Whether it’s complaints about traffic, worries about red tape or questions about tax incentives, Sue Hack wants to hear all about it.

Straight from the business leaders’ mouths.

“Hopefully we can learn a little bit more about our existing companies,” said Hack, a Lawrence city commissioner scheduled to visit Sauer-Danfoss Inc. later this month. “We tend to do aerial flips when a new company comes to town, but we really haven’t done as good a job thanking those companies that continue to be here and continue to invest in our economy.

“This is thanking them for being here, and hopefully we can learn more about them.”

The scheduled visit is part of a new team approach for Hack and other elected officials, who are working to open and nurture lines of communication between major employers and officials at Lawrence City Hall, the Douglas County Courthouse and the Lawrence school district’s service center.

The officials from local governments are fielding three teams to drop by Lawrence’s 30 largest businesses in the coming months as part of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce’s new Elected Officials Visitation Program.

The program grew out of the city’s Business Retention Task Force, and surveys of existing businesses, that uncovered a connection between government and business officials.

“Both parties had expressed an interest in getting to know one another better,” said Heather Ackerly, the chamber’s manager of existing business programs.

Of the 442 new, basic jobs added in Lawrence last year, 399 came within existing companies, Ackerly said. Typically, 80 percent of all new jobs can be attributed to such expansions, not to businesses that are new to town.

Chamber officials hope that the increased communication will be a worthwhile investment for everyone involved.

“This is a very forward-looking and progressive program, to make sure that companies – both on the local level and up to their corporate level, if applicable – understand that this is a community that is committed to them being here and that we want to make sure that they continue to grow and succeed and add new jobs to the community,” Ackerly said.

Victoria Purvis, human resources team leader at Sauer-Danfoss, is looking forward to the Aug. 18 visit from Hack and her fellow team members. The company continues to be on a growth track, with 250 employees working to make pumps and motors for use primarily in heavy-duty equipment.

Purvis said that new equipment was arriving from Denmark to boost production of a new line, which makes low-speed, high-torque motors for mowers used at golf courses and by landscaping companies.

Such product expansions thus far have come without a need to expand the size of the plant, she said, but future growth could require more space. And adding space could leave the company exposed to complying with a mounting set of new regulations, some of which could be up for discussion in a couple weeks.

“We’re never at a loss for words,” Purvis said.