Time working in Municipal Court has spurred a Kansas University law student to file for a seat on the Lawrence City Commission.

Cori Viola, a second-year law student at KU, said her time as a clerk for the nonprofit advocacy group Kansas Appleseed helped bring to light some issues she thinks the commission ought to change. She said her work involved a city ordinance that requires people convicted in Municipal Court to pay a little more than $72 per day for jail time. She said for poverty-stricken defendants, the requirement often just makes it more difficult for them to improve their situations. Plus, she said the mass of paperwork the system creates is a burden for the court.

“My main concern is it disproportionately impacts poor sections of the community,” Viola said.

Viola said other issues also have caused her to become concerned about some of the commission’s actions. She said the Rock Chalk Park sports complex should serve as a reminder of why good process is important at City Hall.

“When we do things like no-bid contracts it leads to a myriad of disasters, which has been demonstrated by Rock Chalk Park,” she said.

Viola also said she is concerned that the East Lawrence neighborhood has not been given a strong enough voice in the discussions about creating an arts corridor along portions of Ninth Street east of Massachusetts Street. She also questions whether city commissioners are heeding the message of voters who rejected a sales tax proposal to pay for a new police headquarters. She said she is not sure the new headquarters is “completely necessary.”

“I think it is a little bit of an insult that the community has spoken and they are still trying to ram this through,” she said.

Viola, 23, has lived in Lawrence for six years, while receiving her undergraduate degrees and working on her law degree. She said that the City Commission could benefit from having a younger voice and new perspectives.

“The current City Commission is a microcosm of politics at large: an elite group serving their own purposes and tuning out the voters,” she said in a press release.

Viola is the 13th candidate to file for one of three at-large seats on the commission. The others are City Commissioner Bob Schumm; City Commissioner Terry Riordan; Leslie Soden, the owner of a Lawrence pet sitting company; Stuart Boley, a retired IRS agent; Stan Rasmussen, an attorney for the U.S. Army; Matthew Herbert, a Lawrence High School government and civics teacher; Justin Priest, a Lawrence bus driver and leader of the local transit union; Mike Anderson, the host of a cable television program; Kristie Adair, a Lawrence school board member and co-owner of Wicked Broadband; Gary Williams, an owner of a local janitorial service; Rob Sands, a full-time officer in the Kansas National Guard; and David Crawford, a leader of a grass-roots group to bring a grocery store downtown.

Candidates have until noon Tuesday to file for one of the three at-large seats. A March 3 primary will narrow the field to six candidates. The general election will be April 7.

2015 Lawrence city commission candidates (in order of filing)