Departing city manager David Corliss gets a handshake from Doug Gaston, of Central Bank of the Midwest, during a farewell reception for Corliss at the Carnegie Building, 200 West Ninth Street on Monday, May 11, 2015.

It might be time for Lawrence to fill in the blank.

Lots of communities do it. Some communities say, “in five years we’re going to have . . . .” Others say, “we’re going to excel in . . . .” A few even go so far as to say, “we’re going to be the best in the country at . . . .”

How would Lawrence fill in the blank?

Lawrence City Manager David Corliss isn’t sure, and he won’t be around to figure it out. Corliss is leaving his post as the top executive at Lawrence City Hall at the end of the month to take a town manager job in Castle Rock, Colo.

But Corliss, who sat down with the Journal-World to share his thoughts about the community as he ends his nearly 25-year career at City Hall, said it may be beneficial for Lawrence to go through a process of setting “long range goals and aspirations.”

Lawrence has a long-range, comprehensive plan called Horizon 2020, but it’s mainly a land use document for the city and the county. A strategic plan would be a simpler document focusing on an overarching community aspiration. That’s a piece currently missing in Horizon 2020.

Corliss said he’s seen strategic plans that are very simple: A large goal that the community has come to a consensus on, and then just four to five specific goals that can be tracked and measured to evaluate whether the community is making progress on its overall aspiration. Corliss said the focus required under such a system might be good for Lawrence.

“We want to do so much on so many different fronts,” Corliss said. “We may have a weakness in that we can’t laser focus on one thing and fend everything else off. Maybe that is not a weakness. I don’t know, but I think it would be a good conversation for the community to have.”

Corliss’ last day as city manager is technically May 29. But city officials hosted a farewell reception for him earlier this week, and assistant city manager Diane Stoddard — who has been selected to serve as interim city manager — has been assuming more of the day-to-day operations. City commissioners at their meeting on Tuesday are scheduled to have their first public conversation about how to structure a search to find a permanent replacement for Corliss.

Corliss, meanwhile, is packing up more than two decades worth of items accumulated as a lifelong city government servant. A native of Wichita, Corliss came to Kansas University in 1980, received undergraduate and law degrees, and then started working in city government. First he served as an attorney for the Topeka-based League of Kansas Municipalities, but by 1990 he was hired to serve as a management analyst at Lawrence City Hall.

He later was promoted to director of legal services for the city, then became an assistant city manager, and was hired as city manager in 2006. Corliss has said he’s leaving to take the job in Castle Rock for a variety of personal reasons. Corliss and his wife, Sarah, have three daughters, and all three are going through graduations this month, Corliss told the crowd at the farewell reception, as he knocked on wood. Two are graduating from college, and another from high school, meaning that he and Sarah will be empty nesters. The move to Castle Rock, a town of about 50,000 between Denver and Colorado Springs, also will put the family closer to Sarah’s parents.

“I think Lawrence has some of its brightest days ahead,” Corliss said. “I think the future is very strong for the community.”

Here’s a look at several comments from Corliss in his wide-ranging conversation with the Journal-World:

• Form of government: There’s been renewed discussion on whether Lawrence should change the current system with five at-large city commissioners who elect one of their own to serve a one-year term as mayor. Sometimes referred to as a “weak mayor system” — although Corliss said it is never a good idea for a city manager to use that term — there has been discussion that a mayor directly elected by the people for a multi-year term might produce more consistent leadership.

“I think it is very healthy for the community to have that discussion,” Corliss said. “But it probably needs to be a discussion outside of an election, and it probably needs to be a discussion that happens after all of our elected officials have had a little bit of experience.”

Currently, three of the five commissioners are in the first few weeks of their first terms.

Corliss said Lawrence might want to be more cautious about a system to have commissioners elected by district, rather than at large. He said those districts would need to be roughly equal in population, which could create debates about whether the west side is more heavily represented than the east side of the city.

• The completion of the South Lawrence Trafficway: Corliss said the 2016 opening of the SLT likely will be one of the more important developments in Lawrence in decades. He said he’s a believer in “transportation destiny,” and notes that one of Lawrence’s larger population booms occurred after Kansas Highway 10 was built connecting Lawrence to Johnson County. He thinks the completion of the SLT will do much the same.

• Accomplishments: Corliss served as city manager during a boom in public building projects. They’ve included the $18 million expansion of the Lawrence Public Library; $22.5 million for city expenses at Rock Chalk Park; and the beginning of more than $70 million for a new sewage treatment plant south of the Wakarusa River. Corliss also cites efforts to strengthen downtown, and others have frequently noted that he was a driving force in saving the Union Pacific Depot in North Lawrence from demolition when he was a staff member under previous city manager Mike Wildgen.

“I’m genuine when I say that one of the neatest things has been the staff I’ve worked with,” Corliss said. “I think we have great people working for the community. I have tried to help them. I try to get them the resources they need, but they always need more.”

• Spending priorities: Corliss said more of a consensus on where the community wants to focus it resources is needed because “we’re probably not going to be able to do everything.”

“This community has difficulty saying ‘no’ to things,” Corliss said. “There are pluses and minuses to being a community that wants to do a lot of things. I think the pluses outweigh the minuses, but the community needs to talk about that more.”

• The pending police debate: Corliss said a plan to address the police department’s facility and staffing needs is necessary. He said he’s also glad that community leaders are beginning to discuss how mental health needs also play into the work that law enforcement does. But Corliss said there is potential for the conversation to get off track.

“I think you’ll want to be very careful,” Corliss said. “Mental health issues are not just law enforcement issues. You don’t want to always talk about them together.”

• Economic development: Corliss said promoting economic development has been a longtime area of emphasis for City Hall, but he said there was a period where the community was “living off the trajectory of the University of Kansas for a long time.” Corliss said the most recent recession has helped reshape some economic development strategies. He said some of what the community has been doing — he cited the business and technology incubator on West Campus and the new technical education training center — has been catch-up work to compete with other communities.

“The recession really helped us get hungrier,” Corliss said. “The plateauing of KU’s enrollment led us to realize we’re going to need an additional engine.”

• Working with commissioners: City managers work at the pleasure of the City Commission, but Corliss said there’s still plenty of opportunity for a city manager to tell commissioners that they might be heading down a wrong path.

“That is allowed and is encouraged,” Corliss said. “But it is never done in public. But it is entirely appropriate to whisper truth to power. But at the end of the day, if you have briefed them on the pros and cons and they say let’s do this, then it is appropriate at that point. They have seen the pros and the cons and if they still want to accomplish something, we say, ‘let’s go get it done.'”

• A city manager’s joy: Corliss said the job of a city manager can be misunderstood by the public.

“A lot of people tell me they would never want this job,” Corliss said. “The job never ends, you are always married to your phone, there is always an issue out there. That is all true, but there is something they don’t know about the job. What they don’t know is the good feeling when it all works.

“There is a lot of satisfaction and joy to help a community be what it is. It has been a privilege to work here.”