Lawrence and Douglas County commissioners say they would be willing to use tax breaks, low-interest loans and other incentives to attract new businesses to town.

That’s provided they don’t have to pay too high of a price.

“There’s not a lot of spare money floating around the city right now to create new cash incentives,” Mayor David Dunfield said. “The best incentives we can provide are the ones that don’t require spending taxpayers’ money.”

Commissioners and members of the Lawrence school board met Wednesday with officials from the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, Kansas City Area Development Council, Kansas Department of Commerce and others to review prospects for rejecting, retaining or bolstering incentive programs for economic development.

Lawrence already offers property-tax breaks for companies that qualify. Douglas County sells ready-to-develop land at the East Hills Business Park for below-market prices.

But economic-development officials say the community should think about doing more to help the county compete with 300 other U.S. metro areas and 15,000 economic-development organizations angling for as few as 100 major business projects each year.

And with the odds and stakes akin to winning a national championship in basketball — companies coming to town can bring hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars of investment — commissioners should be sure to take the court with the strongest team possible, said Jonathan Sangster, a site-selection consultant.

“Let me use a metaphor,” said Sangster, senior managing director for CB Richard Ellis in Atlanta, who helped lead Serologicals Corp. and its $28 million investment to Lawrence. “If Bill Self wants to compete, consistently, for the conference championship or … make it to the Final Four year in and year out, and compete for a national championship, he’s got to have the tools. He’s got to have the resources to get there. He’s got to have the right assistant coaches. He’s got to have the good facilities to be able to attract the players. He’s got to have a recruiting budget. It’s got to be an investment of time and dollars and resources to help him develop that team to be successful.

“The same can be said in economic development: It’s putting that package together to be a winner.”

What changes Lawrence might make to its collective package remain unclear, but officials are floating ideas.

Local governments in other college towns with Big 12 universities — Manhattan; Ames, Iowa; and Waco, Tex. — offer cash incentives for companies to move in, said Lynn Parman, vice president of economic development for the Lawrence chamber. Other cities offer tax breaks for developers willing to build facilities that might attract new businesses; others dangle free land, low-interest loans and other items to land new jobs.

Dwayne Peaslee, a member of the Lawrence-Douglas County Economic Development Advisory Board, said that Lawrence needed to come up with some creative ideas of its own if it didn’t want to get left behind by other communities.

“It’s like anything else,” said Peaslee, a retired labor leader. “You have to invest in it to make it work.”

But Dunfield, an architect, said it would be difficult in today’s budgetary environment to create any plan that would cost extra money. He would prefer to seek procedural changes that could make a difference when Lawrence competes with other communities for business projects.

Among the possibilities, he said: Expediting permitting processes, so that a new business coming to town wouldn’t get held up in red tape at City Hall.

“If there are ways we can smooth the path by showing companies that we care, I think that’s something we should look at,” he said.

Commissioners invited Parman and other chamber officials to come up with a list of incentives offered by other communities, so that commissioners could look them over and decide whether any of them might be appropriate for Lawrence.