Lawrence city commissioners expressed some willingness Tuesday night to grant at least some of the emergency funding needed to keep the Lawrence Community Shelter from reducing staff and services this year.

But they said the funding may come with conditions, and they would not commit to a specific dollar amount.

Officials from the Lawrence Community Shelter, which moved into its new, expanded facility in 2012, is seeking $200,000 in emergency funding — $100,000 each from the city and Douglas County — to prevent it from running out of cash next month.

Without the funding, the shelter’s director of operations Trey Meyer said, the 125-bed shelter will have to begin laying off staff and reducing services as early as next week.

That would also require closing as many as 45 or 50 bed spaces and reducing the kinds of services it offers.

“The majority of that burden would fall on the adult, single side,” Meyer said, adding that the priority would be to keep families staying in the shelter together. “We have about 20 kids staying there now.”

John Tacha, vice president of the shelter’s board, admitted that the cash-flow problem has been mainly due to a lack of aggressive fundraising since moving into the new facility.

“There has been a bit of board fatigue in terms of fundraising,” he said. But he said a new board has recently taken over, and he vowed that the financial situation will be turned around.

“The previous board was responsible for the awesome feat of raising money for the new shelter,” he said. “As board leadership turns over, our responsibility is to make it financially stable. We’re new to this responsibility but we’re thoroughly invested.”

City commissioners took no formal action on the request because the item had only been added to the agenda late Monday. But they did authorize Mayor Jeremy Farmer to open discussions with Douglas County officials about putting together a joint city-county aid package for the shelter.

Commissioner Stuart Boley suggested the city could provide at least part of the money being requested on a matching basis as an incentive for private donors to contribute as well.

Neighborhood Revitalization Act

Also Tuesday, commissioners received a briefing from city staff about the city’s use of Neighborhood Revitalization Act incentives to spur redevelopment in the city.

Under that law, enacted in 1994, people who redevelop existing properties in a way that increases their assessed valuation can qualify for rebates on the incremental increase in property taxes generated by the project.

Britt Crum-Cano, the city’s economic development coordinator, said Lawrence is one of the few cities that restricts the use of those incentives to individual private developments. Unlike most other cities, she said, Lawrence has not designated public revitalization areas in which all property owners within a defined area could qualify for the abatements.

Commissioner Leslie Soden, however, said she is not interested in expanding the incentive program to include entire neighborhoods.

“We already have a problem with affordable housing,” she said. “I’m not interested in spurring gentrification of our neighborhoods when we already have an affordable housing crisis.”

In other business, the commissioners:

• Agreed, on a 4-1 vote, to accept $600,000 in federal highway safety improvement funds to install a roundabout at Wakarusa Drive and Harvard Road. Commissioner Mike Amyx voted against it.

• Approved, on a 5-0 vote, the first reading of an ordinance creating an Affordable Housing Advisory Board, which would make recommendations to the commission regarding the use of money in an Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Commissioners also directed staff to make certain changes in the proposed ordinance.

• Agreed, 5-0, to rezone approximately 10 acres of land at 4300 W. 24th Place from a single dwelling residential office district to a neighborhood shopping center district.