News and notes from around town:

• Lessons about please and thank you and a textbook written by Miss Manners. Soon, community leaders may find themselves in such a class. On Thursday, members of the business community and several neighborhood groups will participate in focus groups designed to figure out whether Lawrence has a problem with civility. Consensus, which is a non-profit group based out of Kansas City, will be conducting the focus groups. The effort follows up on a project the group conducted in Kansas City — dubbed The Civility Project.

Some of the members of the Kansas City knew group leaders in Lawrence and suggested that an effort be launched in Lawrence. The Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, the local United Way and individuals at the KU School of Journalism all have played a role in setting up the focus groups.

“We were looking for a community where people are really engaged and active in the community,” said Jennifer Wilding, director of the organization. “That certainly seems to be true in Lawrence.”

Tom Kern, president and CEO of the chamber, said he’s not sure Lawrence has a civility problem, but he’s not sure that it doesn’t either.

“The issue does get raised occasionally,” Kern said.

Kern said there have been concerns that if a person or group steps up to take a stand contrary to the prevailing opinion that they will be criticized not only for their ideas but also as a person.

“We have heard some feedback that people don’t feel comfortable coming forward and expressing their opinion,” Kern said. “”With this exercise we are just asking whether we are really open to hear other voices, and do we allow them to have equal time on the stage?”

Evidently, the business community has quite a bit to say on the subject. Kern sent an e-mail a week or so ago asking for about a dozen volunteers for the chamber focus group. He got about 40 volunteers, so a couple of focus groups will be held. Other organizations that Consensus hopes to have focus groups with include the Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods, public officials, senior citizens, school site councils, members of Black churches and rural residents.

The group expects to wrap up the focus groups in the next couple of weeks, and then it will decide whether there is interest in the community for a larger project. That project may focus on how the public process in the community could be changed to better promote civility.

“We want a process to bring out the best in us and let us be the nice people we want to be,” Wilding said.

The group will present its findings at a Sept. 27 event at the Dole Institute of Politics.

It might be an interesting time for this project. The SRS office issue is bringing out a lot of passion right now. Will it get uncivil? Perhaps. I heard a video clip from one public meeting recently where a Lawrence resident said the governor ought to be reported for child abuse over the SRS office closing. Catchy, but not exactly civil.

I also think it will be interesting to hear how much we get talked about during these civility discussions. Wilding said that in other communities anonymous online comments often are cited as an obstacle to civility.

“What we know is that anonymity is the enemy of civility,” Wilding said. “We know that from many focus groups we have done.”

Feel free to comment on that.

• We’ll see how civil folks are in 95-degree heat on crowded sidewalks while looking for bargains. That’s the forecast for Thursday’s Downtown Lawrence Sidewalk Sale. But sidewalk sale organizers are trying make visitors more comfortable in one important way – Porta Potties. The portable toilets will be set up in the vacant lot immediately south of the Eldridge Hotel and also in the breezeway in the 800 block of Massachusetts Street. Downtown Lawrence Inc. also has arranged for several downtown buildings to serve as cooling stations. The locations will offer air conditioning and free water. They are:

1. Watkins Community Museum, 1047 Mass.
2. Signs of Life bookstore, 722 Mass.
3. Blue Dandelion, 841 Mass
4. The Eldridge, 701 Mass.
5. The Carnegie Library building, Ninth and Vermont
6. US Bank, Ninth and Massachusetts

In addition, look for members of the Topeka Zoo to be on hand for the event. They’ll have snakes, lizards, turtles, tortoises and other animals in the 900 block of Massachusetts Street. ( I wonder if the animals consider this their trip to the zoo.) The city also will host its weekly Brown Bag Summer Concert series at noon in front of the US Bank Tower Building at Ninth and Massachusetts. Borderline Country will perform.

• Downtown certainly was the topic yesterday as I hosted a Downtown Roundtable event with a group of property owners and retailers. Landlords Doug Compton and George Paley were part of the group, as was City Commissioner and property/restaurant owner Bob Schumm, and Weaver’s executive Earl Reineman. You can see some of their comments on our live blog transcript, and I’ll report on more when I finish a larger article I’m writing about downtown in the next couple of weeks. But I did want to share with you a bit of the conversation we had about the mix of retail vs. entertainment establishments in downtown. Everyone in the group was concerned downtown is tilting too far toward an entertainment district. Compton said he purchased the Masonic Temple building, in part, to help stop that trend. He said he was convinced the Temple building was going to become perhaps “the largest nightclub in the state of Kansas” if he didn’t buy it. The group seemed to think a market correction is in the making. In other words they think that the number of restaurants in downtown has reached a saturation point, and the market will respond accordingly. But if that doesn’t happen, I also got the sense that action from City Hall may not be out of the question. City Hall does have some control over drinking establishment licenses. Most restaurants in downtown want to serve alcohol. Compton noted that there are many communities where, if you want to have a drinking establishment license in a district, you have to essentially buy one from an existing license holder. I asked how that idea would go over in the Lawrence real estate community. My sense was it would go over about as well as well as warm milk on a hot day. Compton said he wasn’t sure, and he said he personally was “mixed” on the idea. That showed more openness to the idea than I expected. Talk about an idea that could have an impact on property values. Nothing imminent on this, I would guess, but something to keep in the back of your mind.