photo by: Bremen Keasey

Lawrence City Hall at 6 East 6th St pictured on Dec. 10, 2024.

Raises for police, fire, stormwater, traffic and solid waste workers are slated for a vote by the Lawrence City Commission at its meeting next week.

On the commission’s meeting agenda for Tuesday are an agreement with one of the city’s employee unions and amendments to the city’s agreements with three other unions. The amendments are to the memoranda of understanding with the solid waste workers, police and fire and medical unions, and they are all for the purpose of adjusting employee pay. Each of those groups would receive a 3% general wage increase for 2026.

One of those pay increases has been before the City Commission before: the one for Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical. The commission had to break an impasse between city management and the union, and it sided with management’s pay proposal, as the Journal-World reported.

The one full agreement, or memorandum of understanding, that city leaders are considering is for wastewater, stormwater, street and traffic employees. Like the other groups, they are poised to get a 3% raise next year.

The commission’s meeting agenda says that since May, six negotiation sessions have taken place between city management and Teamsters Local No. 696, which represents that group of employees in the city’s Municipal Services and Operations department. Both sides reached an agreement “on all topics that were presented for discussion,” the memo reads. The negotiations will be reopened next year for the purpose of determining wages for 2027 and 2028, the agreement says.

In addition to the raises, the agreement for these infrastructure-related employees features several other changes from the past year, including adjustments to the grievance procedure, updates to job titles and language adding Juneteenth as an observed holiday for employees.

All of these items are on the City Commission’s consent agenda, which is a group of items that the commission can vote on in a single motion. The commission meets at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St.