City hosts Listening Tour

The Concordia city commission hosted its Neighborhood Listening Tour last week.
The listening tour included two sessions on Tuesday, one at noon at the Concordia Senior Citizens Center and one in the evening at Valley Rental Center, and one session on Thursday evening at the Nazareth Motherhouse.
The purpose of the listening tour was to provide an opportunity for the commissioners to hear from residents on the quality of life in Concordia.
City commissioners and city manager Amy Lange attended each of the sessions.
Lange provided a summary of the sessions.
There were 25 residents attending the noon session on Tuesday, three attending the evening session on Tuesday and two attending the evening session on Thursday.
When divided by the July 1, 2016 census population estimate of 5,179, this attendance represents .48 percent of Concordia's residents. No duplication attendees were observed.
The statement from Lange stated that, although attendees varied at each session, the resident-led discussions centered on four common themes including:
Infrastructure maintenance: Repair of streets is important; the city is doing a good job with street repair given its current budget.
Property maintenance: The demolition program is good, but more work needs to be done; the annual City Wide Cleanup is a good program, and more people need to take advantage of it.
Services for seniors: General Public Transportation is a good amenity for Concordia. It should be continue, but needs financial support beyond the Senior Center; quality medical care is critical for our community and patient experience is critical to insure local citizens choose Cloud County Health Center for healthcare needs.
Economic development: We need to do more to promote quality of life in rural Kansas to get more people to move here; business development should be encouraged beyond downtown.
Those themes were mentioned during at least two of the three listening tour sessions, or resulted in significant discussion during at least one session. Subsets of each of those themes were discussed at each meeting.
Other topics were discussed as well, but not mentioned frequently.
The themes will be discussed in more detail during the city commission meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.