City Budget Advocacy
Coalition’s Presentations Before the Commission
2026 Budget Public Hearing
Paying for GO Bond Debt and Recommendation for Financial Consequences, Holly Krebs
Revenue Bond Debt and Documentation Issues, Melinda Ball
Challenges to Understanding the Debt, Christina McKenna
Proposed 2026 Budget
You can read our public comments or watch each of our presentations:
Overview of City of Lawrence Financial Situation, Mandy Enfield
City of Lawrence Recent Budget Changes, Ari Dishinger
Transparency and Accuracy of Debt Data, Christina McKenna
Fund Balance Inaccuracies, Katie Brown
Paying Old Debt with New Debt, John Martin - We have since learned that the information the City’s finance department provided that we based this feedback on was incorrect, and they are not taking out new debt to pay for old debt.
Debt Spiral, Limit, and Capacity, Melinda Ball
Accuracy and Transparency Issues, Part 1, Bonnie Johnson
Accuracy and Transparency Issues, Part 2, Julie Jones
Bias in Community Engagement Questions, Patrick Ross
Proposed 2026 Capital Improvement Plan
Transparency challenges our coalition faced, Christina McKenna
Results from our survey's debt-related questions, Melinda Ball
Survey comments about the City's capital investments and debt, Julie Jones
Coalition’s Independent Community Engagement
In February 2025, the City of Lawrence hosted community engagement opportunities about their 2026 budget, but our coalition found these to have significant limitations. We requested that the City of Lawrence host additional community engagement opportunities, but the City reported that their staff did not have the capacity to do so.
So our coalition independently hosted A Community Conversation about the Lawrence City Budget on June 5, 2025. We shared our research with the 70 people in attendance and then broke out into small groups for substantive discussions about our concerns and ideas for solutions.