I read on another post, a description of events in Lindsborg, Ks. and the following is my reply: Their are a lot of differences between Lindsborg and Fort Scott.
Lindsborg is pushing and highlighting what they have, building on their history and entertaining 30,000 people at their 2-day festival. Quite obviously they like what they have and are proud of their heritage. It is a place geared to tourism, and it sounds like they have learned to live within their means.
Quite the opposite for our town. We are being naive about our history and what the future of our town is. Our past leaders have quite simply ignored what makes a town a place where people want to come to visit, play, shop, and stay. Who wants to come to FS with our overflowing sewers, pollution of our waterways, suspect water in our water supply, sewers backing up into homeowners basements, kitchens and bathrooms, restrooms in our parks that takes 2 years to get a water line fixed to a toilet, streets one can barely navigate and a community college in danger of closing, due to lack of funding.
The character of our town, and what brought me back to town, is defined by the old fort, and more importantly, the character of the people who live here. Our citizens are our most important asset, and yet our leaders are more interested in the glitzy, pie-in-the-sky projects that mean nothing to the citizens now, and never will.
Our town is crumbling, and we need to fix it, not build some $300M project south of town that is completely out of character with our heritage.
Where in our comprehensive plan does it suggest such a plan?
FS needs to stop the nonsense perpetrated by BB Co. REDI. and get our town back to the basics of fixing what we have and making it a great place to live.
Overland Park is 90 miles north, we don’t need another one south of FS! I like it like it is, or like it used to be.
My vision of FS is a clean, well maintained, friendly, formerly frontier city, with clean water to drink, sewers that do not pollute, and streets we are proud to own. We need neighborhoods cleaned up and kept that way and available jobs with pay that will sustain a family and make them want to stay in FS.
We have come a long way toward this vision in the past four years and we have a marvelous base, let’s be like Lindsborg and build on it! Our roots are not in commercialization!