The response of Lawrence city staff to recommendations by the city’s Business Retention Task Force is a promising start to making the city’s planning and permitting process easier to navigate.

There has been much discussion in Lawrence in recent years about whether Lawrence is “friendly” or “unfriendly” to business. Often, being “business friendly” has been seen as doing businesses undue favors or helping them cut corners in the city’s planning process.

But what the Business Retention Task Force learned from a survey of local businesses is that businesses aren’t looking for ways to get around the city’s policies; they just want it to be a little easier to get through them. It’s not that the city’s planning process is unfriendly or unfair; the problem is that it’s hard to navigate and understand.

After hearing from businesses, the task force took its concerns to the city staff and asked them how they could contribute to making the process better. The staff’s response was heartening. Various city departments came up with a list of ways they could better coordinate with one another and provide better, more timely information to members of the public for whom they work.

Online resources were one key. The staff recommended the creation of a Web site that details the city’s development process with links to each step as well as interactive capabilities to retrieve information on specific projects. The staff also envisions a concept called “BusinessLink,” which would bring together staff members of core departments that work with development projects. This work group would regularly review the status of projects and help applicants identify any “hot spot” issues that need attention.

Throughout the recommendations, staff members seem aware of the need to, as City Manager Mike Wildgen put it at Tuesday’s City Commission meeting, “send as few mixed messages as possible.” One of the most frequent complaints of applicants working with the city is that the planning process is unpredictable and that roadblocks seem to suddenly appear even when they believe they have fulfilled the city’s requirements.

City Commissioner Sue Hack, a member of the task force, emphasized that “the planning and permitting process can never be a moving target.” People doing projects should be able to look at the process at the beginning and see exactly what requirements they need to fulfill. Further, they need to know that when they have met those requirements, they can expect their project to be approved, not run into other unexpected detours.

The idea of making Lawrence more “business friendly” is not to give businesses a “free pass,” Hack said, or to bend any rules for project applicants. It’s to make the process consistent and understandable for both companies and individuals who are trying to do business with the city.

That’s a great goal for city staff members to pursue, and the community should monitor, but also applaud, their efforts.