photo by: Rochelle Valverde/Journal-World

Lawrence City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St., is pictured on Jan. 31, 2023.

City leaders this week will take the next steps in approving the 2024 budget, including making a final decision on whether to impose a property tax rate that exceeds the rate that would keep tax revenues steady compared to a year ago.

At Tuesday’s Lawrence City Commission meeting, commissioners will conduct a pair of hearings related to the proposed budget, one of which is to consider exceeding that steady tax rate also known as the “revenue neutral rate.” The other hearing is intended for city staff to receive and respond to questions related to the recommended budget released in early July.

About a month ago, city leaders set the maximum property tax rate they can impose when they do eventually approve the 2024 budget at 33.207 mills. While that’s the same rate approved with last year’s budget, many Lawrence residents should still expect their property tax bills to increase due to rising home values.

The City Commission can still reduce the mill levy rate from here, but it can’t be increased above that maximum rate. The rate it would take to collect the same amount of property tax revenue as last year is about 2.5 mills lower at 30.711 mills, but doing so would mean the city would need to reduce its budgeted 2024 revenues by $3.58 million.

Since the last time city leaders discussed the recommended budget, it’s been revised to include an additional $810,000 of revenue in the city’s general fund, the primary operating fund for city services like public safety, parks and recreation and parts of municipal services and operations. In turn, the budget now calls for roughly $650,000 in additional expenditures, including five more firefighter/paramedic positions for Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical.

As it stands, the total recommended budget calls for $472.5 million in expenditures, including a new $2 million Homeless Programs Department and about $7.5 million in additional wages and benefits to city employees.

City leaders won’t be adopting the budget this week, but will be providing direction for city staff to prepare a final version of the budget. That’ll come later at the City Commission’s Sept. 5 meeting.

In other business, commissioners will:

• Consider granting final approval to an ordinance establishing a Neighborhood Revitalization Area at 700 New Hampshire St. and granting a developer financial incentives to rehab the former Borders bookstore building in downtown Lawrence.

The Lawrence City Commission, Douglas County Commission and Lawrence school board all have previously voted to approve incentives for the project at Seventh and New Hampshire streets, which would turn the building that has sat vacant for more than a decade into the corporate headquarters for developer Doug Compton’s First Management and First Construction companies. The incentives, if approved, would include a 15-year, 65% property tax rebate and a sales tax exemption on the cost of construction materials.

• Consider granting final approval to an ordinance making it illegal to make hiring, rental or public-access decisions on the basis of someone’s natural hairstyle.

The ordinance is Lawrence’s version of the CROWN Act, which is designed to prohibit race-based hair discrimination by employers, landlords, shopkeepers and other professionals. With that final approval, Lawrence will become the first city in Kansas to pass a law banning racial discrimination based on hair texture or hairstyle, joining 23 states across the country and numerous individual cities that have done the same.

The Lawrence City Commission will convene at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St.