Concerns are mounting about whether the Lawrence City Commission is about to place an unofficial moratorium on efforts to expand the city limits for new development.

Commissioners at their meeting tonight are scheduled to act on a new planning resolution that contains language directing commissioners to generally reject future annexation requests until larger area plans are adopted.

“My question is whether this is creating a de facto moratorium on new annexation and thus new development, and that it would be a moratorium that doesn’t have any type of timeline attached to it?” Douglas County Commissioner Bob Johnson said this afternoon. “I don’t know the answer to that. I just know I sure have the question.”

Johnson said he is planning to deliver a letter to commissioners prior to their meeting tonight asking them to delay any action on the resolution until it has been explained to county commissioners.

City Commissioner David Schauner, though, said the city’s not trying to do anything to slow development. Instead, he said the idea of asking for area plans prior to approving annexations is an attempt to get the city’s planning process ahead of development. Area plans generally show where streets and other important infrastructure would be located not only for the piece of property seeking annexation but also for potentially hundreds of acres surrounding the property.

“I can tell you that is not our intent to create a moratorium of any kind,” Schauner said. “Our intent is to better coordinate the build-out of the community. We want to create a process that will cause those areas to be developed in a way that is most economical and efficient for the community and the landowners.”

Johnson said he’s in favor of the city getting in front of development. But he said he is concerned that if the city requires area plans to be adopted before accepting new annexation requests, that developers may be asked to wait too long for those plans to be finished. He pointed to work on an area plan for the property south and east of Kansas Highway 10 and O’Connell Road as an example of how long those plans can take. That plan, known as the Southeast Area plan, has been in the works for more than two years and is not yet complete.

Johnson said the proposed resolution also doesn’t spell out that the county commission would be a partner in creating those area plans. He said that is essential because the area plans would impact property owners who live in the unincorporated parts of the county and thus aren’t represented by city commissioners.

“It clearly could be akin to taxation without representation,” Johnson said.

Schauner said the city wasn’t looking to cut the county out of the process. He noted that the county has significant ability to block annexations that aren’t consented to by property owners.

“Even if we wanted to, we could not choose to leave the county out of the process, and that’s not what we want to do anyway,” Schauner said.

The resolution also attempts to address the concerns about the process taking too long by saying the area plans will be “accomplished in a diligent manner.”

Commissioners will meet at 6:35 p.m. tonight at City Hall, Sixth and Massachusetts streets.