From left, Lawrence City Commissioner Jeremy Farmer shows his mother, Lori Farmer, pictures from Tuesday night's City Commission meeting where fellow commissioners voted him to serve a one-year term as mayor.

City Commissioner Jeremy Farmer was unanimously elected by fellow commissioners on Tuesday to serve a one-year term as mayor, and he immediately sent a message that citizen input is going to be a priority during his term.

“Starting tonight the shot clock will be no more,” Farmer said, referring to the clock the City Commission has used in recent years to generally limit public comment to three minutes per person. “We want to hear from you.”

Farmer, 31, is the executive director of Just Food, the Lawrence-based food bank and is beginning his third year on the commission. Issues expected to immediately confront the new commission include finding a new city manager to replace outgoing manager David Corliss, and to move forward on addressing needs for a new Lawrence police headquarters. Farmer vowed that all the processes will have a heavy emphasis on public feedback.

“This will be a year that will be dedicated to transparency, openness and authenticity,” Farmer said.

Tuesday’s meeting also included the swearing-in of the three candidates elected to City Commission terms during last week’s elections: Stuart Boley, Matthew Herbert and Leslie Soden.

Soden, the owner of a Lawrence pet care business, was the top vote-getter in the election, and will serve a four-year term on the commission. Soden also was unanimously elected vice-mayor, which if tradition holds puts her in line to become mayor in April 2016. Soden became the first woman to serve on the commission since 2009.

Boley, a retired IRS auditor, was the second-place finisher in last week’s election. He’ll serve a four-year term. Herbert, a Lawrence High School teacher, finished third, and will serve a two-year term on the commission.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Soden said she hopes the commission soon will begin looking at public safety issues. She said she would like to have a “blue ribbon commission” formed that will look at the community’s entire public safety system, including police, fire and health care systems.

Soden said she hopes the commission soon will review its official list of goals, and she’ll advocate that new goals be added in the area of strengthening public safety and addressing mental health issues. She said she’s been extremely interested in models, such as the one that local officials recently studied in San Antonio, that seeks to divert nonviolent offenders out of the court system and into mental health programs.

“Treatment, not punishment, needs to be our focus,” Soden said.

Commissioners agreed to hold a study sessions at 3 p.m. April 21 and April 28 at City Hall to discuss yet-to-be-determined topics. Those topics could include the process for finding a new city manager, a review of city goals, economic development incentives or other topics suggested by commissioners or the public.

Farmer said he also anticipates having a commission and community discussion about changing how City Commission meetings are structured. Farmer previously has said he wants to consider having a community potluck dinner on the second Tuesday of each month, where city commissioners would travel to various locations around the community and receive feedback.

Farmer also has said he wants to consider replacing the regular business meeting held on the fourth Tuesday of each month with a study session where the commission would delve more deeply into larger topics. Regular business meetings would continue to be held on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at City Hall. Farmer said he plans to bring that proposal to the commission for discussion in the coming weeks.

Tuesday’s meeting also marked the end of the one-year term as mayor for Mike Amyx, although he will continue to serve as a commissioner for another two years. Amyx delivered the city’s State of the City Address on Tuesday, saying the past year had been a “challenging year,” but that the city had done a good job of investing in economic development, investing in infrastructure, improving city services and improving quality of life issues.

“We’re going to engage our community more in the conversations about where we are going and what needs to be done,” Amyx said during his address. “We’re going to talk about priorities and how we accomplish these projects within the resources we have and within the context of where we want to be as a city.”

Tuesday’s meeting also marked the end of the terms for three city commissioners: Mike Dever, Terry Riordan and Bob Schumm. Riordan and Schumm unsuccessfully sought re-election. Dever did not seek a third term on the commission.

Both Dever and Riordan were unable to attend Tuesday’s meeting, but offered written comments thanking the community and others for their support. Schumm said in his closing comments on the commission that he was proud of what the commission had accomplished during his most recent four-year term, and predicted that the decade of the ’20s will be the best economic decade in Lawrence’s history.

“We have put in place a number of opportunities and a number of draws to this community,” Schumm said.

In other business, commissioners:

• Accepted an application for economic development incentives from Integrated Animal Health, which announced on Monday that it plans to move its global headquarters to the Bioscience and Technology Business Center on Kansas University’s West Campus.

The application seeks a $100,000 forgivable loan from the city, and also $115,000 in rent subsidies from the city. Commissioners took no action to approve the request Tuesday, but rather referred the application to the Public Incentives Review Committee for a report and recommendation.