New Lawrence mayor Jeremy Farmer doesn’t spend any time trying to convince people that his first two years in office have been as much fun as he thought they were going to be as a young, energetic candidate in 2013.

“It has been a very up and down ride,” Farmer said Friday, as he settled into his one-year term as mayor.

At various times, Farmer shared with about anybody who asked that he was sure that his first term on the Lawrence City Commission would be his last. But now, he’s not sure. The ride has been more up than down lately.

“I’m open to the idea again,” Farmer said of seeking re-election in a couple of years.

Farmer said he’s been feeling better about his role as a city commissioner now that he has had a chance to reflect on what he has learned on the job.

“I have learned a lot about compromise,” Farmer said. “It is probably the part I have struggled with the most. When you have two people on opposite sides, and you try to bring them to the middle, both parties feel like they have lost.

“We have to try to get away from that as a community. It is not about winning or losing. It is about what we can accomplish as a community.”

Farmer said he’s spent more time listening — he hosted a series of listening sessions on capital improvement planning, and has regular sessions at coffeehouses that he calls “Conversations with Your Commissioner.”

“Wouldn’t you know it,” Farmer said, “after I started doing that, I started liking the job better.”

Familiar faces

When Farmer starts talking to people around town, there’s a good chance he knows them. Farmer grew up in Lawrence, attending Centennial Elementary, Southwest Junior High and Lawrence High. A couple of his elementary school teachers congratulated him after his fellow commissioners elected him as mayor on Tuesday. But that wasn’t much of a surprise. He still regularly talks to his past teachers.

“I owe everything to the investment people have made in me,” Farmer said. “It has meant a lot knowing there are people who are cheering me on.”

There even will be a familiar face on the City Commission. Newly elected commissioner Matthew Herbert and Farmer were classmates. They attended junior high together, worked on a summer mowing crew together, then competed against each other in debate, when Farmer was on the LHS team and Herbert was on the Free State team.

Farmer grew up in southwest Lawrence before it really developed, and lived in “some questionable duplexes.” He said he grew up thinking of Lawrence as the “biggest small city in the country.” He said that’s still an appropriate way to describe Lawrence. The designation has its pluses and minuses.

“I remember always wishing there was more stuff to do,” Farmer said of growing up here. “I would walk downtown, but my family couldn’t afford to shop downtown. We had to go out of town to do stuff.

“But I love what we have now and how we have grown, and where we are as a community.”

Issues to tackle

Farmer is 31 and single, a demographic that is prominent in Lawrence but not always well represented on the City Commission. He’s confident he’ll bring his own unique perspective to the job of mayor. But he said it is the experience that he gains in his full-time job as director of the food bank Just Food that gives him a unique view of the city. Farmer has been with the nonprofit since 2011, when he returned to Lawrence after attending seminary and working in churches in California and Arkansas.

“The next few years, we are going to have some good conversations about social services,” Farmer said. “Poverty is here in Lawrence, and it comes in a lot of different forms.”

The City Commission will need to have conversations about several other issues as well. Farmer said he plans for the commission to have discussions next week about the search process to replace City Manager David Corliss, who is leaving to take a town manager job in Colorado.

Farmer said the commission needs to appoint an interim city manager. He said he’ll recommend Diane Stoddard, an assistant city manager for Lawrence, for the interim position.

He said the commission also will need to have a conversation sooner rather than later about whether Lawrence wants to change its government structure to include a mayor that is directly elected by the public. Currently, the five city commissioners choose one of their own to serve a one-year term as mayor.

Farmer said he thinks the idea of a “strong mayor” that would serve a multiyear term is definitely worth discussing. But he said the commission should have some idea of whether it wants to make a change before it starts interviewing city manager candidates.

Farmer said he has confidence that the new commission can tackle the issues. The commission — it has three first-time commissioners, and Farmer just finished his second year on the commission — is one of the lesser experienced commissions in recent memory. But Farmer said none of that concerns him.

“We have three great people who got elected, and they have a vision, and they did a lot of listening during the campaign,” Farmer said. “That’s very important.”

Farmer said the theme of listening to the public should be the dominant one of his term. In the next month or so, he intends to ask the commission for approval to start using a new government software system — Open Town Hall — that gives residents more ability to provide meaningful online feedback to elected officials. He also is exploring another software system that would allow the city to put its financial documents online in a more user-friendly way.

Farmer also has taken to writing a blog that he emails to constituents, and he’s hoping other commissioners find their own ways to communicate with residents. Farmer said he knows some of the heated City Hall debates over Rock Chalk Park, police headquarters and budget priorities have taken a toll on how residents view the commission.

But he’s optimistic that the commission’s path can be upward, if everyone works together.

“Next April, if we have rebuilt trust with the community, given them hope in their government and rebuilt some bridges that maybe got burned a bit, then that will be a sign that we’re successful,” Farmer said. “That isn’t just the job of the mayor, though. We’ll all have to do our part.”