photo by: Nick Krug

The old Douglas County Courthouse, 11th and Massachusetts Street, pictured on Monday, Aug. 7, 2017.

Updated at 1:45 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 19

Douglas County leaders on Wednesday unanimously approved a process for making their own appointments to the Lawrence Community Shelter Board of Directors, and they also appointed two new members with experience in nonprofits and volunteer work.

As the Journal-World previously reported, the homeless shelter is transitioning to a shared governance model with the City of Lawrence and Douglas County, and the joint resolution that county leaders approved on Wednesday spells out how the city and county will appoint members to the shelter’s seven-member board. The City Commission approved the resolution and appointed three members at its meeting Tuesday, and the county appointed two members of its own on Wednesday: Christina Gentry and John Krehbiel.

Gentry is director of communications at The Sexual Trauma and Abuse Care Center and was appointed to a three-year term on the board. Krehbiel is a longtime volunteer at the shelter and was appointed to a two-year term. Both appointments were approved unanimously.

Before the vote, the commissioners said they expected more discussion in the future about what the board would look like — including whether it should be expanded. Commission Chair Patrick Kelly pointed to the size of the board in contrast to the “number of people who want to get engaged in this.”

“I want to be cautious about saying we’re going to solve homelessness in Douglas County, but to make progress on it we’re going to need an entire community to work toward these solutions,” Kelly said. “And if more people are interested in getting engaged, we need to find ways for them to get engaged.”

Commissioner Karen Willey said concerns over the size of the board were valid but were not “worth holding up the show,” and Commissioner Shannon Reid agreed, saying that although it “seems kind of small to me,” a seven-member board “is OK for now.”

“… I also recognize the sort of unique circumstances we’re in,” Reid said, “and that it’s a reset right now to some degree.”

Reid also said she’d like to see more discussion “about the types of roles or positions that we would like to see filled in future appointments” to the board, “keeping in mind that lived experience is certainly a piece of that.”

As the Journal-World has reported, the transition to the shared governance structure was announced about two months after LCS Interim Executive Director Melanie Valdez told the Journal-World that the shelter’s funds were well short of the roughly $1.6 million per year it needs to keep running and the shelter was “just barely getting by.” The City Commission on Tuesday voted to add another $150,000 to the shelter’s funding agreement, but the County Commission did not vote Wednesday on whether to provide any additional funding.

After the meeting, Assistant County Administrator Jill Jolicoeur told the Journal-World that the transition’s goal was “stabilizing” the “continuum of care to support folks experiencing homelessness.” And former shelter board member Jamie Price, who recently left the board, said she appreciated that the city and county were now involved in the appointments, and that she thought the county’s appointees would bring the “diversity that was representative of the committee.”

With the appointment of Gentry and Krehbiel, the board is now complete. The other five members, as the Journal-World has reported, are Shannon Oury, executive director of Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority; Chuck Magerl, owner of Free State Brewing Company; Elizabeth Keever, chief development officer at Heartland Community Health Center; and current shelter board members Charlie Bryan and Rebekah Gaston.

In other business, the commission:

• As part of its consent agenda, unanimously approved the appointment of Bradley Eldridge as Douglas County appraiser. Eldridge had been interim county appraiser since the retirement of the previous appraiser, Steven Miles, in June, but was only allowed to serve in the interim capacity for up to six months.

According to a news release from the county, Eldridge has 25 years of experience as a real estate appraiser and has received an “MAI designation from the Appraisal Institute, which is the highest designation in the appraisal industry.”

photo by: Douglas County Government

Douglas County Appraiser Bradley Eldridge.