City Commission approves ride share licensing agreement

The City Commission of Concordia met for their regularly scheduled meeting on April 17th at which they unanimously approved a licensing agreement for a bike sharing program in the Concordia community.
This partnership between OCCK, Blue Cross and Blue Shield and Zagster will allow communities across the North Central Kansas region to add pay-as-you-ride bike sharing programs to their goals for community wellness and affordable transportation.  
Concordia’s City Commission is the first in this region to vote to approve said program.
Zagster, a national company, has promoted these ride sharing programs in other communities, like Wichita and other metro areas, and is partnering with OCCK to incorporate these bike racks into the locations of their 81 Connection lines.
The two bike rakes will be located in Parking Lot 4 of Cloud County Community College and on West 7th street across from City Hall to coordinate with the 81 Connection stops in these locations.  They will also include ten bikes to start with.
The racks are expected to be operational on June 1st of this year.
Riders will use an app to pay a small fee per hour to take the bike out for their own personal usage and then must return it to a rack, although not necessarily the same rack, to end their time.  They may also purchase, for a larger fee, a yearly or student code for this usage.
Zagster and its partners will monitor the locations of the bikes using GPS and maintain them for repairs in addition to carrying the necessary insurance to cover riders.
The City will have no responsibility for or pay any fee over these bikes aside from providing and maintaining the locations of the racks themselves.
The Commission also heard a study session from Karal Closser of the Concordia Senior Center on the state of Public Transportation in Concordia.
Klosser reports that transportation’s use has grown over the last year to nearly double what it was in 2018.  She reports that the ride wait times have increased as the two vans can sometimes have a line of between eight and ten individuals waiting to be picked up.  
Subsequently, the cancellation rate for rides has also increased because people feel they cannot wait the sometimes more than an hour of time for the ride.
“We average 80 rides a day,” Klosser says, “sometimes as high as 100.”
Klosser has asked the City Commission to consider taking over or stakeholding, the additional $1700 a month or $20,400 a year to help this service run more smoothly.
“I personally, am proud of this public service and I cannot imagine what it would do to our town to lose it,” Klosser concludes.
No action was taken at this time on this request.
City Manager, Amy Lange, also presented the updated findings from the 2nd Annual Neighborhood Listening Tour.  Three tours were held last month, over the course of one week, one afternoon session and two evening sessions.  
While attendance was a lower than the previous listening tour with approximately 30 people in attendance, the same four key focus items remained in the forefront of the discussion.
These four items were infrastructure maintenance, property maintenance, services to citizens and business development.
These themes were discussed at length or present in more than one stop on the tour.
They included discussion of the condition of streets, the further expansion of the City’s demolition project, expressed a need for expanded quality medical care and public transportation and promotion of the quality of life and business development goals of this community.
The general consensus is that it is likely they will continue to have between two and three stops and have further listening tours, but no official decision was made at this time.
In other action items, the City voted to approve the licensing agreement with Keaton Lambert for the use of the undeveloped portions of 18th, 19th, 20th, Kansas and Olive streets for farming purposes.
The agreement originally entered into on May 20, 2009 was for a ten-year period.  At that time, he had purchased the land from Beldon Blosser, who in turn had a similar agreement with the City.
This agreement will then remain in effect until May 19, 2029 or upon termination, which can be cancelled by the City if the need were to ever arise, with thirty days’ notice.
April was also officially proclaimed as Fair Housing Month and this year marks the fifty-first year of Fair housing in the United States.  Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1968, of which Title VIII declared that equal rights would also include housing.