After efforts to lobby Manhattan officials to support funding full-service kitchen amenities in the soon-to-open community recreation center co-located at Eisenhower Middle School came up short, Northview neighborhood advocates brought their requests to the city commission.
Multiple supporters and members of advocacy group Northview Rising (NVR) presented a petition with more than 100 signatures — joined by an online petition with more than 350 signatures — and spoke in support of the request as a step to address food insecurity in Manhattan’s most food insecure census tract at the June 22 city budget discussion. Additionally, the kitchen build-out has also drawn the support of the Flint Hills Wellness Coalition and the Food and Farm Council of Riley County and the City of Manhattan.
“Northview desperately needs a truly accessible, usable and welcoming community center,” said NVR Working Group member Dr. Doug Benson, a 41-year resident of Northview. “And as we have pointed out regularly in communications with the City Manager’s Office, the pandemic has only exacerbated the needs of our neighborhood.
“The solution, then, lies with you -- with the city commission itself now -- by identifying a funding source for the build-out of the Eisenhower Community Center kitchen in this budget cycle.”
Supporters initially attempted to make their comments during the public comment period following the city’s Social Services Advisory Board budget proposal for fiscal year 2022. After a couple commenters made their remarks, though, Mayor Wynn Butler questioned the relevancy of their comments to the agenda item and moved further comment to the end of the evening’s final budget presentation.
“My assumption was you were all going to talk about the Social Services Advisory Board and you’re not talking about that,” Butler told those in attendance. “So what I want to do is terminate the public comment on this until the end of the meeting -- you will be able to finish, but we want to put it in the right context because our next topic was supposed to be Special Alcohol Funds which might be related and once they’re done we can continue the discussion because it’s gone on a direction that doesn’t fit the agenda.”
NVR Working Group member and speaker that evening Andrew Elliott disagreed, telling me after the meeting that the kitchen is directly related to Manhattan’s social services and could serve as vital support infrastructure for various existing services providing aid and assistance in Northview.
“We’re always looking for any sort of opportunity where we can make a rational, logistic and economically-sound argument,” Elliott said. “All of that seems painfully obvious and there were folks in the SSAB [sitting] in the back who were like, it just makes sense.”
Following the final city presentation, Butler brought the discussion back to the table. Susanne Glymour noted data from the Flint Hills Wellness Coalition and Riley County Health Department that the entirety of the neighborhood in northeast Manhattan is a food desert, defined as an area with a higher than 20 percent poverty rate and in which over a third of the community lives greater than a mile from stores selling fresh produce, experiencing worse overall health outcomes than other neighborhoods just a few miles west.
“Publicly-funded projects attempting to address community needs in Northview must begin by addressing the known problems of food scarcity in Northview and the lack of localized, equitable access to amenities that promote general health and well-being,” says Glymour. “While the city committed to roughing-in space for a kitchen in 2019 in response to community advocacy, it’s failed to commit to securing kitchen equipment.”
For further information on prior advocacy Glymour referenced, see my past reporting on the topic here.
Commissioner Mark Hatesohl questioned how the kitchen solves the neighborhood’s food insecurity following Glymour’s remarks, further asking who would maintain and operate the facilities if funding were allocated.
“How will that solve food issues and wouldn’t a [Flint Hills] Breadbasket second location be better?” Hatesohl said.
Elliott began to respond with a trio of questions in return, until told by Butler that the time would count against his five-minute public comment time limit. He says he had planned his comments with a close eye to the time and did not want to take his speaking time to respond to questions, adding he’ll engage in an email dialogue with Hatesohl on the matter.
Elliott’s comments touched on many of the reasons and arguments NVR has made over the years to city officials to seek funding opportunities for the kitchen build-out. He says the city did not equitably engage with the Northview community in setting priorities for the Eisenhower center and that the neighborhood needs a true community center rather than a center “designed around sports tourism.
“A space that supports a broad range of activities and services including educational programs, nutritional and cooking classes, community events and meals, a localized COVID vaccine site and localized food distribution,” said Elliott.
Public comment was concluded by Thomas Kerrigan, saying Northview residents were marginalized in the design process from the get-go. Seven of the 44 steering committee members were from the neighborhood, who he says were separated as the committee was divided into subgroups.
“Find the money -- do what you got to do, work whatever you got to do, work that magic,” says Kerrigan. “I don’t envy you your job, I wouldn’t want to do it, I don’t have the temperament for it, but it’s got to be done.”
Following Kerrigan’s remarks, Butler said as the item was not on the agenda he does not believe anyone on staff or the commission are prepared to discuss the topic in depth. He said the discussion would probably fit under the umbrella of community improvement projects, a topic yet to be discussed in the budget process, and recommended revisiting the discussion at that time before calling the meeting to a close.
Following the meeting, I reached out to city commissioners and NVR via email for their perspectives on the evening’s discussion. Mayor Butler and Commissioner Hatesohl as well as NVR’s Elliott all provided their thoughts on the matter.
Hatesohl wrote that this was the first he’s heard of the request as he was re-elected to serve on the commission following the planning and design of the Eisenhower and Anthony centers. He wrote that he’d need additional information before he could comment beyond his remarks from June 22.
Butler wrote that he believes the request is for much more than kitchen equipment, adding that NVR is “focused on a mission and issues that are not in alignment with the Eisenhower Recreation Center concept.
“I am not sure that putting a kitchen into one or both facilities serve any purpose,” he said. “The Concession kitchen area is adequate to the task. The rec facility was not staffed or designed to support the food initiatives advocated by the group. Other facilities are available in the city with full size kitchens. Programming for this food effort might be best handled by UFM.”
Butler also questioned whether the request is ‘mission creep,’ further adding that he hopes to meet with the group at the currently open Anthony center for further discussion.
Elliott expressed disappointment at the response from city officials and commissioners during and after the meeting, though still believed the engagement was positive for their request’s visibility in Manhattan.
“It’s something people have been asking for for a long time,” said Elliott. “The Food and Farm Council has been asking for this, the Flint Hills Wellness Coalition has partnered with us to try and push for this, and NVR even when it was the Greater Northview Action Team years and years ago have all been explicitly doing this.
“Something we’ve had to realize is that they’re not really interested in being partners in this work, so we’ve had to shift from this more gentile approach that didn’t get us anywhere.”
He additionally questioned Butler’s decision to move their comments to the meeting’s end, seeing it as a way to disorganize their planned remarks.
“It’s assumed that private business interests have a voice and there are very few barriers to their lobbying,” Elliot said. “Aggieville Business District, Downtown Manhattan Inc., these groups are asking for 50 to 60 thousand dollars regularly on an annual basis -- that’s what we’re asking for this community center.”
Elliott added they plan to continue their advocacy while they evaluate their next steps, and that this is all part of their push to increase public input and equitable development in the Greater Manhattan Area.
“[NVR has] this thing called the EDPS, the equitable development and policy scorecard,” he said. “So the Eisenhower center is one of the test cases for this thing, and the idea is people evaluate a number of categories [to determine] how much does this reflect community need? It won’t surprise you that if you stress test the Eisenhower center with that scorecard, it gets a very low score.”
Elliot says the intent is to provide community members with a tool to better identify whether developments are serving their communities’ interests.
For more information on Northview Rising’s request, view their petition here. It has recently been updated with fuller perspective from Elliott on the meeting.
Originally posted at https://northviewnotable.substack.com/p/northview-advocates-petition-city
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