ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
There has been a lot of progress on multiple projects throughout the community lately, but as City of Liberal staff tells it, there is much more to come.
“One of the big undertakings going on right now is our water line replacement project, which, even though there are still a few details we’re working on, is continuing to move forward,” Communications Director Keeley Moree said. “That will be rolling forward and replacing different water lines throughout the city and making sure our water infrastructure continues to stay updated, because we do want to be able to continue providing clean water to our residents. We’ve also continued working on our Comprehensive Plan, and we had a lot of activity in April and May with that in regard to public engagement. We did put out a community survey that had nearly 700 participants, and since then, our consultants have been working on putting together a professional plan for the future. We’ve been reviewing all the different feedback from not only the survey, but also from public events we attended, focus groups we put together comprised of people throughout the community, and we truly feel the best Comprehensive Plan will come from our citizens. We will be seeing more activity with the Comprehensive Plan come September, we’ll have another Steering Committee meeting to look at some of the ideas that were generated based on the feedback we got from our public engagement activities as well as city planners who work on tasks like this on a regular basis and can bring some ideas that match what is being talked about throughout the community. We look to have all of that wrapped up and available for the community to review by January, so we appreciate everyone who’s been part of that process, and our core team continues to work hard on everything related to that.”
Moree also gave a quick update on another longtime project, floodplain mapping.
“We need this mapping in order to be able to take a look and reassess our flood mapping, not just for stormwater management purposes, but also for making sure we have an updated insurance risk management map,” Moree said. “We will continue working, through our lobbyist, with FEMA so we can get our letter of map revision, which will allow for a lot of changes in terms of development and where we can put what based on that new data and information.”
The Web sites for the City of Liberal and the Mid-America Air Museum will also soon see some updates and upgrades, Moree said.
“If you’re familiar with the City of Liberal Web site, it’s got very familiar graphics because they are from many years ago,” Moree said. “I started working on that project a while back, and we have updated portions of our Web site in terms of content, but as far as the overall look, it’s pretty much the same. We’re working with our Web site host company to be able to put forth some changes, and there are some cool new layouts. We also looked closely at our analytics to see what people were searching for, and we’ll be able to float that information into much more visible sections of the site. We’re really looking forward to how that ultimately ends up. In looking at all of that analytics, we found a lot of people were looking for the Mid-America Air Museum, which currently does not have its own Web site, but we felt it was really important for that to be available to people from the area and the rest of the U.S. who want to pay a visit and see that facility. One of the museum’s employees made that suggestion, and it just fit really well with exactly what we’re trying to do in terms of advertising Liberal and putting ourselves out there.”
“In terms of the water line replacement, I have to be candid and say the staff failed the public in that regard,” Liberal City Manager Rusty Varnado said. “There were various circumstances that came up that prevented us from being able to do that necessary work, but when things finally got cleared up, KDHE thankfully honored our original rate and agreement, and we’re pleased to be able to finally get things going. With the Comprehensive Plan, I cannot overstate the importance of the public engagement, and the sessions we’ve hosted have been VERY beneficial, especially with our Mexican and Guatemalan populations, so I have to give a huge thank you to everyone involved with those. The floodplain mapping was an absolute disaster, the FEMA maps had almost 80 percent of Liberal’s land mass in the city limits in a floodplain. We spent a little more than $200,000 to get a complete redo of the mapping, and the engineers did an excellent job of providing in-depth studies and everything else necessary.”
Moree then continued talking about other projects currently in progress.
“A big project we’ve been working on for a while is the splash pads, and those are currently being installed at Mahuron Park and McCray Park. The company was able to come in last week and get work started on that, and we’re anticipating those will be open in September,” Moree said. “We’ve had a lot of community enthusiasm around this project, and we’re excited as well to see how everything ends up looking. These splash pads will be open year-round for families, and we’re excited to see how the community responds. We’ve also been going about with the solar panels installation on city properties – we’ve had them installed at the Wastewater Treatment Plant as well as the Liberal Fire Department and the Liberal Animal Control buildings, so we’re really happy to have these opportunities. We have a few other buildings we’ll be installing those, so people should be on the lookout for that.”
There are also some upgrades that will be made to Arkalon Park.
“This is the first year we’ll have Arkalon Park open year-round, and we’ve heard a lot of enthusiasm from people who want to be out there in the fall, and they’ll now have the opportunity to see Arkalon Park in all four seasons,” Moree said. “We’re also continuing plans for a gun range in that area, and that will be part public and part law enforcement, and it should be a great opportunity as far as training and everything else. We’re also looking at installing cabins at Arkalon Park for people who do want to visit throughout the year, that will give those visitors the chance to stay in an indoor space. We do anticipate those cabins being highly utilized, and we’re looking forward to seeing that project come to life.”
