Home: City Manager's Updates

Posted 03-10-08
Our Washington DC Trip

Mayor Mike Rhodes, Grant Administrator Sarah Talley and I recently returned from a lobbying trip to Washington DC. While we were there, we met with the staff of our congressional delegation. We got a few minutes with Senator Sam Brownback and some time with Congressman Jerry Moran. We answered questions about our community and provided information on various projects. We did receive endorsement of several grant applications Sarah is working on. In addition, we heard continued support for the growth of Fort Riley, the Manhattan Regional Airport and the National Bioscience center being recruited for our region. We met with officials at the Pentagon, officials from the Office of Economic Adjustment, Department of Defense and with officials with U.S. Census Bureau. At each meeting, we stressed the importance of providing financial assistance to the City for building infrastructure to support the growth in the area. The Office of Economic Adjustment has been a tremendous help with numerous planning grants and has provided dollars for studies to help us make appropriate decisions such as the regional labor study to be conducted by Fort Hays State University. In addition, we are talking with the OEA about funding a study to look at the delivery our fire and police services in the region. We visited with the Census Bureau officials to learn about appealing our census estimate. They were helpful and we will see where our numbers are in July of this year.

Building relationships with federal officials is important to the success of many of our local programs. We stressed the importance of the continued funding for numerous programs that help our community. Some of these are the United States Department of Agriculture, Rural Development dollars and the Community Development Block Grant program.

Overall, it was a productive visit and we are excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for our community.

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