photo by: Contributed

Left to right: Brad Chun, Shannon Reid

An incumbent and an independent candidate are competing for a seat on the Douglas County Commission for District 2.

The two candidates for Douglas County District 2 are incumbent Commissioner Shannon Reid, who was elected in 2020, and independent candidate Brad Chun. The winner will serve the district, which includes North Lawrence, the eastern area around downtown, Grant Township, and the portion of Wakarusa Township north of Lawrence.

Shannon Reid

Reid, a Democrat, works as a court advocate for victims of domestic violence at The Willow Domestic Violence Center. She told the Journal-World that she has provided direct advocacy for victims of domestic and sexual violence in Lawrence since 2010.

When it comes to prioritizing funding for different programs, Reid told the Journal-World that as a commissioner, she focuses on the totality of circumstances brought to the commission in the proposed budget. However, broadly speaking, she prioritizes programs and services that directly support more public safety and better access to services vital to Douglas County residents’ well-being.

For significant county projects – like the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center and the Public Safety building – Reid said the commission has a duty to make necessary investments in long-term infrastructure needs and prioritizing public safety. She said she is in support of the need to move some operations out of the downtown JLEC building and into a new public safety building.

Reid said that for other projects aimed at increasing renewable energy in the county, it’s difficult to determine a specific number of operations that should be in place. While some projects may not be a good fit, others will be. Reid said she will continue to value leading fair and open processes that will allow the public to weigh the potential harms and benefits each time a project is proposed. Reid voted for the conditional use permit for the proposed Kansas Sky Energy Center industrial solar project in northern Douglas County.

Additionally, Reid said the county government should strategize on solutions to the issues of affordable housing and homelessness.

“Housing affordability is a crisis across our nation, and it is applying pressure that escalates homelessness rates in all sorts of local communities,” Reid told the Journal-World. “We have no choice but to directly face reality and orient ourselves toward how to better collaborate among public, private and social sectors.”

Brad Chun

Chun has owned a local business, Kaw Valley Glass at 313 E. Eighth St., for the last nine years and has been a glassblower for 27 years. He has lived in Lawrence since 1992 and moved to North Lawrence in 2005. He has experience in cabinet shops and construction, installation, drawing plans in computer-aided design software and bidding.

Chun said that it is clear that the first thing residents want their tax dollars to provide is the safety from a robust fire department, emergency services and sheriff’s department, along with the infrastructure that allows for fast response times. He said that while the JLEC building has strategic safety problems and will cost a significant amount to maintain and repair, a project costing over $75 million should come before the people rather than being decided solely by the county commissioners.

While he is in favor of renewable energy projects, Chun said he disagrees with the site of the proposed 8 million-square-foot solar project — the Kansas Sky Energy Center — in northern Douglas County.

“Not only will the solar field cover prime farmland, but it will exacerbate the flooding problems that North Lawrence currently deals with as the stormwater drainage system is not complete,” Chun told the Journal-World. He also added that he doesn’t think utility-scale wind farm projects have a place in the county.

For making decisions on the budget each year, Chun said the county should focus on lowering property taxes and allow for more single-family homes to be built to help address the affordable housing issues in Douglas County.

“We have a duty to protect and support our own citizens who are unsheltered and in need of assistance to the best of our abilities with our finite resources (and) without making life more difficult for those with shelter but living check to check,” Chun told the Journal-World.