The successor to late Lenexa Councilmember Joe Karlin’s seat is hoping to use data and research to drive his decisions.
A project manager and former Lenexa Planning Commission member, John Michael Handley, was appointed to Karlin’s Ward 1 seat on Jan. 23 by Mayor Julie Sayers. Before his death in December, Karlin had held the seat since 2009.
With his professional background as an engineer and project manager, Handley said he wants to bring a data and research-driven approach to his decisions on the city council.
“When someone brings a concern to me, I want to listen to it, and I want to learn more about it,” he said. “I’m going to try to go out and do some research so that I can have this conversation at the level that they’re wanting to have it.”
Handley moved to Lenexa in 2019
An Onaga, Kansas, native, Handley was immediately struck by Lenexa’s beauty and welcoming nature when he and his husband moved here in 2019.
“(We) knew pretty early on that this was a community that we really liked and wanted to stay put in,” he said.
With a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a master’s in civil engineering from the University of Kansas, Handley said he wanted to put that education to good use in Lenexa and applied for a seat with the planning commission. He was appointed to the commission in 2020.
“To me, it just looked like a really good opportunity to leverage something that I had an education in and to also have a structured way to give back to the community,” he said.
Planning commission, professional experiences
Since he was young, Handley said he’s had a fascination with data and breaking it down into manageable pieces.
That passion has driven his career, he said, first as a water resource engineer at the global engineering firm Black & Veatch and now as a senior project manager for Diode Ventures, a Black & Veatch subsidiary.
In his day job, he works on real estate development for utility-scale renewable energy assets and hyper-scale data center campuses, working with companies like Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and Amazon Web Services.
The job often put Handley on the opposite side of his position on the planning commission, where he’s taking a piece of land and working with the property’s respective city staff to help with planning and zoning.
“Having seen both sides of that decision board, I thought it was a really valuable experience,” he said.
Mayor says Handley’s experience made him the right choice
With the vacancy of Karlin’s Ward 1 seat, Lenexa’s city staff and governing body worked quickly to find a successor to fill out Karlin’s unfinished term, Mayor Julie Sayers said.
Interviewing 16 applicants, Sayers said each one was impressive and qualified. But Handley’s experience with the planning commission, as well as his professional background, made him the best fit, she said.
“He’s served four years to this point and understands at a little bit deeper level what goes into a lot of the things that we do as the governing body because he has spent that time experiencing the first step of that process,” she said.
Where Karlin brought his background in finance to the city council, Handley brings a different approach as a project manager.
“He’s an engineer and comes from a design background, and that’s certainly something that I relate to,” Sayers said. “Being able to understand both the details of an issue and the bigger picture of a given item, I think, is a really important trait for someone to have on the governing body.”
Handley’s current term ends in December
Handley will serve the remainder of Karlin’s term, which concludes in early December 2025 following the Nov. 4 election.
The Johnson County Election Office website shows Handley has already filed to run for a full four-year term this fall.
While his appointment comes during a particularly cold, snowy winter, Handley said he hopes to knock on his constituents’ doors to introduce himself once the weather warms up and host neighborhood meetings in his ward as well.
In the meantime, he encourages the people he represents to email him their comments and concerns so he can represent them well.
“I want folks to reach out. I care about how our city continues to develop. I care about how our city services continue to be just excellent,” he said. “That may not be what everyone else is concerned about. And so, really, having an open line of communication and dialogue with everyone is what I’m hoping for.”
Go deeper: Lenexa pays tribute to Joe Karlin, appoints someone to fill his council seat
