Visionary Leadership Develops Comprehensive Plans: A Glass Half Full

Preserving What We Have While Growing

By Connie Parish

Contributing Write

“We don’t know when or in what form it’ll happen, but we’re anxious to make sure we’re ready as it happens.”

As county and city leaders contemplate their roles, one thing is increasingly clear. They can’t afford to be short-sighted. They must have their “eye on the prize” in the short-term, but it’s even more important to determine what will happen 10 to 15 years in the future – or even conceivably past their own lifetimes.

Comprehensive planning, then, becomes a vital issue. So it’s not surprising, looking around Leavenworth County, that it is a big focus for many entities. County commissioners will be deciding later this spring how they will use the information that’s been gathered over past months through surveys prepared by Oschner Hare & Hare and several public meetings.

Leavenworth officials are also working with a consultant, Olsson Associates, which is preparing questions designed to find out what city residents want to see happening to their city.

Meanwhile, the county’s economic development association, Leavenworth County Development Corporation, has joined with Irv Jensen, a consultant now located in Missouri, to determine how the group can work more effectively. He, too, is preparing a comprehensive strategic plan the board was scheduled to consider in mid-February.

Two other communities, Lansing and Tonganoxie, are reviewing plans done previously, determining what their next steps will be.

Steve Jack, executive director of LCDC, explains it this way. “It’s with some frustration we see all this development. We have seen it for several decades in Johnson County, then after the NASCAR track, there was tremendous growth in Wyandotte County. We know in our heart of hearts we’re probably next. We don’t know when or in what form it’ll happen, but we’re anxious to make sure we’re ready as it happens.”

Once the LCDC strategy is in place, Jack said they’ll be prepared to work more effectively with the county and its communities. He describes the county’s plan as “a significant document that could set the course for the next couple of decades about where development will go.”

Leavenworth County Director of Planning and Zoning Christopher Dunn sees his role as educating the decision-makers as to their options, the trends and what data will support, as well as taking the “pulse of the public.”

As far as planning goes, Dunn said, there are generally known principles. “If you get certain types of growth, you get certain types of effects system-wide.” And he adds, “What we have in many ways is a very rural county that also isn’t Kansas City, whether it wants to be or not.”

While it’s clear residents want to keep that rural character, other themes are obvious as well. “We hear, even from rural folks, that they want opportunities; they want places where their kids can get a job locally and stay; they want educational opportunities; they want to be able to shop and keep their money in the county, rather than taking it to Wyandotte or Platte counties,” Dunn said.

Another trend that he says must be acknowledged ─ the majority of Leavenworth County’s growth is coming from the Kansas City area.

“Their expectations are slightly different,” he said. “They’re not necessarily looking for 60 or 180 acres. A lot are looking for what they can’t find in Wyandotte or Johnson County, which is an affordable, small rural acreage and a good school district.”

Along with affordable prices, more land and good schools, they will “still be able to get downtown to their jobs quicker than they could from southern Johnson County,” Dunn said, which makes southern Leavenworth County attractive.

But, as he puts it, “God’s not making any more land. So what’s there is out there and if you fill your open area with 2.5 acre homes, you don’t really get enough tax money off homes to support the roads that are needed.”

That’s where the balancing act comes in. The county’s new comprehensive plan will emphasize new growth in the cities, where Dunn said it belongs. It won’t promote rural subdivisions next to the cities, because they become a tax burden if cities have to sewer all the new growth immediately, as well as beefing up roads, law enforcement and other city services.

Instead, rural growth will be promoted in areas where it’s more appropriate, and developers will know ahead of time where that will be. After all, Dunn said, the county will be built by developers, who have to be considered partners, not “wily coyotes we’re against.” And to build trust, “they’ve got to know we’ve got a stable, reasonable and responsive set of regulations and people are enforcing those regulations.”

 Ideally, developers would know the county’s expectations up front, knowing they wouldn’t be switched in mid-stream, which would “help them make a profit in a way they also pay for the full impact of the subdivision,” Dunn said. In the past, county taxpayers as a whole have had to foot the tab for rural subdivisions, because the residents complained they didn’t have city level services.  Working closely with the cities – actually forming interlocal agreements – is much more productive, Dunn contends.

“I think you can have growth and preservation,” the county planner said. “You can have it all, but nobody goes out to the garage and hammers out an airplane. They come up with a plan and they approach it systematically and modify it as needed.”

With more rooftops, there are more consumers, which can help keep shoppers’ money in the county. When a new home is built, Dunn noted, it takes nearly all its property taxes to break even for necessary services. Instead, economic growth comes from new businesses “coming to places where there are a lot of people who are educated and employable, and the sales taxes generated from those folks shopping locally.”

Lansing officials have been working on a downtown commercial district to take advantage of that. Mayor Ken Bernard said Lansing’s Town Centre has been in the works since about 2000. The city, which owned most of the land, put in the streets and the infrastructure, he said, and he expects to be seeing the results of the Tax Increment Financing project soon. The hope is for retail establishments, such as a grocery store, a restaurant and some specialty stores.

In Leavenworth, Director of Planning and Community Development Jerry Gies said city officials want to ask residents questions that weren’t answered in the 1998 comprehensive plan, which focused on a “vision of what citizens in the community wanted.” Results of that plan are evident throughout the city, including the aquatics center in Wollman Park. Most of the community’s households were surveyed, and there was a “tremendously high” response rate of 50 percent. Trails will likely come up as an issue again this time, as the city has not been as successful at that, he said.

Another topic will be the North Fourth Street arborway, because some elected officials wanted to strip it out and make it commercial, Gies said. The update will also focus on whether citizens want the city to grow or if they’re happy being a “bedroom community.” Do they want more government jobs or should the city focus on a more diversified economy?

“People like the small nature of our community, which is friendly and close to a metropolitan area, close to an airport, and I don’t think by and large they want to be Johnson County,” Gies said.  Of course, he adds, there are areas for improvement.

Revitalizing downtown to capitalize on historic tourism is something Gies calls an economic development tool.

Leavenworth City Planner Roger Denton said there’s a delicate balance between “cleaning up and tearing down. We want to clean up everything” but not destroy history. He thinks the city’s property maintenance ordinance has helped. He thinks adding fines for cleaning up and mowing unsightly properties will help.

Meanwhile, the city of Tonganoxie is reviewing ways to implement the comprehensive plan adopted last year.  Administrator Mike Yanez thinks his community stacks up well against others, not only in utilities and a good transportation network, but also a quality of life that families find attractive. He cites a library, parks, a recreation commission and a new swimming pool that should be complete this summer as examples.