photo by: Bremen Keasey

Lawrence's City Hall, located at 6 E. Sixth St., shown in June 2025.

Sixty people from 23 states have applied to be Lawrence’s next city manager, and the Lawrence City Commission plans to start evaluating those applications as early as next week.

Lawrence is currently looking for a successor for City Manager Craig Owens, who announced last year that he would be stepping down this spring. At Tuesday’s City Commission meeting, Mayor Brad Finkeldei shared the stats about the city manager applications, which recently closed.

He said that the city got “a decent cross” of demographics in the applicants – 70% are male and 30% to 40% are minority applicants. The state with the most applicants is Texas, with 10, and nine of the applicants are from Kansas, he said.

The city has a more than $28,000 contract with consulting firm SGR for its executive search, and the process has included talks with various stakeholders about what they’d like to see in a new city manager.

On April 14, the commission is set to start the process of narrowing down the candidates, Finkeldei said: “That’s the time we will talk about those applicants for the first time.” The commission has also set aside May 5 to evaluate candidates, he said, and the consultants may also be helping in the review process. Both of those discussions will be held in executive session at the start of the City Commission’s meetings and will not be open to the public.

In his estimation, Finkeldei told the Journal-World, the finalists the commission settles on could be visiting Lawrence sometime toward the end of May.