At least one new face will be on the Lawrence City Commission after the April election. Longtime Commissioner Mike Rundle announced Thursday that he would not seek another term.

Rundle said he made the “difficult decision” to not seek a fourth term on the commission after realizing that he wanted to spend more time with his father, stepmother and his domestic partner of 15 years.

“Parts of my life have kind of been neglected,” Rundle said. “I have a strong sense that I don’t have the reserves of energy that I used to draw on.”

Rundle – in an approximately 25-minute, wide-ranging speech – also was critical of the tone that politics has taken in the community. He said he was disappointed that he had become a frequent target of “unrelenting nastiness” on Internet forums, letters to the editor and multiple conversations.

“It has regularly been vulgar and smutty,” said Rundle, who in 2005 became the first Lawrence mayor in memory to announce that he was gay. “If anything contributes more to the erosion of civility in our community, I don’t know what it is.”

He urged community leaders – particularly those in the business and development community – to do more to encourage constructive public discourse. Rundle issued the challenge to the business and development community because he said “the individuals responsible for the nasty comments and commentary make it clear whose team they’re batting for.”

“I think it’s time for community leaders and community members on those teams to make some effort to encourage more constructive public discourse, or maybe even ask some people to just be quiet if they can’t be civil,” Rundle said.

Bobbie Flory, executive director of the Lawrence Home Builders Association, said she disagreed with Rundle’s assessment that members of or supporters of the development community were being any more negative than anyone else.

“I would agree that the anonymous online comments get out of hand,” said Flory, who emphasized her group had never made any such statements about Rundle. “I just quit reading most of them because they are anonymous. People say things when they are speaking anonymously that they definitely wouldn’t say if it weren’t anonymous.”

Rundle is the only one of three incumbents on the five-member commission who will not seek re-election. Commissioners Boog Highberger and David Schauner already have launched their re-election campaigns. Three other candidates – Rob Chestnut, chief financial officer for Allen Press; Mike Dever, owner of a Lawrence environmental consulting firm; and Carey Maynard-Moody, a retired school social worker – also have filed for the three at-large seats.

Rundle – who is a clerk at the Lawrence Community Mercantile and owner of a piano-tuning business – said he hopes future city commissions will take a hard look at whether the community is allowing too much retail development and whether growth is adequately paying for itself.

“I think we’re still nowhere near having some control over our growth,” Rundle said, although he acknowledged that “we are most fortunate” that so many of the city’s challenges are related to growth and change.

Rundle also addressed an e-mail that he sent in December to Flory in her capacity as the executive director of the Lawrence Home Builders Association. In the e-mail he urged Flory to not “trot out” a 5-year-old study on whether single-family housing growth pays for itself. Rundle went on to say that he could not recall anything that was a “bigger waste of time” than the time it took for commissioners to review the study’s findings.

On Thursday, Rundle said he sent the e-mail because he is adamant the study is flawed and did not adequately account for all the costs that single-family home construction creates for a community. He said he recognized the e-mail was “blunt,” but he did not intend for it to be disrespectful.

Flory said she didn’t have any comments about the e-mail or Rundle’s explanation for it.

Rundle first served on the City Commission from 1987 to 1991. He chose not to seek re-election after his first term, but then returned to the political scene to serve from 1999 until the present.

His term will end after the April 3 general election. Candidates have until noon on Tuesday to file for the race. If more than six candidates file, a primary election will take place on Feb. 27.