rental units and affordable homes for purchase for low- and moderate-income residents, which were also discussed as part of the meeting Tuesday.

City Commission Work Session 02/12/19