If you are ever in need of a Lawrence trivia question, throw this one out: What is the most number of votes a Lawrence mayor has won in modern times? The answer: Five.

For decades, Lawrence’s mayor has been elected by the five members of the Lawrence City Commission. Once a year, a commissioner makes a motion for one of their fellow commissioners to be mayor for the next year, and then they vote on the motion. Most years all five commissioners agree, and the next mayor is unanimously elected with a grand total of five votes.

I’m not sure that piece of trivia is useful in wowing the crowd at your next cocktail party, but perhaps it is useful in pondering whether Lawrence’s system for selecting a mayor is the best it can be.

Some community leaders are questioning whether simply allowing Lawrence residents to vote for a mayor – perhaps once every four years – might be a better way. In fact, the Lawrence chamber of commerce is actively considering asking the City Commission to put a question on the November ballot that would enact such a system to directly elect future Lawrence mayors.

The Chamber recently sent a survey to its members asking whether they supported or opposed the idea of a directly-elected mayor. Bonnie Lowe, chamber president and CEO, told me recently that nearly 84% of respondents supported the idea of a directly-elected mayor.

Now, the Chamber is reaching out to other community organizations to see if they also would be interested in asking their members about the idea. Plus, the Chamber is exploring the technical details of how such a question could be placed on the November ballot.

At this point, some of you may be thinking this sounds like a City Hall rerun. No, you are not going crazy (although that is a listed side effect of watching too many hours of the city’s YouTube Channel.) Residents in November 2024 voted down a ballot question that involved creating a directly-elected mayor.

However, the Chamber is contemplating a question significantly different than what was posed to voters two years ago. That question called for a system to directly elect the city’s mayor, but also called for expanding the City Commission to six commissioners, plus the mayor. With the expansion, four of the six commissioners would have been elected by district, meaning a person would have to live in a certain quadrant of the city in order to run for that district’s seat. That is a big change from the current system, where all five commissioners are at-large, meaning they can run for any seat as long as they live anywhere in the city.

Lowe told me the Chamber is considering asking for a ballot question that only seeks to create a system to directly elect a mayor. It is not seeking to enlarge the size of the commission or to create districts.

Lowe said her anecdotal evidence suggests that a significant number of people voted against the 2024 question due to concerns about creating districts for city commissioners. She said she had heard from some voters that if the 2024 question were only about creating a directly-elected mayor, they likely would have supported it.

Even as it was, the 2024 ballot question didn’t lose by much. The ballot question lost by less than 700 votes out of more than 36,000 votes cast.

Lowe, a former mayor herself, said she thinks there are many residents who still see value in having a mayor who has a direct mandate from the people, and who would serve for four years instead of one.

“It is the vision of a directly-elected mayor working very closely with the city manager to move that vision forward for four years, instead of a change every year and having a little bit of a stop and start on directions,” Lowe said of the thinking she had heard in the community. “It can be hard to get any continuity with that system.”

The idea of having a mayor who knew they would be in the position for multiple years was a much-talked-about selling point during the 2024 election. Several people argued that it would be easier for a four-year mayor to make connections with state leaders and other elected officials in the region. With a one-year mayor, you’ve only started to make a connection by the time your term is ending, some argued.

I also recall, though, that not everyone loved the idea of a four-year mayor in 2024. I heard from some who said they would feel more comfortable electing a mayor for four-years if the voter turnout in city elections were higher. Voter turnout in a Lawrence City Commission election is often near 25%.

On top of that, political winds have been known to shift rather quickly when it comes to City Hall issues. One year you have candidates who are very supportive of homeless service programs, for example, and two short years later candidates who say the city has gone too far with those programs do well at the ballot box. In other words, some people think it is a feature, not a bug, that the mayoral position changes every year because it gives the commission a chance to adjust to changing public sentiment.

City commissioners have used a set of unwritten rules to determine who to elect each year for mayor. They are unwritten, though, and they have been known to leave some people feeling like they are trying to read instructions to assemble a $14 dining room table. In summary, though, the top vote winner in a City Commission election will be selected by fellow commissioners to become the vice mayor for year No. 1 of their term. In year No. 2, they will be selected to become mayor. The second-place winner in the election will be selected to be vice mayor in year No. 2 of their term, and then selected to be mayor in year No. 3. (A four millimeter wrench also is involved somewhere in the process.)

Exactly how a new system would work is yet to be determined, Lowe said. Ultimately, the Chamber and other community organizations can make recommendations about what they would like a system to look like, but it will be up to city commissioners on whether they want to consider a change.

City commissioners have until Sept. 1 to ask the Douglas County Clerk to put a question on the November ballot. Commissioners would decide on the exact wording of that question. The ballot question could include details such as setting the term of the mayor to four years, and also could include details such as whether the mayor is allowed to vote on commission issues like the other commissioners do. Some systems only allow the mayor to vote in the case of a tie, while other systems allow the mayor to vote all the time. Lowe said she had heard more support for a system that allows a mayor to vote all the time.

The ballot language also could specify the duties of the mayor. Those could include running meetings, serving as the ceremonial head of the city, and could include language about powers related to appointments for various city boards like the planning commission or the library board, for example.

What is not expected is a mayor who has the powers of a true chief executive. Under Lawrence’s current form of city government, the city manager is the supervisor for all city employees. In some cities, the mayor is the actual supervisor of city employees. Such a change isn’t being contemplated in Lawrence. The city would still operate under what political science folks call a “weak mayor” system rather than a “strong mayor” system.

Lowe said she didn’t have a specific timeline for when the Chamber may decide whether to ask the City Commission to put a question on the November ballot. However, she said the group was doing its homework in preparation for such an ask, and expected any request would come well before the Sept. 1 deadline.