photo by: Journal-World

The west side of the Douglas County Courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St., is pictured on Sept. 23, 2021.

On the final day of Douglas County’s hearings on the 2023 budget, a truancy-reduction nonprofit and a low-income housing program both asked for county funding and said they wanted to play a greater role in the budget process in future years.

The conversation at Thursday’s hearing focused on behavioral health organizations, agencies serving at-risk populations, and safety net and human service providers. Among them were the longtime affordable and supportive housing nonprofit Tenants to Homeowners and a newer nonprofit called the Center for Supportive Communities, both of which were asking county commissioners for funding to help deliver their services.

The Center for Supportive Communities is a newer addition to the nonprofit landscape in Lawrence. It formed to continue a truancy prevention and diversion program that was facilitated through the University of Kansas until this summer. That program is now called the “SupportED” program, and the nonprofit hopes to work with local justice system representatives, youth advocates and schools to support students who are habitually truant as an alternative to the court system.

This year, the Center for Supportive Communities is seeking $150,000 to partially fund that program. County commissioners agreed that they were interested in examining a county-funded truancy program, but they also said it wasn’t clear what such a program would look like, and they had unanswered questions such as whether different programs would be necessary for different age groups.

County staff’s comments on Thursday suggested that the conversation about truancy prevention would extend beyond this month’s budget review process.

“I think some of those pieces in terms of trying to make sure we have a very clear understanding of if you had more, what could you do — I think some of those conversations need more work here,” County Administrator Sarah Plinsky said. “In my view, it’s not going to get solved at this table today or next week. It’s a conversation to try to bring something better, a little more refined, back to the commission.”

Tenants to Homeowners, meanwhile, approached the commission asking for $100,000 to support its operating costs and management of its existing and future supportive housing units. Rebecca Buford, the nonprofit’s executive director, told the commission that the additional funding could be spread around in a number of ways, from helping to hire one or two additional staff members to increasing administrative capacity.

Buford said there were a number of possibilities for collaboration with other affordable housing agencies in the community that could help Tenants to Homeowners do more with the county money. One agency she suggested working with was the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority, which she said could be a resource for helping tenants obtain affordable housing vouchers.

The housing authority has also approached the commission this budget cycle with a $50,000 funding request to help support its landlord risk reduction fund. That request is because the Housing Authority has lost its partner landlords at a “shocking” rate, according to Shannon Oury, the Housing Authority’s executive director. The organization relies on landlords who accept federal Section 8 housing vouchers, and Oury said vouchers wouldn’t be much help if the landlords weren’t on board.

“These funds will not be for salary; it would be for trying to get some of these landlords back,” Oury said. “A voucher is only as good as the landlord who will take it.”

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Both the Center for Supportive Communities and Tenants to Homeowners had another, longer-term request as well — they expressed interest in joining the county’s list of “community partners” that are represented each year in conversations about the budget.

More than two dozen entities — including the local health department, the Housing Authority, the Lawrence Community Shelter, Kansas Holistic Defenders, Just Food and more — are on the community partners list. They are often considered for funding as part of the budget process even before each year’s budget hearings begin. Agencies that aren’t on the list, meanwhile, have to request “supplemental funding” during the county’s budget hearings; those requests are also an option for entities that are already a part of the list.

It wasn’t clear on Thursday what steps the agencies might have to go through to become new community partners, and if they were to get on the list, it wouldn’t have an impact at this stage in the 2023 budget process.

Commissioners on Thursday also heard a rundown of budget priorities from the county’s director of behavioral health projects, Bob Tryanski. The agencies in this group — including Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, Heartland Community Health Center and LMH Health — are, for the most part, already built into the proposed budget thanks to revenue from the county’s behavioral health sales tax.

Much like the work sessions that sometimes take place before the commission’s weekly meeting, no action is taken during budget hearings. Thursday was the last day of budget hearings, and commissioners will meet to begin their deliberations on Monday. Those meetings will take place from 9 a.m. to noon and will end after a final session Tuesday, July 12. The public can attend all of these sessions in person or via Zoom. The final hearing to adopt the 2023 budget is tentatively set for Aug. 24, according to county staff.

During the previous two days of hearings, conversations largely revolved around fire and medical officials’ requests for nearly $1 million in additional funding and the Douglas County District Court’s plan for a self-help center intended to help litigants navigate the court system regardless of their ability to afford legal services.

The proposed budget is available for the public to view online at dgcoks.org/budget, and meeting information regarding the commission’s hearings and deliberations, including recordings of those sessions, is available on the county’s website at dgcoks.org/commissionmeetings.