Union leader files for seat on City Commission

A Lawrence bus driver who also is the leader of the local transit union is the latest candidate to seek a seat on the Lawrence City Commission.

Justin Priest, 41, said he’s seeking to bring a louder voice to a group of Lawrence residents who he believes sometime get overlooked at City Hall.

“I’m mostly about the working man and the blue collar person,” Priest said. “Nearly everybody on the commission owns their own business or is in the white collar realm.”

Priest said he has experience representing the working class. He’s been president of the local chapter of the Amalgamated Transit Union for about a year, and during that time membership in the union has grown to 83, up from about 30.

Priest said he anticipates running a campaign that focuses on how the community can get more jobs. He also said he anticipates the campaign to include many questions about some of the commission’s spending decisions. He said the decision by commissioners to spend nearly $25 million on the Rock Chalk Park sports complex before unsuccessfuly asking voters for a new sales tax to pay for a police headquarters has left him feeling “irritable.”

“I understand the police building needs to be renovated or we need to build a new one,” Priest said. “But the funding was there before, and then it kind of went away.”

Priest grew up in Lawrence during his junior high years, moved away and then moved back various times. He’s been a Lawrence resident most recently since 2002. He’s been a bus driver — he mainly drives Kansas University buses but also occasionally drives city buses for the company that has the city contract — for the past eight years. He previously was a co-owner of a mortgage company, J&J Financial, which he dissolved after his business partner died. Priest also works as a tax preparer for Lawrence’s Hume Tax Service.

Priest is the fifth candidate to file for a seat on the commission. The others are: Leslie Soden, the owner of a Lawrence pet sitting company; Stuart Boley, a retired IRS agent; Stan Rasmussen, an attorney for the U.S. Army; and Matthew Herbert, a Lawrence High School government and civics teacher.

The seats currently held by Commissioners Mike Dever, Terry Riordan and Bob Schumm are set to expire. None of the commissioners have yet filed for re-election. Candidates have until noon Jan. 27 to file for one of the three at-large seats. If seven or more candidates file, there will be a primary election March 3 to narrow the field to six candidates. The general election will be April 7.