By Sarah Green
KHI News Service
Monday, Nov. 20, 2006
SATANTA
At an elementary school assembly here, Kansas Transportation Secretary Deb Miller announced a package of almost $730,000 in funding for the
“Safe Routes to School”
project.
The federally funded program encourages communities to teach students the importance of physical activity and lessons in pedestrian, bicycle and personal safety. It also is meant to help
reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality where cars and buses wait to ferry children to and from school.
“Initially, the program looked at a bunch of different things like vehicle/pedestrian collisions, and then it looked at other issues like street safety and wellness and health,” said Lisa Koch, the state”s Safe Routes to School coordinator. “With the obesity epidemic that”s becoming prevalent in schools, we”re trying to find every way possible to stop it in children by altering their habits.”
Two of the 24 grant recipients Satanta and Sedgwick
will use the money
to make infrastructure improvements near schools. Satanta will use its $150,000 to build Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible sidewalks and ramps
linking the elementary school on the west side of town to secondary schools on the east side, along with sidewalks in another residential area near the elementary school.
Kansas didn”t have a Safe Routes to School program until passage of the 2005 SAFETEA-LU federal transportation bill. But it is among the first states with new programs to start awarding grants, Koch said. The national program will provide $615 million over five years. Kansas received a $1 million grant for the program in 2006, increasing in the following years to about $1.6 million in 2009.
Other communities that won grants will use the money to develop their own Safe Routes to School plans, Koch said. More than 60 communities applied for this year”s program.
Among the possibilities:
forming neighborhood “walking school buses” or “bike trains,” where parents take turns walking or riding with groups of children to and from school.
Satanta”s project
was at least two years in the making, said Mayor Rick Limon and City Councilmember Carlyle Kiehne.
Limon and Kiehne saw a need for sidewalks after watching children riding their bikes through town after school, Kiehne said. With few sidewalks in the southwest Kansas town of 1,200, there were no other options to keep bicyclists and pedestrians a safe distance from cars and trucks.
“Nothing”s ever happened here,” Kiehne said, “but it could.”
A trip to Liberal earlier this year to meet with an engineer prompted the school district and the city to apply for a Safe Routes to School grant.
About 72 percent of the elementary school”s 200 students live close enough to walk to school, said Principal Leanne Tschanz.
“We don”t have near that many that walk,” she said. “Hopefully we”ll have more when we have sidewalks.”
Once the sidewalks are constructed, Kiehne and Limon said they
expect the town”s active senior population to also take advantage of the improved paths.
Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton; Rep. Gary Hayzlett, R-Lakin; and Rep. Bill Light, R-Rolla, attended the announcement ceremony.
“I think all the state agencies can get involved in the health of the state,” Light said. “Health initiatives, as a rule, have been a low priority compared to highway funding or other big projects. I think we get caught up with big spending ideas.”
New initiatives, such as consolidating much of the state”s health policy under the Kansas Health Policy Authority, could help the Legislature focus on smaller-ticket items such as health and wellness plans, Light added.
“I think the Legislature can get behind simple projects that help a lot too, and make it more of a priority than we have in the past,” he said.
Communities receiving funding for “planning grants” in 2006:
Baldwin: $14,780
Belle Plaine: $12,750
Concordia USD 333: $9,500
Conway Springs: $15,000
Lansing School District: $13,989
Leavenworth: $14,820
Lincoln: $9,700
Louisburg USD 416: $14,780
Lyons: $15,000
Marion: $14,500
Mid-America Regional Council: $2,400
Minneapolis: $12,800
Mulvane: $9,000
Neodesha: $13,300
Newton: $15,000
Parsons: $15,000
Plainville USD 270: $5,650
Stafford USD 369: $9,000
Sterling: $12,750
Unified Government of Wyandotte County: $75,000
Wichita Area Metropolitan Planning Organization: $15,000
Wichita Public Works: $15,000
Communities receiving funding for infrastructure improvements:
Satanta: $150,000
Sedgwick: $245,056
Contact Sarah Green
at
sgreen@khi.org
or (785) 233-5443.