Kansas Community Strategic Plans

Abstract

Since the passage of the Community Strategic Planning Assistance Act by the Kansas Legislature in 1990, strategic planning in non-metropolitan Kansas has increased and Kansas communities have begun to assume responsibility for economic development planning. Currently, thirty-eight rural counties have developed a strategic plan and twenty-three of those counties have received funds from the state's planning grant program. Another twenty-nine counties are currently in the process of preparing a strategic plan and twenty-one of those counties have received a state planning grant.

The Kansas Center for Community Economic Development at the University of Kansas and Kansas State University engaged in a study of these county-wide strategic plans in Kansas. This study was commissioned by Kansas Inc. as part of the State of Kansas' effort to update the state's strategic plan. Thirty-six plans from forty-three counties were reviewed and analyzed with the aim of linking the results of community strategic planning to the statewide strategy program. The focus was not on an evaluation of the plans but rather a presentation of the information in the plans and the implications this has for the state's strategy.