Introspection and inflection

Looking inward and outward to move a needed conversation forward

Introspection

I want to start with a recognition, and an apology.

Last week I came in hot with a post about resistance to a housing development on the north edge of town. In the process, I used language and imagery that legitimately hurt people’s feelings.

I don’t like to cause hurt feelings for people who don’t deserve it. I don’t think everyone caught in my piece deserved to be painted with a singularly broad brush. I know some of the people in the neighborhood I wrote about. I like them. I enjoy visiting with them. And I respect the work they do in the community.

Some of the residents likely didn’t have the full details of the proposed development in hand until the night of the City Council meeting. It seems that once they had more information, concerns eased a bit. There are always process improvements that could be made, and this experience in an opportunity for the city to identify ways to better communicate important matters to residents, and an opportunity for residents to identify ways to learn more about our city’s operations.

I have very strong feelings when I sense that the intentions, motivations, and circumstances of people in my neighborhood are judged based on little more than where they live, their homes, or incomes. It’s an unfair practice, whether it’s on the lower, or upper, end of the socio-economic spectrum.

Not once in my life have I claimed to be perfect. I am embarrassingly far from it. But I’ve always tried to accept responsibility for the things I say and do, and apologize when I feel it’s needed.

I’m genuinely sorry for using words that unjustly hurt anyone’s feelings.

Inflection

I believe that Hutchinson stands at an inflection point that will cement our long-term future as a vibrant, dynamic community, or just another prairie city that has struggled to hold on since the Great Depression.

Reno County experienced its peak population in 1980. We’ve had initiatives and efforts throughout the years to change that trajectory, but with very limited success. From 2010 to the 2020 U.S. Census, Reno County lost roughly 3,000 residents.

The projections for the future aren’t rosy either. Current modeling shows Reno County dropping another 11.3 percent of its population in the next 20 years.

In the ongoing conversations in both Hutchinson and in the county’s smaller communities, the lack of affordable quality housing has been identified as a barrier to growth. It affects our ability to attract investment, jobs, and employees.

There’s a need for new housing across every income and price range, but there’s an acute need for affordable workforce housing. That would make the most sense in the Hutchinson’s core and southern areas, but there hasn’t been a for-profit developer who’s given the area a real hard second look in some time.

It’s worth reading through Reno County’s Housing Needs Assessment.

When I talk to “Old Timers” who grew up on the South part of Hutchinson, they speak of the area with wistful fondness. There was a community, where kids could roam free, and parents knew the neighbors would watch out and care for them. They felt like they offered a lot to the broader community and they felt like they belonged here.

That has eroded over the past 50 years or more. Over time, the town has in many ways split in two - with most new housing and business development moving north, and the south end feeling increasingly neglected, ignored, and scorned.

At some points, bright lines developed in our community. It used to be a new person coming to Hutchinson was told that 4th Avenue was the dividing line - a home north of the line would hold value, had better schools, was close to shopping. Then it was 11th. And then 17th. Now, I hear people say it’s approaching 23rd Avenue. All the while, residents on the south side of town began to feel more disconnected from their community, along with an increased sense that few people cared to know what it felt like to live on this side of town.

I’ll share this example that has always stuck in my mind as a strong illustration of that feeling.

I live in Hutchinson’s Midtown area, close to HMS-8, the “Little” Dillon’s on Main Street, and Ace Hardware. Not an affluent area. A year or so ago, I saw a Mother and daughter trying to load a bicycle with a flat tire into too small a car. I walked over with a female friend who was at my home at the time and asked if we could help. I have an old 1998 Chevy Silverado, and offered to load up the bike home for them.

She seemed hesitant, but accepted my offer. I followed her downtown, to an area South of Avenue A, if I remember correctly, and unloaded the bike.

“I’m sorry you had to come down to the ghetto for this,” she said, even though she lived in a perfectly nice house in a perfectly nice neighborhood.

I don’t want anyone in Hutchinson feeling that way about where they live.

And I don’t know that there’s a good way to quantify the economic impact of people feeling this way about their homes, communities, or themselves - but I assure you there is a significant economic impact. And we are realizing that in Hutchinson today.

This is the reality we’ve allowed to develop in our community over the past several generations. And while that reality isn’t what exists for all of Hutchinson, it is the reality that exists for a significant, and I’d argue, growing, part of Hutchinson. Each year that reality is ignored is a year it becomes more costly to address, or fall entirely out of reach.

I believe our community will struggle to grow and prosper until we have difficult conversations about what has caused this perpetual neglect and disinvestment, and start to change the behaviors and policies that led us here.

Moreover, I’ll argue that Hutchinson’s tax base and attractiveness to outside investment will continue to erode if we don’t in this moment resolve to start doing things differently, include more voices in the decision making process, and once again look at our community as a connected whole.

Additionally, I think we have to take much the same approach to our county’s smaller communities. There are so many towns across the state that are doing all they can with limited resources to keep their communities afloat. But they face a number of barriers - from regulation, to funding, to accessing complicated federal and state resources. In most of those communities - including in Reno County - housing is also named as a principal barrier to growth. They, too, have unique challenges and often feel like they’re left on their own to find the solutions.

I travel all over Kansas for various reasons, and I see what is happening in other communities, some close to Hutchinson’s size and some smaller. As much as I love our community, when I travel, it becomes painfully clear to me that Hutchinson isn’t hitting on all cylinders. I see communities that have identified their strengths, created a vision, and captured excitement and investment from both within and without. I see a willingness to try new things, and to let loose the reigns of power to people with different experiences and ideas.

I might not know how to tackle what ails us in Hutchinson and Reno County, but I know there’s no solution in pretending as though everything is just fine.

We all exist in a moment that I believe will largely determine two very different versions of what Hutchinson and Reno County could be 50 years from now. I’ve always said that this community will have a future, and what that looks like will depend on the decisions and the choices we make today.

We have in our hands today all the evidence of what our community looks like if we keep doing what we’ve done for the past 50 or 60 years. I’d like to see what the future could look like if we’re willing to try something different.