Where to start?

Participating in local government can be daunting. They have a habit of using a lot of jargon, which can make understanding what’s happening in our communities more difficult. This post aims to demystify the first step of getting involved - looking at City Commission agendas.

To start off with, the agendas are actually hosted on a different site than the main City of Lawrence site. It’s a platform called Civicweb, and I will often just type ”Civicweb Lawrence” into the search bar to get to the agendas (or paste this into the search bar: https://lawrenceks.civicweb.net/portal/). Once there, the bar on the right side of the screen will show you all upcoming and recent meetings. For demonstration purposes, I’ll be using the June 20th agenda.

You have to scroll a bit to get to the actual agenda, but once you do, the first thing of note is the section about how to attend the meeting. At the very top of the agenda is the time & address of the meeting, if you’re planning on going in-person. Zoom is also an option, but you must click the link to register. I’ve registered for a meeting as it was happening and they were able to let me in, so if you’re late and want to attend online, you should still be able to.

The city also has a dedicated YouTube channel where archives of all their commission meetings are stored. This is unfortunately one of the only ways to see the discussion that happened during meetings, as agenda minutes are usually pretty vague.

The Agenda

Alright - let’s actually jump into the agenda here. The first chunk of time is not something that we as activists generally have to pay attention to, as it’s mostly administrative stuff. After this (sections A-C) is general public comment (section D). This time is for stuff that isn’t on the agenda, so make sure that you stick around if you want to talk to the commission about something they’re already planning on discussing. Otherwise, this time is yours to talk about whatever you want. In my experience it’s usually more impactful to comment on things already on the agenda if possible, or talk in front of a smaller board that deals more closely with the issue you’re interested (I’ll talk about other boards here in a bit).

Section E

This is usually one of the longer parts of the agenda. Things in the consent agenda are approved all at once without talking about each individual item, unless a commissioner or a commenter requests they be pulled for discussion. The first few sections of the consent agenda (E1-E5) are once again usually things an activist wouldn’t need to pay attention to, it’s more administrative stuff.

E6 contains large contracts that usually go towards construction, which may be important to pay attention to occasionally, but generally, E7 and E8 are where the things we care about the most are. These sections cover laws the city is considering passing and zoning changes/general city management things respectively. For example, E7c was a plastic bag ban ordinance that failed yet again after five years of the city passing it back and forth between staff, the Sustainability Advisory Board, and the City Commission (but that’s a different discussion). Each section also has a link to the ordinance or any other relevant information, which is especially important to look at when giving comment. City Commission and staff will generally pay more attention to your comment if you address specific things in the staff report or ordinance that you have problems with or are in favor of.

Section G

The regular agenda items, are the items that the Commission will discuss no matter what. This section, along with section I, will sometimes have presentations by city staff. These presentations, plus all documents associated with the meeting and all written public comment, can be found in the agenda packet (there’s a link right above the agenda that opens this document). Because it has absolutely everything in the agenda, it can be long and difficult to navigate, but can be important if you want to document your public comment.

Section I

This can have important city-wide stuff or staff reports to pay attention to. It also contains a document of future agenda items. If you’re planning a longer campaign around an issue, this is definitely something that you want to check frequently as new agendas are published, because it can change over time. Usually this section is the last thing that I will pay attention to on City Commission agendas. The rest is, once again, administrative stuff.

The Boards

City Commission is overall the most important board in the sense that they are the last level of approval that pretty much every big decision in Lawrence must go through. However, the way that things get put in front of the City Commissioners is usually through smaller boards and commissions. The city has a ton of them, is in the process of consolidating some. The current list can be found here.

Which boards/commissions you pay attention to will naturally change depending on the issue you’re interested in, but as an environmental justice activist, I mainly pay attention to these boards:

• Affordable Housing Advisory Board
• Douglas County Food Policy Council
• Planning Commission
• Multi-Modal Transportation Commission
• Public Transit Advisory Committee
• Sustainability Advisory Board.

AHHH! That is a lot

Thankfully, despite the fact that each board/commission has its own style of agenda, they’re generally similar or simpler than the City Commission agendas. Keeping track of all of these agendas can seem like a lot, but the city has an email list that you can sign up for here. It allows you to pick which boards/commissions you want to get notifications for, and you’ll get an email as soon as the agendas are ready or when they’ve added public comment. Many of these boards and commissions meet monthly, which is much easier to keep up with than City Commission’s weekly meetings.

That’s pretty much it! While this should cover most things that you’ll need to deal with, let me know if there’s any important points I’ve missed. Good luck with your comment and happy campaigning!