After weeks of criticism over City Hall’s failure to anticipate growth in northwest Lawrence, Planning Director Linda Finger submitted her resignation Friday afternoon.

Finger said she offered to quit – effective Dec. 31 – at a Friday meeting with City Manager Mike Wildgen. She was not asked to resign, but said it was clear her days with the city were limited.

“We talked about what my options are, really, and how there probably isn’t a very long-term future for me here, so why don’t I just get on with what I want to do?” Finger said Friday evening.

Both Finger and Wildgen said sewer planning in northwest Lawrence never came up during their meeting Friday.

But members of the Lawrence City Commission had been vocal about their displeasure with the situation. And Tuesday night, commissioners met in a secret executive session with Wildgen to discuss “personnel matters.”

“It would be fair to say that I’ve been increasingly upset with this wastewater issue and the issues that surround it – most of which are planning issues,” City Commissioner David Schauner said Friday, after the resignation became public. Schauner was the only commissioner available for comment.

Finger had been in the job, which oversees 15 staffers and a nearly $975,000 annual budget, since 1994, weathering community debates that made planning staffers alternately the target of sometimes-fierce criticism from developers and smart growth advocates alike.

Finger

“Planning is so high profile – in this community it’s just really, really important,” Finger said Friday, adding: “It’s a tough place to be, where you’re always under fire.”

Out of sewers?

The heat, however, grew more intense in late September.

That’s when planners began placing conditions on development plans to slow the issuance building permits in northwest Lawrence until further sewer studies were completed.

City managers said the conditions were necessary because of signs that population in that area was growing faster than anticipated and might strain the system, leading to raw sewage backing up into basements. Staff members commissioned a study to place “flow meters” on specific sections of pipe to determine whether the capacity problems that were showing up on paper actually were occurring in the pipes.

Developers said the slowdown threatened to severely hamper the city’s construction industry, generally considered one of the prime economic engines of the community.

“I love Lawrence,” Phil Struble, president of Landplan Engineering, said Wednesday morning at a commission study session. “We’re a great city, but I’m wondering how a city of Lawrence’s caliber and stature can supposedly run out of sewer capacity nearly overnight.”

Commissioners were openly critical of planning staffers after the news became public, saying that a “colossal error” had been made.

“I think we’re in a situation where we don’t know what is going on,” City Commissioner Sue Hack said at an October study session on the matter. “This has opened up a big can of worms.”

Flabbergasted, future

• 6News video: Planning director to step down (11-11-05)
• 6News video: Sewer pump station could get upgrades (11-11-05)
• City faces growth woes (11-10-05)
• Sewer plant may be needed sooner (11-10-05)
• Sewer update eases worries (11-04-05)
• City Manager’s Memorandum on the 2003 Wastewater Master Plan

City Hall announced Finger’s resignation just before 5 p.m. Friday, right as the weekend started. A number of developers and builders were unavailable for comment to the Journal-World.

Gwendolyn Klingenberg, president of the Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods, said she was “flabbergasted” by Finger’s resignation.

“She has always worked with us – you asked a question, you got an answer,” Klingenberg said. “She explained things; sometimes her explanations maybe weren’t what we were wanting to hear.”

Now the focus will turn to finding Finger’s replacement.

“This might be one we want to have an executive search firm look at,” Wildgen said. “It’s a very important position, and it will be filled by a very competent and experienced person at some point in the future.”

Schauner said he wanted City Hall to hire a director who could “bring a vision to some proactive planning in this town.”

“This wastewater question ought to be a wakeup call for everybody – that we, the city, need to be in front of, instead of reacting to, the development process,” Schauner said. “I hope that’s what the new planning director will help us do.”

But in a growing city like Lawrence where the planning department is the aim of so much ire – and, not infrequently, lawsuits – is it possible to find a director who can satisfy all the competing factions?

“I think we can attract somebody,” Schauner said. “I think we need to give them the tools and the autonomy to do that job.”

Finger had been with the planning department since 1978. She said Friday she would continue as director through the end of the year and then follow up on continuing tasks – the city’s development code, rural development regulations and other special projects – as a planning adviser through June 30.

After that, she said, it’ll be time to move on to something that “won’t consume me” with 60-hour work weeks and all that go along with them.

“I just need to look for something that’s lower stress,” she said.

Wildgen said he would consult in coming weeks with city and county commissioners about filling the job.