photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Members of the Lawrence chamber of commerce listen to candidates running in the Lawrence City Commission race during a forum Wednesday morning at Arterra Event Gallery, 2161 Quail Creek Drive.

Candidates vying for a seat on the Lawrence City Commission addressed members of the local chamber of commerce on Wednesday, fielding questions on such topics as expanding the city’s boundaries and attracting new businesses.

Five of the six candidates — incumbents Brad Finkeldei and Courtney Shipley, former commissioner Mike Dever, and newcomers Dustin Stumblingbear and Justine Burton — participated in the Chamber’s forum, one of many candidate events slated to take place throughout the week. Incumbent Amber Sellers was absent because of a work commitment.

The first development-related question was about a requirement in Plan 2040, the joint city-county comprehensive plan, that requires developers who want to expand the city’s boundaries to identify a “community benefit” that their project would provide. The moderator for the Chamber forum, Vice President of External Affairs Hugh Carter, said the city’s shortage of available lots for development was exacerbated by the “vague language” in Plan 2040, and he asked whether the candidates would support amending the plan to clarify what counted as a community benefit.

The candidates at the forum seemed to agree that an amendment to the plan was worth discussing. But Finkeldei said it would be an involved process that the City Commission couldn’t do on its own — changes to Plan 2040 also have to be approved by the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission and the Douglas County Commission.

What city leaders can do, Finkeldei said, is set a precedent for how they want to define the term “community benefit” when individual zoning requests come to them for approval. He said the commission has demonstrated a pattern of ruling that new affordable housing meets the requirement.

Dever mentioned one recent expansion of the city’s boundaries that was approved under the current “community benefit” requirement — an 85-acre annexation directly north of Rock Chalk Park on the northwestern edge of the city with plans calling for more than 300 homes. But Dever said that’s a benefit that may take a while to manifest, given that the housing development may include a school in the Perry-Lecompton school district.

“For me, it’s a benefit to the community, but is it a community benefit?” Dever said. “Because we are eventually going to get a school, but it’s going to stay vacant until the Perry-Lecompton school district decides to build a school there. There’s no benefit we as a city can manifest there, because we can’t make them build.”

Dever said he’d prefer to focus on making it clear to developers what counts as a community benefit and incentivizing them to build more workforce and low-income housing.

Stumblingbear said that with the city’s shortage of affordable housing, it shouldn’t be a stretch to consider housing a community benefit. But he said the perception that more expensive housing shouldn’t be built doesn’t help, and that the city should value a mix of housing types and price points.

Shipley said that while changing the language around the community benefit requirement would be worth talking about, the current language gives “a flexibility we’re maybe not acknowledging.” The housing development north of Rock Chalk Park, for example, donates some lots to an affordable housing program, and Shipley mentioned that another accepted community benefit is setting aside land for green space.

Burton said there needed to be a more specific definition of “affordable housing” and more consideration toward spreading affordable housing through all areas of the community.

Candidates were also asked what the city’s role should be in supporting its existing businesses and attracting new ones.

Burton and Shipley both suggested focusing on specific types of businesses. Burton said larger businesses should be brought in to bolster the city’s tax base, while Shipley said the focus should be more on small businesses in general, even as the City Commission plays a role in trying to identify spaces where new industrial and commercial businesses could go.

Stumblingbear said the city could do more to help new entrepreneurs who don’t know where to find information about starting a business. He said that in his experience, Indigenous people were especially in need of entrepreneurship resources, and that it could be as simple as providing a hub for information in a central location on the city or Chamber website.

Both Dever and Finkeldei said the city would need to address its housing shortage before it could effectively invite more businesses to the community. Dever said that the city would have to be realistic, and that it already had many tools to help the small business community grow, including Peaslee Tech and the University of Kansas’ Small Business Development Center.

Finkeldei said there were other steps the city needed to take that the private sector couldn’t, such as zoning more land for industrial use.

“The next four years, we’ll be looking for the next industrial park,” Finkeldei said. “We need to have the next industrial park — we need to find that land and have it ready. That’s something the private sector can’t do on its own.”

He added that it will also be important to create an “inviting process” for businesses through the current rewrite of the city’s Land Development Code.

The deadline to register to vote in the general election is Tuesday, Oct. 17, and advance voting by mail or in person at the Douglas County Elections Office, 711 W. 23rd St., begins the following day.