ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
There has been much work going on throughout the Liberal community and Tuesday, City of Liberal staff gave updates one some of that work.
The presentation began with discussion of projects already completed.
“The end of the summer is always extremely busy for us as we transition from one season to the next, and there’s quite a bit we were able to get accomplished,” Chief Communications Officer Keeley Moree said. “One of the big things was housing, and we do have several housing developments going on in Liberal at the moment. In this last quarter, we did approve some plat changes and a Rural Housing Incentive District (RHID) project for Southeast Liberal near Larry Street and Hickory Street. In that area, we are looking at the developer putting in 65 single-family homes, which will continue to grow our housing market in Liberal. There are multiple single-family home projects in the works along with plans for multi-family dwellings and rental units. Every home we bring onto the city and bring into the market allows for the chance for people to move into those different spaces. We’re excited to get a lot of those started, and there’s been a lot of progress on the Ortuño Addition on the south side of town and the housing going up on the north end of town.”
Another particular project, Moree said, was chip seal maintenance and other road maintenance.
“Chip seal projects did happen throughout this last quarter, and we did crack and chip seal in Northeast Liberal, and we did add Western Avenue to this year’s cycle and rotation,” Moree said. “For several years, we weren’t quite keeping up with that maintenance schedule as well as we should have, so we’re doing a lot more of that recently. We’re definitely working on making sure we’ve got preventative maintenance in place, and we added Western Avenue to this cycle because we didn’t want to see that expense go up in future years. We also recently completed a lot of street markings throughout Liberal, and that includes pavement markings and crosswalks. That’s been going on throughout the entire community, not just in one area or another, so that’s something people in the community should be noticing in recent times.”
The completed projects also included work at the Recreation Center, Moree said.
“We did recently replace the Recreation Center roof, which was a needed repair already,” Moree said. “This allows us to have a good, solid roof on the building to be able to install solar panels in the near future to help with producing power to this building. And in the process of that work, we did end up having a new gym floor put in as well since we did have some issues with some parts of the flooring that came apart during that process, so we did get that refinished.”
Another completed project that drew a lot of excitement from the community was the installation of splash pads at McCray Park and Mahuron Park.
“We did have those splash pads open for a weekend in September, and there was great turnout,” Moree said. “We are going around and putting the final touches on them, including sidewalks leading to the splash pads and some protective fencing to help patrons corralled inside those areas. It was really exciting to see them out playing in those splash pads, and we think they’ll be wonderful additions to the community and will be well utilized by the community.”
The annual Community Health Fair was also a big success, Moree said.
“The City of Liberal did help with sponsorship for the Community Health Fair back in October, and the city commission approved $30,000 to be put toward supporting free lab screenings for the community,” Moree said. “The Community Health Fair did have a record turnout this year, with 1,430 people coming out to get those screenings and other lab work done. The wellness of the community depends on the wellness of the people, and we’re very proud of being able to help with that sponsorship. It did spur some other donors to step up and help with those low-cost screenings as well.”
Even with all of that completed, Moree said, the work did not slow down.
“We did recently complete our budget for 2025, and that resulted in a 3.8 mill reduction and held us at a stable budget compared with our 2024 numbers when you take into account inflation and other circumstances we expect for 2025,” Moree said. “Being able to remain stable there is very impressive, and we really have to thank our staff who worked to keep that number contained and finding different ways to make some things more efficient. The Railroad Crossing Elimination Overpass Grant was submitted after several rounds of public engagement and interaction around that project to be able to help support a grant application to do a development study for site locations for another overpass crossing. We did see great turnout from the community for those discussions as well as with the survey to be able to help us support our grant. We turned in more than 220 pages of documentation to be able to put forth that grant, so we are awaiting that decision. It’s a federal grant that would provide a large portion of the costs of the environmental studies and other necessary work, which would in turn help us obtain the federal dollars that would help with the actual construction. This is a very long process we’ve started, and it very well could be seven to 10 years before we see any construction, and that all depends on the timing of this federal money and our ability to obtain it.”
Some online projects have also been completed, Moree said.
“We did create a new Web site for the Mid-America Air Museum. We discovered there were quite a few people on our main Web site looking for that information, so we did build out that Web site,” Moree said. “It’s going to be great exposure for people to be able to see the entire collection and see a listing of all the aircraft on display. People from throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world visit the museum, so it’s got a much better public profile out there for people to take a look at, and we’re proud of the work the museum staff does. This has been a record year for the museum in terms of attendance, so we want to share it to everyone and remind them of how great an asset that museum is. We’ve also recently started online permits and licenses through the Building Department, so we now have the ability for people to go online and submit permits for contractors and business licenses. That work was very, very paper-heavy, and it took up a lot of people’s time and patience having to go back and forth making sure they had everything necessary, and everything is now online for them to be able to fill out from wherever they are. It’s a great way to be able to help streamline that process for people, especially as we look at being friendly toward welcoming people into the community and establishing their lives and businesses.”
Concluding the completed projects, Moree said, was the repair of slides at Adventure Bay Water Park.
“For those who didn’t know, we have had several of our slides closed in the past due to age and safety, so crews are doing a gel coating repair in order to be able to reopen all the slides for next summer,” Moree said. “We’re excited to get all of those back in operation, it’s something that’s quite needed just to keep those safe for all patrons.”
