photo by: Bremen Keasey/Journal-World

Lawrence's City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St., as seen on Monday, April 6, 2026.

Soon, Lawrence city commissioners will have new rules for how they hear from the public – and, Mayor Brad Finkeldei hopes, new standards for “how we want to interact with each other.”

At its meeting on Tuesday, the Lawrence City Commission unanimously approved a new meeting order that, once a month, will put public comments at the start of the meeting instead of at the end. They also approved a new civility resolution that will set expectations for commissioners’ conduct.

Finkeldei said Tuesday that the civility idea was discussed at the commission’s annual retreat earlier this year, when the commissioners met to discuss good government practices. He said the standards were a reminder to the commission about “modeling behavior that we want folks to model.”

Vice Mayor Mike Courtney liked the idea of explicitly committing to civil discourse.

“We, as commissioners, give grace to other commissioners that they are doing the best that they can for the city of Lawrence,” he said. He said that even when commissioners hear their colleagues suggest things they disagree with, they should remember that everyone is “doing it with the best intentions.”

The resolution calls on the commissioners to treat others with respect and courtesy; “consider differing viewpoints in good faith”; “disagree on issues without personal attacks or questioning motives”; and “focus on facts, shared goals, and constructive solutions.” It also calls on them to be transparent when they communicate with the public, stakeholders and each other – to “share information proactively and avoid unnecessary surprises.”

In addition to these guidelines for the commission itself, the resolution states that the city “rejects threats, intimidation, harassment, and abusive conduct in all forms and affirms that public participation should be safe, welcoming, and accessible to all people.”

The public comment changes, meanwhile, are a step back toward how meetings used to be run.

Before mid-2024, the commission heard general public comments at the very start of its meetings, but it then moved the general comments to the very end. It also stopped broadcasting public comments live on YouTube, then later stopped broadcasting its entire meetings live on YouTube after a change in the state open meetings law meant it could no longer remove the public comment part of the broadcast.

Finkeldei said Tuesday that moving the comment period in 2024 was done to ensure the commission could get through its regular agenda by a reasonable time of night. With the old structure, there was sometimes more than an hour of comments before the commission started considering its most important business of the evening, he said.

“Which one do you prioritize, general public comment or the regular agenda?” Finkeldei said, summarizing the dilemma. There were meetings, he said, where “if we would have even had an hour of public comment, we’d be here at midnight or 1 in the morning and pushing very important items to late in the night.”

The new early public comment period won’t have that problem. It’s only once a month, on the second Tuesday of each month, and general public comments on that day will be heard from 5 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. At the other two meetings, on the first and third Tuesdays, the general public comments will still be the last item on the agenda.

Commissioner Kristine Polian said it was good that the city was trying to “kind of gently move into going back to where we were.” She also expressed hope that the city could start live-streaming its meetings on YouTube again in the future.

In addition, Polian said she respected the commissioners who had to deal with less-than-civil comments from the public at meetings. As the Journal-World has reported, uncivil behavior during public comment periods has happened a number of times at city meetings over the past few years. That has included insults and even racial slurs directed at the commissioners themselves, and at one point Commissioner Amber Sellers decided to start leaving the room for the general public comment periods.

“I want to give respect and appreciation to the commissioners in the past that have taken a lot of heat in open meeting,” Polian said Tuesday. “It’s very difficult. You guys have been through quite a bit.”

The changes will become effective in June, according to the commission’s meeting agenda materials, but Finkeldei said they might still be subject to fine-tuning. Once Lawrence hires its new city manager, they might have their own ideas as well, he said.

“To me this is the next attempt,” Finkeldei said. “We’ll see how it goes.”