Lawrence Mayor Jeremy Farmer looks to the crowd at a City Commission meeting, April 14, 2015, at City Hall.

Lawrence Mayor Jeremy Farmer resigned his seat on the City Commission Wednesday, two days after he resigned from his job as executive director of the nonprofit food pantry Just Food, where he failed to pay about $50,000 in federal payroll taxes.

Farmer on Monday had described the failure to pay the taxes as an oversight, and Just Food’s board president, Kristi Henderson, characterized the nonpayment, going back to the beginning of 2014, as “just a lack of attention to detail.”

Farmer has not commented since, but in his resignation letter Wednesday he said: “Effective immediately, I will be resigning as a City Commissioner. The last 48 hours have taken a tremendous toll on me personally, and for the benefit of the City and for myself, I feel it best to step aside.”

The letter was sent via email to interim City Manager Diane Stoddard and city attorney Toni Wheeler.

The remaining four commissioners will conduct a special meeting at 2 p.m. Friday to accept his resignation and begin the search for a new commissioner to fill his vacancy.

Farmer was not present at Tuesday night’s City Commission meeting, where the remaining four commissioners gave final approval to a $207 million city budget for 2016.

Under city codes, Commissioner Leslie Soden, who serves as vice mayor, will automatically become acting mayor and assume the duties of the office of mayor.

Under Lawrence’s form of government, the mayor has no administrative duties. The city manager is in charge of day-to-day management. The mayor chairs commission meetings and has authority to sign certain documents that require a mayor’s signature.

The vacancy created by Farmer’s resignation will be filled by appointment. It takes a majority vote of the other four commissioners to name a person who will fill the remainder of Farmer’s unexpired term. In the event of a tie vote, city codes provide that the city attorney will cast the deciding vote.

Farmer, who will turn 32 next week, was elected in 2013 to a four-year term that was supposed to expire in April 2017. But Kansas lawmakers this year passed a law moving municipal and school board elections to November of odd-numbered years, and those people elected will take office the following January. As a result, Farmer’s term, and that of Commissioner Mike Amyx, was extended and is now set to expire in January 2018.

Farmer did not return phone calls from the Journal-World seeking further comment on his resignation, but other commissioners said they understood his decision and wished him well.

“I know it’s been pretty stressful on everyone, especially Mayor Farmer, but I believe it’s the right move,” said Amyx, who is now the only Lawrence city commissioner with more than three months’ experience in the job. The other three commissioners­– Soden, Stuart Boley and Matthew Herbert — were all elected to their first terms in April.

Amyx also said he hopes the commission will engage in a public process for choosing a new commissioner, one that he said should involve community advisory panels and public forums.

“None of us was given a free pass to the City Commission,” he said. “You have to go through forums and knocking door-to-door. Obviously that’s not going to happen. But if we set up forum-type events where candidates answer questions, I think there’s that type of arrangement that could be had. I do think a public process similar to what each one of us had to go through at election time would be good.”

Herbert said he wasn’t surprised by Farmer’s resignation.

“He’s had a tough 48 hours,” Herbert said Wednesday. “But this is a situation where he had to put the interests of the community ahead of the interests of himself. If he hadn’t resigned, it would have been a distraction.”

Herbert also said he thinks it’s important for the commission to move quickly to fill the vacant seat because Lawrence is now in the rare position of having both an acting mayor in charge of the commission and an interim city manager in charge of day-to-day operations.

“We’re in the middle of a city manager search,” he said. “We don’t need a distraction while we’re trying to recruit the best of the best.”

Herbert said he thinks the process of filling the vacancy could take 60 to 90 days.

Boley said Lawrence voters spoke loudly in the last election demanding a change in direction on the City Commission, and he wants to see that reflected in the choice of a new commissioner.

“It’s going to be a process to figure this out,” Boley said. “We’re going to work hard. We need to come together as a commission and unite around what we want in a new commissioner.”

Soden did not respond to phone messages seeking reaction to Farmer’s resignation.

Former leader of Just Food appears to have given United Way a questionable income tax return