One result of last November’s election is new leadership for the Lawrence City Council. The Geist Community Newsletter met recently with newly elected Council President Tom Shevlot, 50, and second term Council Vice-President Sherron Freeman, 57, to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the city’s 46,000 residents and its government leaders. The following are their responses to the most pressing issues.
Revenue and Budgeting
Shevlot (R) at-Large Councillor: We need stability from a fiscal perspective in local government. Local government is funded primarily with property taxes, and the past couple of years have been a challenge. Our priority is to get a handle on projecting revenues accurately. Our primary responsibility is budgetary – getting expenses under control and revenue forecasting. You have to adjust the way you run your organization.
Freeman (D) District 3: Because of property tax caps we now have only a set (reduced) amount of money coming into the city. Another drawback is the more than 36,000 property assessment appeals filed. That money is tied up until those appeals run their course. To me, they should have just left property taxes alone. The funds would have been there for us to do other things such as a library. We can’t jack up fees because we want people and businesses to remain in Lawrence.
Shevlot: If we continue thinking we’re going to get incremental revenue increases from property taxes, that’s unlikely because the last couple of years we’ve gotten less. I have ideas about new revenue sources, but the council is limited in what it can do about them. Ultimately, it’s the administration that has to execute them. I believe they are moving that way. I can’t discuss it yet, but there are two new funding options that would not require more taxes, and we’re in conversation about them with the administration.
Public Safety
Shevlot: Public safety is more than 70-percent of the city’s expenses. Bloomington has only 32,000 residents and more police officers than Lawrence. The same is true for Richmond and Columbus. The challenge is that funding has to be appropriated across all of the city’s 300 employees. We have to do a better job of creating alternate sources of revenue. We can’t do local government “as usual” anymore because we now have experience with how cities are being funded with reduced property tax revenue, and it’s not meeting expenses. There comes a time when you can’t cut anymore without getting into public safety, so my hope is we can find new funding sources that are sustainable.
Freeman: We want our police officers to have decent patrol cars, but funding for that sort of thing is a challenge with decreasing revenue streams from the property tax caps. Still, I think the city is doing very well.
Economic Development
Freeman: We need more businesses in Lawrence that are here to stay – not the kind that pick up and go after 30 days. Also, the commercial growth at the former Ft. Benjamin Harrison needs to continue. We need locally-owned small businesses to get in there and get stabilized. The more businesses that come to Lawrence, the less taxes will be necessary.
Both Freeman and Shevlot agree that local governance is less about ideology and party affiliation. “The public doesn’t care about a ‘D’ or a ‘R’ – they just want to know what you’re going to do positive for the city. What are you going to do to push us forward,” said Freeman. Shevlot said he is optimistic, but also pragmatic about Lawrence’s future. Freeman agreed, adding that she and the council president are, for the most part, on the same page. “So much is thrown at us, and the way we complement each other seems to be working.”
