photo by: Mike Yoder

Courtney Shipley, pictured outside City Hall, is set to take over as Lawrence's mayor at the Lawrence City Commission's meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021.

The road that led incoming mayor Courtney Shipley to local politics was quite literally a road.

Shipley, who lives on Kasold Drive, said she first started going to public input meetings hosted by the city in 2015 amid the debate over the redesign of a section of Kasold Drive that runs directly in front of her house. The public meetings and debate about the road project went on for more than a year and led her to a City Commission meeting, where she would become a regular attendee.

“I got interested in other stuff they were discussing,” Shipley said, adding that commission discussions can sometimes span multiple meetings. “And so that’s why I started just coming every week.”

Shipley, who has two kids, said she “got hooked” on local meetings, and it became her weekly “mommy’s night out.” Because she attended commission meetings so regularly, she said people started approaching her to get more involved in issues and serve on local boards.

Shipley ended up serving as chair of the Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods, as a member of the Board of Zoning Appeals, and as a member of the Transient Guest Tax Grant Program Advisory Board. She also served as the president of The Friends of Oak Hill Cemetery and as a member of the Lawrence Preservation Alliance. Ultimately, in 2019, Shipley ran for a seat on the City Commission.

Shipley finished as the second-highest vote winner in that election, and her fellow commissioners, following tradition, named her vice mayor for this year and are expected to appoint her mayor on Tuesday. Shipley said what motivates her as a commissioner goes all the way back to the debate about the design of Kasold Drive.

City staff had recommended the construction of a roundabout as a means of increasing safety at Kasold’s intersection with Harvard Road. But the commission eventually voted 3-2 in 2016 to go against that recommendation. Shipley said she ended up changing her mind and favoring the roundabout design after seeing the research on the two options, and that the experience showed her the importance of decisions made at the local level.

“I think it goes back to that experience of being someone whose life was going to be directly affected by a decision that five people made, and needing to feel that those people really listened, and really researched, and really took seriously the concerns of the people that are most affected,” Shipley said.

Shipley, 43, moved to Lawrence when she was in elementary school and has now lived here more than 30 years. She graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in Slavic languages and literatures and currently works as a property manager. Apart from her duties on the commission, Shipley said she has managed to keep up with her book club — the long-running PBR Book Club — which she said has helped her expand beyond the nonfiction books she typically reads.

In addition to Shipley being a homegrown mayor, Shipley’s appointment will likely be the first time a person of Hispanic background has held the office in recent decades, and potentially longer. Though specific records on the race or ethnicity of city commissioners are not maintained by the city or the Douglas County elections office, a Journal-World review of commissioners elected since 1969 did not appear to include any Hispanic or Latino members, and Shipley said she is also not aware of any.

When asked her thoughts on the topic, Shipley, whose father is Mexican American, said it can kind of feel like Latino people are less visible, even though they do a lot to support their communities and have played a big part in the history of the country.

“I definitely think it’s interesting in that way, just the experience of Hispanic and Latin people of doing a lot to support their community, and being a huge part of the history of the United States, and being kind of undervalued or ignored,” Shipley said.

For her part, Shipley is looking ahead to several key issues in the upcoming year. She said those include “getting a lot more movement” in addressing homelessness and getting a better handle on how to help people by working with community partners. She also looks forward to an improved budget process by further integrating the commission’s recently completed strategic plan; working with the Kaw Nation to ensure the return of Iⁿ ‘zhúje ‘waxóbe, the 23-ton prayer rock that’s currently in Robinson Park across from City Hall; and making improvements to policing in Lawrence.

Last year, the commission called for a review of the police department in the wake of national and local calls for police reform and protests against police killings of Black people and other people of color. The commission agreed in October 2020 to hire an outside firm to conduct a comprehensive study of the police department and create a new master plan. The subsequent 132-page report, which the commission received in May of this year, included 60 findings and 75 recommendations. The creation of an implementation plan for the report’s recommendations is ongoing.

Shipley said she expects the new police chief — the city named Rich Lockhart as the incoming chief on Friday — to provide leadership over a lot of changes in how the city handles public safety.

“We’ve got a pretty big list of things we’ve been waiting on, so I expect, and I’m sure the public expects, some real movement and discernible change on some of those issues,” Shipley said.

And, as anyone who follows the commission knows, Shipley is a champion of the sidewalk issue in Lawrence. One of the positions of Shipley’s campaign was that sidewalk maintenance, which is currently the financial responsibility of adjacent property owners, should be the city’s responsibility. She said with funding from the new federal infrastructure package and two newcomers joining the commission — Bart Littlejohn and Amber Sellers will be seated on Tuesday — she would be bringing up the issue again.

When it comes to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Shipley said she feels good about the high vaccination rates among city staff and the community as a whole, but that she thinks the city will continue to be cautious and watch how things proceed. The city has hundreds of employees, and Shipley said she felt the city had done a lot to support staff and staff safety.

“It feels like we’ve worked with our partners, the school district and the county, to try to balance different values and safety together to make sure that we’re operating the best way that we can,” Shipley said.

The Lawrence City Commission will convene at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St. Commissioners elected in November, namely incumbent Lisa Larsen and newcomers Littlejohn and Sellers, will be sworn in, and the commission will choose the next mayor and vice mayor. Traditionally, the commission chooses the mayor and vice mayor based on general election results. Outgoing Mayor Brad Finkeldei, incoming Mayor Shipley and the newly seated commissioners will make remarks.