Editorial: Moving ahead

The Lawrence City Commission is taking steps to regroup and move forward.

After a chaotic week, Lawrence city commissioners came together Tuesday night and took some positive steps toward regaining the community’s confidence.

First, the three commissioners elected in April unanimously chose Mike Amyx to fill the mayor’s seat at least through next April. Vice Mayor Leslie Soden, who served as acting mayor after the resignation of Jeremy Farmer last week, could have asserted her right to the mayor’s seat, but graciously and wisely did not. “I’m very much interested in doing what is best for the city,” she told the Journal-World. “Experience, continuity, predictability is what is best for the city right now.”

Commissioners Matthew Herbert and Stuart Boley agreed with that assessment and joined Soden in electing Amyx to the mayor’s job. Accepting his sixth term in that job, Amyx immediately showed the steady leadership that is needed right now. He noted that the commission needed to move forward immediately on the process of appointing a new commissioner and continuing its search for a new city manager.

Although some commissioners had said the process of selecting a new member could take 60 or 90 days, Amyx suggested the appointment should be made within about 30 days so that the new commissioner could be involved in the city manager search. He also set forth a reasonable process for selecting a new commissioner that calls for each sitting commissioner to appoint three members to a task force that will review applications and interview candidates. That task force also will work with the Voter Education Coalition to set up public forums with the potential commissioners.

This process is more involved than that followed by the commission the few times it has filled a vacancy or even that followed by the Lawrence school board in filling two recent vacancies. The formal process is intended to build public confidence in the commission and the new member it selects, which is fine, but Amyx also is right that completing that process in 30 days is important to allow the commission to get on with important business.

At Tuesday’s meeting Herbert noted that the three commissioners elected in April had campaigned on the need “to restore trust in the commission” and that recent events have caused the commission to take “a step backwards” in achieving that goal.

That’s true, but commissioners should be congratulated for taking a step forward on Tuesday by electing Amyx and setting a more expedient timetable for appointing a new commissioner.