The process to appoint community members to City of Lawrence advisory boards has left some board applicants and members of the public feeling as though they’re in the dark.
Some folks who Lawrence city commissioners approved to join the city’s advisory boards within the past week might not yet know they were selected.
Other folks who were nominated for boards, then removed from the list of nominations, may not have known that, either — or the reason why they were removed.
The new appointments come following a long process to slim down the number of advisory boards the city had. (Read more on the background in the articles at this link.) Anyone who was on one of the boards that’s changing needed to reapply if they wanted to continue serving. That resulted in more than 60 vacant advisory board seats for the commission to fill.
The large number of open seats combined with changes to processes has left some applicants out of the loop. Some members of the public also feel like they don’t have any means to weigh in on who’s nominated to the boards, which help the commission decide how to spend city funds, shape policies and ordinances, and gather community input on issues. Advisory board seats are unpaid, voluntary positions.
Confusion for appointees
Chloe Chaffin said they recently moved to Lawrence from Topeka and looked forward to getting more involved in town. She applied to join the Environmental Sustainability Advisory Board, and she was on the list of appointees published Aug. 2 in the commission’s meeting agenda — but by Monday, her name had been removed from the list of appointees in the commission agenda.
The first she’d heard of any of it was when a reporter asked her about it Wednesday.
“I was never informed that I was selected and then …. unselected I guess?” they said via email. “The application itself was also very bare bones so even from that I figured they would surely be reaching out for interviews or follow-ups before deciding anything.”
In a turn of events Thursday evening, when the agenda was published for the Aug. 13 commission meeting, Chaffin’s name was back on the list, as were most of the seven applicants whose names had previously been removed.
“I am still looking forward to serving on that board if I am able to, but I am more confused right now than anything,” Chaffin said Thursday.
She happened to be in the company of Donnavan Dillon, who was nominated this week for a position on the Affordable Housing Advisory Board, “and this is also the first he has heard about his name being included,” they said.
Lawrence City Clerk Sherri Riedemann said there’s no formal process for notifications of nominations to advisory boards, but “Generally speaking, commissioners are reaching out to the folks they nominate,” she said via email Friday. “We don’t notify someone if they are not nominated because their application stays in the system, and they may be nominated in the future.”
Once city commissioners approve a nomination, “staff updates that information in our Board Manager software. An email is sent congratulating them on their appointment,” Riedemann said.
“The nomination notice generally goes out within the same week of approval by the commission,” Riedemann said. “Due to staffing in the clerks office this week, those notices will be sent out on Monday.”
So any of the more than three dozen advisory board applicants who received commission approval on Tuesday may still be unaware that they have been selected to serve.
Chaffin said they will continue to be a “joiner,” but she could see how some folks might get anxious, feel deterred or just keep waiting to hear back on an advisory board appointment before starting something else so they don’t get overloaded, only to realize too late that no communication is coming.
“If you have passionate young people trying to give their time and talents for the benefit of the community, you would imagine they would at least give them a boilerplate response of ‘so sorry, we decided to go in a different direction, but please sign up to volunteer here or sign up for a newsletter over there,’” Chaffin said. “If the city can’t communicate well, then they will always wonder why no one shows up and lament the lack of youth participation and buy-in without realizing how they’ve contributed to the problem.”
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Most of the names that disappeared from the list were removed because commissioners had not actually nominated them by the deadline to appear on that week’s agenda — and most reappeared when the agenda for the Tuesday, Aug. 13 meeting was published.
That includes Joshua Seiden, former deputy Douglas County district attorney, who says he knew his application to the Community Police Review Board would likely stir up some controversy. Read more about that at this link.
Alex Kerr, another applicant to the Community Police Review Board, said he saw that he was appointed when the commission’s Aug. 6 meeting agenda was initially published. He watched the CPRB meetings consistently starting in December 2020 and frequently gave public comment, before the board was put on pause.
His name was removed from the appointments — and not added back on to the list this week — because he’s 16 years old. The city ordinance covering the CPRB requires that members be at least 18.
“I’ve known city government since I was 11, and let me tell you, I am considering a lot these days running in 2025 for a spot on that commission because the community needs someone like me who wants to make sure everyone is heard and thought of,” Kerr said.
Another nominee who was removed and later re-added to the list of nominations did not respond to an email seeking comment for this article.
Public participation
A number of changes in Lawrence City Commission practices, coupled with the new process for advisory board appointees, have compounded confusion and frustration for some who feel like their voices aren’t being heard.
Frequent public commenter Steven Watts said via email that the commissioners “have allowed the staff to systematically reduce citizen participation in meetings to practically nothing.”
Another frequent public commenter, Chris Flowers, raised questions about the appointment process during Tuesday’s commission meeting.
Flowers said commission appointments were previously on the consent agenda — a list of items that are generally approved with one motion unless a commissioner asks to pull an item for discussion.
The commission last year changed its process to no longer allow members of the public to pull most items from the consent agenda, but people can still ask a commissioner to pull something for them if they wish to give public comment about it. But the city has moved the appointment list toward the end of the agenda under “Commission Items,” a part of the meeting that is not open to public comment at all.
Commissioners also voted in May to move the general public comment period near the end of meeting agendas — just before Commission Items — and to no longer broadcast it. And in June, they voted to move public comment to the very ends of meetings and to stop recording it for the city’s YouTube channel (prompting this publication to begin recording it and posting the videos).
The changes to procedures mean that even if people do want to give public comment about appointments listed under “Commission Items,” their comments would come after commissioners have already taken a vote.
At first during the commission’s Aug. 6 meeting, Mayor Bart Littlejohn and Commissioner Amber Sellers stopped Justin Spiehs as he began to speak about Seiden’s nomination to the CPRB, though other people — Seiden included — had been allowed to talk about advisory board appointments.
“When you don’t take public comment on an item, you’ve historically allowed folks to comment on that during public comment. We did not take public comment on nominations,” Riedemann told commissioners during the meeting, and they allowed Spiehs to continue speaking.
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New procedures
Asked why the appointments were moved on the agenda, Riedemann said newly adopted Chapter 1A and advisory board policies charge all commissioners with nominating advisory board members, “making it a Commission item.”
Nominating applicants to serve on advisory boards historically has been solely within the mayor’s purview, and the commission would vote on whether to approve them as part of the consent agenda. Thus far under the new process, agenda materials have not made it clear which commissioner is nominating each applicant.
Neither of the recently approved documents outlines a formal process for advisory board nominations, Riedemann said.
“Having nominations come in from all 5 commissioners, and not just the Mayor, creates challenges,” she said via email Friday. “To address these, I provided some suggestions for getting the nominations on the agenda for approval by the Commission.”
She shared that document and said it was not included in any meeting agendas because “This is an administrative process not a commission procedure. The intent of the process document was to assist in compiling the nominations and meet agenda posting deadlines. Documented processes is key to consistency and accuracy.”
Commissioners generally agreed during their July 16 meeting with the procedures Riedemann had outlined:
202408-Nomination-ProcessUnder those procedures, commissioners are supposed to nominate applicants to advisory boards by noon on Mondays in order for their names to appear on the commission meeting agendas that are published on Thursdays. The update to last week’s agenda mostly removed people who had not been submitted on time to be included in the agenda, though their names had made it onto the list anyway.
“This process will likely be updated as we work through the nuances,” Riedemann said. “I expect it to be simpler once we get through this large number of initial appointments.”
None of the Lawrence city commissioners weighed in for this article.
As of Saturday afternoon — if the commission approves the list of appointments as it’s currently included in the meeting agenda — all seven seats on the Affordable Housing Advisory Board and the Community Police Review Board would be filled.
There would still be two or more vacancies each on the Aviation Advisory Board, Connected City Advisory Board, Environmental Sustainability Advisory Board, Historic Resources Commission, Cultural Arts Commission and Parks and Recreation Advisory Board.
Read about how to apply at this link. Find the latest vacancy report and applications on the city’s website at https://lawrenceks.civicweb.net/Portal/BoardApplication/.
The Lawrence City Commission will meet at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 13 at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St. See the complete meeting agenda at this link.
In other business, commissioners will consider approving one of three concepts — each with its own price tag, and two of them well above budget — for a renovation of the Outdoor Aquatic Center. Read more about that at this link.
Meetings are open to the public and livestreamed on the city’s YouTube channel, youtube.com/@lawrenceksvideo.
The commission accepts written public comment until noon the day of the meeting emailed to ccagendas@lawrenceks.org. The commission also hears public comment in person during meetings as well as via Zoom. Register for Tuesday’s Zoom meeting at this link.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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