Lawrence’s policy on tax rebates and abatements may need some fine tuning, but city commissioners should be careful not to oversimplify the goals of a development tool that serves a number of different purposes.

It’s clear that some city commissioners want to severely restrict tax incentives for residential projects, and they are right that the size of those rebates and abatements may have grown too much in recent years. It also makes sense for a jobs-producing industry to be eligible for greater incentives than a new apartment building, but that doesn’t mean the public has nothing to gain by providing reasonable incentives for some residential projects.

Promoting residential development in downtown Lawrence, for instance, has some broad public benefits because it helps support the vitality of that area. To say, as two commissioners did on Tuesday, that a residential project proposed by former commissioner Bob Schumm contributed nothing to the “public good” seems like a narrow view.

In addition to providing more downtown residences, the project would fill a vacant lot with a building that, over the long haul, would vastly increase the value of that property and the taxes paid on it. The plans also include parking for the new units so it wouldn’t contribute to downtown parking congestion.

Those factors may not be as important to Lawrence as jobs or affordable housing, but they still represent some contribution to the “public good.” Would it serve the public more for that lot to remain vacant? Or for the city to directly or indirectly provide an incentive for a different project that doesn’t provide parking for its residents?

City officials may also need to consider their long-range strategy for downtown parking. Current ordinances allow apartment complexes like the one under construction at the southeast corner of Eighth and New Hampshire to be built without dedicated parking for residents. Is that a trend commissioners want to encourage?

Commissioners also shouldn’t be too quick to make arbitrary decisions on incentives. Schumm requested a tax rebate of 85 percent for five years and 50 percent for the next five years. That’s in line with what some other downtown projects have received, but Mayor Mike Amyx was the only commissioner who supported allowing the plan to be reviewed by city staff and the Public Incentives Review Committee. Eventually, three commissioners agreed to direct city staff to work with Schumm to try to develop a project that would be feasible with a 50 percent rebate, but two commissioners didn’t want the city even to have that conversation.

That kind of summary dismissal of a development proposal that falls within the city’s current policy parameters doesn’t set a positive tone for any developer or business that wants to do a project in Lawrence. As commissioners move toward revisions in the city’s incentives policy they need to make sure the policy is both competitive and flexible enough not to chase away projects before they’re even proposed.