Lawrence City Commissioner Mike Amyx, right, is congratulated by City Commissioner Stuart Boley after Amyx was chosen unanimously as mayor by his three fellow commissioners, including Vice Mayor Leslie Soden, left, and Matthew Herbert, not pictured, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2015, at City Hall.

Lawrence City Commissioner Mike Amyx took the gavel as mayor Tuesday night, the sixth time he has served in that role in a political career that stretches back to the 1980s.

Amyx was chosen unanimously by the three other commissioners, all of whom have only been on the commission since April. He succeeds former Mayor Jeremy Farmer, who resigned last week amid reports that he failed to remit federal payroll taxes at his job as director of the nonprofit food bank Just Food.

Commissioner Leslie Soden, who has served as acting mayor for the past week, will continue to serve as vice mayor, commissioners agreed.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got a great city,” Amyx said as he accepted the job. “It’s been said in the past. To be able to have this job, this is the best elected job in the state of Kansas.”

When Farmer resigned last week, there had been some expectation that Soden would succeed him as mayor. But Soden said the city needs someone with more experience in the role of mayor.

“I agree, the last election sent a strong message for change, but I don’t think it included making someone with four months’ experience the mayor,” she said.

Commissioner Matthew Herbert also said the city needs experienced leadership during a time of transition.

“When the three of us campaigned, there was a big need to restore trust on the commission,” he said, referring to the April elections when he, Soden and Commissioner Stuart Boley were elected. “Unfortunately, some of the events that have happened in the first 120 days we’ve been here, I do feel like we’ve taken a step backwards.”

“I will support Commissioner Soden becoming mayor next April, and after that I will pledge my support to Commissioner Boley becoming mayor,” Herbert said. “But this is not next April yet. This is August.”

Overflow crowd at #LawrenceKS city hall to watch selection of new mayor. pic.twitter.com/ErDqB9inxy

— Peter Hancock (@LJWpqhancock) August 18, 2015

Amyx will continue as mayor, at least until April 2016, when Farmer’s term in that position was set to expire. But because Kansas lawmakers passed a law this year moving municipal elections to November and changing terms of office to expire the following January, commissioners said they may consider changing the term of mayor to coincide with that schedule.

Under Lawrence’s form of government, the office of mayor is a rotating seat, and the person chosen serves a one-year term. The mayor chairs meetings and is authorized to sign certain documents but otherwise has no day-to-day administrative duties.

Amyx said the commission has major decisions lying ahead, starting with the hiring of a new city manager and the appointment of a fifth commissioner to fill Farmer’s vacant seat.

Shortly before Farmer’s resignation, the commission had just launched a national search for a city manager to succeed David Corliss, who resigned earlier this year. Diane Stoddard, who had been an assistant manager under Corliss, has been serving as interim city manager since then.

City officials have said they hope to have a new city manager in place by November. But the remaining commissioners have also said it could take 60 to 90 days to select a new commissioner, which could mean naming the new commissioner as late as mid-November.

Amyx, however, said Tuesday that he wants the next commissioner to take part in the hiring of a new city manager, and so he suggested a shorter, 30-day time frame for selecting the next commissioner.

Under Amyx’s plan, which the other commissioners agreed to, each commissioner will name three people to serve on a special task force to review applications and interview candidates in public forums. He said those appointments should be made by Thursday.

Meanwhile, the City Commission will accept applications for the open seat for 14 days. Once those are received, the task force will work with the Voter Education Coalition to set up public forums where the candidates will respond to questions.

The task force will then recommend a short list of perhaps six finalists to the commission, but commissioners will not be limited to looking at only those six.

Under that schedule, the next commissioner could be seated by mid-September. The person chosen will serve the remainder of Farmer’s unexpired term, which, because of the recent change in state law, now ends in January 2018.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2015/aug/19/east-lawrence-bistro-proposal-hangs-limbo/