Who We Are
The Coalition for Collaborative Governance is a group of actively engaged residents advocating for improvements in the cultures, policies, and practices of the governmental entities serving Lawrence, Kansas.
We envision collaborative governance that empowers all stakeholders—residents, community organizations, businesses, and city government—to shape local policies, budgets, and outcomes.
Our initial objective is to support the City of Lawrence in fulfilling its commitment to collaborative community engagement. We believe this type of engagement leads to optimal outcomes because it reflects the opinions and needs of community members and balances them with government staff expertise.
We have observed that local governmental decisions tend to be driven by City management and consultants, rather than by collaboration between residents, City management, and elected officials. In these decision-making processes, residents often experience
inadequate accountability from the City of Lawrence.
We provide research to create transparency about the challenges community members face in working with our local government, and we advocate for improvements.
How We Came to Be
In the fall of 2024, Holly Krebs organized an advocacy campaign to retain the size of our outdoor swimming pool. Her research demonstrated that the City of Lawrence had proposed a pool renovation that did not align with our citizens’ requests and did not meet our City’s Strategic Plan commitments to our community.
Many other engaged activists shared similar experiences with Holly, which led her to believe that our community could benefit from improved governmental processes and relationships. So she invited local community advocates to meet and collaboratively strategize how to improve the relationship between our local government and its residents.
We are working to bring transparency to recurrent issues residents experience and to advocate for improvements. Our coalition models collaboration in our work together, and we’re excited about what a coordinated group of dedicated, thoughtful, knowledgeable residents can do to support our community’s governance.