Thursday, March 1, 2012

The relentless rivalry

There've been a few issues that have highlighted the Winfield-Ark City rivalry in recent weeks. You have the new push to reopen and car tag and tax office in Ark City, which was closed about 10 years ago. You have a recommendation from a citizen's task force to move Cowley First from Strother Field to Winfield, to save money. You have the countywide 911 consolidation plan, which includes a decision on where to put the emergency dispatch center. The task force recommended a location north of Strother Field, which would be geographically neutral. All these things remind us that we live in a county with two cities of the same size that compete for business and services, to some degree. Boundary politics can influence government decisions. There's no avoiding that. Having lived in both Winfield and now Ark City, I do have a perspective from both places. Ark City does feel like it needs to wave its hands to get attention sometimes, because Winfield is the county seat. But, as one reader from Ark City pointed out to me recently, geography and playing to the rivalry should not be the driving factor in these kinds of decisions. It would be neat if we could get to the place where people felt like residents of Cowley County as much as they do the individual towns, although that's probably like asking to change tribes.

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