photo by: Contributed

Mike Dever

In some ways, Lawrence leaders may be too focused on creating affordable housing Mayor Mike Dever told a crowd of real estate professionals on Tuesday.

“I’m trying my best to change the word ‘affordable,’ and just say ‘attainable’,” Dever said. “If you want a house, there should be one there to buy. I don’t care if it is $250,000 or $2.5 million. We don’t have enough of them.”

Dever said higher end, more expensive homes — and the larger-than-average tax bills they produce — can be very important additions to the community’s tax base, which was another theme of his address to the membership of the Lawrence Board of Realtors, who gathered at the Arterra Event Gallery in west Lawrence on Tuesday.

“We need more people to share the burden,” Dever said of the city’s tax burden.

While Lawrence continues to post annual population growth, it is not doing so at the rate it has in some previous years. During the last Census period that ended in 2020, Douglas County posted population growth of 7.2% for the decade. That was down from 10.9% in the decade that ended in 2010.

More recently, there have been signs that Lawrence’s growth has slowed even more in this decade. New population estimates released by the Census Bureau in May found Lawrence’s population has grown by 2.46% between 2020 and 2024. That’s a growth rate of about 0.6% per year, or about 40% less than the growth rate of 20 years ago and about 15% less than the growth rate of 10 years ago.

“Our lack of growth over the last 10 years has been a major problem,” Dever said.

He said the city needs to better understand why population growth has slowed significantly, and then determine if there are actions that the community can take to address it.

“So, something went wrong,” Dever said of the slowdown in the growth rate. “We need to change it. I think the city is investing the dollars so we can grow. I think we have commissioners on board who want to see the community grow inwardly through infill, and also through annexation and platting and new development.”

Questions about how much the city should expand its borders to allow for new residential growth have been contentious at City Hall. Some community members have argued that is a recipe for urban sprawl, and that the new homes will require more services than what they will produce in new tax dollars. Others argue residential development adds plenty to the city’s coffers, especially considering that population growth usually leads to growth in sales tax collections, which is the city’s largest source of general operating revenue.

Dever told the group he does think the city’s boundaries will grow significantly in the coming years. Specifically, he thinks the area west of the South Lawrence Trafficway will become an area for large amounts of new home construction, but it is likely still a few years away. The city is contemplating investing millions of dollars to extend sewers, water service and major roads into the area to prime it for development. Dever thinks there are landowners ready to develop once the stage is set.

Dever said the need for growth is becoming more apparent as the city tries to tackle multiple, big ticket items. One of the biggest, he said, is a commitment to raise the wages of city employees to bring them in line with what similar positions in the private sector or in comparable governments are earning. A second major initiative has been major increases in capital spending to replace worn out infrastructure or to build new facilities, like a $130 million public works facility under construction in eastern Lawrence.

The two initiatives, combined, have put a tremendous amount of pressure on the city’s budget, leading to what is expected to be tough budget sessions this summer that will seek to close a more than $6 million deficit, he said.

“Those two things together is what kind of squashed our budget to a point where we’re in a position that we have to cut $6.5 million of our existing budget,” Dever said.

But Dever said the growth issue is fundamental to the issue as well.

“Our expenditures exceeded our growth,” Dever said. “That can’t happen, and nobody thought about that, no offense.”

In other items, Dever told the crowd:

• It is a near certainty that Lawrence will be a home base for a team in the 2026 World Cup. He said the organization currently is in discussions with hotels about lodging issues. However, it is not known what team will be assigned to Lawrence, given that the field for the most important soccer tournament in the world hasn’t yet been set.

• The University of Kansas has “stepped up to the plate” with its $700 million-plus renovation of David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium and the construction of a convention center on the site. Dever said he knows there will be questions about the impact the project will have on the neighborhood, and how key financial incentive packages that still need approval from the city will work.

“It is going to be hard and it is going to be messy,” Dever said of the debates ahead.

But Dever also said he hopes community members don’t discount the amount of money the university, its donors and the State of Kansas already have invested in the project, and the amount of new sales tax revenue the project can create if it successfully draws visitors to town.

“It is going to be a lot of questions about how it’s going to get done and who’s going to pay for it,” Dever said. “But the fundamental thing to understand is we’re going to bring other people’s tax dollars into our community to build it up.”