You might sum up why Jordan Lerner moved here from Seattle in three words: To get connected.

Lerner, a 34-year-old electrical engineer and lighting designer, is now plugged into the currents sifting through grassroots Lawrence politics.

As the chair of the Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods, Lerner has a main line connection to most of the growth issues shaping Lawrence at the front porch level.

“In LAN we talk about just about everything that affects the city. Anything that happens in a city, it happens in a neighborhood,” he said. “The day’s headlines are talked about in LAN meetings and all the big issues that are going on at city hall and the campus. . . . it’s really been fascinating.”

Getting wired

Lerner grew up in the Kansas City area, graduated from Kansas University with an architectural engineering degree in 1991 and moved to Seattle.

Two years ago he moved back to the Lawrence area in order to get more involved in a local community.

“Seattle was just getting too big and we didn’t feel like we were connected,” he said.

Shortly after moving to the Old West Lawrence neighborhood, a flier appeared on his door. It said the Old West Lawrence Neighborhood Assn. needed a representative to LAN.

He volunteered.

“I went to the LAN meetings for over a year and I think it’s just an excellent forum to be involved in,” he said.

Quality and history

Two issues that concern him most are quality of life and historic preservation.

“All neighborhoods share a lot of things in common. We’re all concerned about traffic and congestion and our schools, so there’s a commonality among the neighborhoods.”

Quality of life is important to young families, with children, he said.

“But I think it doesn’t matter your age,” he said. “I think it’s important that neighborhoods are filled with people of all ages and types and such.”

Lerner, also a member of the Lawrence Historic Resources Commission, said there’s been a big push to get downtown Lawrence into the National Historic Register as an historic district.

He’s also been working with the Oread Neighborhood Assn.’s battle with Kansas University over houses in the 800 block of Ohio Street.

The state ruled in favor of the neighbors to save those homes from being razed by Kansas University to make way for new student housing.

Rallying the troops

Neighborhood associations have a social element in helping you to get to know your neighbors, he said. But they also provide you with a political connection to your community.

“If there is information that needs to be passed, there is already a means for that information to flow.”

For example, the Old West Lawrence Neighborhood Assn., has block reps for each block. When newsletters need to be distributed, there are already “footsoldiers” to take care of that.

“When there’s an issue that comes up, we can very quickly relay information through our block rep system,” he said.

Each rep talks to about a dozen or so homes.

More issues seem to affect the core of town because it’s already built out and congested. But as neighborhoods like Quail Run get older, they are encountering some of the same issues.

“The issue of traffic, that Harvard has become a cut-through street, is of big concern out there,” Lerner said.

“And if I lived out there, I would be stomping up and down and trying to get that changed, because there are kids that live in that neighborhood and dogs and cats and there’s a lot of traffic.”

Lerner sees these grassroots groups as essential to the growth of the community.

“Neighborhoods encompass everything: traffic, schools, zoning, Horizon 2020, flood plain regulation, historic preservation, parks, open space it really takes in everything.”

Planning it out

Besides organizing, neighborhoods can also make written neighborhood plans.

Five of the older neighborhood associations  Old West Lawrence, Oread, Brook Creek, East Lawrence and Pinckney all have their own plans.

They received a federal grant in the late 1980s, which provided funds to develop plans for those neighborhoods.

Lerner strongly urges the city to seek funds for such plans again.

“When we were trying to rezone our neighborhood, it clearly stated in our neighborhood plan that we wanted to be a single-family residential neighborhood,” Lerner said.

“And so you can express the will of your neighbors for what you want your neighborhood to be like, which makes it easier to fight things you don’t like.

“When they want to build a big box development on the corner of your neighborhood, you can always produce this plan to say, look we’ve always envisioned this to be a park. We haven’t had the money to do it, but the city has adopted this.”

A central hub

Before LAN was formed, each neighborhood was looking at its own issues in a vacuum, Lerner said.

By working together through LAN, they can share resources and information.

For example, “If they want to tear down houses in Oread this week, next week they might want to tear down houses in Old West Lawrence.

“We might need some help next week, so we’ll give you some help now. It’s an excellent tool so that when an issue comes up that affects the quality of life in Quail Run or in East Lawrence, we can kind of assemble a group of people who can help with the cause.”

LAN can also use its member neighborhoods as a resource when there are big issues that come up. “So I personally think it’s critical that neighborhoods have these organizations,” he said.

LAN meetings are open to the public. They are the third Wednesday of every month at Lawrence Memorial Hospital’s conference Room E.

Agendas are proposed about a week to two weeks ahead.

Besides Lerner, current officers are Caleb Morse, vice chair; Jeanne Klein, secretary, and Susan Miller, treasurer.