photo by: Shawn Valverde

Dozens of protesters fill Lawrence City Hall on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023, to speak during public comments about the war in Gaza.

Lawrence city commissioners heard about an hour’s worth of public comment on Tuesday urging the city to adopt a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israeli-Hamas conflict that is producing large numbers of civilian casualties in the Middle East.

Some commenters went so far as to say that a failure to support a resolution calling for a ceasefire would put the city on the side of genocide.

During the public comment session, which was attended by a crowd that filled the meeting room and about half of the City Hall lobby, city commissioners generally did not interact with commenters. The commission had no discussion after the public comment period about crafting or supporting a resolution related to the conflict.

Mayor Lisa Larsen told the Journal-World after the meeting that she knew of “no plans at this time” to bring the idea of such a resolution up for further discussion at a future meeting.

The public comment session did spark questions from some — Justin Spiehs, a former Douglas County Commission candidate who was removed from past City Commission meetings, was among them — about whether the City Commission was being fair in how it determined which topics were germane to city business, which is supposed to be a requirement for people making comments to the commission.

Commissioners didn’t address those questions during the meeting, either, but afterward Larsen told the Journal-World that the issue of what is considered a germane topic is very subjective, and the city doesn’t have a policy that provides clear guidelines on the topic. Instead, she said each commission is given wide latitude to make that determination, which she said can be difficult.

“Everybody wants to come up and speak their mind,” she said.

Commissioners impose a three-minute limit on how long an individual can speak during the comment period, but the commission generally does not put a time limit on how long the public comment session as a whole can last. The public comment session is near the beginning of the commission’s agenda, meaning that it may take the commission an hour or more before it gets to any of the action items on its agenda.

Commissioners previously have discussed whether they want to change the commission’s public comment procedures, but Larsen did not specifically bring up any of those ideas after Tuesday’s meeting. But she did say it was important that the meetings must primarily serve a purpose of allowing the commission to conduct city business.

As for the issue of the Israeli-Hamas conflict, she said the fighting there has resulted in some “horrible atrocities.”

The conflict began on Oct. 7 when Hamas, which is based in Gaza, launched raids into Israel that left more than 1,400 dead and produced reports of rapes, beheadings and other acts of violence. Israel’s attacks into Gaza have drawn condemnation from many due to widespread civilian casualties, which Israel has said are partially due to Hamas embedding itself into civilian areas.

In other business, commissioners:

• Unanimously approved as part of their consent agenda a three-year labor agreement with the Lawrence Police Officers Association. The agreement provides for a 2.5% pay grade adjustment in both 2024 and 2025, and gives both parties the ability to negotiate a pay grade adjustment in 2026. In addition to the pay grade adjustment, the agreement specifies that employees who receive a performance review with a rating of “meets expectations” or better generally will advance one step on the pay scale, which would add to the wage increases for an individual employee.

• Were told during a work session on economic development issues that the commission in 2024 likely will be asked to consider new policies related to economic development incentives. Discussion on what types of changes could be made to the incentives policy — which governs programs such as tax abatements and tax rebates — did not occur at the work session. Instead, commissioners were told many of the policies had not been updated since 2019, which made them prime candidates for review.

• Unanimously approved a pair of right-of-way vacations at 1031 Mississippi St. and 1208 E. 13th St.