For 40 years of growth and change in the City of Lawrence, city planner David Guntert was a calm presence behind the scenes.

Guntert, 64, died Tuesday at his home, and city leaders say he will be remembered for his dedication and his calm demeanor.

“David’s love for his family and for Lawrence shined on everything he did,” said Director of Planning and Development Scott McCullough. “He was truly the calm in every storm and was the go-to person for too many things to list.”

Guntert began his career in the city planning office in 1977 and was involved in the preparation of multiple long-range plans in his early years in the office, McCullough said. Those included various neighborhood plans, Plan 95, the Douglas County Guide Plan, the Downtown Comprehensive Plan and Horizon 2020.

More recently, McCullough said that Guntert provided countless hours of behind the scenes work to build and maintain data layers on the city’s Geographic Information System. He was also in the process of building a geodatabase mapping the city’s historical growth through hundreds of annexations since the city’s founding, McCullough said.

Planning Administrator Sheila Stogsdill, who has worked with Guntert for 27 years, said that he was a utility player in the office who embraced the new technology of GIS when the city first started using it about 20 years ago. Stogsdill said the layers of information he helped build into the maps are used by city staff on a daily basis. Beyond his professional contributions, though, Stogsdill said that Guntert’s calm stood out.

“More than anything, David was just a calm energy in our office,” Stogsdill said. “Nothing would rile him, and he’s one of the few persons in the world that I could say, ‘I never heard him say anything negative about another person.'”

City Commissioner Mike Amyx, who began his political career in the 1980s, took a moment at the end of Tuesday’s City Commission meeting to recognize Guntert.

“Here’s a guy that gave 40 years of his life to the City of Lawrence and to working with the other folks that we have in our planning department,” Amyx said. “…He was guy that if I get in the elevator with him, he cared about me — I always thought, ‘Here’s a guy that really cares.'”

Guntert is survived by his wife, Teri, and their three children, Ehren, Tayler and Jordan. Services for Guntert are pending and will be announced by Warren-McElwain Mortuary.