By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
During Monday’s Great Bend City Council meeting councilmember Davis Jimenez wanted to get a sense of the changes to funding for Great Bend Economic Development. While the City of Great Bend has funded Economic Development $250,000 this year, Barton County has matched that total in recent years.
Great Bend City Administrator Logan Burns said the city received a letter stating that Barton County was no longer going to fund Economic Development going forward.
"That's a county issue," said Burns. "We got a copy of the letter that the county is not funding them for this year. We still have our $250,000 that we do for them. We'll have to look at budget season for next year of what we're looking at doing."
Jimenez questioned if the city needed to reexamine their Economic Development funding following the change from the county. The councilmember was told he would need to contact the county or Economic Development and that the city could discuss the topic during their upcoming budget sessions.
The Great Bend Chamber of Commerce used to handle Economic Development until 2020 when a city-appointed committee recommended the economic development services should become an in-house service.