Kansas City, Mo ? Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes has sent a proposal to American Airlines offering incentives for the company to keep its overhaul base — and 2,000 jobs — in the city.

Barnes’ offer includes $100 million to upgrade the base, and another $100 million to construct a state-of-the-art maintenance facility at Kansas City International Airport.

Also among incentives in the long-term lease proposal are that American wouldn’t have to make lease payments for the first five years, and the city would provide $4.5 million annually to help pay back a portion of the bonds.

American has six months remaining on its current lease for the base.

Kansas City voters in 2000 approved $395 million in aviation bonds to improve the airport. Of that, $110 million was set aside for improving the overhaul base, and another $185 million was earmarked for an elevated, automated rail system to take people to and from the terminals to satellite parking lots.

Plans for the people-mover were dropped a year ago after cost estimates came in $58 million higher than expected. Other issues such as increased travel time between parking lots and terminals were cited when the project was abandoned.

That gave Barnes $185 million in already-approved bonding potential to work into her proposal to American.

Despite the incentives, the chips are stacked high against Kansas City if American decides to close one of its three overhaul bases. The Kansas City base is the smallest of the three. One of the other bases is in Fort Worth, Texas, where the company is based; the other base in Tulsa is nearly twice as big as Kansas City’s and employs four times as many people.

The 1.8 million-square-foot Kansas City base employs about 2,200 people with a $163 million annual payroll, said aviation department spokesman Tom McKenna. The Tulsa base has 8,310 employees on a $592 million payroll and 3.4 million square feet of space.

American Airlines spokesman Todd Burke said the company was studying proposals such as the one Barnes submitted and would ultimately do what was best for the company.

“We appreciate the efforts of Mayor Barnes and the city, and are evaluating how this proposal could fit into our plans to return American to financial stability,” Burke said.

American shrunk its fleet by 57 planes this year and is grounding another 57 by next summer, he said.

This week, the company furloughed more than 3,100 flight attendants, including almost 1,800 who had worked for TWA. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy in the spring until being bailed out by $1.8 billion a year in labor concessions.