Dearest editor,
I found your article on Wednesday’s Planning Commission meeting to be accurate and informative. However, I want to make it clear that the commission was swayed neither by an irate neighbor nor the desperation of the hospital committee.
The commission’s majority vote to recommend denial of the change of zoning request was objective.
If the proposed commercial business was a car dealership or a strip mall, I’m certain the vote would have been unanimous.
As a citizen and proponent of the new hospital, I urge the Iola City Council to find a way to make the Huskey property work.
The Huskey property is already slated to be zoned commercial, in accordance with Iola’s Comprehensive Plan, and, in my opinion, is the ideal location for Iola’s new hospital.
Iola is destined to grow to the northeast and absorb that parcel. It’s a matter of time. Let’s make it sooner rather than later.
Sincerely,
Ben McRae
Iola, Kan.
To the editor:
Well kick me sideways and bite me twice, you’ve got to be kidding me. Rats-Sil-Frat-Sil-Finkle-Berries.
First I felt like I had been stabbed in the stomach when The Register headline read, “City administrator fired” and now I have to endure another headline that stabbed me in the stomach again, with the headline that said, “The Iola Planning Commission denies the Kentucky site for the new hospital.”
These hospital trustee meetings have been going on for what, about 35 to 38 weeks now and I have been to all the meetings except two and now we are just finding out that the residents are very unhappy with the location of the new hospital on Kentucky Street because it would require rezoning the property from residential to commercial. It doesn’t make sense to put a commercial zoned property in the middle residential housing and I knew from the beginning that those property owners in that neighborhood of quality built homes would not want a helicopter landing next door to their homes or ambulances coming and going at all hours of the night and day. Relocating the new hospital from East Street at the entrance to the city to Oregon Road and the highway seemed like a reasonable idea at the time. Then we started hearing about the cattle ranch that was too close to the Oregon Road site. Twice during those talks I smelled that cattle ranch at my house on East Garfield Street, which is across the street from Windsor Place. Both times I drove up to the corner of Oregon Road and the highway, got out of my car and I didn’t smell a thing. Then we take and move the new hospital from the Oregon Road site to a site on Kentucky, that looks like it is a winner, but isn’t that site on Kentucky much closer to the cattle ranch than the Oregon Road site?
I’m completely confused as to what we are doing, because in the very beginning we were told more than once by the mayor that whatever the hospital trustees decided to do would be fine with the city and we heard the same type of comment from the county commissioners. It is beyond my comprehension why we didn’t get all the City Planning Commission and all the county commissioners and all of the city council members and the mayor and a good representation from possible property owners near where all these possible sites were and try to hash out any and all problems right from the start. If the city had said from the start that they were not going to annex the Oregon Road site or help with the utilities or let the new hospital use the quarter-cent sales tax and they were not going to annex the Oregon Road site or help with the utilities, or let the new hospital use the quarter-cent sale tax, then we wouldn’t have spent money boring holes and doing environmental studies on three different sites and if I’m correct, each site had a boring cost of $8,000 to $18,000 plus at different times permission had been given to the architect to go ahead with drawing plans for the hospital at a certain cost.
I certainly think that the hospital trustees have worked in good faith; however, somewhere along the line the rules have changed by the city of Iola, without the hospital trustees being notified in detail of those changes. As I understand the situation, if the new hospital doesn’t start selling the hospital bonds before the end of the year, it could cause the cost of financing the hospital to go up by approximately $150,000 per year.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the builder and the architect just threw up their hands and left, unless all the parties involved can make some necessary decisions.
Paul Sorenson
Iola, Kan.
