Economic development will be the Lawrence City Commission’s top priority in the next year, commissioners decided in an annual goal-setting session Saturday.

Mayor Sue Hack said that meant the commission would be more vocal in its support of the city’s economic development activities, which it pays the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce more than $90,000 a year to handle.

The support could also mean more money for economic development, Hack said. She pointed to the construction of a “spec” building at East Hills Business Park as the kind of activity the city wants to promote. The building, which doesn’t yet have a tenant, will be put on the market as a ready-to-use building for companies interested in locating in Lawrence.

“It’s risky, but if we don’t take that risk, somebody else will,” she told the Journal-World. “To me, it’s riskier not to try.”

During the session, Hack told her colleagues that emphasizing economic development would require the commission to ask some questions.

“Are we a community, from a city commission and staff standpoint, that welcomes business?” Hack said. “Do we have a process in place that allows that, or do we have a process that obstructs that?”

Four of the five city commissioners made economic development a top priority in their rankings.

“I would love to bury this idea we’re talking about growth-no growth,” Commissioner Mike Rundle said. “We need to move on to talk about how we’re going to grow.”

That would be reflected in the commission’s No. 2 priority: planning for growth. Commissioners said they wanted to help move along revisions of Horizon 2020, the city-county long-range planning document, and revisit the long-standing debate over how closely it should be followed.

The final top priority was “community building.” Commissioners said they wanted to foster appreciation of Lawrence’s culture and heritage  possibly with a communitywide annual festival.

The priorities were the result of two days of conversations between the commissioners, top city staff and management consultant Carol Nalbandian. The “retreat” could portend a change in the way the commission does business; commissioners said they wanted to find more time for meetings where they talk to each other about ideas instead of just addressing items that require immediate action.

And at least one member of the public wants to be more a part of that process. Lawrence resident Delores Tolar was the only person to attend Saturday’s meeting at Lawrence Municipal Airport, delivering a letter of ideas she said would make the city better. She said residents should have a voice in the goal-setting process.

“They’re doing this here, but the citizens aren’t participating,” Tolar said. “We’re missing out on creative problem-solving by our citizens.”

Commissioners said several times during the weekend that preserving public input into government processes was important.

“It’s a two-way street,” Hack said. “We have to do our part and get the information out there that the public can use. And the public has to do its part of participating in the process.”