City Manager Zach Walker and Chamber Chairman Matt Medley

This week, Zach Walker presented his State of the City at our Membership Breakfast. For me, it was a nice look at the bigger picture of what is happening in our community. I think we often feel like there are days when we don’t see the kind of progress we’d like to see, and in some cases, feel like there are days when we take a step backward as a community. That is when you have to look at a larger perspective and Zach helped show the big picture of how Independence has changed for the better. Highlighting topics such as population growth, diversification of our residents, the increased effort to address dangerous buildings and neglected properties, and the growth we are seeing in new housing projects and of course the Northpoint development in the Little Blue Valley.

Perspective sometimes is often impacted by the window of time we are looking at. One of my worst feelings is when we lose a member who chooses not to renew. Every month you see a list of those members and it feels like in that short window of time, we are trending in the wrong direction. Step back and look at the broader perspective and you can see that 3 years ago, we were right around 500 members and today we are at 680 so we’ve seen 25% growth and in the middle of that 3-year period we had a pandemic to deal with.

We all experience highs and lows in our daily lives but putting those all into a longer-term perspective is when we can measure whether we are making progress or going backward. Zach today gave us that perspective to show that we are indeed making the progress we need to grow and thrive as a community.