City staff gives Human Relations Advisory Board an annotated bibliography and ties commission work to ‘Safe and Secure’ KPIs

City of Lawrence staff on Wednesday presented an annotated bibliography and a set of links and summaries intended to help the Human Relations Advisory Board align its work with the city strategic plan’s “Safe and Secure” outcome. Farris, a staff member in the city’s equity and inclusion area, told the board the packet includes the strategic plan, the advisory boards ordinance, several city resolutions and the relevant chapter of the municipal code, and short descriptions of each item.

“We just kind of titled it as annotated bibliography,” Farris said, describing the document as a way to make a large body of material “more easily digestible” for volunteer commissioners. He said the materials include the city strategic plan, the ordinance governing advisory boards, Resolution Nos. 7472 and 7473, an ethics and professional conduct policy, and Chapter 10 of the city code that establishes the human relations board.

Farris explained that the Human Relations Advisory Board has been placed under the strategic plan outcome labeled Safe and Secure and that staff are prioritizing a subset of key performance indicators (KPIs) rather than attempting to move a very large number of metrics at once. He said the KPIs recently shifted from measuring perception variance across race and gender to a focus on how the city closes investigations, so the board can better understand whether complaints are being resolved in a way that strengthens residents’ confidence in public processes.

Staff also described the city’s approach to dispatching specialized resources, noting the growing use of a crisis response unit that pairs mental-health professionals with officers in certain calls. Farris said the aim is to “dispatch the right resource to a situation that makes the most sense” so an incident that primarily involves mental health does not escalate because the wrong responder arrives first.

Commissioners asked about the data behind the KPIs and the cadence of surveys. Staff said the city contracted ETC for a perception survey done just over two years ago and expects that survey about every two years; other KPIs are collected at varying intervals and sometimes require additional analysis and staffing before results are publishable.

Board members discussed how the advisory board could contribute: suggesting questions for future surveys, identifying KPIs the board could track directly, and convening cross-board conversations (for example, with the affordable housing advisory board and the community police review board) to address overlapping issues.

Votes at a glance

- Approved: Minutes of Aug. 18 (motion moved and seconded; voice vote). - Approved: Reseat of current chair (motion moved, seconded; voice vote). - Approved: Election of Kevin Elliott as co-chair (motion moved and seconded; voice vote). - Approved: Adjournment (motion moved and seconded).

The board asked staff to circulate the annotated bibliography packet and a brief strategic-plan overview video so commissioners can review the KPIs and return with suggestions for where the board can use its time and influence.