photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

At a Lawrence City Commission candidate forum hosted by the North Lawrence Improvement Association on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023, neighbors had the chance to ask direct questions of city commission candidates.

At a Lawrence City Commission candidate forum in North Lawrence Wednesday night, neighbors got a chance to ask some direct questions about the dilapidated state of some properties and longstanding issues like the lack of a neighborhood grocery store.

Five of the six candidates who are running for three open seats on the commission — incumbents Brad Finkeldei and Courtney Shipley, former commissioner Mike Dever and newcomers Dustin Stumblingbear and Justine Burton — were present at the forum, which was hosted by the North Lawrence Improvement Association. The sixth candidate, incumbent Amber Sellers, wasn’t present due to a work commitment, which also caused her to miss two other candidate forums this week.

The NLIA forum differed in comparison to other recent candidate events, mostly due to its less formal structure. Instead of a moderated and timed event, any of the dozen or so audience members could ask a question, and not all of the candidates responded to every question.

One resident asked what candidates’ first priority would be if they had the ability to accomplish one thing right away after being elected. Finkeldei was the first to answer: “Homelessness is the biggest issue we’re facing, have been facing and will continue to face.”

The resident then asked, “If everybody will say homelessness, can I ask what’s your number two priority? Let’s all concede number one — what’s your number two?”

North Lawrence has often been at the center of the city’s homeless issues because it’s home to the city-run support site for people experiencing homelessness and a second, unsanctioned camp directly outside it. But none of the questions directly asked what the candidates would do about homelessness; neighbors at the forum were more interested in talking about older issues affecting the neighborhood.

photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Residents of North Lawrence listen during a City Commission candidate forum at the Lawrence Union Pacific Depot, 402 N. Second St., on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023.

At one point, a resident held up a poster board that was covered, front and back, with photos of deteriorating and abandoned houses throughout the neighborhood, and another resident voiced concerns about how they feel like North Lawrence is neglected compared to other areas of the city. They wanted to know how the candidates would work to make the neighborhood feel less like a “dumping ground” and more like a part of Lawrence.

For some candidates, that’s a question of code enforcement. Shipley said she advocated for adding another code enforcement officer to the city’s already small staff recently, during the process of approving the city’s new ordinance banning single-use plastic bags, but said the effort was unsuccessful. She said Wednesday that there’s a need to “beef up” the city’s code compliance office.

“You’re not alone in this, I would say,” Shipley said. “I hear this from neighborhoods all over town, even ones that’ll give me a list of all the (issues) they’ve been complaining about.”

But that can get complicated, Finkeldei said, because the process of code enforcement is a “long statutory process” that can take a while to play out. He said the city has tried, with some success, to put money toward affordable housing developer Tenants to Homeowners with the goal of buying up these sorts of dilapidated properties for redevelopment, but that doesn’t always work.

Dever said there are only a few direct options the City Commission can take to help solve the problem immediately. One of them is “peer pressure” — to find out who owns the property and help them understand why it needs to be brought into compliance. And if that doesn’t happen, he said the next step is getting code enforcement involved, not just by waiting but by directing staff to refocus its efforts on especially egregious cases.

Stumblingbear also said that these types of issues aren’t limited to just North Lawrence. He said in the area where he lives, the Pinkney neighborhood, the infrastructure also feels forgotten, and that he can relate to North Lawrence neighbors’ concerns.

Both he and Burton said it’s important that visitors entering the community from the north see vibrancy when they arrive. And Burton added that one of the main reasons she chose to run for office was because she feels that North Lawrence and East Lawrence get “lost in everything else” when it comes to how they are treated compared to the rest of the city.

Another neighbor at the forum asked how candidates would address a bigger, older issue in the neighborhood — its status as a “food desert.” Both at previous forums and at this one, Burton wondered why there wasn’t a grocery option anywhere relatively near North Lawrence.

Shipley said for many major grocery chains, where they’ll develop largely depends on a formula that calculates how many members of the population need to live nearby for a store to be profitable, which they’re not likely to deviate from.

Stumblingbear said that’s an issue that can be rectified by looking for ways to bring in denser housing that fits with the neighborhood’s character, like mixed-use development — things like apartment buildings that sit on top of a first-floor grocery store, for example.

“I know a lot of people think we all want to own a home, but in this community that’s also killing us financially,” Stumblingbear said. “This urban sprawl is having a direct impact on the tax burden that each of us is feeling, and so the more people we can bring in within the city, add to that density, the more people we can add to that tax burden, which alleviates it for all the rest of us. That allows us to bring in something like a grocery store.”

That’s a point that Stumblingbear and Dever agreed on. Dever said there’s a need to be intentional when negotiating with businesses to bring a store to the community, but added that population growth in North Lawrence has put the neighborhood in a better position than it used to be in for adding mixed-use development.

Finkeldei said there’s been at least a little movement on this front lately, though not on the same side of the Kansas River. City commissioners recently discussed how they’d like to see a number of downtown parking lots possibly be redeveloped in the future, and one potential option they voiced interest in was a downtown grocery store. He added that bringing in other types of new businesses to the neighborhood is just as important as adding a grocery store.

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.