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Health leaders will be asking the Lawrence City Commission to put a yearlong pause on new licenses for tobacco retailers at its meeting next week.

On Tuesday, the City Commission is scheduled to vote on an ordinance that would establish a 12-month moratorium on the issuance of new tobacco licenses within the city limits. As the Journal-World has reported, this is a measure that Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, the city-county health department, has requested as a stopgap while the city considers how to strengthen its tobacco retail licensing program.

The licensing program started in 2023, and there are nearly 90 licensed retailers in the city.

Health department leaders have expressed alarm about that number and about where these stores are located. They’ve said that Lawrence has more tobacco retailers per capita than Las Vegas, that the shops tend to cluster in low-income areas, and that some of them are close to schools.

They’ve also noted that between 15% and 18% of retailers have failed compliance checks by selling to underage buyers, and they think it’s too easy for a store to reopen under new ownership and a new name if its license is suspended for noncompliance.

The moratorium wouldn’t change any of that on its own, but the health department says it would give the city time to figure out how to strengthen the city’s program and stop sales to minors. City commissioners have said they’re in favor of tougher regulations.

A memo from the city attorney’s office to commissioners says the moratorium won’t affect existing licenses, and that businesses will still be able to renew their licenses, but no licenses would be issued for new businesses “unless the applicant can establish extraordinary hardship caused by the moratorium.”

In other business, the City Commission will:

• Receive a draft framework of the city’s next strategic plan, Vision 2030. The framework has statements of the city’s priorities in areas such as growth, infrastructure, civic engagement, equity and environmental sustainability, and after it’s finalized, staff will work on ways to measure the city’s progress in those areas.

• Develop a legislative priorities statement for the 2027 session of the Kansas Legislature. At the end of each year, before lawmakers return to Topeka in January, local governments typically make their lists of things they would like the Legislature to take action on.

• Consider an agreement with the Kansas Department of Transportation regarding stripes that KDOT mistakenly painted on Lawrence roadways earlier this year.

In August, KDOT workers didn’t correctly verify where they were supposed to be painting and ended up painting stripes on North Second and Third streets and Sixth Street, which the city hadn’t asked them to do. The roads are the city’s responsibility to maintain, not KDOT’s, and city officials said the quality of the stripes didn’t meet Lawrence’s standards for pavement markings.

Under the agreement, KDOT would pay the city $130,000, the estimated cost of re-striping the roads, and the city would release KDOT “from all known and unknown claims arising from the event.” The funds would be used to improve pavement markings around the city next year.

The City Commission meets at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St.