Lawrence City Hall is pictured in this file photo.

Three candidates for the Lawrence City Commission on Wednesday called for either a freezing of city utility rates or a moratorium on the collection of overdue utility bills.

How to assist low-income residents who are struggling with consistently rising utility bills was a big question at a City Commission candidate forum hosted by the local chapter of the NAACP.

“The biggest thing we can do to assist those individuals is to freeze those rates and make sure we don’t compound the problem,” candidate Milton Scott said.

The two incumbent commissioners seeking reelection, however, stopped short of saying a freeze on utility rates would be feasible. Commissioner Stuart Boley said the city’s utility department — which provides water, sewer and trash service — has to pay its own way and can’t be subsidized by tax dollars. That can be problematic because the city has a backlog of old pipes and other pieces of infrastructure that really can’t wait to be replaced, Boley said.

“One of the problems we have is we haven’t done good enough maintenance,” Boley said.

Both Boley and fellow Commissioner Lisa Larsen stressed that the city has started a new utility assistance program that allows residents of the community to add a little extra money to their utility bills to fund a program that will provide utility assistance to families in need. Boley said he is open to using some government fund dollars to supplement that assistance program.

Other candidates, though, called for more direct action. Candidate Amber Sellers said rates should be frozen, but a moratorium also should be put in place stopping the city from cutting off service for people who are behind on their utility bills.

“These individuals should not be taken to collection,” Sellers said.

Sellers thinks there is more the city can do with federal pandemic relief funds to take care of past-due balances owed by local utility customers.

Candidate Bart LIttlejohn agreed with the idea of a moratorium on collections and a moratorium on disconnecting service. He also stressed that the city could do a better job of helping people understand that programs exist to help them catch up on past utility bills.

“It really doesn’t do any good to have the programs and resources available if nobody can get to them,” Littlejohn said. “There are some resources out there to help folks.”

Candidate Ma’Ko’Quah Jones stressed the importance of one other program that could help. As chair of the city’s Sustainability Advisory Board, she said that group has been recommending the expansion of the city’s home weatherization program. While the city does not set electric or natural gas rates, both those bills have been rising for many residents. A program to make homes more weatherproof could help alleviate some of those bills, but Jones said only 11 households applied for the city program last year.

Six candidates are running for three spots in the City Commission election, which will be decided by voters on Nov. 2. Here’s a look at some of the other comments candidates made during the NAACP forum, which was held virtually via Zoom.

• Lisa Larsen. She said the city needs to complete its search for a new police chief by finding someone who is ready to confront a clear lack of trust between the minority community and the police department. She also said the next chief should be someone who believes in creating a more proactive policing model.

Larsen also said she wants to explore an idea of using city sales tax money set aside for affordable housing to buy land across the city that could then be turned over to nonprofit organizations like Tenants to Homeowners to manage and build new affordable housing units.

Larsen said she also wants to explore how to expand the city’s Catalyst economic development program, which provides companies with tax breaks and a streamlined development approval process, if those companies produce a certain number of good-paying jobs. But she said the program isn’t currently doing enough to help small or minority-owned businesses.

• Milton Scott. He said he wants to explore waiving some city development fees to help reduce the price of housing in the city. He said the asking price of many new homes immediately puts too many people out of the market.

Scott said the city needs to be thinking about not only a living wage, but ensuring that the city is paying its contractors a “prevailing wage.” He said that will be important as the city hires a lot of contractors for future infrastructure work.

He said he would want the city manager — who is responsible for most city hiring — to find a police chief who focuses on “collaboration, cooperation, and compassion.”

• Amber Sellers. She said everyone likely wants a police chief who is compassionate, but she said it is critical to find a police chief who is skilled at implementing new policies.

Sellers said that creating a more detailed plan for how to tackle affordable housing is key, but she said it already is clear that a strategy of “mixed income housing can help alleviate poverty.”

Like all the candidates, Sellers said it was critical to attract employers who paid a living wage, but she said it also is important to support organizations like Peaslee Tech, who can provide training that helps individuals command higher wages.

• Stuart Boley, like Larsen, touted the benefits of the city’s Catalyst program in bringing good-paying jobs to town, with the recent Pretzels Inc. plant being an example. But he also said the city could do a better job of paying some of its employees. He highlighted that the city has rightly been criticized for paying its lifeguards too little.

He said the issue of wages is of extreme importance in the community, in part because it likely will be a major way to address affordable housing. He said not all attention can be spent on bringing the cost of housing down, but some attention also must be paid to increasing the income of households.

In the search for a police chief, Boley said he wants the city to hire someone who recognizes the department has lots of “dedicated and committed” police officers, but who also can see there are “opportunities for departmental improvement.”

• Bart Littlejohn. He said the city’s next police chief will need to work on fixing a “fractured” relationship with the city’s Community Police Review Board.

He also said he believes labor unions have an important role to play in helping create living wages in the Lawrence community, and that he was pleased the City Commission had supported the formation of new unions to represent some city workers, and was open to additional public unions being formed.

Littlejohn also said he supports the idea of streamlining the city’s development code.

• Ma’Ko’Quah Jones. She said she not only supports the idea of a living wage, but believes the minimum wage across the country should be increased to $15 an hour.

Jones said she is concerned there are “predatory” renting practices underway in Lawrence, and renewed her call for a “tenant bill of rights” in the city.

She also said the city’s next police chief needs to be skilled on social media because it could be an effective way to build trust levels with the community, and the next chief can’t be afraid of reform.