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West Florida For East Kansas? It's Not A Good Trade

The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 7, 2007

It's understandable that New Port Richey City Manager Scott Miller, who plans to resign to become the top municipal government administrator in Leavenworth, Kan., reportedly is a little bit down on his soon-to-be former state.

The Legislature, indeed, has interfered some with local governments' home rule by mandating tax cuts, with more possibly on the way, without concern for the impact to budgets and services.

It does get hot here, with a change of seasons mostly involving turning the pages of a calendar.

And we've had a hurricane or two, which has led to enormous increases in homeowners insurance.

But leaving Florida's West Coast for eastern Kansas? That's like trading your Lexus for a Chevy Chevette.

The Leavenworth area is in Tornado Alley. The Internet site City-Data.com, which crunches data from numerous sources to create profiles of cities, reports that Leavenworth, historically, has slightly more tornado activity than Kansas as a whole but a rate that is 144 percent greater than the U.S. average.

Leavenworth also is famous for its prisons; it has at least four federal and state facilities, including the infamous U.S. Penitentiary. The area has catchy little slogans such as "The Great Escape" and "Doin' Time in Leavenworth," which, considering the prison industry, is a little bit contradictory but humorous nonetheless.

And, obviously, Leavenworth residents have to drive hundreds and hundreds of miles to go to the beach, unless you settle for the banks of the Missouri River.

Anyway, to be fair to Leavenworth, New Port Richey does have U.S. 19, recognized by several studies as the worst road in the United States. And, of course, there's no getting past the six long months of hurricane season.

But no matter the differences between Kansas and Florida, Miller, a Pennsylvania native, is going to find that one thing isn't going to change, and that's the heat that comes with running a city for an elected board that controls his employment. We wish him luck.

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