photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Douglas County elections office at 711 W. 23rd St. is pictured Monday, Oct. 31, 2022.

Voters won’t be choosing Lawrence’s city leaders in this November’s elections, but they will be weighing in on how they should be chosen — including whether voters should decide on the mayor themselves.

Back in February 2023, the Lawrence City Commission approved a resolution to put a question on the November 2024 ballot about whether Lawrence should change its form of government to one with a directly elected mayor and geographic districts for commissioners.

Mayor Bart Littlejohn told the Journal-World that the city and the commissioners wanted the vote to take place during a presidential election year because that would have more voter turnout.

“We wanted to make sure a good amount of people turned out to vote to decide it,” Littlejohn said.

Littlejohn said the city was planning to ramp up an informational campaign soon about what the proposed changes would look like. He felt that was an important step to make sure that the information wouldn’t get lost in between the presidential and other political races that will “suck up a lot of oxygen.”

So, what would the changes look like?

Lawrence currently uses a commission-manager form of government with five elected city commissioners and an appointed city manager. The commissioners are elected at large, meaning they can come from any geographic area of the city, and the commission chooses one of its own members each year to serve as mayor.

The proposal on the ballot would have some key differences from that structure.

First, the number of commissioners would grow from five to six, and not all of them would be at large. Four of them would represent specific geographic districts that would be drawn up by the city.

In addition to the six commissioners, Lawrence voters would directly choose another person for the role of mayor. The mayor would oversee commission meetings, but they wouldn’t vote with the rest of the six-member commission except to break a tie.

The length of time some commissioners serve would also change. Currently, in each City Commission election, the top two vote-getters win four-year terms on the commission, and the person with the third-highest vote total wins a two-year term. Under the proposed changes, all commissioners would serve four-year terms, though the elections would still be staggered so that no more than three seats would be up for election at the same time.

Lawrence’s appointed, professional city manager position would stay the same under the proposed changes.

The changes that are on the ballot are based on the work of a task force created in 2021 that was asked to review the current city government structure and suggest changes to that structure. The last time Lawrence changed its form of government was more than 70 years ago.

If voters approve the referendum on Election Day, the first election to include the direct mayoral election and the six-person commission would happen in November 2025.

The government structure question will not be the only city-related referendum on the ballot in November. The City Commission also added a referendum in August asking voters whether the city should raise its sales tax to fund affordable housing efforts from 0.05% to 0.10%.

The sales tax increase, which was proposed by City Manager Craig Owens in July, would add an extra nickel in tax to every $100 in purchases made by consumers in Lawrence. State law requires that all city sales tax increases be put to a citywide vote.

A large amount of the new money would fund programs for homeless services, which the city created with temporary federal funding received during the pandemic. Most of that federal funding, however, is scheduled to end in 2025.

The deadline to register to vote or update your voter registration information for the November general election is Tuesday, Oct. 15, and advance voting begins the next day, Oct. 16. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5.