More than 300 people from over southeast Kansas crowded into the parish hall of St. John’s Catholic church Thursday morning for the “Together We Succeed” economic summit.
In opening remarks, Gov. Sam Brownback said it was time to “reset, restart and refocus.”
The enthusiastic gathering was the first of what will be a series of regional meetings.
The summit’s goals are ambitious: More jobs, better housing, a higher standard of living. Kansans can achieve those goals, Brownback said, if they are stated so that progress toward them can be measured.
He quoted an economic guru as saying “that which can be measured, can be achieved; if it isn’t measured, nothing happens.”
After other inspiring presentations, the assembly was apportioned into several groups, which were guided into making recommendations for action.
Among those was that SEK, Inc. be “reset, restarted and refocused” to tackle the task of renewing southeast Kansas, which remains the poorest quadrant of the state.
SEK, Inc. is a remake of Mid-America, Inc., which was started sometime in the 1950s and became the most successful regional economic development organization in Kansas.
Mid-America had an office in Parsons. It was headed by a series of full-time executives who kept the pots boiling in the counties of the region. It was instrumental in the location of many industries, including Herff-Jones, Berg Manufacturing, Gates Rubber and Klein Tools in Allen County.
Mid-America depended on dues paid by businesses, cities and counties. Because it was a single-purpose organization — economic development — it faded when the larger cities and counties in the region created their own economic development offices and pulled out. That development also had the effect of putting the cities and counties of the region in competition with each other and regionalization faded as a motivating force.
A REFOCUSED regional organization with a broader charter should have been born in Iola Thursday. Southeast Kansas needs more than jobs. It needs new energy, higher ambitions, disciplined determination.
Those essential intangibles flooded parish hall Thursday. A passion to make our region a better place and southeast Kansans happier, more successful people, abounded.
Now the intangibles need to be made tangible.
The framework for a successful regional organization exists in SEK, Inc. All of the counties in the region are represented. A way to finance the organization through annual dues exists. The files of SEK, Inc. contain an invaluable list of past members who can be asked to rejoin a new regional crusade. The organization requires a professional director.
To breathe new life into the organization perhaps it should be renamed. It most certainly needs hundreds of new members and tens of thousands more dollars in its annual budget.
With a new emblem — a team of galloping horses? — a new name and a very well paid full-of-fire director and a set of goals as broad and comprehensive as are the needs of this Cornerstone of Kansas, the measurable goals we set can surely will be met.
The governor of Kansas came to Iola to tell us we can lift ourselves high by our own bootstraps. Let’s show him — let’s show ourselves — that we can.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
