City Budget Analysis:
Capital Investments, Debt, and Budget Deficit
The City of Lawrence is facing a $6.5 million deficit next year. In February, they asked our community for input about how to solve this problem. The City gave us the options of reducing budgets for departments, such as police and parks and recreation, or increasing taxes.
We greatly appreciate the City’s effort to involve the community in this important community decision-making process. Unfortunately we do not believe the City’s budget engagement process fulfilled their Strategic Plan commitments to practice collaborative engagement with our community and to provide transparent access to data.
The City’s community engagement only allowed participants to provide input about the budget through a program that made them solve the complicated puzzle of eliminating the deficit by making 49 funding decisions.
Additionally, the City’s budget engagement opportunities addressed only 24% of the City’s total budget. Residents did not receive information about the expenses that made up 45% of the 2025 budget – capital investments and debt payments.
* Correction: 2018-2023 are audited numbers, and 2024-2025 are adopted numbers. Since publication, we have learned that the City reports audited and budgeted capital expenses differently, which makes it impossible to accurately compare these years.
The City’s capital investments (large, one-time investments) have increased significantly in the last two years. In 2025, they were expected to be $152 million, which was 4.5 times as much as their audited capital expenses in 2023. NOTE: After we reported about the City’s capital expenses for five months, the City finance department finally explained that they were not publishing comparable numbers in their approved versus audited budgets. If we compare approved debt for these projects, we do know that the City’s 2025 approved debt was 2.6 times greater than the amount they approved in 2023.
The City’s debt payments for the last two years have been 25-30% greater than their previous highs, and these are paid with portions of our community’s property taxes, sales taxes, and utility fees.
As of April 2025, our City has a total debt of $462.7m, which is a 19% increase from just last April. This means the City is currently carrying $4,810 of debt for each Lawrence resident, which equals $19,240 of debt for an average household of four.
For more details about the City budget, please read our full analysis of the City’s capital expenses, debt, and budget deficit.
We offer this research to increase budget transparency. We believe this information will help our community better understand the City’s financial situation and be able to provide informed feedback to our City government.
Community Engagement about the City Budget and Capital Expenses
The Coalition for Collaborative Governance is a non-partisan group of engaged residents who are advocating for the City to actively involve the community in its decision-making processes and to provide more transparency about City information.
Due to the limited scope of the City’s budget engagement offerings, our coalition asked the City to host community engagement events regarding the 45% of the City’s budget that includes capital expenses and debt service. The City considerately replied that they will post answers to some of our coalition’s questions on their website, but they reported that their staff does not have the capacity to host community engagement events at this time.
Because we believe our community would benefit from more public discussions about these important issues, our coalition independently hosted A Community Conversation about the Lawrence City Budget. We provided an educational presentation and community discussion about the City’s budget, debt, and capital investments, and we compiled participants’ feedback and present it to the City.