Our Vision
We envision collaborative governance that empowers all stakeholders—residents, community organizations, businesses, and local government—to shape local policies, budgets, and outcomes.
City of Lawrence 2027 Budget
How Sustainable Are the City’s Personnel Expenses?
The Coalition for Collaborative Governance researched the City’s budget to understand why their costs have outpaced their revenues, and one major reason is because their personnel expenses increased 40%, from $90 million to $126 million, in the last six years.
Why have the City’s personnel costs increased 40 % in the last six years?
More Employees - The City currently has 931 full-time-equivalent (FTE) employees, which is 77 more than it had in 2020.[1] On average, each FTE’s salary and benefits cost the City about $130,000 per year, so 77 additional employees could account for about $10 million in annual costs.General
Wage Adjustments - The City provides raises for its employees each year, called general wage adjustments. These raises have been between 0.5 and 3.0% each year for the past six years, and in 2026, City staff received a 3% wage adjustment.
Market-Rate Adjustments - In 2018, the City hired an outside consultant to compare City staff salaries with comparable jobs in 14 similar communities throughout Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. They found that 19% of our City’s non-union employees were paid below what the consultants identified as market rate, and they found that another 21% of these employees were paid at the low end of the market rate for their position. This study’s findings prompted the City to increase salaries for many employees in 2022 and 2023 to make staff salaries competitive.
Union Agreements – The City has salary agreements with the unions that represent their fire-medical, police, and sanitation employees. These employees receive an annual wage adjustment like the City’s non-union employees, and they also receive a “step compensation” each year for the first 10 years of their employment if they meet their job expectations.
These combined increases mean that most union employees were able to expect salary increases of around 7.5% per year in 2024 and 2025.All combined, the vast majority of the City’s 250 top-paid, union and non-union, employees received raises of 6% or more each of the last two years, and many received similar increases the previous two years too.
The Federal Reserve aims to keep inflation at 2%, and it has been 3% these last two years. So these City staff salary increases have outpaced inflation by 2 times or more. During these same years, the City has faced significant budget deficits and addressed them by cutting departmental budgets and implementing fees at our community’s recreation facilities.
Learn More about the City Budget!
City Expenses and Revenues
Here is some historical and current City budget information.
The City's expenditures have increased considerably since 2020, starting with inflation, which has increased 28% in six years.
Payroll - Employee compensation is one of the City's largest expenses, accounting for about a quarter of their budget, and there have been many additions to this expense.
The City has added 77 full-time-equivalent employees since 2020. At an average cost of $120K, those 77 additional employees could account for more than $9M in expenditures.
The City increased many employee's salaries in 2021-2023 to bring them to market rate.
In the last two years, the City Commission approved annual wage adjustments of 2.5% and 1%, but our recent analysis shows that 150 of the City's ~950 employees received raises of 6% or more, often substantially more, in each of those years.
Our research from last year also indicated that the City has substantially more employees per capita making over $100K than all other large cities in Kansas. (Our researchers are working on more analysis to better understand and explain these situation.)
Health insurance costs have increased substantially for the City.
Additional Programs - The City added the Homeless Solutions program, which now has a $4.8 million annual budget. The City also stopped charging fees for buses, which previously only brought in about $200K. To generate more revenue, the City also started charging fees for recreation facilities and sports tournament at the beginning of this year.
Revenues - The City will be collecting 52% more revenues in 2026 than it collected in 2020. In spite of these increased revenues, their annual budgets have not been balanced, and they have stabilized their budgets by using federal Covid funds; making significant budget cuts; and using millions of dollars from their reserve funds.
2027 Budget Issues
Two of the most significant issues for the City’s 2027 budget is funding a new fire station and our community recreation facilities. The City is collecting resident feedback on these specific issues, so here is some additional information about them.
Fire Station
Our community has long needed a new fire station in northwest Lawrence, and its operational costs are estimated to be $4.5 million per year. City staff proposed raising the property tax rate to pay for this fire station. Because residents' property taxes have already increased substantially over the last six years due to increased property valuations, the City Commission also requested that City staff develop budget options that do not include raising the property tax rate.
City staff’s proposal is based on the assumption that the City needs the total $4.5 million next year, but this fire station will not be operational until 2029. The fire department will need some funding in 2027 and 2028 to start training new staff, but will not need the full $4.5 million in the next two years.
City staff is optimistic that new economic development from CostCo and the KU Gateway project will increase sales tax revenues in the upcoming years. The City could fund the fire department’s 2027 budgetary needs and gather data in 2027 and 2028 about how much the fire station’s costs could be covered by our community’s new business developments.
Recreation Facility Fees
Commissioner Mike Courtney presented a proposal for increasing Parks & Rec funding based on the City's own Parks & Rec Master Plan's many suggestions for cost savings and revenue generation. These options were not included in the City’s survey materials, so we’re glad to have community members know about these budget options too. For more details on this issue, see below.
Parks & Rec Fee News
Lawrence Recreation Center Fees
The City implemented fees at Lawrence recreation centers starting in January, in spite of strong community opposition. Over 3,800 residents signed the No Fees for Lawrence Rec Center petition, the most signatures we’ve ever seen on a local petition, and over 2,000 survey respondents (82% of all respondents) opposed these fees.
Expected Memberships The City is expecting to issue 3,000 memberships this year —2,250 paid memberships and 750 free ones for youth and low-income individuals. Last year, about 13,000 unique visitors used our City’s recreation centers (pg 5), so the City is expecting 10,000 fewer people (1/10th of Lawrence) to use our recreation centers this year.
Expected Revenue The City budgeted to bring in $450,000 from these fees, but we don’t believe this math adds up. Most passes are between $80-$120 a year, which means the City would need over 4,000 people to sign up to reach their financial goals.
January Data The Lawrence Parks & Rec department recently released data from their first month of membership sales. While they claim to have passed their goal of 2,250 paid memberships, they are counting each monthly membership as one membership, and they have only brought in $182,000 of the expected $450,000.
We believe that lumping annual and monthly passes together in the City's data is misleading. If one person bought a monthly pass for 12 months, that would be counted as 12 memberships. If all 2,250 memberships the City is anticipating selling were monthly passes, that would only equal about 200 residents buying passes. At an average of $12/month, this would only bring in $27,000 of the $450,000 the City is hoping to generate with these fees
Learn more at the LJWorld article, which includes lots of graphs, and The Lawrence Times article on the presentation before the City Commission.
Other Parks & Rec News
The Lawrence Farmer's Market has conducted a robust community engagement process to identify the best location for a permanent market location, and on Feb 10, they presented a proposal to the City Commission to start investigating South Park for this purpose.
You can see their presentation and community members’ feedback here, and you can read The Lawrence Times article about the Commission meeting here.
More Info on Parks & Rec Fees!
Lawrence residents to start paying for rec center access as city faces budget deficit, KSHB 41
What to know about Lawrence rec center access fees by Mackenzie Clark, The Lawrence Times
Lawrence city commissioners voted to implement rec center fees. Some believe they broke a promise. by Cuyler Dunn, The Lawrence Times
82% of Survey Respondents Oppose Rec Center Fees by Carol Kummer in The Lawrence Times
No Fees for Lawrence Rec Centers petition - 3,817 signatures and counting!
Our Coalition’s Goals
Develop Relationships
Develop more collaborative relationships between our local governments and their residents.
Identify Issues and Successes
Identify recurrent challenges and successful practices in local governmental processes.
Promote Solutions
Promote solutions to make our local government’s cultures, policies, and practices more transparent, collaborative, and accountable.