photo by: Shawn Valverde

The site of Lawrence's future Pallet Shelter Village, now under construction at 256 N. Michigan St., is pictured in this aerial photo from Monday, Oct. 16, 2023.

This story was updated at 7:45 p.m., Monday, October 16, 2023.

Lawrence leaders could take action this week to approve the process for appointing members of the Lawrence Community Shelter Board of Directors under a new shared governance model and grant the shelter additional city funding.

At this week’s Lawrence City Commission meeting, commissioners will consider adopting a joint resolution with the Douglas County Commission that sets out the process for appointing members to that board under its newly amended bylaws approved Oct. 9. Additionally, the city will consider adding $150,000 to its 2023 Lawrence Community Shelter funding agreement. The city announced about a month ago that the City of Lawrence, Douglas County and the Lawrence Community Shelter would be moving to a shared governance model, and those parties have been working toward the transition. The city also confirmed at that time that the shift in governance would also mean the shelter receives more funding from the city as part of the deal.

The joint resolution, if approved by both commissions, would enable the City Commission to appoint three of the seven members of the board of directors. The Douglas County Commission would be able to appoint two, and two currently serving members would stay on the board. They’d each have three-year terms, but the initial members appointed by the city will serve for staggered terms of one, two and three years each.

The resolution does note that while the City Commission and County Commission would appoint a majority of the board, the shelter “will not become, or be regarded as, an agency or instrumentality of the City of Lawrence or Douglas County.”

The joint resolution also appears on the agenda for Wednesday’s Douglas County Commission meeting, and it would take effect once approved by both bodies later this week.

City spokesperson Maureen Brady told the Journal-World Monday afternoon that there will be action to approve the city’s appointees to the board during Tuesday’s meeting if the resolution is approved, however. Per the meeting agenda, the city’s three recommended board members are Shannon Oury, the executive director of the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority; Chuck Magerl, owner of Free State Brewing Company; and Elizabeth Keever, the chief development officer at Heartland Community Health Center. Oury would be appointed to the three-year term, Magerl to the two-year term and Keever to the one-year term under the staggered structure outlined in the resolution.

As for the additional $150,000 in shelter funding, a memo with Tuesday’s meeting agenda notes that amount should sustain the shelter’s services through the end of the year. As the Journal-World reported in July, LCS interim director Melanie Valdez said the shelter’s funds were well short of the roughly $1.6 million per year it needs to keep running.

The addendum to the funding agreement establishes additional requirements on top of what’s in the base funding agreement, including entering all clients’ names on the county’s by-name list, maintaining a minimum capacity of 100 beds per night, and increasing its total shelter capacity when outdoor temperatures dip below 40 degrees.

The addendum also requires the shelter to offer “day services … including but not limited to three meals per day” to all guests, but doesn’t offer any further specifics. The shelter is also to cooperate with the Lawrence Police Department and accept referrals as long as the client meets the shelter’s eligibility requirements. Another requirement states that the shelter “will offer operational support to other emergency and temporary sheltering systems within the city.”

In other business, commissioners will:

• During a work session, hear an update about the strong and welcoming neighborhoods goal area of the city’s strategic plan.

Though commissioners don’t take any action on items covered during work sessions, the presentation included as an attachment with this week’s agenda seems to be almost entirely dedicated to following up on previous discussions about homelessness that have taken place at recent City Commission meetings.

For example, one slide of the presentation is about “addressing public camping,” with bullet points that touch on the regulations for city park hours and the downtown zoning district. That seems to be a direct response to calls from Lawrence Mayor Lisa Larsen at one meeting in mid-September for more information about why the city isn’t enforcing a no-camping ordinance. Another bullet point on the slide mentions the rules for the Lawrence Public Library’s lawn, the site of an uptick in disruptive behavior since the summer. That space is technically under the jurisdiction of the City of Lawrence, which owns the land the library sits on, that lawn and the parking garage next door.

Other slides address how the city is addressing new and existing campsites where people experiencing homelessness are living around the city. The city apparently has a new website reporting form and phone number for reporting new camps, for example, and the presentation says the city is using “assertive intervention to support recovery from chronic homelessness” in addressing established sites.

Another slide addressing emergency shelter includes a couple of notes about the city’s planned Pallet Shelter Village at 256 North Michigan St. According to the presentation, the Pallet Shelter Village is expected to be operating by December — but as it stands, the city still doesn’t have a social service agency lined up to operate the temporary shelter site.

The presentation also claims there are an additional 45 unused Pallet shelters at the city’s disposal, but Brady confirmed Monday afternoon that number is inaccurate. The city’s purchase contract with Pallet approved back in March included the cost of 75 shelters, and the city most recently has maintained that the North Michigan Street site will include 50 of them. That is still the plan, she said.

Brady also told the Journal-World that city staff looked at the Lawrence Community Shelter property to see if the additional Pallet cabins might fit, in response to a question about whether the city has assessed the viability of placing the unused cabins there. Brady said no design or construction work related to installing them there has taken place, though.

The Lawrence City Commission will convene at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St.