City Commission candidate Ken Easthouse

Since unsuccessfully vying for a vacated seat on the Lawrence City Commission two years ago, commission candidate Ken Easthouse has become a regular at City Hall.

“Since being eliminated in 2015 for the open seat, I’ve sat back and become kind of a researcher on local public policy and things of that nature,” Easthouse said.

City Commission candidate Ken Easthouse

Easthouse, 33, was one of 14 people who applied to fill the seat vacated by former mayor Jeremy Farmer, and was a semifinalist in that process. Easthouse began serving on the Lawrence-Douglas County Public Incentives Review Committee in February, and has also become a common face behind the microphone during public comment.

“I’ve stood up and spoken my mind periodically at City Commission meetings, been on a first-name basis with everyone at City Hall,” Easthouse said.

But his affinity for Lawrence goes back farther than that. When he was in sixth grade, Easthouse’s family moved from Topeka to Lawrence so his dad could be closer to Kansas City for work. He said his whole family fell in love with the town. In 2002, Easthouse graduated from Lawrence High School, and moved back to town not long after graduating from college.

Data-focused

Easthouse earned his bachelor’s degree in management with a minor in journalism from Emporia State University. Currently, Easthouse is a supervisor at a local call center, General Dynamics Information Technology. He also worked as an election judge for Douglas County for five years.

If elected to the commission, Easthouse said he thinks his experience working with numbers and his understanding of data analysis will make him an effective commissioner. He said he uses those skills in his current job and as a member of PIRC. But he traces his focus on data all the way back to when he was a manager at McDonald’s in college.

“I’ve always been kind of data focused, and that’s what I really pride myself on, is being able to make sense of the numbers and come to some reasonable conclusions,” Easthouse said. “That takes a trained eye.”

For example, Easthouse said that PIRC was provided statistics for the past year about the employment rates and how many people commute in and out of the city. He said that data alone was hard to judge, so he looked up comparative statistics for similar cities and found that Lawrence could be performing better.

“Doing that kind of analysis allows us to see not only where we are but where our peer cities are, and are we underperforming or over-performing in certain areas,” Easthouse said. “That allows us to identify very specific needs that we may need to address.”

Issues

Easthouse said one of the issues he’s focusing on during his campaign is creating city-owned fiber internet service. The city already has some fiber infrastructure in place along its major roadways, and Easthouse said the city has been waiting for years for a company to provide widespread service.

“It seems to me we’ve been without fiber internet service for so long that it’s time for the city to step up,” Easthouse said.

Easthouse said if the city were to provide fiber internet service as a utility, it could provide an additional revenue stream, make internet more accessible to residents and give the city the ability to commit to being net neutral. He said he realizes adding internet to the city’s services will mean budgeting for the rollout and maintenance, but that he thinks it’s time for the city to take control of its own destiny.

“I’m not saying at this time next year we could have city-backed services, but it’s a goal to shoot for in the future,” Easthouse said. “If we control our own timelines on that instead of waiting for someone else to come in and do it, I think we’ll be in a much stronger position.”

Easthouse said citywide fiber internet could also attract businesses, especially high-tech companies that use a lot of data. That benefit also relates to another of his main issues.

Easthouse said he thinks the city needs to improve its use of incentives and increase its attention on attracting jobs.

“I think that certain incentives are used above and beyond what they were initially designed to do,” Easthouse said. “Most noticeably, a lot a residential infill projects for high-dollar apartment buildings.”

Instead, Easthouse said he’d like to see the city provide more incentives to small businesses or start-ups and builders of affordable single-family homes. He said the latter would also help address the city’s lack of affordable housing.

“We need to use our influence where we can to address the issue,” Easthouse said.

The terms of commissioners Lisa Larsen, Mike Amyx and Matthew Herbert are expiring this year. Eight candidates have filed for the election: Herbert, Larsen, Jennifer Ananda, Bassem Chahine, Dustin Stumblingbear, Easthouse, Mike Anderson and Christian Lyche.

The primary election on Aug. 1 will narrow the field to six candidates. The general election will be Nov. 7.