Lawrence Budget Research
How Will the City’s New Utility Fees Affect Residents?
On Sept 16, 2025, the Commission voted to increase the City’s water and wastewater fees about 8% each year for the next three years, and the community has already seen substantial increases in these and the stormwater and solid waste fees over the past five years.
Our coalition researched the financial impact of these changes on Lawrence residents, using average baseline data and rate increases that City staff provided in 14 agenda items between 2019 and 2025. The chart below shows this research, and Holly Krebs’s presented that data before the Commissioner to inform their deliberations. The cumulative effects of these rate changes are substantial, and these calculations indicated that an average Lawrence household would pay $1,045 more in City utility fees in 2028 than they paid in 2020.
A City Commissioner suggested that we provide more nuanced data to show how these rate increases would impact different populations in our community, so we worked with City staff to get the data needed for this analysis. Visit our utility fees page to see even more detailed breakdowns of how different-sized households can expect to be affected by these fees.
City Budget Reports
By 2030, the City anticipates paying $21 million more in debt payments each year than in 2025.
An average family of four living in a single-family home in Lawrence can expect to pay a total of $1,300 more for their City utility bills in 2028 than they paid in 2020.
The City of Lawrence’s total budget almost doubled in the last five years. It has increased from $260.9M in 2020 to $518.7M in 2025.
Budget Analysis: Capital Investment, Debt, and Deficit
Our City has also taken on significantly larger amounts of debt over the last two years while simultaneously facing budget deficits.
Budget Analysis: Community Engagement and Transparency
The City’s Strategic Plan commits them to fiscal transparency, but our coalition researchers did not find that their budget data met this commitment.
How Sustainable is the City’s Proposed Debt?
The Commission's 2026 debt decisions are particularly important because our community will pay for this debt for the next 25 years. If the City approves the proposed 2026 debt, they will have approved $355M worth of debt in three years, for an average of $118M per year. Previously, the most they had ever approved was $60M.
How do they plan to pay for it?
A City chart shows that if the Commission approves all debt proposed through 2030, the debt payments paid by our property taxes will be $22 million in 2030, which is 84% more than this year’s debt payment. The city is able to afford these larger debt payments because they are using cash reserves to cover some of each year’s payments.
But by 2032, the city will have spent all the reserves that their current policies allow them to use. This means that the cost of the city’s proposed debt is expected to be greater than the city’s resources to pay for that debt in 2033-2035.
Coalition’s 2026 Budget Analysis, Engagement, and Advocacy
To facilitate greater understanding and transparency regarding the City’s 2026 Budget, our coalition:
Conducted an independent analysis of the City’s current and proposed budgets.
Published reports and articles to educate the community about the City budget.
Asked the City for increased transparency and public engagement regarding their budget.
Hosted A Community Conversation about the City Budget.
Produced our own community engagement survey to capture the public’s opinions about the City budget.
Presented before the Commission about their proposed 2026 Capital Improvement Plan, budget, and Parks & Rec fees.