photo by: Rochelle Valverde/Journal-World

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

Twenty Lawrence events next year will share $150,000 in city funding, and city commissioners at their meeting on Tuesday will divvy up those dollars.

Commissioners, as part of their consent agenda, are scheduled to approve a set of recommendations for which community events should receive funding through the city’s guest tax program, which is funded through the special sales tax that is charged on local hotel rooms.

The Lawrence Busker Fest, which has featured street performers ranging from pogo stick acrobats to fire eaters, received the highest ranking among a city-appointed advisory board that considers the funding requests.

The Busker Fest was one of four events that received the full amount of the organizers’ requests. Sixteen other events are recommended to receive city funding at an amount less than they requested. Fifteen other events are receiving no city funding from the program.

Here’s a look at the 20 events that are recommended for transient guest tax funding in 2024: Lawrence Busker Fest, $12,000; Free State Festival, $15,000; Lawrence Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade, $15,000; KU Powwow and Indigenous Cultures Festival, $10,000; Lawrence Art Guild’s Art in the Park, $6,127; Holiday Show Tradition at Theatre Lawrence, $11,250; Live on Mass, $9,000; Lawrence Restaurant Week, $11,250; Kansas State Fiddling and Picking Championships, $7,500; “The Nutcracker, A Kansas Ballet,” $7,647; MixMaster 2024, $3,000; Dia De Los Muertos Community Celebration, $4,992; Kansas Half Marathon and 5K, $6,000; Lawrence Mardi Gras Parade, $2,408; National African American Quilt Convention, $7,500; Central States District of the Barbershop Harmony Society, $3,750; Americana Music Academy Downtown Lawrence Music Crawl, $4,075; I Heart Local Music Presents, $6,750; Stocktoberfest, $4,500; Rev It Up Hot Rod Show and Street Festival, $2,250.

Events that aren’t recommended to receive funding include a mix of new and old events. Existing events that aren’t recommended to receive city funding include Lawrence Lights Making Spirits Bright Christmas light display, the Lawrence Veterans Day Parade, the Great Plains Art and Music Festival, and the Kaw River Roots Festival.

Events that didn’t receive city funding could still happen, but won’t be able to count on city dollars for their budgets.

Other items on Tuesday’s City Commission agenda include:

• A funding agreement for the Lawrence Community Shelter to manage and operate the city’s Emergency Winter Shelter and The Village, which is a city-owned development on North Michigan Street that includes 50 Pallet homes and a variety of services for the homeless. As the Journal-World reported on Thursday, the board of the Lawrence Community Shelter is expected to propose an amount of money the shelter organization will need to accomplish the added tasks. Those tasks will be in addition to operating its existing homeless shelter on the eastern edge of Lawrence. As of Monday afternoon, the group’s funding request to the city had not yet been made public. Leaders with the shelter have been working the past several weeks to determine the appropriate amount to request.

• A development plan for Fall Creek Villas, which would build 14 duplexes near the southwest corner of Kasold Drive and Tomahawk Drive. The development failed to win a positive recommendation from the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission. Neighbors in the area have expressed concern about plans for the development to be next to a creek and what the extra homes may do to stormwater flooding in the area. If city commissioners want to approve the project, votes from four of the five commissioners will be needed to override the Planning Commission’s denial of the project. City commissioners, however, could keep the project alive with a simple majority vote by sending it back to the Planning Commission for a more detailed explanation of why the Planning Commission failed to recommend the project.

• A draft of the city’s 2024 Legislative Priority Statement, which will be distributed to state lawmakers for consideration. Commissioners are specifically asking for a new state law that local leaders hope would stop other cities from bringing homeless individuals to Lawrence for homeless services. The new law would prohibit any city or organization that receives state funding from making such transfers, unless officials from the new county have agreed to the transfer.