Kansas impact on the Economy

Last week, I attended the KU City Manager seminar. The theme of the program was how cities were coping in this economy. The example cities/counties experienced the desperate times we hear about in the news daily.

One thing like to do at conferences with my colleagues is spend time in the halls talking and comparing notes. This year the comments are not like the stories we hear from the major media outlets. Like Hillsboro, Kansas communities are coping well during this time. The more I listened to the stories in the seminar and the stories in the hallway a theory developed in my mind. In Kansas' smaller communities, local governments do not stray far from the core purpose of what government is supposed to do! The purpose of government activities is to do for the community that we can't do for ourselves. When we gather in community living, we try to spread the jobs around. One person does law enforcement, another does fire protection. One provides water and another teaches school. And the activities go on.

In larger communities, there are more people asking for more things to be done and because there is money available, the diversity of activities grows.

This is the contrast I saw last week. Since folks want more and their government is willing to provide it times like we are seeing create pressure to keep doing the same grandiose things. In our smaller communities, I see us doing the core services well and fairly Spartan. (We certainly could use a couple more people in certain areas too.) We are living within our means and we have a sense of not getting too extravagant. The Midwest work ethic plays here too.

So my unofficial poll is this, we are doing well compared to the east and west coast. We are thankful that our community does not hurt like those I heard about last week.