ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The City of Liberal has been able to accomplish much throughout 2025, including economic development, construction projects, and the approval and implementation of the Comprehensive Plan.
As City Manager Scarlette Diseker tells it, 2025 certainly kept City of Liberal staff busy.
“I think 2025 went exceptionally well. We had a lot to do in this year, in my opinion, and there were several things I wanted to monitor and potentially adjust, which I think that's pretty normal when a new leader takes over,” Diseker said. “We really started by assembling the leadership team, the administrative team, who was going to oversee everything happening in the next year, whether that be from an HR perspective, from a special projects point of view, anything involving operations of the city, I really needed to make sure I had leadership in place and then delegated out the different things that I expected. We set out a roadmap, the best that we could for the timeframe that I came in. When I became the city manager, officially, in January, the budget had already been passed, and all of that work had taken place, so we were moving through a year I'd partially had a hand in making those budgetary decisions, and then a former city manager as well, so they did a great job. I'm very proud of the things the people can visually see, like pickleball courts and the Liberal Animal Shelter dog runs and full completion of the splash pads. But I'm also very proud of the work that we've done with Keeley [Young] and the communications department. New logo, upcoming signage as a result of that which, once you get the logo refreshed and updated, you can order new Christmas decorations and flags for the light poles and anything that helps you promote your company or business. So I mean, I could go on forever about the things that have happened, but I'm looking at a list of over 50 things that we accomplished in 2025 and I think we have even more planned for 2026.”
Diseker said there is an overall positive vibe as 2025 draws to a close.
“I think all of our departments are pretty proud of what we accomplished in 2025 and as I said at the most recent Liberal City Commission meeting, we have our foot on the gas going into 2026. We have a Comprehensive Plan that has been adopted and completed, so we have a roadmap for the future,” Diseker said. “We're working on some downtown revitalization. We have a lot of economic development coming down, so we're just building upon what has happened in 2025, and it's a lot of really great news. I think we'll hit in 2026 many items of which I feel the public has asked for for quite some time. We've got everything from project development, upgrades to Adventure Bay Water Park and getting that information out there, but also pretty large economic development projects which we're excited to be able to reveal soon. Our staff is very proud of our work. I am very pleased with what we have accomplished this year. We got organized, we found our identity, and we clearly defined who we were and what we wanted. Now, I think we can have a seat at the table for this part of the region of Kansas. We repaired a lot of image issues with the city and we will expand upon that in 2026.”
However, Diseker said, not everything went quite according to plan.
“Something that went according to plan from the city's standpoint, but not necessarily in terms of public reception, was the Ruby Red Slipper Slide at the Tourism Department. We loved that project mainly because we worked really hard on the funding,” Diseker said. “We did that from a state commerce grant for the Tourism Department which only a fraction of projects that are presented to the state get approved for, and we did it in a combined effort with that grant and the transient guest tax, which is paid for by people who come through town and stay in our hotels. It's not paid for with local property tax dollars or the 1-cent sales tax. We tried to be very proactive in the way we messaged that. I understand not everything we do is going to be popular, and people may not see the point of that, but the point of that grant is to create roadside attraction in Kansas, and a committee at the state level decides whether or not your project that you presented is worthy of grant funding for a Kansas roadside attraction tourism project. The fact they were so receptive at the state level of what we had put together, it was a little surprising. When we brought that project back to Liberal and put it out there that people were pretty negative about it. But at the end of the day, our Tourism Department sees the foot traffic, whether other people do or not. The slide is serving its purpose and doing what it's supposed to do, and they have slides like that in Las Vegas and other tourist cities of the world, and they're very popular place to stop, and then hopefully the goal is that people will eat and shop or possibly stay the night.”
Diseker added work continues to happen with the Wastewater Treatment Plant funding situation.
“The wastewater plant was started years ago and originated with plans to have a combined plant with National Beef, then through city management changeover into different decisions that turned into a split plant, which cost us about $45 million and National Beef more than that,” Diseker said. “You inherit those types of situations, you uncover them and look into them, and try to figure out what needs to be done. I am pretty proud of the work we've done administratively involving the correction of those financial situations that we received when I arrived here, but we implemented a flat $10 fee. With that in place, we sunsetted a $6.25 fee for residential and a $12.50 cent fee for commercial. On the water side, we basically took those funds, just implemented a flat wastewater fee, and then sunsetted that so that people would be hit with two flat fees. We want to make sure we're not negatively impacting the public. Since that was adopted in April, we've generated about $500,000 from that flat fee, which is helping to pay that loan back. Because that loan runs until 2037, we have a very state of the art plant. We want to make sure we have the fiscal health and responsibility to take care of it and pay for it with that revolving loan at KDHE, so the revenue generation side of the wastewater plant financials have been corrected. It will just take a couple of years to totally recover from that and make sure we are producing enough revenue to pay back the loan and also create enough revenue to pay back some of that construction deficit. With my background in finance, I'm glad we could put our heads together, come up with that, get it through the commission, and have as little impact on the public as possible. What I tell everybody is that situation, as hard as it was when I got it in the beginning, has flipped, kind of showing signs of recovery.”
Diseker said there is plenty to be excited going into 2026.
“I'm very excited we will be able to give the public a dog park. We have those plans, and we've done a lot of work to prepare for the first quarter of 2026 to put in a community dog park in across from the Recreation Center at the McCray Park area property Pine Street. We will put in parking there and a very fun and hopefully active dog park for the community, and we're going to make it a reasonable size. If that goes well, we want to be able to put one on the north side of town as well,” Diseker said. “We have a lot of other really great projects planned that have to do with just improving our facilities and making things better for our staff members, but also really starting to get into conversations about what we need to do about the water park. It is 17 or 18 years old at this point, and we've done some community engagement to talk about what can be done to improve it, stabilize it, and give the public what they've been asking for for many years. Something that never was completed with Phase Two was a lazy river, and I've not heard the end of that in all of these years. People want that, and when it comes to 1-cent sales tax dollars, we want to give the people what they want.”
Diseker added she and City of Liberal leadership will continue working hard to be good stewards when it comes to the 1-cent sales tax.
“The purpose of the 1-cent sales tax is for project development and quality of life improvement. The 1-cent sales tax is voted on by the public for, like I already said, project development, so we have to put those projects out there, and that's what those funds being saved in there are to be spent on,” Diseker said. “Our overseeing body, the Focus On the Future Committee, helps give us structure and delegate how they would like those funds to be spent as to what the public is telling them, and we meet on a monthly basis. I'm also looking forward to seeing the new logo be put on new signage – if you've been to our parks and any of our other placemaking signs throughout town, they need an upgrade, but we've been responsibly waiting for the logo to be updated before we did that. I can't wait to see our parks get a facelift with signage – some people might think that is not a big deal, but the way we view ourselves and the way we present ourselves is a big deal, and it's part of our image and how we portray ourselves to the public. And of course, we broke ground recently on a new CityBus facility, which is a project that has been talked about since I got here three years ago. The fact that I got to sign the contract and break the ground on it was great, and I was honored to do that.”
Overall, Diseker said, she feels the city is in a good spot going into a new year.
“I want this to be a city people want to live in and putting down roots and staying because the more that we can attract families and people to either stay in Liberal, go to college and come back, or move into Liberal because there's job availability that increases the tax base,” Diseker said. “People buy homes, they pay taxes, and they shop here, and they build things here. They can build sports programs and music and theater programs. I want Liberal to be an attractive place. I grew up here, I care about it, and it's why I stayed, so we're very much looking forward to leading by example in all areas of the city, creating solid quality of life, repairing an image that's been rough for a bit, but is on the mend and definitely on the rise. I think we've set ourselves up for a really great 2026, and I'm looking forward to more discussion about downtown revitalization. We want people to know we're open for business, and I want to thank everybody who's helped us this far. I want to also ask for support from the public, and we'll continue to do what we can for them and listen to them.”
