photo by: City of Lawrence

City Government Study Task Force members meet on May 27, 2021.

The City Government Study Task Force has finalized its recommendation that the city consider a system with a directly elected mayor and a six-member commission elected by districts.

As part of its meeting Thursday evening, the task force voted 10-0, with Dustin Stumblingbear absent, to finalize its recommendation regarding changes to the city’s form of government. Task force chair John Nalbandian closed the meeting with a comment on the task force’s process to arrive at its recommendation.

“We started from scratch here and really worked through a lot of issues,” Nalbandian said. “I think as we all know, this is step one.”

The recommendation will now go to the City Commission for consideration and public input. Two methods exist under Kansas law for a city to modify its form of government: a citywide election or a charter ordinance, which would have to be passed by four of the five commissioners and could still be put to a citywide vote if a valid protest petition were filed. Commissioners previously agreed that any changes the commission proposes to the city’s form of government should go to a public vote.

As the Journal-World previously reported, the task force voted last week to recommend that the city consider changing to a six-member commission in which the commissioners are elected by geographic districts, with each serving a four-year term. The task force also voted at a meeting last month to recommend that the city consider changing to a directly elected mayor who serves a four-year term. The task force is recommending that commissioners and the mayor remain nonpartisan.

Currently, the commission is five members, serving four- or two-year terms, and all five members are elected at large, meaning that all represent the city as a whole. The City Commission chooses one of its own members each year to serve a one-year term as mayor — by tradition, commissioners choose based on whoever received the most votes in the most recent election, though exceptions have occurred.

The task force report finalized by Thursday’s vote details the task force’s reasoning for its recommendation. The report, which is available as part of the task force’s agenda materials, notes the goals of providing fair representation, increasing voter engagement, encouraging more civil discourse, and, in the case of a directly elected mayor, providing more continuity on the commission. The only addition to the document was adding that the task force discussed and decided against term limits, with the reasoning that there is already a high degree of turnover on the commission and that term limits would go against a desire for more continuity.