The weather app on my phone says on Thursday we can expect a high of four degrees with a low of six below. Friday’s forecast is six degrees with a low of two below. Sounds like things could get chilly. I suggest grabbing a jacket as you head out the door.
This might seem like a small thing but it’s not.
Beginning in January, meetings of the Platte County Commission are coming back to the county seat. Like God intended, I would imagine.
Yes, county commission meetings will once again be held at the Platte County Administration Building in Platte City. What a concept. This isn’t hard. It was a decision that so obviously needed to be made that we needed someone from the outside to convince the insiders to do it. Insert something about can’t see the forest for the trees.
Platte City, by the way, is and always has been the county seat. The Platte County Administration Building in Platte City, by the way, was constructed more than 30 years ago to house county administrative offices that had outgrown the adjacent county courthouse. It was constructed with a large second floor meeting room to host meetings and sessions–such as this thing called county commission meetings.
For the past couple of years county commission meetings have been held at the Platte County Resource Center. As I recall, the initial reason for that was the county commission had given up its offices and meeting room to the prosecutor while some construction improvements were made to the prosecutor’s offices on the third floor of the courthouse. For a time the prosecutor’s office was using space in the large open meeting room in the administration building, but now I’m told that’s no longer the case–and apparently hasn’t been the case for a while now.
So. . .it was curious why commission meetings were still being held at the resource center in Kansas City, located off the airport exit along the east side of I-29. My guess is that a majority of Platte County’s 108,000 residents don’t know what the Platte County Resource Center is, let alone know where it is. It was a shorter drive for a couple of county commissioners from their homes, I’m sure, than is Platte City. And it made it harder for the commissioners to be found, a fact that the commissioners probably found attractive. And I’m sure most commissioners didn’t really mind that media types like yours truly were less likely to run down to the airport exit than we are to go the more natural location of the county for such things.
I mean, yeah, Platte City has spotty electrical service but damn. . . don’t try to steal the county seat from us just yet. After all, Evergy hints our local electrical service is slowly headed in the direction of excellence.
“Scott Fricker (the incoming presiding commissioner) asked us to move most of the county commission meetings back to Platte City,” Joe Vanover, second district commissioner, told me this week. “Dagmar (Wood) and I agreed.”
Vanover says some of the other committee meetings are likely to move back to Platte City at the same time. “The commission uses video streaming at our meetings. It is better for the equipment to stay in one location. The other committees that use the video streaming equipment will need to hold meetings in Platte City to take advantage of the equipment,” Vanover added.
Early this week I reached out to Fricker, the incoming presiding commissioner elected in November to fill the seat being vacated by Ron Schieber, after hearing the excellent idea of moving the meetings back to Platte City was his. “As you know, I won’t actually have any decision-making authority until Jan. 1 so moving the commission meetings is officially the current commission’s decision,” Fricker said.
Fricker has some other ideas that are worth mentioning here.
“One of my goals for the first half of 2023 is to increase public access to the county commissioners and to increase awareness about what the commissioners actually do,” Fricker told me this week. “The first step is moving the biweekly commission sessions back to the county administration building in Platte City. And I’ll encourage my fellow commissioners to agree to start holding these sessions in the evenings, as is the practice with most other local jurisdictions. Because most people who pay property taxes know where the county administration building is located, more people are available to attend meetings in the evenings, I hope these changes will lead to more public participation.”
Some additional plans from Fricker that he hopes will increase awareness include a Facebook page (Facebook.com/CommissionerFricker) “where I’ll post regular updates about commission activities,” he said. Fricker added he will push for a complete overhaul of county’s website. He’s on the right track with this thought, too, as the county’s website is not convenient to navigate and needs some modernization.
Fricker said one of the additions he’d like to see on the website is a listing of board member names in the category of boards and commissions. “And if anyone wants to reach out to me directly, they can email me at scott.fricker.co.platte.mo.us, call or text me at 816-533-5808 or message me through my Facebook page,” he added.
What the Platte City community, exhausted from power outages, wants from Evergy are specifics about what’s going to be done to improve reliability and when. The public feels like it has been sold a bill of goods over the past 15 years or so on improvements that will make a noticeable difference. Evergy, for whatever reason, has not been anxious to get very specific when questions come up. So the result is a doubting public.
The idea of quarterly updates to the county commission is a good one, and kudos to the Evergy reps at Monday’s meeting to at least agreeing to giving those updates. Baby steps.
(Merry Christmas from Between the Lines headquarters, which you can reach by email to ivan@plattecountylandmark.com)