Bioscience initiative

City Hall wants on the bioscience bandwagon.

Mayor David Dunfield on Tuesday said the Lawrence City Commission should pass a resolution in favor of state legislation that would promote bioscience research at state universities and larger population centers in town.

Dunfield said the city should solicit endorsement of Kansas University and Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, the Lawrence school district and Baker University in Baldwin.

“We think we have a lot to offer, with the research capabilities we have here,” Dunfield said.

Business registration

In an open letter to members of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce last week, Mayor David Dunfield tried to stem criticism of the city’s aborted plan to register businesses.

News accounts, Dunfield suggested, had blown the issue out of proportion and created the controversy.

“It simply hadn’t occurred to me that the ‘story’ would be those two words (business registration),” Dunfield wrote.

He explained that the point of the proposed registration requirement was to help City Hall track commercial space in Lawrence, so that officials can judge new requests for commercial development. Still, he said, the language of the city policy will be changed to avoid mention of “registration” — and instead will call for another method to collect the needed information.

“Our intention,” Dunfield said, “was and is to avoid harm to our established businesses by oversaturating the local retail market.”

More services online

City Hall has a new tool to help Lawrence’s residents solve neighborhood problems.

A new complaint form is on the city’s Neighborhood Resources Web site, and the city has spread word through neighborhood association presidents.

“It is for any and all types of complaints,” Neighborhood Resources Director Victor Torres said. “We felt having this on our Web site would allow people to interact with us 24 hours a day.”

He said the department takes complaints on all types of issues, including environmental blight, structural concerns, snow blocking sidewalks and parking issues.

The form is online at www.lawrenceneighres.org/ComplaintForm.shtml.

On the other hand …

City Hall’s transition from paper to cyberspace hit a snag this past weekend when the city’s Web site went down for several days.

The city issued a news release Friday saying the site would be down from that evening through Saturday morning, so that work could be done on the city’s Web site server.

Come Saturday morning, though, the site was still down. Same for Sunday morning, and Monday morning. It was back up by early Monday afternoon.

“There were setbacks,” City Hall spokeswoman Lisa Patterson said of the long interruption in Web service. “This is an infrequent occurrence. In fact, there hasn’t been this kind of interruption since we obtained our (Web) domains in 1996.”

Schedule

• Board of Electrical Examiners, 6 p.m. today, City Hall, Sixth and Massachusetts streets.
• Board of Zoning Appeals, 6:30 p.m. Thursday, City Hall, Sixth and Massachusetts streets.
• Grant Review Board, 6:30 p.m. Monday, City Hall, Sixth and Massachusetts streets.
• Public Improvements Task Force, 8 a.m. Tuesday, City Hall, Sixth and Massachusetts streets.
• City Commission study session on utility rates, commission goals and the 2005 budget, 9 a.m. Feb. 11, City Hall, Sixth and Massachusetts streets.